"What an extraordinary waste of time! I counted 42 announcements in the Queen’s Speech and only four had not been announced before yesterday. This is a Queen’s Speech that risks being a waste of the Queen’s time, the people’s time and Parliament’s time. I cannot recall in 19 years in …..." John Healey - View Speech
"Let me finish my comments on my hon. Friend’s speech, then I will give way to him.
My hon. Friend went on to speak about leasehold reform. He is one of the champions of leasehold reform in the House. I was glad to hear that the Minister for Housing and …..." John Healey - View Speech
"It will not surprise my hon. Friend to know that I will come on to that. He is right. We sometimes hear the Government say that they have built more social homes than we did, but 90% of the social homes built by this Government were commissioned by the Labour …..." John Healey - View Speech
"It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban) in his last speech to the House. Like you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I faced him through the long hours of many long Finance Bills when he was on the shadow Treasury Front Bench. His reflective and loyal …..." John Healey - View Speech
"There are not many Members opposite, as the hon. Gentleman says. [Interruption.] He will remember, however, that after 10 years of the last Labour Government, before the global financial crisis and recession hit, borrowing and debt were lower than when we entered office. We have a deficit to deal with …..." John Healey - View Speech
"The intervention in the collapsed and failing banking system was a necessary step that the last Labour Government took with support from others, and most of the RBS and other bank intervention is dealt with differently in the national accounts. I would have thought that the right hon. Gentleman would …..." John Healey - View Speech
"My hon. Friend characteristically anticipates one of the points I was going to make. He will know, because he will have seen the papers published alongside the Budget, that those papers confirm that over this Parliament public sector capital investment has fallen by 44%. His point is spot on.
"The Minister says, “Hear, hear”, so let me tell her that household debts increased over this Parliament and are set to rocket over the next five years. Ministers have halved public investment over this Parliament, despite a pledge to protect it; and on exports, the balance of payments gap at …..." John Healey - View Speech
"It is possible to deal with a deficit simply by cutting, which is largely what the right hon. Gentleman’s party has done, but it is also possible to deal with it in a more balanced way by cutting where cutting is needed, raising revenue where it is right to do …..." John Healey - View Speech
"When the hon. Gentleman intervened during my speech, I made it clear that the deficit was caused after the global financial crisis by the Government stepping in to help the country through. That is what Governments can do. I said clearly that that caused the deficit and we had to …..." John Healey - View Speech