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Mr. Letwin: I am sorry that the hon. Lady did not catch my phrase. I was talking about the trend rate of growth, which is measured across 15, 20 and 25 years and has been measured by the current Treasury as having been, on trend, 2.25 per cent. throughout the Conservative period of Government.
Mrs. Campbell: The hon. Gentleman will be lucky to find a Conservative Government that lasts 25 years. In view of the mistakes made by the last Conservative Government, any Conservative Government would be extremely lucky to achieve a growth rate of 2.5 per cent. even for five years. As a Member of the last Parliament, I remember a former Conservative Chancellor saying that unemployment was a price worth paying--that was the Conservative philosophy.
The Labour Government have got 800,000 more people in work and we have a great deal to be proud of. We have created pathways out of poverty for millions of people. Lone parents who were trapped on benefits throughout the Tory period in office are now being encouraged to return to work when their children start school. Work is being made to pay through the working families tax credit. The long-term unemployed--many of whom have not worked since leaving school--are finding a new life and new security with work that was previously unavailable to them. At the same time, we have introduced the national minimum wage, which also helps to make work pay. Family-friendly policies are helping people to manage work and home, as do increased child care facilities and investment in public transport--for millions of people, the only way to get to work.
Mr. Nick Harvey (North Devon):
It is a pleasure to wind up the debate. I start by focusing on the difference that has emerged during the debate between those who account for things in real terms and those who account for things in cash terms. That lies at the bottom of all the wriggling that Labour Members have been doing during the debate and which they have to do every day, every week, in every radio interview and in every press article.
The mess is entirely of the Labour Government's own making. At the start of the Parliament, they took the cynical decision that, for the first two years of the Parliament, they would leave in place Conservative spending plans. They did so in the hope that electors would blame the Conservatives for all the pressures and
strains that emerged in public services--it would be the legacy of the Conservative years. They planned to switch the money into public services in the latter half of the Parliament so that, at the next general election, the good old Labour Government would have saved the day, with the result that voters would sweep them back into office out of gratitude for their policies. There has never been a clearer example of bust-and-boom policies.
The most uncomfortable point of a strategy of that shape is felt around the third year, when the public become cheesed off about the lack of improvement in public services and rather more doubtful that all the problems can be blamed on the previous Administration. At that stage, there is no sign of the improvements that the general election campaign led them to expect. They optimistically look out for such improvements every time they collect their child from school or suffer the misfortune of being put on a waiting list to go into hospital.
The Paymaster General either does not understand the difference between real terms and cash terms--I rather doubt that--or she hopes that the rest of the world is too stupid to understand the difference. However, it is not. People hear all about the Government's marvellous multi-billion pound expenditure, but when they go into hospitals they look around and wonder where on earth it has got to. They are beginning to suss that the £18 billion and £21 billion are funny money.
A doctor put the matter to me in this way: "Mr. Harvey, if my son grows three inches in one year, another three inches the second year and another three inches the third year, after three years he will have grown nine inches, but in the eyes of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that child has grown 18 inches." That is the difference between the figures that are being bandied between one side of the Chamber and the during this debate.
The Liberal Democrat manifesto, which the hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Rammell) is more than welcome to look at, talks about real terms increases in spending over and above anything that could be accounted for by inflation or growth in the economy. The Government are bundling together successive years' worth of inflation, adding them up in compound form and then comparing that with what we were committing to as a real terms pledge.
There was an interesting exchange between the hon. Member for Reading, West (Mr. Salter) and my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock), who wanted to know the difference between moving on and breaking a manifesto promise. The difference comes down to whether one does more than one promised in a manifesto or less. We are saying that, in the light of the fact that growth in the economy has been much better since the election than we might have predicted at the time, it is only reasonable that people should be doing more than they said they would do in 1997. The Government are doing much less than they were going to do then and they are resorting to spin, confusion and trickery to put people off the trail.
I listened with great interest to the Secretary of State for Health when he introduced the finding of the NHS beds inquiry. Everyone knows that we have far fewer beds than we had years ago. We now have 95 per cent. bed usage, whereas 20 years ago, it was 75 per cent. During a winter crisis such as we have just had, the strains are all
too clear to see. That inquiry compared the number of beds per head of the population here with the figures in every other civilised country, from which the Secretary of State concluded that Britain is making more efficient use of its beds than any other country. If I have ever heard new Labour spin, that is it. It is a fine way of explaining that we have far too few beds and that the situation here does not stand comparison internationally in any shape or form.
If we focus on the health service, many announcements have been made in just the past couple of weeks. One fifth of patients are waiting four hours or more in accident and emergency departments, and 57,000 operations were cancelled on the day last year. Those on in-patient waiting lists rose by 36,500 in January. In my region, the south-west, there are more people on in-patient waiting lists than when the Government took office. The Government's usual con is to try to pull the wool over people's eyes on the difference between out-patient and in-patient waiting lists. But for all the Government's trumpeted achievements, in the south-west there are more people on in-patient waiting lists than there were when the Labour party took office three years ago.
The number of people waiting more than 13 weeks for their first out-patient appointment--the true measure of how long people have to wait--has grown from 248,000 in March 1997 to 512,000 in March 1999, and those are the Department's own figures.
Returning to the efficient use of beds, it is worth remembering that each year in the national health service more than 100,000 people catch potentially fatal infections, 5,000 die of such infections and they are implicated in a further 15,000 deaths. That is the efficient use that we are making of beds in the NHS--we are pushing people through hospitals so quickly that the places are filthy and infections spread.
I have no doubt that that is a further example of the efficiency that the Secretary of State for Health will proclaim, but the cost to the NHS may be as high as £1 billion a year, according to the National Audit Office.
In the midst of confused recruitment policies, the bill for agency nurses stands at £344 million. It has increased from £264 million in one year--extraordinary growth for a completely unnecessary budget head.
During the national beds inquiry it was concluded that more intermediate care beds were needed, for example, in cottage hospitals. However, the Government have been going full steam ahead to close down such hospitals. Two have closed in Lincolnshire, two in Oxfordshire and two in Devon, including one in my constituency, which is theoretically still open, but when one visits one finds it closed--although it is still being paid for, heated, lit and cleaned. Once again, all that is being done in the name of efficiency.
People who go to hospital, or indeed to schools, see only too clearly that, for all the billions of pounds that the Government so lavishly trumpet as having been spent, there is not much improvement. Head teachers ask why the £19 billion for education is not reaching their schools. They are fed up with hearing: "Trust me, I'm a politician. The cheque's in the post. There'll be more money in your budget because the Government have allocated £19 billion." The fact of the matter is that head teachers can all see through that. It is no wonder that Labour
Members are wriggling--they have not got away with the con on which they embarked at the start of this Parliament.
For all the Labour talk of fair funding, in education in particular the Government have not put right some of the grotesque geographical anomalies as between funding in different areas. It cannot be right for a primary child in Derby to be funded at £1,000 less than a primary pupil in Lambeth, or for there to be a gap of £1,370 per pupil between the best--Kensington and Chelsea--and the worst funded, Bradford. Even in two adjacent Labour- controlled London boroughs--Tower Hamlets and Hackney--there is a difference of £300 a head between secondary pupils. However, we hear that the Government are taking national initiatives: the national curriculum, national tests, national league tables, and inspection of schools according to a national framework.
Funding disparities that have become grotesque remain in place and the Deputy Prime Minister says that he intends to do nothing about it for three years. There is a distinct lack of equity, in addition to the lack of transparency to which I referred, in the Government's presentation figures.
I listened with interest to the contribution of the hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), who spoke for the Conservatives. I did not agree with his prescription, in particular for the health service, where the Conservatives seem determined to ensure a large increase in the number of people who take out private health insurance. I am not sure which of the three strategies that I can identify they will pursue. The first would be to compel everyone to do it; the second, to use taxpayers' money to bribe everyone to do it; and the third, merely to continue to run the health service as the Labour party is doing and to drive them to do it out of sheer desperation. It must be one of the three.
However, the one thing on which I did agree with the hon. Gentleman was that, unlike those on the Government Front Bench, he was ready and willing to accept the difference between cash-terms increases and real-terms increases. He had a different estimate from ours of what we would be able to afford out of economic growth, but at least he recognises the figures for what they are and has his own response.
Throughout the debate we have also heard from the Government that the Liberal Democrats make spending commitments, but never say from where the money will be paid. For goodness' sake, the point of today's debate is that we have tabled a motion to say exactly where one could get £2.6 billion for whichever public service one chooses. The Government are in power and they can decide which are the highest priorities. I have given examples of the state of the health service, and every hon. Member will appreciate the accuracy of my description of the situation in schools from visits that they have made to schools in their own constituencies. The Government will have to decide which matter to make their top priority. Can anyone really doubt that our public services require investment of £2.6 billion?
There is also absolutely no evidence that the public want a tax cut now--the very opposite is the case. All recent polls have produced the finding that 80 per cent. of the public would prefer that sum to be spent--now, in the coming year--on public services to a tax cut.
It is also interesting that, month after month, the Bank of England is having to increase interest rates, partly because of its great concern about a consumer spending
spree. So how on earth could it make any sense whatever to put £2.6 billion into consumers' pockets? A tax cut makes no economic sense, the public does not want it, and an array of tasks in the public service are waiting to be done.
Labour Members made other untrue statements about the positions adopted by Liberal Democrats Members on various issues. It is absolutely nonsense to say, for example, that we opposed the minimum wage.
My hon. Friend the Member for Northavon (Mr. Webb) explained particularly accurately not only why we voted against the legislation introducing the working families tax credit, but why we have no objection whatever to the principle of it. The Paymaster General replied that, in the debate on the legislation, she had explained in great detail how the system would operate. Undoubtedly she did so, and did so very well. However, when the votes on the legislation were cast, they were cast simply on the system that it proposed as the method of payment. The Government themselves have now accepted that that system was a mistake. They have also said that they will make new payments by a different system.
The Paymaster General was therefore expressing the hope that, at the next general election, Liberal Democrat Members will be going round the country arguing for removal of the working families tax credit. She could not be more wrong about that. We have not opposed it in principle at all.
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