Balancing the Public Finances

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of balancing the public finances.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in this new Parliament, Ms Ryan. This is the first time I have secured a Westminster Hall debate since the general election. If you will forgive the indulgence, it is also a great pleasure to see the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride), in his place. He served with tremendous distinction in the Whips Office, which I had the pleasure of leading after the 2015 general election, and I am pleased to see him in his current role. I look forward to him responding to the debate.

I am conscious that a large number of Members wish to speak, so I will speak for a little less time than I had originally intended. The first thing worth drawing to the attention of the Chamber, however, is how few Opposition Members are present, which I find astounding. To draw some conclusions from the attendance, we can see that the Conservative party and our allies in the Democratic Unionist party believe in balancing the public finances and making the difficult decisions necessary to ensure that we can grow the economy and create jobs. Judging by the turnout on the Opposition Benches, or rather the lack of turnout, the Labour party is clearly not interested in balancing the public finances or making sensible decisions; all that it is interested in is spending other people’s money until it runs out. Whereas, so many Conservatives are here that they are having to move right around the Chamber and take over the other side.

I will probably have to draw my remarks to a close sooner than I had expected, in order to allow other Members to speak, so let me do a quick précis of my argument. We have come a long way since 2010: we have cut the deficit by three quarters; we have had faster economic growth than almost any country in the G7 largest countries; and we have cut unemployment to levels not seen since I was at primary school in 1975. That is incredibly important, because those are not just statistics; they represent real people getting the opportunities to succeed and thrive.

There are things that we should be proud of, and we could and should have talked about them more during the election campaign. I was very pleased to hear the Chancellor’s outstanding speech in the debate on the Queen’s Speech, in which he set out our economic record and our plans for the future. My central message at the conclusion of my speech today will be that although we face difficult decisions and many pressing needs for spending public money, we need to raise that money while keeping taxes low and economic growth moving along. Those are difficult decisions. The Chancellor is the man who must make those decisions, and he must make them in a balanced way, taking into account all the factors, including economic growth. He needs to make those decisions at the Budget in the autumn, and Conservative colleagues should give him our support in doing so.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his excellent speech. Is it not the case that Britain has become addicted to public sector debt? The truth is that since 2002 Governments of both colours have been spending more each year than we have been collecting in taxes. If are to stop doing that in future, it will be a bit like a drug addict coming off drugs.

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend sets out clearly what has happened in the past, and I want to spend a little time on the challenges facing us in the future, but it is worth looking at the economic record. We did not make the decisions and get the success we have had easily; they were contested, and our political opponents challenged us every step of the way. But we have been successful, which gives us the credibility to talk about facing the challenges of the future.

When we came to power in 2010, the budget deficit was the equivalent of just under 10% of the size of the economy, at £150 billion a year. According to the most recent set of actual figures, we have reduced the cash deficit to £46 billion—down by 70%—and the deficit as a proportion of the size of the economy is down by 75% to 2.5%. That is a significant achievement, and it means that in this Parliament the size of our stock of national debt as a proportion of the size of the economy will start to fall. That is incredibly important for the future.