Oral Answers to Questions

Ed Balls Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is right, of course. The Treasury’s own independent analysis of the Labour party’s approach to public spending shows that it could borrow over £166 billion more in the next Parliament. Labour Members have started to contribute to that with a £21 billion shopping list this summer. Perhaps the shadow Chancellor can get up and explain how he is going to pay for it.

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

Let me start by welcoming the Exchequer Secretary to her new post on the Front Bench, and by saying to the Chancellor, “Don’t worry—I’m not going to press you on my ice bucket challenge to you today.”

Let me instead ask the Chancellor about another highly topical economic issue, particularly among his Back Benchers. Before the last election, he told the Centre for European Reform that he was a “pro-European”. This week, The Times is reporting that the new chapter in his biography says that the Chancellor has gone cold on Europe—an “unmistakable hardening”—and is now pondering exit. I suspect we may know the answer, but let me ask the Chancellor: what has changed?

[Mr Osborne]

First, I thank the right hon. Gentleman for nominating me for the ice bucket challenge. I would rather make the extra donation to charity and pour the cold water over his economic policies. When it comes to reading biographies, we do not need a biography to know his life story: he was put in charge of the British economy, and he wrecked it.

On Europe, our position is the one that I think is shared by the majority of the British people, which is that we seek a renegotiation of Britain’s terms of membership of the European Union, and that we will then put that to the British people in a referendum. Why does the right hon. Gentleman not get up and commit the Labour party to letting the people have a say?

[Ed Balls]

The Chancellor cannot even convince his own Back Benchers of his policy on Europe, let alone anybody else. Let me tell the House what the president of the CBI said last week. He said that the Government’s policy on Europe

“has already, and is increasingly, causing real concern for business regarding their future investment”.

Yet the Chancellor is flirting with exit. We know what has changed: Boris Johnson has said that he is returning to Westminster and that he is flirting with exit, and—surprise, surprise—the Chancellor is too. Let me ask the Chancellor this. I want reform in Europe but, like the CBI, I am determined to put the national economic interest first. Surely the Chancellor should put his leadership ambitions aside and put the national economic interest first too.

[Mr Osborne]

We put the national economic interest first by fixing the mess that the shadow Chancellor left the British economy in. I have been doing some research on what he has been up to over the summer. I read an article in the Express & Star called, “Out and about with Labour’s Ed Balls”, about when he went canvassing last week. It says:

“as we walk down Essex Drive to another house (there’s no-one in), a group of boys on their bikes look over”.

They say, “Oh look, it’s Gordon Brown.” Even they can spot more borrowing and more debt—it is Gordon Brown all over again.