Tom Harris
Main Page: Tom Harris (Labour - Glasgow South)Department Debates - View all Tom Harris's debates with the Scotland Office
(13 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are making sure that money goes into FE colleges. That is essential for the skills agenda of the future, and we want to free up those colleges to have more agreements with business. In the past they were over-regulated in respect of the courses they could run and the qualifications they could offer. We want to see much greater collaboration between FE colleges so that we get the skills that we actually need.
Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)
Until 18 months before the general election, the Prime Minister supported Labour’s spending plans. At what point did he decide to rewrite history?
The Prime Minister
We realised that the spending plans were unaffordable, and we came off them. We went into the last election promising to make spending reductions. It needed to be done, and I remember sitting where the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) is, week after week, asking the former Prime Minister, “Aren’t you really saying there are going to be cuts?”, and he said, “No, no cuts. There won’t be any cuts.” Do you remember? It happened week after week. Now we have the evidence from Labour’s own memo. It was planning £44 billion in cuts, and not a word about it to anyone. That is thoroughly dishonest.