Angela Eagle
Main Page: Angela Eagle (Labour - Wallasey)Department Debates - View all Angela Eagle's debates with the HM Treasury
(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
It is a real privilege and an honour to follow the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), who has spoken quite brilliantly. I cannot understand why he has not caught the eye of the Leader of the Opposition before now. He richly deserves to do so, particularly after delivering such a fine speech as we have heard a few moments ago.
I shall now deal with the motion. This is a case of fantasy economics. It advocates the idea of building 25,000 affordable houses and creating 100,000 jobs for young people from a bank bonus tax, which raises less money than the Government’s own banking levy. There is a double-counting issue there, which causes me substantial concern, added to which the Opposition voted against £800 million being raised from tax avoiders. Yet again, Labour Members talk about all these wonderful things that people want, because they want to seem populist, while in reality supporting the very rich. The people on whose side we need to be are the grafters and hard-working people; we should ensure that they get better jobs.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. To clarify the issue, the vote on the Finance Bill happened as a result of hundreds of amendments being tabled with almost no notice. The shadow Minister responsible said that we supported the intent behind the measure, but we wanted the Government to bring it back and review it. That is all on the record. The hon. Gentleman should not mislead the House in that manner.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. An hon. Member has been accused of misleading the House. I assume that the hon. Lady meant unintentionally misleading it. She should withdraw that comment.
Charlie Elphicke
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the U-turn she has announced.
When I intervened on the shadow Chancellor, he attacked me for opposing the weakening of our border controls. The previous Government were not well known for being strong on border security or on immigration controls, yet he criticised me for standing up and defending my constituency. Just as the motion before the House is fantasy economics, it was the shadow Chancellor’s fantasy that this Government cut our border controls. It was the previous Government who cut our border controls, such was the commitment of the previous Prime Minister to keeping our borders safe. He had the grand plan of selling off our English borders at Dover in a privatisation, so much did he care about England. In many ways, I wish that he were in the Chamber more often, rather than hidden away in Portcullis House, so that we could set forth to him our concerns about the policies he pursued. The recession and misery that have been brought upon people up and down the land by his serial mismanagement of the nation’s finances are nothing short of a disgrace.
The Labour party has gone from government to opposition, but has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. It has proposed a £13 billion unfunded VAT cut—populist but unrealistic. It has made £10 billion of welfare reform spending commitments—nice for the base of people in dependency culture, but unrealistic and unaffordable. We need to ensure that work pays.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
We have had an interesting debate. On this very day a year ago, the Chancellor came to the House to announce what he and his spin doctors from Tory central office characterised for reasons of base propaganda as his unavoidable Budget. In reality, they and he knew that it was nothing of the kind. He used such misleading language because he wanted to disguise the central feature of his purpose that day. His aim was to create the image of a Chancellor with little option, as he fought to defend the country from the attentions of the bond vigilantes, stalking the world’s treasuries, looking for countries to kill.
In fact, the reality was very different. The Chancellor deliberately talked up the dangers in the bond markets by irresponsibly claiming that Britain had been on the brink of bankruptcy. He knew then, and he knows now, that it was all overblown rhetoric designed to disguise the fact that his Budget was actually a political choice made by the Conservative-led Government and their Liberal Democrat human shield, and it was an extreme choice. At a time when the economic recovery had not been locked in, he made a political choice to embark on a programme of tax increases and spending cuts greater than any which had ever been tried in Britain’s peacetime history.
Ms Eagle
No, I will not give way.
The Chancellor’s choice to cut further and faster than was economically necessary ensured that the UK plan to deal with the deficit went from one that was in line with the plans of other G20 countries to one that was far more extreme than anything undertaken in any other advanced economy. In other words, it was a reckless and risky experiment with our economic future.
Ms Eagle
No.
The Chancellor’s choice meant breaking promises that he made before the general election by scrapping the future jobs fund, cutting tax credits for people on incomes under £50,000 and increasing VAT to 20%. For the hapless Liberal Democrats, his choice meant that they had to do the exact opposite of what they had promised in their election manifesto. Before the election, they promised a £3.1 billion stimulus package; just after it, they went along with a £6.2 billion cut. They campaigned for an end to tuition fees and then trebled them. They warned about a VAT bombshell and then voted for it.
Mr Speaker
Order. Government Back Benchers must not engage in rhetorical stalking. The hon. Lady has made it clear that she is not giving way, so the position is clear.
Ms Eagle
The Chancellor’s choice meant that only Ireland and Iceland have been expected to deliver more austerity measures. The result has been that only Greece, Ireland and Denmark have grown less fast than the UK has managed in the past year. Back then, in what he so theatrically described as his emergency Budget, the Chancellor stood at the Dispatch Box and told us that
“we are all in this together”.—[Official Report, 22 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 167.]
Well, we do not hear that phrase cross his lips quite so often these days. True, that ludicrous claim was blown apart the day after the Budget by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, but a year on, even the Chancellor seems to have given up on it. Perhaps it has been consigned to the dustbin of history, along with his pre-election pledge to ensure that no one working for a nationalised bank would take home a bonus of more than £2,000. Perhaps it has joined the Government’s promise that there would be no top-down reorganisation of the NHS.
The Chancellor also promised fairness, but a year ago today, he delivered a budget that hits women and children first and hardest, and he was cheered to the rafters by both Government parties in scenes of sadistic jubilation at the cuts that I, for one, and many of our constituents will remember for many years to come.
One year on, the Chancellor’s Budget of extreme austerity is inflicting nothing but pain and hardship on the British people. One year on, people are suffering the biggest squeeze in their living standards for more than 80 years. Food prices are up, petrol prices are up, energy prices are up, transport prices are up—
Ms Eagle
VAT is up, wages are frozen, hours are falling and real standards of living are sinking fast. It is certainly hurting, but it does not seem to be working.
The Government’s choice to put deficit reduction above every other consideration means that, one year on, they have developed no credible strategy for growth and jobs. All the important economic indicators are warning that the British economy is moving in the wrong direction. The Chancellor’s irresponsible scaremongering about bankruptcy and his reckless decision to compare us to Greece talked consumer confidence down to a 20-year low in January. Inflation, which was falling last year, is now more than twice the Bank of England target and the third highest in the OECD. Unemployment is set to be 200,000 higher than predicted in every year of this Parliament, with youth unemployment blighting one in five of all our young people. Despite all of the talk of being a pro-growth Government, the truth is that growth forecasts have been downgraded, thanks to his choices, again and again and again.
Things were getting better when we left office, but after a year of the present Chancellor and his political choices, they are getting worse. He has created a vicious circle in the British economy. He has put this country into the economic slow lane. By choosing to cut too far, too fast many more people are out of work, claiming benefits and not paying taxes. As a result, the Government have to borrow £46 billion more in the coming years than they expected only last autumn.
We on the Opposition Benches warned the Chancellor last year that huge and rapid cuts in public expenditure risked stifling the economic recovery. We said that his plan to cut billions from public spending last June, when the economy was still fragile, was reckless and irresponsible. Now more people are expressing their doubts about his plan. We have consistently called for a steadier and more balanced approach to reducing the deficit, but instead this ideologically blinkered and arrogant Government continue to claim that there is no alternative. This is irresponsible, it is complacent and it risks putting a permanent dent in our future prosperity.
Ms Eagle
A temporary VAT cut could help kick-start our stalling economy and the Government should certainly consider it until growth returns. Instead of giving the banks a tax cut this year, the Government should repeat the bank bonus tax and use the revenue to create 90,000 youth jobs, build 25,000 much-needed houses and support more regional growth. The Chancellor badly needs to change course.
It is not as though the Government are not used to retreating, backsliding, U-turning and executing 180° handbrake turns. They have had enough practice recently. The list is long and growing: decimating school sport in the run-up to the Olympics—abandoned; flogging off our forests—abandoned; ensuring anonymity for rape victims—[Hon. Members: “Abandoned.”]; reinstating weekly bin collections—[Hon. Members: “Abandoned.”]
Only yesterday in the House after Treasury questions the Government executed two huge policy retreats on their proposals to offer 50% discounts on prison sentences and the massive car crash that is their wasteful top-down reorganisation of the NHS. Their Back Benchers might not like it, but they have learned to live with it. They are even learning to adapt their behaviour to accommodate it. Just look at what some of them are saying on the ConservativeHome website. One said:
“When I get a torrent of emails about a controversial issue now, I leave them for seven days before replying, because there is an increasing chance that the line is going to change.”
Another is being even more sensible. He wrote:
“I let the letters and emails on anything where there is a hint of a U-turn pile up for thirty days. Frankly I don’t want to make myself look stupid by defending a policy only for it to change a few days later.”
Another complained that the Whips asked them to write letters defending the Government’s reform plans then the next day abandoned them, stating:
“Ten times bitten, eleventh time shy.”
The reason for all these U-turns and policy retreats is that this is a reckless Government who act first and think later. This is a Government who rush to ideological judgments, act recklessly, and cause chaos and then have to retreat, causing uncertainty and waste. That pattern perfectly describes the Chancellor’s irresponsible first Budget. His decision to cut too far and too fast set the context of rapid cuts against which so many of the recent U-turns have had to be performed.
As the Prime Minister said yesterday:
“Being strong is about being prepared to admit you didn’t get everything right the first time”.
I could not agree more. It is time for this Chancellor to follow his Prime Minister’s example and be strong on the economy. It is time for a plan B.