Debate on the Address

Because crime is down by 30 per cent., burglary is down by 50 per cent., and there are more police officers in our communities than ever before. If we had taken the advice of the No Turning Back group, we would be cutting £30 billion out of public expenditure to pay for tax cuts, and we would be having to cut the police forces in our country. I want to say something about the economic situation. In the face of continuing financial turbulence around the world, the legislative programme also includes measures to ensure that we maintain economic stability. We will act to replace the current savers' compensation scheme that has been in place since 1982. It used to guarantee only 90 per cent. of bank deposits up to £35,000; we are now consulting on guaranteeing, for the first time, up to 100 per cent. of the deposits of individual savers in banks and building societies, up to a specified limit, as we build on measures that have brought us 10 years of growth, free of recession—something never achieved by the Conservative party. We have had the longest period of economic growth and stability in British history, and inflation has been brought down to 1.8 per cent—within our target of 2 per cent. Just as we have had to deal with turbulence after the Asian crisis, the IT bubble, the US recession and the trebling of oil prices, so our strong economic framework is designed to continue to maintain stability and growth now and in the future. We are determined never to return to the old days of the early 1990s: unaffordable tax cuts, spending promises that could not be met, resultant inflation, 15 per cent. interest rates and the worst recession since the war. The Leader of the Opposition may remember that. He was pictured side by side with Lord Lamont on Black Wednesday. Even on that day—the worst day in financial history since the war—he could not resist a photo opportunity. I listened to the Leader of the Opposition and I heard very little policy on the big issues. [Interruption.] Is it not remarkable that the Opposition put an advert in the paper last Thursday setting out the policies that they would follow in government? We checked up, and four of the so-called new policies came from their 2005 manifesto, under the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), who was the leader of the party then, and five of them came from the 2001 manifesto. We knew that the Leader of the Opposition took his jokes from the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague); he now takes his policies from him. Where are the Conservatives on the big issues? Have they thought them through?