Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I look forward to the opportunity of visiting Shrewsbury if I can.

Let me be clear: I meant to say ‘masochism’. I am sorry, Mr Speaker. Normally I say that the shadow Chancellor likes to dish it out but cannot take it, but after this quote I think he obviously quite likes taking it as well. So there we are. [Laughter.] We have learned a lot of interesting things today.

What is happening in Shrewsbury is magnificent. There have been improvements to 400 stations across the country, including Kings Cross.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Q7. The Prime Minister said that his economic policy would eradicate the deficit in this Parliament. All he can claim today is that after four years it came down by a third, but in the past few months it has been going up. Will he accept that the big fall in real wages since the election is a large part of the explanation for why his economic policy has fallen so far short on its central objective?

[The Prime Minister]

After four years of never mentioning the deficit and opposing every single spending cut we have had to make, there seems to have been a Damascus-like conversion—Labour Members are all suddenly interested in the deficit. Let me give the right hon. Gentleman a bit of a lesson. Yes, we have had to make very difficult decisions, cutting some Government Departments and some by as much as 20%, but every single decision was opposed by the Labour party. In terms of what is happening on wages, as I have just said, the recent figures out show that people who have been in work for more than a year are seeing pay increases of 4%. We are helping everyone in work by cutting their taxes. In the end, the only way to raise living standards sustainably is to grow the economy, create jobs and cut taxes— three things we are doing; three things Labour would never do.