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National Policy Statements

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. As a new Government coming in, we had to look at the financial commitments that we were inheriting. We had to decide which were bad decisions—the Sheffield Forgemasters loan absolutely did not come into that category—and which were the decisions we viewed as simply not affordable. Of course we would love to be able to shower money on a range of good projects around the country, but there is no scope for doing so. As we know from the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, there was no money left. That was what the outgoing Government told us.