Women in Wales

Wayne David Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Crabb]

The danger when looking through any particular demographic lens—we could have been debating the impact of policies on young people, older people, disabled people or people from ethnic minorities—is that we are lured into making generalisations and over-simplifications. We have had a bit of that this afternoon, so hopefully I will inject some balance into the debate.

The starting point, of course, is the economic context and the enormous financial crisis that still faces this country. It is worth putting on record again—I know that Opposition Members will roll their eyeballs at this—that the reason why we are having to take very difficult decisions about public expenditure, and the reason why we are having to restore discipline to our national finances, is the financial mess that the Labour party left after 13 years in government. I will go further: future generations of women and girls would not thank us if we shirked our responsibility now and did not address the deficit and the debt. They would not thank us for the burden of debt that we might hand on to them if we did not take the difficult decisions that we are taking.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

I say with all due respect that we have had three years of this Conservative-led Government, and the record is now wearing a bit thin. It is no longer valid, if it ever was, to blame everything on the previous Government. Surely to goodness the Minister can form a better argument in defence of what he has done.

[Stephen Crabb]

The context is important, and it is valid. I reject what the hon. Gentleman says.

The Labour party is committed at the moment to cutting £7 out of every £8 that the coalition Government are cutting. The Labour party has said that it is committed to that level of budget cuts. Of course, it will not say where. I listened to the hon. Member for Newport East give a long list of cuts to which she objects, but she will not say what her party would have cut. She is also not saying that her party, if it were in government, would actually increase spending on any of those services. I hope she will forgive me for saying this, but it is a little disingenuous to attack all the efforts that we are making to restore discipline to our national finances without also being up front by saying, “As a party, if we were in government, we would probably be cutting all of these things, too.”