The Economy

I am not going any further. I am proud of what we did. We put record investment into the national health service. We had the Decent Homes programme, which, in my local council area, provided £360 million to put right homes that were desperately in need of it. There was a huge improvement in school results. We had more doctors, nurses and police on the beat. We had the national minimum wage, peace in Northern Ireland, new schools and hospitals, better health outcomes, and record numbers at university and in work. We also had—Conservative Members have not mentioned this while attacking the economic progress of our Government—a record period of growth over more than 11 years before we were hit by the global crisis. What is certain is that the Conservatives and their yellow human shields, the Liberal Democrats, will never learn from history. They want to ignore the history of ordinary men and women. Indeed, when the Chancellor was asked in 2007 about his memories of the miners' strike, he said:"““I'm trying to see if I can honestly remember.””" What we have is a party that selectively forgets the past, including the suffering and misery of a generation of people whose only crime was to want to live in security, bring their kids up well, have a good life and go to work. The Conservatives refuse to remember those things. They are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past, and ordinary people will pay for those mistakes.