Budget Resolutions
Debate between Simon Hoare and Liam Byrne(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)
I do not know what Budget the right hon. Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden) was reading, but it was not the Budget that was put on the table this afternoon. I think the Chancellor got the judgment exactly right today. She had a difficult inheritance, a difficult hand and difficult decisions to take, but she got the calls absolutely right. Under the Budget, growth this year and business investment over the course of this Parliament are forecast to rise, and inflation is coming down. Forecast interest rates are coming down, energy bills for our constituents are coming down, and child poverty is set to collapse. That means that 8,900 people in my constituency will be better off because of this Budget—a Labour Budget delivered by a Labour Chancellor this afternoon.
I have been in this House for 21 years. I have sat on both Front Benches and on both sets of Back Benches, and over the years I have seen the selective amnesia that bedevils debate in this place, and the problem of unreliable narrators, but I have to say that I have never seen amnesia on as epic a scale as I did from the Leader of the Opposition today. It is quite well established that back in 2010, I thought the numbers were a little bit tight. I thought difficult decisions were going to be needed, which is why we left a judiciously balanced Budget—two thirds spending cuts, one third taxes rises—that would have halved the deficit in four years and brought debt borrowing down by 2016. That, of course, was not the strategy pursued by the last Government, and what difference did that make? The Conservatives saddled this country with an extraordinary £1 trillion of debt more than the situation we left. That is why we are paying £1 in every £10 in interest rates today—it is because they more than doubled the national debt.
Liam Byrne
Before we hear any nonsense about covid, let us remember that 80% to 90% of the increase in debt that the Conservatives saddled us with came before the covid lockdowns began.
Simon Hoare
Oh, it is nothing as contemporary as covid—don’t worry about that. I just wondered how much money the right hon. Member left in the coffers when he was Chief Secretary in 2010.
Liam Byrne
I can tell the hon. Member. I do not know what his facility with maths is like, or if he realises that a trillion has 12 noughts, but we left the national debt £1 trillion lower than it is today—£2.7 trillion. That is how much this country is now borrowing.
The great tragedy is that if the previous Government had borrowed money at low interest costs and invested it in something that enhanced productivity, we would be in a better position today and the Chancellor would not have had to deliver the Budget she had to deliver today. Don’t take my word for it; the International Monetary Fund was clear in its report on 25 July that our productivity growth under the Conservatives collapsed by a third compared with the good old new Labour years. Our productivity divergence with the United States is so serious. Our productivity growth has been half that of the United States, and the OBR is clear today that the downgrade on growth that it has baked into its numbers is entirely due to the productivity collapse because the Conservatives wasted the money during their 14 years in office.
I should just say, by the bye, that because the Conservatives are the Conservatives, they managed to put £1 trillion on the debt and to collapse the productivity numbers, and still to put inequality through the roof. That is why we have all had food bank queues in our constituencies that we will never forget. I will never forget for as long as I live the phenomenon of collecting food in inner-city Birmingham because our food banks had run out of food. I will never forget the children at Adderley school who were literally helping restock our food banks by taking Penguin bars out of their lunch boxes to put them in food collection crates so their classmates did not go hungry at lunch time. That is the reality of the child poverty legacy the Conservatives left us with, and that is the legacy that the Chancellor got to grips with today.
The Business and Trade Committee looks forward to scrutinising the proposals that have been laid out today. We have been travelling the country over the last couple of weeks talking to businesses about what they wanted out of this Budget, and three things were clear. These are isles of wonder. We now stand on the threshold of an extraordinary new era of innovation. This is an extraordinary and inventive country; we have been since the industrial revolution started in Birmingham back in 1761, but that will be nothing compared to what is about to unfold in this country. We are at the front of the grid in the race for the 21st century, but we need to mobilise capital on a completely new scale. That is why certainty, certainty, certainty for business was so important. I welcome the fact that the headroom has been put up to £22 billion today.
I welcome the fact that the Chancellor is ending the biannual circus of fiscal speculation by having one forecast a year. I have to say to the House that I seriously think that Mr Hughes needs to consider his position. The fact that we had a leak of the OBR forecast before this House got to debate the Budget is appalling, and this uncertainty has bedevilled us. Alongside that, we have to step up the mobilisation of capital on a completely different scale.
Data Protection Bill [Lords]
Debate between Simon Hoare and Liam ByrneWednesday 9th May 2018
(7 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Data Protection Act 2018 View all Data Protection Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 8 May 2018 - (9 May 2018)
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
I am following what the right hon. Gentleman is saying with great interest. I think he is saying that he appreciates that a lot of the activities that he is talking about are illegal, but that they have still been done by journalists and others. Where I am not joining the dots, as he clearly is, is on why Leveson 2, were it to reopen, would make journalists and others more cognisant of those things that are already illegal and change their behaviours.
Liam Byrne
For a very simple reason: we have evidence that bad behaviour is still ongoing. When the Secretary of State originally decided to cancel Leveson 2, he said that the bad behaviour was in the past. Actually, the evidence is that it is ongoing. What is more, there was much evidence that could not be considered by Lord Leveson because of the court cases that were ongoing. Crucially, that evidence included allegations of collusion between the press and the police. I would have thought that we should scrutinise that to bits in this House, not just walk on by.
Simon Hoare
Sorry, the reconvening. I do not get why the reconvening of Leveson would make things that are currently illegal any more illegal than they already are. The courts and the prosecution services have the power to bring those cases when illegality takes place. We do not need Leveson 2 to achieve that, surely.
Liam Byrne
The point of inquiries is to get to the nub of the truth. There was much that the first half of the Leveson inquiry could not consider because of the courts cases that were ongoing. As a Member of this House, I want to know whether the press regulation system that we are setting up takes account of what we have learned about the sins of the past. I do not think that those sins should be buried and forgotten, and that we should walk on by—unless, of course, people are lucky enough to live in Northern Ireland.
Local Government Finance (England)
Debate between Simon Hoare and Liam Byrne(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Simon Hoare
My hon. Friend is right. Frankly, the Opposition party has been rumbled on this. Let us not kid ourselves, this remains, even after the welcome announcement made by the Minister on Monday, a tough settlement. It leaves an unfair and unsustainable gap between funding for rural and urban areas. That continues. It has just been made a little less tough. There is no golden goose being given to Tory local government.
Liam Byrne
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will take back the point about synthetic rage. If other hon. Members had a hospital such as the one in my constituency, which is £54 million in deficit, and where delayed discharges are up 1,000% in a year because of public funding cuts, they would have a responsibility to stand up and say, “Think carefully about how you distribute money.” If they are representing a city such as Birmingham where there is another £92 million to come out of social care on top of the crisis that is already there, then, collectively as a country, we have a problem. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will take back his comment and recognise that there are genuine questions about the distribution mechanisms being put forward by the Secretary of State.
Simon Hoare
If Birmingham City Council is funding its local hospital, it might explain some of its problems. That is not a responsibility of the city council. I do not know how the right hon. Gentleman has the brass neck to stand and ask Government Members to retract comments when the note he left in the Treasury continues to hang like an albatross around his and his party’s neck.
Simon Hoare
No. Of the right hon. Gentleman, I am never frit. Of course I will give way.
Liam Byrne
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is being courteous and collegiate in giving way. He will also remember that I left a Budget that was going to halve the deficit over the course of the Parliament, which his Chancellor has still failed to achieve.
Simon Hoare
The right hon. Gentleman has obviously been to Specsavers—he has the rose-tinted glasses and he is looking through a completely different Labour history.