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Comprehensive Spending Review

I am as disappointed as the hon. Gentleman about the broadband application. The issue is quite clear: the Welsh Assembly made a mess of the application—that is the unfortunate fact of the matter. I respectfully request that the hon. Gentleman raise that issue with his colleagues in the Welsh Assembly. We face a situation in which we are borrowing more than we are spending on the NHS and the defence budgets put together, which is unsustainable. If Opposition Members are happy to see the country continue to pay £120 million a day in interest, so be it. I feel proud to be associated with the coalition, which believes that taxation should be used for the benefit of the people of this country—and that means that we reduce the cost of interest payments. The coalition’s decisions have undoubtedly been good, and have been recognised as such by the markets. As I said this morning, it is clear that the long-term interest rates that the country faces have reduced dramatically since the coalition came to power. The credit reference agencies have responded positively to the way in which the coalition has dealt with that matter. If we consider how the international markets now regard the UK situation compared with other eurozone countries, it cannot be denied that the decisions that we have taken have been extremely positive. Those were reflected in the OBR statement on Monday. Opposition Members have stated strongly that the coalition is going to reduce the deficit by decimating the public sector, but I do not believe that to be the case. Within the public sector there is a need for efficiency and a need to ask ourselves whether we can do things better than we have done in the past. In May, the OBR stated that we would lose 490,000 jobs in the public sector; the new report, which was announced on Monday, shows that the figure has been reduced to 330,000. Yet there has been no positive response from Opposition Members to that huge development. I made the point this morning—and I shall make it again, because it is important—that the difference between the OBR statement in May and that announced on Monday is some 10,000 public sector jobs in the Welsh context. As a Committee, we should welcome that development. It is important to point out that the public sector job losses indicated in the OBR reports are modest compared with the losses suffered by the private sector under the previous Government. It is important to contrast the way in which Opposition Members are making a huge issue about the potential loss of jobs in the public sector and how they were relatively quiet when the private sector was being decimated in Wales.