Treasury and Work and Pensions

It was a pleasure to listen to the grown-up speech of the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), which was much better than the childish rant of the shadow Chancellor, the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne). I do not know what has come over the right hon. Gentleman, but I think that he should be brought back to the Front Bench to make a serious contribution, rather than remain stuck on the Back Benches. I also enjoyed the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), and I might refer to some of the things that he said later. I shall not pick up on all the points made by the right hon. Member for Wokingham, but I wish to raise certain matters. It is stated in the second paragraph of the Queen’s Speech:"““A stable economy is the foundation of a fair and prosperous society. My Government will continue to maintain low inflation, sound public finances and high employment.””" The Chancellor should be commended for doing that over the past decade. The Queen’s Speech also states that the Government will try"““to help the most vulnerable members of society.””" That is, in a sense, why I rise to speak. It is clear that some of the issues that I wish to raise are Department of Trade and Industry issues, but I notice that no DTI day has been allocated in the Queen’s Speech debate. I hope, however, that the Chancellor has much influence on that and other parts of the Government, and that he will have even more in the very near future. Regardless of what is said in the course of all the yah-boo politics, and in all the factional bids for this power or that power or for spending on this or on that, people I talk to in the part of the country that I come from and elsewhere recognise that we have had a stable and growing economy over the past decade, whereas there have been some heavy storms in other parts of the world, and there has been a difficult period for the European Union when the euro did not take off as it should have and we did not get the growth that we expected. The Chancellor has seen all of that through, as well as problems that arose in other economies, and our economy has continued to grow. The economy in my constituency is such that people are not rushing abroad. INEOS, the largest privately owned company in the UK, has bought the olefins and derivatives business of BP and it has now committed itself to spending £60 million on what is probably the world’s largest biofuels plant, in Grangemouth. That will be a flagship venture for many others in low-carbon technologies.