Cost of Living Increases
Debate between Tulip Siddiq and Jerome Mayhew(1 year ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Tulip Siddiq
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. Having campaigned in her constituency, I know there are huge levels of poverty in certain places. Someone from the back said that we are lucky here because we are MPs and get paid a decent salary. We certainly should not be laughing at people who are struggling to make ends meet.
I remind the House that, when Labour was in government, real GDP growth averaged 2%. If growth had continued at the same rate under this Tory Government, we would have £40 billion more to spend on our public services, without having to raise a single tax. Instead, a lack of strategic policy making, economic uncertainty and the absence of an industrial strategy mean that the UK is going through the slowest economic recovery in the G7.
Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)
The hon. Lady is asserting that the UK economy has fallen behind since 2010. Does she recognise the figures that show that this country has actually grown faster than Italy, Japan and France since 2010 to date and that, since 2016—since the Brexit vote—it has grown at about the same pace as Germany?
Tulip Siddiq
The Conservatives can manipulate the stats as much as they want, but they cannot run away from the fact that we are falling behind our peers. [Laughter.] I do not care how much Conservative Members want to laugh; I know that is the truth. It is families who are bearing the brunt of the low growth. A decade of stagnant wages has left the British people highly exposed to rising prices. If the hon. Member who just intervened can dispute this figure, he is welcome to intervene again: the average French and German family are now 10% and 19% richer than their respective British counterparts. If we continue down this path of managed decline and our growth rate stays where it has been over the past decade, families in the UK will be poorer than those in Poland by 2030 and poorer than those in Hungary and Romania by 2040. I see the hon. Member—
Jerome Mayhew
It is a great pleasure to be given the role of the Opposition spokesman from the Back Benches here, but there is a difference between economic data that is factual, has happened and can be verified, and straight-line projections of the future between now and 2030 that have not happened and will not happen.
Tulip Siddiq
As I figured, the hon. Member did not have a response to the question I asked. If we do not break with the Tories’ failed economic model, the necessary underpinnings of a good life—as I have mentioned, fair wages, secure work, a decent home—will be further eroded.