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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

The right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn) urged me to be generous to the Chancellor, even if he is not here. Let me begin by congratulating the Chancellor, in his absence, on the delivery of his 10th Budget. It is an undoubted achievement. He has beaten a record set by Lloyd George in a week in which the Prime Minister has returned us to the politics of Lloyd George. We have had a good final day’s debate, although I am sorry that Labour ran out of speakers about halfway through. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, who is not here now either, trotted out the Chancellor’s litany of bogus statistics on investment, research and development, and productivity, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) and my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) comprehensively demolished each one of them in their robust contributions. How on earth can the Chancellor claim that research and development is going up when the day after the Budget figures are produced showing that R and D levels are down? How on earth can he claim that business investment is up when his own Red Book revises down the forecasts for business investment and when business investment levels are at a record low? How on earth can the Government claim seriously that productivity growth is up when everyone knows that it has slumped? There was an argument about which measure we should use for productivity growth. I am happy to use the one that the Chancellor himself used in 1998, based on output per worker, when he said that it was the"““fundamental yardstick of economic performance””." On that yardstick, he has fundamentally failed. Productivity growth is one fifth the level that he inherited. That must in part explain the sluggish growth that my right hon. and learned Friend talked about. [Interruption.] I welcome the Chancellor to his place. The 1.8 per cent. growth last year was below the EU average, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average and the G7 average. We had other good contributions. I enjoyed those from the hon. Members for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) and for Strangford (Mrs. Robinson). My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) has been Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee for years, and I was one of his underlings on that Committee. He described how impossible it is to measure the Government’s claims on Gershon, and the National Audit Office report on that is striking. My hon. Friend proposed getting the Comptroller and Auditor General to audit Opposition efficiency plans. I am happy to consider the idea, although I suspect that Sir John has his work cut out trying to get to the bottom of the Government’s efficiency plans. My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) drew attention, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton and others did, to the decision to abolish the scheme that has given 500,000 people computer laptops. My right hon. Friend described it as the action of an analogue politician—a very good phrase. We will vote against that measure. Perhaps the Minister for Industry and the Regions, who was in the Chamber earlier, will join us, because only a few weeks ago he said that the scheme was a great example of what can be done when the Government and industry work together. If he works with us, we can stop it being abolished. My hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) gave a spirited defence of his beloved Royal Shrewsbury hospital, and dairy farmers, in the presence of the Chancellor himself. I understand that my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) pointed out that there was nothing in the Budget speech for carers or manufacturing. My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) gave an excellent speech on the Government’s failure to address the seriousness of the environmental challenge that we face. Of course, when we look in the Red Book we see that the proportion of taxes raised through environmental taxation will fall as a result of the measures introduced by the Chancellor. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) became almost religious in his enthusiasm for his constituency, but he also drew attention to the serious problem of crime against schools. I hope that I shall not offend my right hon. and hon. Friends when I say that the most interesting speech was made by the right hon. Member for Darlington. He chose not to talk about the 700 job losses at the County Durham and Darlington Acute Hospitals NHS Trust announced last week. Instead, he focused his fire on the Chancellor’s poverty policies. The right hon. Member for Darlington is a practised assassin. He began by covering his tracks by lavishing praise on the record of the Chancellor, then he stuck the knife in. He called for ““direct targeted tax cuts for low-income families””—but he knows that that is exactly the opposite of the strategy pursued by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who explicitly rejected tax cuts in the Budget. He knows that his speech will be seen alongside that of his colleague, the right hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mr. Byers), who attacked the Chancellor’s extension of means-testing in yesterday’s Budget debate. He hopes that his speech will be reported in the press tomorrow, because he was circulating it to the press lobby before he delivered it in the House. I am not a Kremlinologist, so I can only guess what those two arch-Blairites are trying to achieve. All is not well in the state of the Labour party, and the most charitable view is that, like the Minister for Higher Education and Lifelong Learning, they believe that taxes are so high that"““we are probably at the limit of what people are prepared to pay””." Bang goes his job in the next Administration.