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European Communities (Finance) Bill

I know that the right hon. Gentleman finds it hard to believe, but what has transformed the Irish economy, for example, is not the structural funding, but the much lower rates of taxation. It is possible, I concede, that the substantial subsidies that the Irish received in previous years allowed them to carry a much lower burden of taxation, but what is leading to the astonishing rates of growth in the eastern European countries is the liberalisation of their economies, the cutting away of bureaucratic interference from Government, and the lower rates of taxation. The fastest growing economies in eastern Europe are those with the most dynamic, enterprise-oriented tax systems. One of the things that is eroding our competitiveness is the inexorable rise of public expenditure and taxation, which will, as the shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) described, leave Britain in the position of having failed to mend the roof while the sun was shining during the past 10 years. I have some relevant figures to hand. The Government inherited a national debt of £400 billion in 1996-97. That rose substantially in subsequent years, and by 2012-13—the year this financial perspective ends—we will have a public debt of £810 billion. That should be set alongside the situation in some European countries, which have no public debt at all because they have managed their economies very much more efficiently than we have.