Toby Perkins
Main Page: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)Department Debates - View all Toby Perkins's debates with the HM Treasury
(11 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Osborne
I completely agree with my hon. Friend that unless we have a credibly economic plan to grow the economy, deal with public finances and support business rather than tax it, we will get the reaction the shadow Chancellor got from the CBI, whose members said that the hairs on the backs of their necks stood up as they listened to all the terrible things that a Labour Government would do to them. The truth is that we are fixing the economic mess the shadow Chancellor left behind, and that is the best way to improve people’s living standards.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
T2. The Chancellor was warned that his cuts would choke off the growth that had returned to the UK economy when he took the job in 2010. Of course we welcome the fact that Britain is finally returning to growth, but does he not realise that if he had taken the advice of my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) earlier, we would not have had three wasted years, the average working person would not be £1,500 worse off, and the talents and potential of 1 million young people would not have been laid to waste?
Mr Osborne
I remind the hon. Gentleman that the shadow Chancellor said that our economic policies would choke off the recovery in the spring of this year—the very moment when the recovery was under way. When will a Labour MP welcome the fact that our GDP has grown by 0.8% and unemployment is coming down? When will Labour acknowledge that it is our economic plan that is delivering that?