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Economic Growth and Employment

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and he is absolutely right to say that there is more borrowing than we had anticipated. However, the amount of borrowing will be going down year on year. I am sure that my colleagues on the Front Bench would agree with me that we cannot get out of a debt crisis by borrowing more. At some stage we have to start actually paying the money back. The UK is borrowing at low rates—we have that confidence. Let us just imagine how many more jobs would be lost and how many more people would be suffering if we were borrowing at 32%—that is, if we were in one of those dark places. The motion starts with the usual party knockabout. For example, we are supposedly ““choking off”” growth and"““failing to use strategically procurement and other tools to drive growth and innovation””." However, it is not true that we have failed in that respect. We have cut corporation tax, and by the end of this Parliament we aim to create the most competitive corporate tax system in the G20. Research and development credits will rise by 200% this year and 225% next year. Then there is regulation. We have scrapped the proposals that the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) was talking about, with savings to business currently amounting to £350 million a year. Whatever we did in our little Committee, it never amounted to that sort of saving. We have also introduced a moratorium on new regulation for micro-businesses. Then there is technology and innovation centres, and so on—I do not have time to say much more in five minutes.