Pre-Budget Report

Once again, the Tory party appears to be in full swing in its campaign to convince the people of this country that the only function of Government after the forthcoming general election will be to cut public investment to reduce the current deficit. Needless to say, the Tories have been backed up in that by their friends in the news media and their friends in the finance industry, whose bail-out caused most of the problems in the first place. The deficit needs to be reduced. However, it should not be allowed to take priority over the continuing duties of Government to ensure that the people of this country have jobs and homes, schools and hospitals, pensions and policing, and transport and other local services at home, and peace and security abroad. However, this debate is substantially about the deficit, so I shall concentrate on that. There were three main causes of the present financial crisis. The first was the need to find the money to bail out and prop up the banking system. I would remind the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) that most of those people whom he has described as wise and wonderful and able to prognosticate the future would not have a job if the taxpayer had not bailed out their businesses and propped them up to prevent them from collapsing.