The Economy

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. If we want to make the cuts less painful, that is possible. This does not all have to be about losing jobs. I noticed yesterday that local councils are still advertising for walking co-ordinators, obesity strategy officers, cycling officers and energy island administrators. If the public sector wants to make the cuts less painful, it has the power to do so. Hon. Members talk about the unfairness of the cuts, but let us look at some of the changes that the Government have boldly introduced. We have put a cap on the amount of benefit that people can claim at the equivalent of about a £35,000 gross salary. What is unfair about that? Why should a family on benefits receive more than the average working family receives in salary? We have put a cap on housing benefit to ensure that claimants cannot live in better accommodation than ordinary, hard-working families. We recently suggested a cap on how much someone living in social housing can earn. There are Opposition Members who are earning a household income of more than £100,000 a year and who continue to live in social housing for about £175 a week. That is unacceptable and the public will find it unacceptable too. The Chancellor asked why the Opposition do not have a policy on public sector pensions. I suggest that one reason is that the leader of the Labour party was elected and put in place by the trade unions and that many Labour Members get the majority of their funding from trade unions. I would therefore expect nothing else from them. What alternatives do we have? That question brings me back to economic illiteracy. The shadow Chancellor seems to think that we can force the bond markets to buy our bonds. He seems to think that despite this country being forced to issue £4 billion in bonds a week—that is the amount we borrow plus the amount we have to refinance—and despite the competitive nature of the bond market, bond investors will just purchase our bonds willy-nilly. That is unacceptable economic illiteracy. The truth is that bond investors have a choice. Because of that, we are stranded and have no choice but to deal with the deficit. In my last two minutes, let us look at the countries that have failed to take action. I have already mentioned the United States, which had huge quantitative easing programmes of $600 billion and $1.7 trillion. It has reached the ceiling on its debt cap and is in serious trouble. It will shortly have to follow similar plans to ours. The shadow Chancellor mentioned the eurozone. He was right to point out the problems in Greece, but wrong to suggest that he has never supported membership of the euro. It is the policy of the Labour party to join the euro, and its last manifesto offered a referendum on the euro. The problem with the euro was created by political dishonesty. Politicians in Europe were not willing to tell the truth about the euro and say that there could not be a single currency without fiscal union. I suggest that there is similar political dishonesty from the Labour party. It is a party that, like Alice, lives in Wonderland. It believes that one can keep spending without any consequences and that one can abolish boom and bust.