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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring), but I think he lives in a parallel world—a different world from many of my constituents, who have benefited over the past 10 years from the stable economy that we have become proud of in this country. I joined the Labour party in the dark days of the early 1980s, and I well remember people writing pamphlets about the unelectability of the Labour party. One of the key issues on which they did not trust the Labour party was the management of the economy. How things have changed over those 20-odd years! Not only have we proved that we are able to run the economy and invest in public services, which we can rightly be proud of, but we are leading, as the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) said, in an increasingly competitive and changing world, from which we cannot insulate ourselves, no matter what anybody in any political party says. It is no good turning our backs and hoping that emerging international markets will go away if we do not believe they are there. Levels of national debt are down to record levels. According to the Chancellor’s statement, national debt is down to 38 per cent., compared with the euro zone, where it is 50 per cent., the USA where it is 44 per cent. or the staggering height of debt in the great dynamic economy of Japan, where it is 92 per cent. We ought to be proud also of the levels of capital investment that the Government have made, which is up from £18 billion in 1997 to over £43 billion now. In his opening remarks today, the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne), who entered the House, as I did, in 2001, said in response to a question that the past 10 years had been worse than the 10 years before 1997. Again, the hon. Gentleman seems to live in a universe parallel to the one where I and many of my constituents live. It is worth remembering those years, when we had inflation of more than 10 per cent., interest rates that hit a record 15 per cent., and unemployment of 3 million-plus. That had a dramatic effect in constituencies such as mine. The economic heart of many of those communities was ripped out overnight, with no protection or investment afterwards. Now, house prices are rising, but we do not have the cancer of negative equity, which affected 1.5 million people. Another achievement since 1997 is the fact that net borrowing, which had hit a record of more than 8 per cent., is now predicted, as the Chancellor said yesterday, to be down to 2.7 per cent. and, in future years, 1.4 per cent. Borrowing is not intrinsically bad—it is a question of what is done with the money that is borrowed. The important thing is that we are no longer borrowing to invest in unemployment. The Government can be rightly proud of the record levels of employment, with more than 2.6 million extra jobs—a record in the G7 countries. Reference has been made to quality of life. Having a job is a basic thing in most people’s lives. It gives one dignity and a reason to get up in the morning—what I always call a place in the world.