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Comprehensive Spending Review

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. Given that we are very short of time, I shall address some of the factual areas that we have heard about today, and perhaps offer a few truths. The debate has been instructive about the real dividing lines between the Opposition and the Government. Those dividing lines are between what I believe is the truth about the causes of the deficit that was born in 2008-09 as a result of what happened with the banks, and the revisionism regarding those causes that we are seeing from the Government. That revisionism has been repeated throughout today’s debate. There is also a stark contrast between the honesty of our position now on the economic prospects in the light of the cuts that we are about to see, and the Government’s blind hope and optimism. Our honesty is in tune with the views of the City, to which we have so often been bid to look. Right now, the City agrees with us, not with the Government—certainly on growth. A factual inaccuracy about growth has been repeated several times today, sometimes from a sedentary position. The Office for Budget Responsibility has revised its growth figures for 2011 downwards, from 2.3% to 2.1%. It has revised this year’s June to December numbers up to 1.8% from 1.2%, but that is not much of a claim when a revision is done in December. Lastly, there is a real difference between the Opposition’s interest in and understanding of Wales and its particular needs, including the long-term systemic problems that we have in our economy as a result of our post-industrial heartlands, and the callous indifference, or disinterest, that we see from the Government. That indifference was most harshly exemplified by the welcome, but sadly lacking, response from the Economic Secretary on the CSR’s impact on Wales. We had a rehash of the Chancellor’s speech on the CSR. There were no specific details about the impact on Wales; in fact, there was the temerity repeatedly to present issues that related to only England, with a blind reading-out of that which had already been read out by the Chancellor. I fear also that when we heard from the Economic Secretary—[ Interruption. ]