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Economic Affairs and Work and Pensions

I hope that the clock has not yet started, Mr Deputy Speaker; as the last person whom you will call to speak in your current role, I want to pay tribute to you. You have always been extraordinarily kind and generous to those on my party's Benches. Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, it is a pleasure to follow two totally different maiden speeches, one from the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) and the other from the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali). They are different people from different constituencies and different backgrounds, but they have a shared determination to see an end to the blockade of Gaza. Many in the House share that determination, and I hope that we will see proper progress in the middle east during this Parliament. Today's debate is fundamentally about the economy and I am delighted to take part in the debate on the Gracious Speech today. I should like to comment on much of what the Chancellor said. His description of the economy left to the new coalition Government is well known and the numbers that back it up are equally well known. The deficit was forecast last year to be £173 billion, but this year it is forecast to be £156 billion—still 11%-plus of gross domestic product. UK national debt is sitting at £1.2 trillion on the treaty calculation and is forecast to rise to £1.6 trillion, approaching 90% of GDP by 2014-15. We know the last Labour Government's response to this recession—to make real-terms cuts of £500 million for this year to the Scottish budget, before recovery was secured. Against everything that they professed in public, they began cutting the budgets early and weakening the ability of the Scottish Government and others to secure the recovery.