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Amendment of the law

I am pleased to open this Budget debate with the shadow Chancellor. For one brief, shining moment during his speech, when he said that he would present a positive plan, I thought that he might do so, but we heard nothing positive—no plan for how to get out of recession, no plan for how to build for the future, no plan for fairness in this country. That is the truth about what he said. It was a highly predictable diatribe. He would have convinced more people with a more balanced speech. The shadow Chancellor says, for example, that the downgrading of growth is a purely British problem, but the International Monetary Fund has forecast negative world growth for the first time since world war two. That shows the gravity of the situation that we are dealing with. He says that we are worse placed than others, but the IMF showed yesterday that we are faring better this year than Germany, Japan, Italy and the euro area. He says that our deficit—[Interruption.] I am coming to that. He says our deficit is worse than others', but the United States Congressional Budget Office says that the US deficit will be 13 per cent. this year. On the question of the deficit, we did pay off the debt during the years when the economy was growing—