Amendment of the Law

Debate between Steve Barclay and Jonathan Reynolds

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

First, further to a number of the speeches from Labour Members, including the hon. Members for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) and for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), who I am pleased to see are still in the Chamber, I shall first suggest that the difference between the parties is less than is claimed. Secondly, I shall highlight the fact that significant waste remains, and that waste cannot be cut too fast or too deeply. Thirdly, I shall highlight the disconnect between the House’s responsibility for setting a Budget and debating it, and the information available for effective scrutiny.

Is the gap between the parties as wide as Opposition Members claim? All parties would have spent beyond their means in this Parliament. The Office for Budget Responsibility says that under the coalition, national debt will be £1.31 trillion at the end of this Parliament. Had Labour remained in office, national debt would have been £1.38 trillion. A difference of £62 billion is not insignificant, but to put that in context, it is less than we will be spending in a year on debt interest by the end of the Parliament. It is therefore not credible to say, as a number of hon. Members have done, that public services will be put at risk. After all, the Government will spend £700 billion a year, which is 40% of gross domestic product—more, in fact, than Tony Blair was spending when he left office.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Gentleman clarify that point? Does he not recognise that one crucial difference is the configuration of spending under Tony Blair? That spending went mainly on services, but under this Government, the money will be spent on massive unemployment.

[Stephen Barclay]

Had the hon. Gentleman bothered to be here for the whole debate he would have heard some of the points made by my colleagues, including the fact that £42 billion is being spent on debt interest this year alone.

The hon. Gentleman is quite right to ask where the money is going, which brings me to my second point: waste in spending. The focus is often on top salaries in the public sector, but in Cambridgeshire there is one station manager, or a more senior officer, for every four full-time firefighters, one police sergeant for every four constables, one inspector for every three sergeants, and one chief inspector or above for every inspector. There has been huge inflation in management costs.

Opposition Members may chunter, but let us look at what many of those managers do. The Ministry of Justice asked local authority youth offending teams to collect more than 3,000 bits of data on process, and yet outcomes were still not measured, so the YOTs still cannot say which prevention schemes work. There has been an inflation of management salaries, but often the same people are paid for the same performance. The chief fire officer of Cambridge earns £190,000—£60,000 more than the chief constable—and has three deputies on £150,000, £140,000 and £130,000 each. Perhaps Opposition Members were marching on Saturday to protect such salaries, but we need to look at productivity, and at what we get in return for those salaries and that inflation in management spend.