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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

It was not the only game in town, because, as I have just spelt out, we started in 1998 with £1 billion and the new deal for schools, which turned into Building Schools for the Future. That budget—just to get the figures right—was £600 million when I became Education and Employment Secretary; it is now £9 billion and is transforming the learning opportunities and environment of our children. The argument has been made that we should immediately start to reduce spending. However, one thing that concerns me, to which the hon. Member for Twickenham referred, is that many agencies—next steps agencies, Departments, primary care trusts and strategic health authorities—are already starting to cut in anticipation of even deeper cuts, should a Conservative Government be elected. Paradoxically, that is reducing the speed of growth by cutting back on spending that would keep people in jobs. Let us look at what happened in the past. We cannot live in it, and I shall not compare historical debt to the reduction in the structural debt, which in any case we intend to get down to 2.5 per cent. of GDP by 2014. However, let us presume that we are in 1951, and a Conservative Government have been elected not on an austerity programme, but on a programme of lifting rationing and bringing hope and aspiration to the 1950s. That is what they were elected on. They were elected on the back of the wartime lend-lease and debt, and the debt that Maynard Keynes negotiated in Washington in 1947, but they did not enter office promising that they would wipe out that massive, historic wartime and post-war debt by 1955, 1959 or 1964. In fact, it was paid off in 2002, and the Canadian bonds were paid off in 2007. We need a voice of reality saying that we in the political arena must take cognisance of the international financial arena and speak on behalf of the people who have no other voice. The issue is about continuity of spending; about retaining people in jobs, paying tax and national insurance; and about reducing the anticipated welfare spend—on which Margaret Thatcher did spend while cutting front-line services in my city and those throughout the country. Some of us remember it; some of us dealt with it. As the leader of Sheffield city council for seven years in the 1980s, I lived with it day after day, and none of us should want to go back to that. We do not need to; we can plan sensibly; we can be rational; and, above all, we can act as a counterweight to the voices of those who will not feel the cuts—who will be immune to what happens in education, health, transport, the environment and housing, because they can buy their way out of cuts. We speak on behalf of those who cannot do that, and that is why we should stick to our guns. We should be rational and thoughtful and careful. Above all, we should resist the siren voices of those who know what they are about, and who will vote in this election—they will vote for their own self-interest. That is not acceptable for Britain and it is not the future for our country.