The Economy

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In the last week alone, not only has the shadow Chancellor made a huge unfunded tax promise, but Labour voted against the welfare Bill, with its billions of pounds of savings. It is perfectly right for an Opposition to say, ““I don't agree with that, and I've got an argument with you on this,”” but Labour's voting against the entire welfare Bill was a catastrophic error of judgment, and we will remind it of its failure to reform the welfare system from now until the end of this Parliament. The Labour leader recently said that his party had become known as the friend of the welfare scroungers and the bankers. He was absolutely right about that. The shadow Chancellor's central argument was that the reason why we are undertaking this deficit reduction plan is because it is all part of some great partisan ideological plot. I therefore have a question for the shadow Treasury team: presumably therefore, the Bank of England is part of this plot? Is that the case?