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Welsh Affairs

We need to go back to the evidence. About two decades ago, the pound started falling in the exchange rate mechanism. What did the Conservative Government do? They threw away £12 billion, because they were vacillating and did not know what they needed to do protect sterling. That cost my constituents £20 million in one afternoon. So we do not have to go very far back to see that, when faced with a high-pressure decision that needs to be made in a hurry—exactly as happened with the banks—the Conservatives failed to come up with the goods. The hon. Lady can believe anything she wants, but the record shows clearly what was said at the time. My judgment is that the banks would have been allowed to fail, had there been a Conservative Government in charge. That would have stopped us being a banking behemoth in the world, and turned us into an economic banana republic. This country's economic credibility would have failed. The outcome could be even worse, now. Perhaps the hon. Lady will correct me if I have misunderstood the Conservative promise to sell off shares in the banks owned by the Government. They are the very asset that stand to pay off a large proportion of the debt. We all understand how that works: the shares were bought at a very low price and they will accrue value over time as things—hopefully—improve. We are talking about the shares accruing value to the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds. We do not need to be economists to work out how the value gained should be used, as the matter is self-evident, but we need to think twice when the economic policy of a Government in waiting is to sell off the assets when they are cheap. There is another irony. How many times have we heard the Conservatives criticise the former Chancellor and current Prime Minister for selling gold when it was low in value? In my judgment, that was a mistake, but the Conservatives are about to commit an even bigger mistake by selling those shares at this time. That could cost the constituents of Montgomeryshire as much as £200 million. There is another problem. If the Conservatives sell off those shares, they will have to find money from somewhere, but how will they make it? With a colour photocopier? I do not think so. They cannot depend on alternative sources of income, and they will not have an opportunity—a magic box—to print money in order to fill that void. If they sell off the shares cheaply, the practical consequence for Montgomeryshire, Wales and, indeed, the whole country will be a tax increase higher than that that we already anticipate. We would also be likely to see more severe cuts in public services. I did economics at university for a period, and I see very clearly that we cannot pretend to have money that does not exist. Will Conservative Front Benchers please, therefore, clarify the economic logic—let alone the morality—of selling off the very shares on which any Government of any colour will depend in order to accrue assets to pay back some of the debt? I am happy to give way if the hon. Lady can do that. I was also confused earlier, because I did not receive a satisfactory answer to my question about the minimum wage and a minimum income. For a long time, the Liberal Democrats have supported the idea of a minimum income, and for one glorious moment I thought that the Conservatives supported it, too. If I put together the answers that I received, however, it seems that under a Conservative Government the Montgomeryshire public could depend on neither serious support for the minimum wage nor support for a minimum income. I do not know where that would leave the least well-off in my constituency, but it leaves me very worried that the safety net, which has been introduced and has been quite successful under this Government, would be removed. I am very fond of the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), who is an outstanding character. We have had some entertaining times together in his constituency and he is welcome to come to mine any time he likes, but for him to accuse others of rewriting history and then declaim that the Conservatives supported the idea of a national health service is probably the most laughable commentary since Lieutenant-Commander Woodroffe's inebriated BBC broadcast from the royal naval review at Spithead in 1937. [Interruption.] Which I thoroughly recommend.