The Economy

The past 13 months have been framed by Conservative Members talking about deficit denial, but the truth is that what we have gone through is deficit deceit. They have spun a tale that ignores the fact that what we went through when we saw the failure of the big banks was a failure of capitalism in this country. They never mentioned the fact that Lehman Brothers, HSBC, Lloyds and Northern Rock had collapsed. They ignored the fact that we had light-touch regulation, which they had criticised for not being light enough. The situation that we got into was not just about what our party had done—it was supported by the Tories and by the capitalist system. When the collapse happened, we took tough decisions not to repeat Tory mistakes—not only those of the '80s and '90s, but of the 1930s. We refused to accept, and we still do, that unemployment was a price worth paying. The reality is that the Conservatives still believe that and always have believed it. They ignored the fact that the Labour Government were praised at the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh and by the OECD for the work that we did. In fact, the OECD said that the Labour Government had led the world and prevented a recession from becoming a depression. The Tories must have been happy, because all they wanted to do was stand back and let the market take the course. We have seen them do that in the past. They did it in the 1930s when my father was 14 years old and was sent to work in the coal mines—one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. One thousand men a year were being killed in British coal mines—one every six hours—and someone was injured every two minutes. They went home to houses that were not fit to live in. They had poverty wages, desperate living conditions at home and at work, and no respite. It took a world war and a Labour Government to address those appalling conditions. The Tories have a long memory, and when they got back into power in the 1980s they went back to the same programme that they had in the 1930s. Under the banner they are flying today—““There is no alternative””—they attacked working people and closed mines, steelworks and shipyards. They used the same language when they outsourced hundreds of thousands of workers from councils, hospitals and universities. They cut their terms and conditions, undermined their security and decimated the services they delivered. Does that sound familiar? Yes, because they are doing it again today, and the Liberal Democrats—those who are here—are backing them up.