Spending Review

Stephen Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 26th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I inherited from the last Chancellor a plan greatly to reduce capital spending—to cut it by 50%. In the 2010 review, we increased it from the plans we inherited. We increased it in the years since, and now we are maintaining it in the years going forward and setting it out for the rest of the decade. So the big reduction in capital spending that the right hon. Lady refers to is one I guess she must have supported, because she was a Minister of that Government.

[Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)]

We all know that if we try to live a £40,000 lifestyle on a £30,000 salary, it soon leads to misery unless corrective action is taken. That was the legacy, at a national level, that we were left by the last Government. Despite that tough backdrop, have not this coalition Government secured funding for the national health service and for schools, including more money for children on free school meals, and today announced a massive boost to infrastructure spending and scientific research in order to smooth the way to sustainable economic growth?

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is right, and in the end this is about choices. I say to all the Labour Members getting ready to ask questions that, given that the Labour leader says that he will take these resource plans as a starting point, if they complain about any cut, they have to suggest what else they would cut. We have made choices as a Government. We have committed to protecting the NHS, committed to schools, committed to the pupil premium—we have done these things because we want a fairer society, and we also believe that investing in infrastructure and growth enhances our country’s economic performance. Those are our choices: if people have an alternative plan, we have not heard of it.