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Section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993

It is that lack of credibility that makes me want to oppose the motion. The hon. Gentleman picked up on the point about business investment. I encourage hon. Members to turn to page 16 of the Red Book, which says:"““business investment will pick up and make an increasingly strong contribution to growth in each year of the forecast as confidence builds and credit conditions ease””." Just yesterday, the trends in lending data came out from the Bank of England. Year on year, net lending to all businesses—small and medium-sized enterprises in particular—has fallen in every single month since the Government took office. That is despite Project Merlin and all the attempts at credit easing, which have still not come into effect and will do nothing to help credit availability. Last year, they said in their document that"““Credit conditions have shown signs of stabilisation.””" That has not come to pass, so I have no confidence that their current propositions will come to pass either. On borrowing, page 12 of the Red Book claims that we are heading for"““£11 billion lower over the forecast period than was projected at Autumn Statement 2011””," which is sophistry because we know that in the spending review figures from October 2010, the Government projected a set of borrowing statistics that have had to be ripped up, because we are on a trend that takes us into £150 billion of further borrowing over the lifetime of this Parliament. The new borrowing figures out this morning confirm that particular trend. That is where things are going. The Chancellor keeps restating that the UK is ““a safe haven””, although he slipped a little bit today in saying that it was ““a safer haven””. There he was in Washington this weekend, saying that the UK has ““solved our problems””. That is our Chancellor's assessment of our economy. Such dangerous complacency beggars belief, and I think that it is a sign of arrogance.