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Finance Bill

Again, my right hon. Friend demonstrates his knowledge. Perhaps the Minister might like to reflect on what he says and think about what sensitivity analysis the Government might do on that particular issue before the Bill goes into Committee. The hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Love), who is no longer in his place, challenged Conservative Members to come up with the areas in which we would make savings, and during this debate we have put forward at least three ideas: the very expensive national health service computer scheme, which is costing tens of billions of pounds; the identity cards scheme, which the Government are still pursuing despite its not being welcomed by anyone in this country; and the expensive quangos that the Government have set up over the past decade. He has asked us what else there is, but as I have pointed out, every few billion pounds adds up to a hell of a lot of billion pounds. I see nothing in the Government's Red Book—again I draw hon. Members' attention to chart 2.2 on page 35, on which we see four empty white boxes—to suggest that they have any idea as to how they will fix the structural problems that they will face. The hon. Gentleman made great stock of that matter, rightly pointing out the Institute for Fiscal Studies' observation that four fifths of upcoming borrowing has to do with structural issues and is therefore impervious to the economic recovery. We have heard nothing from the Government or from Labour Back Benchers as to how they will address that issue. We have heard in this debate about the unemployment problem that we face, but nobody has mentioned a meeting that was chaired by the Chair of the Treasury Committee, the right hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (John McFall), in which Danny Blanchflower, who is a very respected member of the Monetary Policy Committee, pointed out that come June another 600,000 people will enter the unemployment rolls, because as our children finish school and graduate college they will find that there is no job for them. Thus, the unemployment figure will bounce up pretty quickly from 2 million or 2.1 million to 2.6 million, 2.7 million or 2.8 million. The economy moves slowly, so even if we were to believe any of the statistics, projections and facts presented by the Government, we will find that in 12 months' time, when the next 600,000 young men and women graduate from school and college, we will have a huge unemployment problem that far exceeds having 3 million unemployed. This was the view of a member of the MPC—it was not my view—who said that the figure might not simply be 3 million or 3.1 million, but could reach a staggering 4 million by the end of next year.