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Preparing Britain's Economy for the Future

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will not give way to him. I want briefly to respond to the debate; as I say, it is not normal to do so. I want to come on to the points that he raised, and those made by the hon. Member for Banbury. The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East, spoke with great passion about tourism. I acknowledge the importance of tourism to the UK economy. I do not particularly want to get into the issues of pubs and bingo today, as they are perhaps not central to preparing Britain's economy for the future, but he is certainly correct to point to the fact that tourism is a significant part of the UK economy. It is an important part of Britain's economic future, too. The hon. Gentleman referred—I think I quote him correctly—to the Government throwing "obscene sums" at the economy. I have to disagree. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) talked about us throwing the kitchen sink at the economy. It is quite good that we did so. We needed to take action to stabilise the banking system. It is right, in the Government's opinion, that there should be a fiscal stimulus to support the UK economy. Frankly, it would be irresponsible for a Government not to have thrown the kitchen sink at the problem. As the hon. Member for Banbury suggests, however, we know that public spending cannot grow in the way that it has since 1997. I am enormously proud of the public investment made since 1997; we have largely rebuilt Britain's infrastructure. The hospital system and general practitioner practices across the country are in a far better state than they were when we came to power. Schools have been rebuilt. Each and every Member can point to new schools in their constituency that were built in the past 10 or 12 years, sometimes with private finance and sometimes through conventional public procurement. That is clear, important investment in the fabric of the country for the future. With regard to spending figures—a point raised by the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke)—we can trade different sets of figures, but he will be aware that public sector current expenditure is planned to rise by 6.8 per cent. this year, and by 4.4 per cent. in 2010-11. We believe that it is important to invest during these difficult economic times, but we have also said that we need to take a responsible attitude to the public finances in the medium term. That is why, in the Budget, we published figures showing a real-terms increase in public-sector current expenditure of 0.7 per cent. per year from 2011 onwards. The hon. Gentleman pointed out that we should take into account debt interest charges and welfare bills. I do not know what welfare bills or public debt charges will be between 2011 and 2014. We live in a time of great uncertainty. Given that uncertainty in the world economy, it is too early to say how those factors will pan out, and so much too early to say how the growth in public spending will be shared, especially as we are only one year into the current comprehensive spending review.