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Mr. Richards: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Brown: I will give way once more.
Mr. Richards: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way before he gets to the substance of his speech. Will he answer a quite simple question? Is the proportion of gross domestic product spent by the Government too high or too low?
Mr. Brown: I tell the hon. Gentleman that the proportion of borrowing by the Government is too high. What I would say to him is that his question should have been addressed to the Chancellor. Why is it--
Mr. David Shaw: Answer the question.
Mr. Brown: Why is it that borrowing was raised from £22 billion to £27 billion--something that would not excite the chairman of the Conservative Back Bench finance committee? Why is it--
Mr. Shaw: Answer the question.
Mr. Brown: Why is it that, at the last election, the Conservatives told us that borrowing in the next five years would be about £100 billion, and it has turned out to be about £150 billion or more? Why have they been 50 per cent. out on the borrowing figures? Why cannot we trust the Tories with the public finances? That is the truth of the matter.
Mr. Anthony Coombs (Wyre Forest): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Coombs: If the right hon. Gentleman is saying that borrowing is too high, can he explain to the House how the ratio of the public sector borrowing requirement to GDP in the past 16 years of Conservative government is under half what it was during the last Labour Government?
Mr. Brown: The hon. Gentleman knows that his Government have had massive oil revenues and privatisation proceeds, which have gone on current
consumption. He also knows that the share of public spending taken by the Government in the past 17 years is, on average, exactly what it was when Labour left office.
So, far from the Conservatives having a great record of coming into office and cutting the proportion of public spending in the national income, it is exactly the same as it was. I will tell the hon. Gentleman why: we are spending money to pay the bills of failure. We are spending money on unemployment, crime and social decay as a result of the Conservatives' failure to run an economy that is sufficiently successful to ensure that we do not have to finance the bills of unemployment.
When it comes to the next general election, I have some sympathy for many of the Conservative Members in the No Turning Back group. They said at the last election that they would cut public spending as a share of the national income, but in fact, when we get to that election, it will not be less than 40 per cent. as the Chancellor predicted it would be two years ago. As he rightly says, it will be more than 40 per cent. [Interruption.] That is the record--
Mr. Michael Brown (Brigg and Cleethorpes):
What would you spend?
Mr. Gordon Brown:
There is no use the hon. Gentleman shouting from a sedentary position.
Mr. Gordon Brown:
He shouts about spending, but he should have asked that question of the Chancellor long ago.
Why are we spending so much on unemployment? Why are we spending on the bills of failure? Why have the Conservatives failed to create an economy that can provide sufficiently high sustainable growth to solve the problems of unemployment in our midst?
The Chancellor raised the question of the windfall tax. I make no apologies for saying that it will be an election issue, because we will tackle the problems of youth and long-term unemployment and give a fair deal to unemployed people by tackling the excess and unfair profits of the privatised utilities--profits that I believe even most members of the Conservative party cannot, in their more enlightened moments, ever defend.
Mr. Quentin Davies:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I wonder whether you would be kind enough to ask the Serjeant at Arms to check the sound amplification system in the Chamber. A few minutes ago, I asked the right hon. Gentleman an extremely clear question: what--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. That is a total abuse of the House. It is not a point of order for me. It is nothing but gimmickry.
Mr. Brown:
The House will agree that I have given way on numerous occasions--[Hon. Members: "Answer the question."]--including, if I count correctly, about 10 times to the Chancellor to allow him to deny that the proposals in the document are under active consideration by the Conservative Government. He failed to answer my questions, and the press will understand that he did so.
Let me conclude by saying a number of things about--
Dr. Lynne Jones:
It is time that Opposition Members had a bite at the cherry.
Do not Conservative Members' comments show that they plan to reduce the share of gross domestic product spent on government by further eroding the welfare state--a process which they have already begun, by removing mortgage protection from people who become unemployed and by going down the road of forcing people to take out private insurance for long-term care? It is not really credible, is it, for them to argue about reducing Government spending as a share of GDP by forcing people to spend more of their own money on taking out private insurance, which costs them far more?
Mr. Brown:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention. [Hon. Members: "More spending."] I have made no secret of the fact that we will use the privatised utilities' resources to take action against the problems of unemployment. That will be a central issue of the next general election. Conservative Members will regret defending the utilities, and becoming the political voice of the utilities in this Chamber and in the country.
Let us conclude by examining--[Interruption.] Hon. Members should listen to what is being said about the condition of the economy, because they will have to answer in their marginal seats for what is happening.
After 17 years of Conservative government, what has happened to the country? First, there is more poverty than there was in 1979. The Chancellor makes speeches saying that the poor are getting richer. He makes speeches with his Social Security Minister, saying that the poor can now buy videos and freezers, and that there is no real problem of poverty in our midst.
But the report issued this morning reveals the truth. It refers to "widening inequality" of income and earnings, and says that, over the last 20 years, the UK has seen an 18 per cent. fall in income among its poorer groups. So far from the poor getting richer, the poor--according to the official in the Treasury, who has studied those matters in that section of the report--have got poorer. The Chancellor cannot deny it.
What about inequality since 1979? The Government suggest that all have benefited from their policies. The report says that, between 1979 and 1993, incomes for the poor fell by 10 per cent., and that, whereas weekly earnings for males in the highest deciles were 2.5 times higher than for the bottom decile, they were 3.3 times higher by April 1995--a massive widening of inequality, which has taken place under Conservative Governments. That is the second fact of life under the present Government.
What is the third fact of life under the present Government? In 1979, the then Chancellor, in his first Budget, said that the job of the Conservative Government was to reverse national economic decline. What has happened since 1979, as the Treasury report confirms today? Not only are we ninth out of 15th in Europe, and not only does the Treasury predict that we shall fall to the levels of Thailand, Mexico and Brazil, but it confirms, as we already know, that Britain has slumped from 13th to 18th in the world prosperity league.
Try as the Chancellor does to wriggle out of it, all he need do is read the competitiveness review published only a few days ago to find that the figures showing that we have fallen behind in the world prosperity league have been confirmed.
It must be an acute embarrassment to the Chancellor today that, despite all his claims about the economy, the Treasury knows that we are slipping behind. It is an acute embarrassment that, despite all that he says about poverty, the Treasury in its document says that poverty has worsened. It is an acute embarrassment for the Government that, despite all they say about narrowing inequality, the Treasury talks about widening inequality.
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