Pre-Budget Report

We have had a thoughtful debate, once we got past the early bombast from the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne). The debate in all parts of the House has broadly been very thoughtful. Hon. Members have talked about the seriousness of the challenges that we face. We have toured the economic history, talking about Budgets from 1993, 1981 and 1967, and we even went back to Snowden. There is a broad consensus in all parts of the House that the events that we have seen in the world economy over the past 12 months have not been seen in any of our lifetimes. This week the biggest bank in the world had to be bailed out by the American Government. That is evidence of the sheer scale of the global problems facing every country in the world. Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures. Evidence of the extraordinary times is the fact that the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), having long been an opponent of Bank of England independence, brought himself to support the Bank's role in the current events. As the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) said, there is great uncertainty. People are very worried about the economic events that they see around them. That is why the pre-Budget report is so important. Two things are clear from this debate. First, there is a big difference. We on the Labour Benches believe that we should act now to support the economy; the Conservative party does not. Secondly, the Conservative party is not prepared to take the tough decisions in the future to bring the public finances back into line after the problems caused by the recession.