Amendment of the Law

Russell Brown Excerpts

Friday 23rd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Labour Members have learned nothing from the mess they handed over to us. They see us in a debt crisis and their solution is to keep on borrowing—keep on digging—and we all know who would pick up that bill.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

rose—

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Justine Greening]

If the hon. Gentleman reads the whole OBR report, he will realise that Britain is an economy that operates in a global marketplace. Of course, his solution to the challenges faced in that global marketplace is to go and join all the countries that are facing problems, not to tackle our own economic crisis that his party left us. I assume that most, if not all the interventions that I get from Labour Members will be cherry-picked statistics that offer no alternative solutions to the challenges facing Britain.

[Mr Russell Brown]

rose—

[Justine Greening]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman has an alternative.

[Mr Brown]

I am not about to cherry-pick a statistic, but let me give the Secretary of State some facts. I appreciate that she was not here at the time, but when the Labour Government came into power in 1997, the servicing of the debt that was left behind amounted to more than was being spent on transport and defence combined. That was a major task to be handled by the incoming Labour Government, so everything was not rosy in the garden.

[Justine Greening]

The previous Conservative Government handed over a golden economic legacy. It was the Labour party that handed over a Britain loaded up with debt, costing us £120 million a day in debt interest, and that left unemployment higher than when it came to office, like every single Labour Government we have ever had. I will take no lectures from the party opposite on economic management, and neither will the British people.