---

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who is my former Parliamentary Private Secretary and oft-time adviser on what I should and should not do. He has made a sage point, as he so often does. When a Chancellor who had made a virtue out of prudence then abandoned her with a divorce two thirds of the way through his chancellorship, I did rather feel that he was throwing away his own legacy. I believe that most people thought that he had done quite a good job at the beginning, but he threw it away with profligate expenditure, as a result of which today's economy does not have the headroom for borrowing that it should have. That was a fundamental failure.