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"John Le Mesurier wishes it to be known that he conked out on November 15th. He sadly misses his family and friends."
It is said that his last words were, in true Sergeant Wilson fashion, "It's all been rather lovely."
The challenge for the Government, met in the Budget, is to balance our books while rewarding work; to find a way in which our public services can support and raise up the people of this country who need their help, and not-as happens too frequently, despite the best intentions-hold them down. I believe that a key to that is unleashing the power, potential, leadership and creativity of our social enterprises and charities.
Recently, Bedford college hosted an evening with the entrepreneurs-an opportunity for schoolchildren to meet some of the leading lights in our social enterprises, including Adele Blakebrough of Community Action Network and Tim Campbell of the Bright Ideas Trust. The schoolchildren could hear the passion that guided those people's lives, and learn about their potential to provide for social services in a better way than the bureaucratic state.
In Bedford, groups of charities have already come together in a formal coalition, Consortico, which will enable them better to compete for the contracts that local government offers. Those charities and social entrepreneurs need the Government as an ally who will enable them to overcome the inertia and intransigence of some arms of the bureaucratic state. We need the leaders of the arms of the bureaucratic state to become champions of unbundling their privileges, not intransigent defenders of their own interests.
Social enterprise is one key, but as has been said many times in the debate, enterprise is absolutely critical. For the arc of my life, my home town has been in economic decline. It is not unique in that-indeed, the causes transcend party and are a pattern repeated throughout our country. Manufacturing jobs have been exported as we plugged into the global economy. There are measures in today's Budget that will start to address that and rebalance growth throughout our economy. We have witnessed a persistence by Government in permitting those who are able but idle not to contribute to the economy. Again, this Government will tackle that.
In Bedford, we have experienced a doubling of unemployment in the past 10 years. The so-called boom of the past decade seemed to pass our town centre by. It is now in urgent need of regeneration, but incapable of making that happen unless we achieve the economic recovery that we need. The measures the Chancellor proposed today will hasten that recovery.
Our bypass is tantalisingly close to completion after 70 years of waiting. As a town, we need to start punching above our weight to attract more capital to it and to the constituency. We will do that together as a community, by promoting entrepreneurship so that we can start
more small businesses, and by opening up our bureaucracies to the social entrepreneurs who can provide a much better service for our community in the long term. We will provide a beacon for other communities to show what can be done by harnessing the opportunities that are presented even in these most difficult times for communities to step forward and fulfil the challenges.
It is said that courage is often found in the most challenging times. With the very difficult measures that he proposed in his speech today, the Chancellor has shown us the courage that is needed, and that he can set us on the right course.
We need a House that can both strive for the most important interests of this country and amplify the weakest and quietest voices in our community. The people need a House that can be a beacon for liberty, freedom and democracy for those in the world for whom those are still ideals and not reality. We need a House that will restore probity to the public finances, so that future generations of Britons are not shackled by the excesses of this generation. The Budget has made a start. I hope, in my time in this House, that I can make a brief and small contribution to achieving those ambitions.
4.40 pm
Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab): In rising to make what must be my 13th maiden speech, I congratulate the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) on his graceful maiden speech. He ensured that what can be an ordeal for new Members was not an ordeal for the rest of the House. I am afraid that my one association with Bedford is an unhappy one. I was carted there in an ambulance after a car crash on the A1 and was in concussion for some time. When I woke up, the surgeon came to see me and congratulated himself on having stitched my right hand together, before telling me that I should be very grateful to him. When I explained that I am left handed, he just said, "Damn!" and went away. It was interesting to hear of the famous people from Bedford-better John Le Mesurier than Eddie Waring, I suppose-and of the attractions of the town. I am sure it has produced almost as many interesting people and has almost as many attractions to visit as Grimsby.
I am less congratulatory to the Chancellor on his Budget. I congratulate him on the provision to protect low-paid civil servants, of whom there are many, from the rigours of a pay freeze, but I am not sure that such measures will be sufficient to outweigh what my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) called, in his very effective speech, stealth cuts, or the general depressive impact of not only the Budget, but the £6 billion of cuts that went before it and the massive cuts still to come. Those are not part of the Budget package, but they must be viewed as part of the approach. I am sure those measures will have such a depressing effect on the economy that the poor cannot be protected by the simple measures the Chancellor introduced.
In fact, collectively, the package of cuts and the Budget lead me to lament the economic ignorance and social arrogance behind them. The Budget is a dangerous assault on the economy when growth is just beginning-it is not fully entrenched or powerful yet-and there is a glimmer of light ahead. It also represents a transformation in the attitude of the Conservative party. Its leader tried to win the election-he did not actually do so-by
charm and by presenting the face of compassionate conservatism. He undertook to protect spending on aid, defence, the NHS and education, to protect front-line services, and to preserve free bus travel and winter fuel payments for pensioners. He also told us that he had no plans to increase VAT. Those must have been the same non-plans that the Conservatives had in 1979, when they increased VAT from 8% to 15%-their non-plans then were equally fulfilled.
That charm offensive-compassionate conservatism-has been replaced by the Chancellor, who was clearly kept in the attic, like Mrs Rochester, during the election campaign, so that he did not go out and frighten people with the extent of the cuts that he wanted to make. He has now been released from the attic to impose his Mrs Rochester economics on the system, with a few pathetic crumbs and benefits, such as the abolition of the cider duty, which we had already in fact abolished before the election. That has now been dropped from the Tory table to the Liberal Democrats to give them and their leader something, however small, to compensate them for having betrayed those who voted for them, thinking them an independent-minded, compassionate middle party.
Martin Horwood: Does the hon. Gentleman really think that taking nearly 1 million people out of income tax, which was a key pledge in the Liberal Democrat manifesto on which we insisted in the coalition agreement, is a small matter?
Austin Mitchell: No, it is of great benefit. I congratulated the Chancellor on it, and I am glad the Liberals won it. However, it is still not sufficient to compensate those 1 million people for the increase in VAT, which is a regressive tax, and for the general depressing effects on the economy and employment of the other measures in the package of cuts in the Budget. That policy on income tax is a gain for the Liberals-and, indeed, the country-and it was right. I congratulated the Liberals at the time on including it in their manifesto.
The transformation of the Liberals is like that of the pigs in "Nineteen Eighty-Four"-I am not calling the Liberals pigs, but they were pigs in "Nineteen Eighty-Four"-into human beings, if not Tories. The Liberals have been transmuted not into Tories, but into European liberals-I am thinking, in particular, of the Free Democratic party, which is an economic liberal party that, I am pleased to note, is now disrupting the coalition in Germany by demanding stringent cuts from Angela Merkel and the Christian Democrats. I am sorry to see my friends in that situation. There are difficulties in the coalition between the Liberals and the Conservatives, because it is like merging a Brownie pack with the Brigade of Guards. I feel sorry for Liberal Ministers who have to sit there and join in the chorus of nodding dogs on the Front Bench at every Tory policy announcement. I am sorry to see that habit spreading to the Liberals.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Austin Mitchell: In a minute, when I have finished the joke!
It is sad to see the Liberals justifying Tory policies, while their Ministers in the Cabinet are being picked off one by one by the Tory press, which is maligning them and doing them down. That is a pathetic spectacle.
Richard Graham: Does the hon. Gentleman agree with Oona King's remarks to The Guardian last week that the tragedy of new Labour is that, while many signed up to the concept of social justice and economic growth, too many Labour Members concentrated on social justice and forgot about economic growth? The reality can be seen in my constituency of Gloucester, where 4,600 jobs have been lost in the private sector over 10 years, 7,600 have been created in the public sector and there is record youth unemployment. Economic growth has completely disappeared, so it is the Government's job to restore the economic growth in order to provide the social justice we all want.
Austin Mitchell: I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman has not heard of the economic recession and its effect on our economy. Before now, we have enjoyed 10 years of steady, substantial economic growth that has improved everything-it has put more people in work, improved people's quality of life and made them better off. Does he deny that reality? I do not want to get into an argument about history, but he is blaming the recession and putting the blame for that on the Labour Government.
I want to move on to the substance of the Budget. The package of cuts in the Budget represents a gigantic confidence trick bigger than the Zinoviev letter, which the Tory party was seen to be responsible for as well. We have to accept that recession brings a need for social democratic, governmental state solutions. Recession brings a need for regulation and fairness, and for public spending to counter the curtailment of private spending and to protect the community. The Conservative party has reacted to that by creating panic about debt, borrowing and the possible foreclosure of our credit cards in Europe. Conservative Members warn about us becoming another Greek economy and, through their tirade of anti-British complaint, they consistently knock Britain.
The clamour about debt is designed to frighten people into accepting measures, cuts in public spending and the roll-back of the state that the Conservative party certainly wanted to put in place anyway.
Austin Mitchell: There is no need to defend the Conservative party at every juncture in my speech. The hon. Gentleman might concentrate on defending his own party for its part in the process-[Hon. Members: "He's a Conservative."] In that case, I apologise and give way.
Richard Graham: I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. Has he looked at the other role model example, which is that of Spain? Currently, it has 20% unemployment, and 40% youth unemployment, having followed precisely the policies that he and so many of his colleagues appear to be advocating-that is, to carry on spending regardless. That leads not to economic growth but to economic disaster. If it were to happen in my constituency, there would be riots on the streets.
Austin Mitchell: I am sorry for mistaking the hon. Gentleman for a Liberal. As a Conservative, he must be sitting in some kind of custodial role on the Liberal Benches.
The analogy that the hon. Gentleman makes is false. It is no use comparing us with Spain, Greece or any of the European countries. Our borrowing is on 13 or 14-year terms, and the interest rates that we pay on it are much lower, whereas Greece's borrowing is on two-year terms, or less.
We are protected by something for which our previous Prime Minister is never given credit-the fact that we did not enter the euro. The Liberal party wanted us to do that, but our being outside it means that we can take exchange rate adjustments that Greece, Spain, Portugal and the other countries in this situation cannot. As a result, we are not facing the same problem, or the same threat to our debt.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con): I take it, therefore, that the hon. Gentleman is proud of the fact that we pay £80,000 in debt interest every minute that ticks by. Is he proud of that?
Austin Mitchell: I am proud of that, because it keeps the economy running at a higher level than would otherwise be the case. It keeps people in work, and it stimulates the growth that is the only answer-
Austin Mitchell: I am sorry, but I want to make a little progress with my argument. I am proud of borrowing. I believe that we have not placed enough emphasis on the need for borrowing, or its role. Borrowing is extremely important, and the panic being created about debt and borrowing is totally unrealistic. It is counter-productive economics at a time when we are facing a recession.
First, I should point out that the debt is not a serious problem. Our debt-to-GDP ratio is lower than that of any other country in the G7, except Canada. We are in a healthy situation when it comes to debt.
Secondly, borrowing by the Government is not the same as borrowing by a household or a company. A Government cannot feel the burden of debt in the same way, because Government borrowing stimulates the economy, growth, jobs and employment.
Mr Sam Gyimah (East Surrey) (Con): To see the problems caused to a country by debt, we only have to look at what happened to Greece. It is clear that it can be a problem, and that something has to be done to resolve it.
Austin Mitchell: We are doing something to resolve it, and that is to get growth. The only way to bring down borrowing and get the economy moving so that it can bear a heavier burden of debt repayment is through economic growth-all the rest is simple piggy-banking and economic ignorance. If I am going to have to face a chorus of that kind of piggy-banking attitude for the rest of my speech, it will be very unfunny, and I had intended it be as humorous as I could make it.
We have to accept that borrowing is important, and that borrowing by a Government is not the same as borrowing by a household. That is because Government
borrowing stimulates the economy, growth and jobs. Borrowing in a recession is a virtue. Indeed, it is absolutely essential, because if the private sector is contracting and credit is tight, and if people are not spending, borrowing is the only way that purchasing power can be kept up, so that the economy can be stimulated. It is simple Keynesianism, and I am surprised that the Tory party seems to have forgotten Keynes.
Steve Baker: The hon. Gentleman has said the word himself, so I will make the same point that I made to the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) earlier. The hon. Gentleman is just rehearsing Keynesian arguments that died in the 1970s. Even the Labour party in the '70s understood that, to the extent that Keynesianism worked at all, it only succeeded in stimulating inflation. Would he please consider the inflationary effects of the policies that he is recommending?
Austin Mitchell: Well, where are they? The Government claim that we have been borrowing at too high a level, yet in 2008 the Conservatives were keen to accept-as an electoral manoeuvre-our spending targets, saying that they would adopt the same targets themselves. Did they mean that we should not have borrowed to save the banks? Should we have let the banks go under, with the cataclysmic consequence of credit contracting in our society? Much of that borrowing went into saving the banks. Should we not have done that?
Claire Perry: I am listening, as always with great interest and enjoyment, to what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but in my constituency people were worried that we were about to lose our sovereign credit rating, which would have been a consequence of the sort of borrowing that he is talking about. Do his constituents not care about that, or not think that it is a risk?
Austin Mitchell: My constituents care about the jobs, benefits and growth that borrowing can give them. That kind of threat that the hon. Lady describes is not talked of in the fish and chip shops of Grimsby, nor is it part of any realistic assessment of our economic situation. There is no threat to our credit rating. The idea is absolutely ludicrous. In fact, the Office for Budget Responsibility, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bank of England as far as I can see, has said that the borrowing estimates are coming down. We are borrowing less than the Government predicted. We can well bear that total of borrowing-we should bear it; we must bear it-to get the economy growing again, because that is the only way to pay off the borrowing and to reduce the overdraft.
The Government insist on cutting spending, but I am not sure about the scale of unemployment that today's cuts in spending will produce. The figure might be 100,000, but it might be up to 500,000, because that is how many jobs have been saved by Labour's expansionary policies and stimulus spending. However, if we increase total unemployment, those people will no longer be paying taxes. They will be receiving benefits and all kinds of public support, which is necessary to support them and their families. That means that the deficit will increase. Therefore, borrowing goes up as a consequence of an increase in unemployment. The only way to counter that is for the Government to spend and borrow to stimulate the economy.
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