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Finance Bill

My principal argument is that we cannot afford it. On what constitutes the best fiscal stimulus when one can afford it, there are various arguments for and against, which I shall tackle in my speech. However, the fundamental argument is that we cannot afford it. I want to reach out in a bipartisan spirit to find another matter about which we and the Government agree. It is that one must recognise the state of the public finances when deciding what stimulus one can have, and that there are limits to Government borrowing, which must guide the policy that one pursues when drawing up pre-Budget report and Budget measures. We clearly agree about that because, despite all the rhetoric in the run-up to the Budget in April from the Prime Minister on his world tour, when he made the case for a bold fiscal stimulus for every country, the UK did not pursue such a policy in the 2009 Budget because the assessment was that we did not have the money. As the Governor of the Bank of England put it to the Treasury Committee—