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Amendment of the law

The hon. Member for Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr (Adam Price) made an interesting speech, but I do not agree with him that the Government have not been honest or bold. If he wants to compare us with the United States, the tables in the Red Book that have been referred to show that the Americans did implement a large number of discretionary measures, but that was because their automatic stabilisers were so small that they had to have a much bigger discretionary package to deal with the pressures they were facing as a result of the same global recession that we have experienced. Our discretionary package is smaller because our automatic stabilisers are larger—by and large, in line with those of our European partners, with whom our welfare packages and tax systems are also much more closely aligned. The hon. Gentleman is therefore wrong to say that we have acted differently from the Americans. We have dealt differently with some of the macro problems to do with the banks' toxic assets and cleaning up their balance sheets, as well as getting cash flowing again.