Pre-Budget Report

Then I will not give way. Given the inadequate time allocated for this debate, I shall make just a few brief points. Unless we correctly diagnose the causes of our problems, we will not get the right cure. It is therefore extremely worrying that the Chancellor and the Prime Minister persist in the self-serving delusion that the cause of our problems lies exclusively in the United States of America. It was not America that caused us to have the biggest boom and bust in the housing market. The excessive lending, which exceeded not only that of America but that of the rest of the world, was a British-made problem. The failures of regulation by the regulatory system introduced by this Government were at least as severe as those in America. It was those mistakes, and not sub-prime mortgage lending, that brought down Northern Rock, then Bradford & Bingley and finally HBOS. It was the Government's policy of spending more than we were raising in taxes that led to the deficit in the public finances and the corresponding deficit in the balance of payments, thereby necessitating the huge devaluation in the pound that we have seen recently. I cannot see how any of the measures announced by the Government relate to those fundamental, underlying causes of the problems that we face.