Budget Resolutions

Debate between Rebecca Long Bailey and Oliver Dowden

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 28th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

Frankly, I expect better from the hon. Lady; she usually makes very measured contributions. If she lets me continue, I will explain a little about what happened. Perhaps she will make different comments if she asks another question later.

It made perfect sense to use that economic turning point as an opportunity to invest in the development of our industrial base and to address the deep structural problems that had been emerging in our economy since the early 1980s. However, what happened was the scaling back of investment and funding in the tools that business needs to grow and succeed, such as skills, infrastructure, research and development, and access to long-term patient capital.

[Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

As the hon. Lady is taking a trip down memory lane, does she recall the Labour party’s repeated predictions when we embarked on this necessary course of public spending restraint that it would lead to 1 million jobs being lost? In fact, 3 million jobs have been created.

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

Again, we have a Conservative Member who struggles with reality. I urge him to speak to workers in his constituency and ask them about the quality of said employment. I speak to workers in my constituency, and they are struggling in an era of casualised, low-paid, insecure work.

Our productivity was certainly impeded, but the picture worsens still when we focus on the recent productivity and investment figures of many British regions and nations. Stark research recently published by the Centre for Cities shows that London and the south-east are up to 44% more productive than many other British regions, and the Institute for Public Policy Research’s commission on economic justice has found that Britain is the most regionally imbalanced country in the whole of Europe.

What have we seen after seven years of this Government’s single-minded obsession with cutting the national debt? Higher debt and unprecedented downward revisions of GDP growth. As every economist knows, the only way substantially to manage the national debt is by growing the economy, but this Government have simply tried to deflect attention away from their miserable performance on GDP.