Taxes
Debate between John Glen and Jeevun Sandher(3 days, 5 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
A few months ago, I met a former civil servant. He told me that when he was working in government in the run-up to the ’97 election, Ed Balls would come into the Department and say, “Look, this is what our manifesto says, but here is the three-page memo on what we are actually going to do in government.” In fairness to that Government, they achieved quite a lot. In their first two years, of course, they stuck rigidly to the Conservative spending plans, and Tony Blair’s economic adviser, Derek Scott, said that they had a golden economic legacy.
I have listened very carefully this afternoon to the speeches made by Government Members. Of course, I can acknowledge where we were, in terms of the economy, and the fact that the country wanted change; I recognise that. Government Members, however, have failed completely to acknowledge the scale of the once-in-100-years covid experience, what that did to our public finances, and the challenges it gave us in the Treasury—the tough decisions we had to make, and the inevitable scarring to the economy.
John Glen
I shall just finish my point and then I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.
The typical refrain is then to say, “What about Liz Truss?” I was not a member of Liz Truss’s Government, but I am sure that my colleagues who were did the very best that they could. She was in office for seven weeks. I acknowledge that, politically, it was catastrophic for my party, and there are lots of lessons on which we will have time to reflect, but the failure to acknowledge properly the dominant reason for losing that last election, which was related to the scarring of what happened with covid and the fundamental challenges, does not do credit to this House. I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman if he still wants to intervene, presumably on Liz Truss.
Dr Sandher
I thank the right hon. Member for giving way. We sit on the Treasury Committee together and I find him to be an incredibly kind and brilliant Member of Parliament. He has been very kind to me personally as well.
On the experience of coming out of covid, our contention is not just about Liz Truss, but about the fact that we had the highest inflation and the highest energy bills. Natural gas, which we depend on, sets the price 98% of the time. It is also 50% to 75% more expensive than wind and solar, so the lack of investment in clean energy left us with higher inflation and made us poorer.