House of Commons Hansard Debates for 14 May 1997 (pt 26)

9.18 pm

Mr. William Cash (Stone): May I first congratulate you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the other Deputy Speaker and the new Chairman of Ways and Means on your appointments. It is a great pleasure for me to see old friends from both sides of the House working in a different capacity and having such important and responsible positions. I also thank those in my constituency--both members of the local party and electors--for giving me the privilege of returning to the House after 13 years as a Member of Parliament.

A number of maiden speeches have been made today, including one by the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney), my successor in the constituency. I congratulate him on his speech; I wish him well, and wish the constituents of Stafford well under the present Government.

I share many of the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess). I do not believe that this was one of the best election campaigns of all time. However, it gives me some pleasure to be in real opposition, rather than the kind of opposition in which I have had to engage over the past few years. The reasons are pretty obvious, and will emerge more and more clearly as time goes on.

I am not going to give namby-pamby congratulations to the Government on their fantastic election result. I think that they have deceived the people: the people have been cruelly deceived, and the Government's Achilles heel will be public expenditure. I have talked to many members of the Government, and I have heard the anxieties that are in their hearts and minds. They know perfectly well that they cannot deliver, and that they will not be able to do so. What is more, they will not be able to do so for one simple reason--the ceiling of the Maastricht convergence criteria. They have engaged in the most cruel deceit of the British people.

During the election campaign, I put it to the constituents of Stone, who, I am glad to say, were good enough to elect me, that the reason why--certainly for the first time in my recollection in politics, which goes back the best part of 30 years--the Labour party was not capable of offering pension increases for the elderly and

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in spending on health and education was very simple. Labour has adopted exactly the same policies as are embedded in the Maastricht treaty, which prevent it from increasing expenditure beyond the levels that have been set by those totem poles of European government.

I challenge any member of the Government to answer that point, at any time. I tried to engage the Prime Minister in the same argument earlier today, but he ran away, for a very simple reason: he knows perfectly well, as indeed do I, that the real reason why the Labour party won the election is that it conned the British people on the question of Europe. That will come back to haunt the Government, because they cannot and will not deliver on public expenditure, and we have them like rats in a trap between now and the next general election. That is the point, and it will come through.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Paul Boateng): This is fantasy.

Mr. Cash: It amuses me to listen to the hilarity among those on the Government Front Bench. Front Benchers know perfectly well that the argument that I am presenting will cause them no end of trouble.

Mr. Gerald Bermingham (St. Helens, South): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Cash: Of course: I shall be delighted to do so.

Mr. Bermingham: The hon. Gentleman has been quietly in the wilderness for a number of years--

Mr. Boateng: He was never quiet.

Mr. Bermingham: I accept that unreservedly. The hon. Gentleman, however, is expressing what I can only describe as an eccentric view, which I did not find had any support on the doorsteps. Does he think that his eccentric view, and those of his friends, played any great part in the devastation of his party?

Mr. Cash: My simple reply to that rather simple point is this. During the election, I was astonished to see members of the Labour party running like fury towards the Euro-sceptic view. They knew perfectly well that, if they had persisted in the Europhilia that had pervaded the Labour party over the preceding five to 10 years, they would not have been able to convince the British people; and they therefore began to move in our direction. We won the argument; the Labour party conned the people. Unfortunately, and this is part of our difficulty, some arguments were not presented by our party during the election. The Labour party has deceived the public, but that will come back to haunt the Government in due course, as I have said.

The three principles that should govern our party in the next few years are simple. They are encapsulated in three simple words: enterprise, compassion, patriotism. I say enterprise because it is through enterprise, through small and medium businesses, through larger businesses and thereby through a strong economy--which we have been able to produce since we left the exchange rate mechanism, which was a complete disaster and which I fought against for many years--that we have been able to

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achieve an increase in the value and growth of our economy, to the point where we were able to reduce inflation to 2.7 per cent. In my constituency of Stone, unemployment is at 2.9 per cent. as compared, for example, with France, where it is 13 per cent., Germany, where it is about the same, and Spain, where it is22 per cent.

That has all happened since we came out of the exchange rate mechanism. The connection between the economy and the European issue is at the heart of where we are going over the next five years. If hon. Members are not prepared to grapple with that question or to accept the fact that those two things are interrelated, I fear for this country's future.

Through enterprise, we obtain, through a fair tax system, the ability to pay for necessary public expenditure. I am not against public expenditure. To a certain extent, there was an ideology in my party against the idea of public expenditure for its own sake, but, if we increase the size of the cake and have a fair tax system, we can provide for necessary, but not wilful, public expenditure.

If we then address the question whether the 26 Bills in the Queen's Speech will improve opportunities for this country's people, I ask hon. Members to consider this. Every Bill that imposes a legal duty, subject to judicial review, on this country's people, in whatever sphere, automatically does two things. It increases the volume of public expenditure that is required as a duty enforceable by law and, of course, it increases the number of people who have to administrate it.

Therefore, I suggest that we have a thorough review, through the Law Commission and the Government Departments, to assess those incredible volumes of statute law, plus the enormous quantity of law that is pouring out of the European Commission, to evaluate it, to take a measured view and to reduce it so that we are able to provide proper public expenditure, but not just simply for its own sake.

In my constituency, there are many good teachers and many good schools, but the problem is that the amount of money they seek bears no relationship to the quality of the education that we could produce if we concentrated properly on things such as discipline in schools--which does not have to be brutalistic or unfair, but should be firm--and not just on providing people with the sort of environment in which they can more or less do what they like. If we have a proper sense of discipline and stick to a national curriculum, and if the three Rs operate effectively, we can provide, not just with words but in action, the sort of education that young people properly deserve.

The Queen's Speech says that the Government

"will cut class sizes using money saved as a result of legislation phasing out the assisted places scheme."

I know from my personal experience in my old constituency of Stafford that Stafford independent grammar schools benefited enormously from the assisted places scheme. That is one side of the equation. The other is that they must provide the money that is needed to cut class sizes. It is no good just looking at the primary schools and the classes of three, four and five-year-olds. They need to make provision in the schools for children of 11 and over.

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