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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

In concluding the Budget debate, and recognising what you have just said, Mr Speaker, I will take interventions. However, I will try to make some progress, as many Members wish to get in and many of the points have probably already been made. I think that it has been an excellent Budget, given the circumstances we find ourselves in. The Chancellor is to be congratulated on focusing on his priorities, which he stated clearly, for rebuilding the shattered economy that we inherited. Let me remind the House that when Labour came to power in 1997 they received a golden economic inheritance, the like of which few Governments since the war have received, which gave them money to spend. Despite that, the painful scar of youth unemployment hardly changed, some 4.5 million were stuck on out-of-work benefits, 1.4 million had never worked at all and we had the largest structural deficit of any G7 economy. Intriguingly, the worst thing is that that point was reached even before the recession had started. After that, things just got a whole lot worse: 5 million on out-of-work benefits; working-age poverty up; youth unemployment at a record high; more children in workless households than the rest of the European Union; and the largest budget deficit in the UK's post-war history, of more than £150 billion. That deficit is for one year, piling on top of the outstanding debt mountain, and £120 million is spent on interest payments alone—every single day. There was even talk of an International Monetary Fund bail-out, bringing alive memories of the dark years of the late 1970s—and, of course, the House knows who was in power then.