G20 Summit

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I do. My hon. Friend is entirely right, and that is why the Education Secretary, who was on such robust form earlier, was in China with me, signing an agreement with the Chinese Government on the teaching of English in China, but also the teaching of Mandarin in our schools. It is extremely—[Interruption.] The Education Secretary speaks perfect English; I do not know what hon. Members are talking about. However, I think that the agreement is a very important step forward.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

For much of the past decade, Ireland was held up by Conservative Members as an example of the direction in which we should have been taking our economy. Now, because Ireland has followed a strategy that largely involves having the same medicine that the Prime Minister is recommending for this country, it is seeing markets questioning its economy, interest rates rising and confidence falling. What lessons has the Prime Minister learned from the situation in Ireland?

[The Prime Minister]

I think that the biggest lesson is that the Irish followed one key new Labour policy, which was to join the euro. Fortunately, new Labour did not have the courage and bravery to follow through its own manifesto and listened very carefully to my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Mr Hague), who fought a very strong campaign to keep us out of the euro.