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Fiscal Responsibility Bill

The hon. Gentleman is right to follow the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) in emphasising the severity and seriousness of the current situation, but the big difference between 1945 and today is that then the war was over and the expenditure on it had finished. In contrast, the unsustainable level of expenditure that we have today has not finished, and there does not appear to be any credible offering from the Government as to how they are going to bring that expenditure under control. We just have this Bill, which halves not the overall debt but just the rate at which we will increase it. That is no real solution at all.