The Economy

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I completely reject that entirely false characterisation of the Welsh economy. Most importantly, the Labour Government in Wales understand that growth will deliver improvements to our economy, not austerity, cutting or increasing the viciousness of the circle. The hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) ought to read The Times from this morning, because it is not only Labour Members who are worried that they have got no economic plan for growth from the Chancellor, but the chief executive officers of this country. On page 2, a reflection on the CEO summit states:"““There is...a real fear that a long, slow, feel-bad recovery will leave Britain a helpless bystander as the new economies of Asia, Africa and Latin America storm ahead.””" What does the article go on to say? It says that we need a plan for growth, that plan A is not working, and that we need an industrial strategy that highlights growth sectors, just as the Labour Government in Wales have highlighted life sciences, digital economy and advanced manufacturing. We need to target and invest in such sectors in a serious, intelligent and structured way, but we are not doing so. As the CEO of Vodafone, which is not exactly a Marxist-led workers' co-operative, says in The Times today, we in Britain have a ““faith”” that"““the market will sort it out””—" a misplaced faith that the market is always the answer. That is another lesson that Conservative Members have not learned. The market alone cannot deliver growth in this country. The Government need to intervene and direct intelligently. That is what history teaches us. Finally, I was not going to talk about banking reform, but the Chancellor ended his speech by saying that Opposition Front Benchers did not talk about it, which admittedly they did not. We will wait and judge Government Members and the Chancellor by what they do on banking reform, but we do not know exactly what will happen on that yet, do we? We know that the Chancellor has cancelled the bonus tax, and we know that he is talking about looking at banks' capital-to-asset ratios and trying to ensure that the leveraging they have on their debts is brought into line, but we will see whether the Government make good on those promises, whether they go beyond Basel III and whether they do what the OECD, which has been prayed in aid several times today, is telling them to do and split off high-risk investment banking from commercial banking. These are the tough decisions that have to be taken by a party that likes to listen to its erstwhile colleagues in the banking sector—there are probably a few Conservative Members who used to work there. These are the people who speak and whisper in the Chancellor's ear. He is not listening to ordinary working people in this country. He needs to start doing that, understand the pain he is causing and move to plan B.