Sheila Gilmore
Main Page: Sheila Gilmore (Labour - Edinburgh East)Department Debates - View all Sheila Gilmore's debates with the Scotland Office
(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
Q15. With the economy shrinking by 5% and inflation rising, having followed Ireland on the path of cutting too fast and too deep, are we not now in danger of following Ireland further down that slippery slope?
The Prime Minister
I am sorry to tell the hon. Lady that the 5% reduction was under her Government, not this Government. If the former shadow Chancellor’s primer has gone missing, perhaps she could get hold of a copy. When we came to office in May, the idea that there was some acceptable plan to reduce the deficit is a complete fiction. Let me just give her this one figure. If we went ahead with the plan of halving the deficit in four years, in four years’ time our deficit would be bigger than Portugal’s is now. Does anybody think that that is a credible path back to growth and confidence? It is not.