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Finance Bill

I do not intend to linger on the Conservatives' plans, not least because of earlier exchanges with the occupant of the Chair, but we have committed ourselves to all that we can reasonably do at this stage—a year out from the election—in explaining what we will do. We have said that we will get rid of ID cards and abandon big IT projects such as the NHS IT scheme. As the hon. Gentleman has just pointed out, we will also look at quango salaries, the Government advertising budget, the consultancy budgets and many other things. I could go on, but I shall not do so. The test that the electorate will apply in gauging the relative merits of the two policies on offer is who they can have confidence in when it comes to getting the deficit under control and getting the debt down. I have argued that the Conservatives have been much more straightforward about that, even in opposition, than the Government. I have said that the Conservative leadership is up to the challenge and has been frank about it. Are the Labour Government up to it? I have listened to the Prime Minister speak about the economy for many years. He considers himself to be an economist, and he is certainly an intelligent man, but I have worried for a long time that some of his remarks on the economy suggest that he is a little detached from reality. That detachment began early and was well entrenched before he came out with his famous recent slip that he was saving the world. When the Prime Minister was Chancellor, and shortly after Labour's second landslide victory of 2001, he wrote a foreword to a book published by the Treasury and edited by his then loyal lieutenant—I am not sure whether he is still loyal—the right hon. Member for Normanton (Ed Balls). In that foreword, the then Chancellor wrote:""In 1997, as in 1944, a new paradigm was required."" The House will recall that 1944 was the year of perhaps the grandest of all grand economic projects with the creation of what became known as the Bretton Woods project for the complete reconstruction of international economic activity. The Prime Minister, then Chancellor, was saying in effect that he was the man for the hour—he was John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, FDR and Churchill rolled into one. In the same way as the allied powers set out to prepare the Bretton Woods system, so he had set out in 1997 to reconstruct the global economic architecture. There is no little hubris involved in such a remark. It was not even a flip remark, but one carefully crafted for the foreword to a book published by his Department. The book gets much more interesting and becomes very pertinent to this debate and to the boom and bust that has led to this crisis. In the same foreword, the Prime Minister went on to say that we need""far more effective mechanisms for crisis prevention"" and that we need to pay""far greater attention to financial stability"." If only he had done so. The introduction to the book—