Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Steve Rotheram Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the Chair of the Treasury Committee.

There must have been at least some Government Members who, however much they wanted to cheer publicly, were wondering privately why no progress has been made in the past three years, and why so much of the promise, as set out by the coalition Government, has failed to achieve what they thought it was going to achieve. I have no doubt that three years ago the Chancellor, the Prime Minister and other members of the Cabinet believed that the measures they were planning were going to work. If we are to understand why we have made no progress, despite the fall in the living standards of an average family of £1,200 a year and the loss of public services, we must look not only at the statistics, but understand why things have gone so badly wrong.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Chancellor is becoming the Baldrick of British politics? He thinks he has got a cunning plan, but everybody else can see that it is doomed to failure.

[Mr Denham]

There were certainly points in the Chancellor’s speech when he seemed to be living in a completely different world from the one in which I am living. For example, he made a throwaway remark that reforms to the planning system mean that houses are being built, yet there were fewer housing starts last year than at any time over the past few years. It is nonsense to claim something that is patently untrue, which brings me to my central point about the danger in politics and government of believing one’s own rhetoric.