Future Government Spending

Debate between Oliver Colvile and Stewart Hosie

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

We debated similar issues early in January, when the Government laid out their proposals for the “Charter for Budget Responsibility”. I explained in that debate that the Government had promised that they would eradicate the entire structural deficit within the five years of this Parliament. It is important to understand what the Government pledged. They specifically stated that debt would begin to fall as a share of GDP in 2014-15, that the current account would be in balance in 2015-16 and that public sector net borrowing in that year would be barely £20 billion. We now know that, on their numbers, debt will not begin to fall as a share of GDP until 2016-17 at the earliest, that the current account will not be back in the black until at least the following year and that public sector net borrowing will not be £20 billion for the forthcoming year but almost four times that amount, at £75 billion. In short, the Chancellor and the Government have failed to meet a single one of the key targets that they set for themselves. The Tory policy of a fixed-term approach to deficit reduction strangled the recovery in the early years of this Parliament, and with tens of billions in cuts and tax rises still to come, the inescapable conclusion is that austerity has failed.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not recognise that there was a big issue, and that it was called Greece? The problems there and in the eurozone blew everything off course completely.