Government's Management of the Economy

Simon Clarke Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con) [V]]

The motion before the House today is not one to trouble serious observers. Over the 10 years that followed the crash of 2007 to 2009, this Conservative Government rebuilt our broken economy. Before the appalling shock of covid, we enjoyed effectively full employment. Public spending was back within our means and the UK ranked eighth in the World Economic Forum’s ease of doing business ranking for 2020. The widespread understanding that the Conservatives are the party who will look after people’s family, home and job is among the most important reasons why we have won four successive general elections, and it will underpin, I am sure, our success in a fifth.

This Government have a clear, bold plan to build back better. Our £280 billion to the crisis was deliverable only because of the tough choices that Conservative Chancellors made in the last decade to fix the roof while the sun was shining. We have made decisive interventions that have preserved much of the muscle power of the British economy during this period of suspended animation, and as my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said in his opening remarks, we have been praised by the IMF for the nature of the interventions that we have made.

Even before next week’s Budget, we have the Chancellor’s £30 billion plan for jobs, the £12 billion green industrial revolution and £8.6 billion of accelerated infrastructure spending. This stimulus is hugely exciting areas such as the Tees valley, which had the chance to leverage great amounts of private sector investment off the back of Government commitments of this nature.

Not all the decisions that lie ahead will be easy; there is no point in sugaring the pill. Our public finances are gravely damaged. Some of the damage will of course be repaired when the free market is allowed to operate normally again. However, we need to be realistic. Nothing we said during the course of the 2010s about the danger of running unsustainable levels of public debt has changed. The fact that borrowing costs are historically low is to be welcomed, but we should regard it as a stroke of great good fortune that it coincides with our hour of need, rather than an ongoing inevitability. I challenge anyone in the Chamber to tell me with certainty what the world will look like in the 2030s or 2040s, or what borrowing costs will be.

I believe it would be nothing short of immoral to mortgage our children’s and grandchildren’s futures to chance. For debt to exceed 100% of GDP for the first time since 1963 is simply not sustainable, so I would support and indeed urge some measures of fiscal consolidation in next week’s Budget. These should be targeted at hard-pressed families, and key drivers of employer behaviour such as national insurance should be protected, but I can well see the sense of looking at other options to raise revenue in the medium term, including increasing corporation tax.

Companies are realistic about the economic landscape. They care more about policy certainty and the general prosperity of the economy than about a moderate rise in corporation tax. So I hope the Chancellor will be prudent as well as bold and emphasise the need for discipline and sound money next week as part of our recovery.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We hope to get back to Nadia Whittome before the end of the debate, and sooner rather than later. So we now go by video-link to Paula Barker.