Section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993

Richard Drax Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

It is not appropriate for any of us to provide a running commentary on the French presidential elections, but it is important that Governments, whether inside or outside the euro, make their argument as to why they believe that the measures required to bring about fiscal stability and economic growth are necessary. Those arguments need to continue to be made, because that is vital to Europe’s long-term interests. We will wait and see what the outcome of the French presidential election is and what the view of the new President is on the fiscal compact.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

What will the Minister tell the millions of people in the eurozone when it goes horribly wrong—as it will—and their lives are ruined, given that we have had the chance, as has been suggested, to rebalance the euro from a position of control? It will collapse.

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[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am not as skilled as the hon. Gentleman in using the internet. Old-fashioned though it may be, I go to shops and buy books, I am afraid.

As for the Budget, the reality is that it will not solve our economic problems. Our problems are not really about the deficit; they are to do with unemployment. Looking back, another time when we had an enormous public debt and enormous deficits was the second world war, after which the then Labour Government ran a full-employment economy, which was the way they overcame our problems. If our Budget was directed towards creating employment, we too would solve many of our problems. The important thing is to generate directly in labour-intensive areas, which are not expensive. We are talking about relatively low-paid workers in the public services or the construction sector—labour-intensive sectors with low import content, which are just the sort of sectors where we want to be generating. However, public services and construction are the very sectors we are cutting.

If we had a massive Government-driven house building programme, along with the creation of more public service jobs, we would bring down unemployment and people would be paying taxes rather than living on benefits, and over time the deficit would solve itself. That is what the Labour Government did after 1945. We were living in Keynesian times then, and I think that Keynes was absolutely right. I like to think that if he were here now, he would be saying what I am saying, albeit possibly in a more sophisticated way.

[Richard Drax]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could say where all those homes would be built. I believe the last Government had a target of some 1.8 million, but I recall that something like half were on a floodplain. Where are we going to build all those homes?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

That is a problem for Ministers and local authorities, but it has been estimated that we need another 4.5 million homes over the next few years if we are going to house our people. However, I will not go into that now, because I want to talk about the European Union.

I do not agree with the Budget—I think we ought to have a different one—but even if it were a good Budget, I nevertheless do not think that we should necessarily be required formally to send it to the European Union. I say that because the motion before us refers to the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993—the Maastricht Act—which, I am pleased to say, my party voted against. Indeed, some Government Members voted against it as well. It is the Act that requires us to send the report to the European Union. Personally, I do not feel bound by that, because my party voted against it, and I do not think it is sensible anyway.

However, let us return to the stability and growth pact, which, as I have suggested, is like building castles in the air. What stability? What growth? We have grotesque instability at the moment—terrifying instability, in fact—and absolutely no growth. Indeed, even the powerhouse economy of Germany has serious problems. There is talk of convergence, but who do we want to converge with? Greece? Portugal? Some of the countries that are actually contracting, with mass unemployment? In Spain there is even talk of unemployment rising to 6 million, which, as a proportion of the population, is the equivalent of 9 million in Britain. This is absolutely insane. I do not want to be “disable-ist” about this, but anybody running that economy must want their head examined, quite frankly.