Debate on the Address

Let me tell the hon. Gentleman what the country will believe. The country will believe that when I first entered the House, I had 40 per cent. unemployment in parts of my constituency; now unemployment there is below the national average. The Government the hon. Gentleman used to support left people literally waiting and dying for their heart operations. The Government he used to support had people working for £1.50 an hour before we introduced the minimum wage. I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to remind people of that. What the Leader of the Opposition did today shows the difficulties that he has. When it is a question of attack, he can make the attack, but when it is a question of giving the alternative, he has no alternative to give. The truth of the matter is that he spends most of his time avoiding difficult decisions, but when he is forced to decide, he decides wrongly. Let us look, for example, at what he says about tax and spending, since that goes right to the heart of whether or not we run an effective economy. It used to be clear. The right hon. Gentleman said that he had a new fiscal rule that would ““share the proceeds of growth””, so there would be less spending than under the Labour Government. But I have been through the spending commitments that the right hon. Gentleman has made and I find that he has called for more spending on prisons, more on housing, more on schools, more on occupational therapy, more on drug rehabilitation, more on police, more on the intelligence services, more on charities, more nurses and health visitors, more for child care for parents, more for child care for grandparents, and more on post offices—billions more. Then comes the Tory tax commission that proposes £21 billion-worth of tax cuts. How does he make everything add up? He has his fiscal rule—[Interruption.] Let me give an example. Here is a quote from the Tory NHS campaign pack—how is this for clarity of policy? The question is:"““Are you guaranteeing increased spending on the NHS?””" The first line of the reply is:"““We are not calling for further, immediate increases on NHS spending””." Fair enough. The second line is:"““We have made an unambiguous commitment to increase spending””," and the third line is"““We have made it clear that we will share the proceeds of growth between increased spending…and reducing tax””." The fact is that trying to cut taxes and spend more with the same money is not sharing the proceeds of growth; it is sharing out the disaster of the recession that this country will face.