The Economy

Indeed. I very much support that point, and I shall come on to it later, if the hon. Gentleman allows me to make my argument. I draw the attention of the House to the point that I was making. The latest version of The Sunday Times rich list, published in May, shows that in the 1990s the 1,000 richest people in this country—0.003% of the population, a tiny number of people—had assets of £99 billion, which by 2010 had more than tripled to £335 billion. That is truly staggering. It means that those 1,000 persons alone could pay off the entire budget deficit with just half of the gains that they have made over that period. So not to make the ultra-rich pay down a significant part of the deficit, which they themselves have largely created, is perverse, unjust and wilfully prejudiced. There is a second source of funding that the Chancellor could and should, with no net increase in expenditure, use in order to resuscitate growth. Here I come to the point to which the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) drew attention. It costs £8 billion to £10 billion every year to keep a million people on the dole. Instead of letting them rot on the dole, the Chancellor could create, with the same amount of money and no net increase in borrowing at all, up to 500,000 jobs to begin the house building, the energy and transport infrastructure improvement, and the development of the new green digital economy—all the things that the country so desperately needs. The Chancellor would then have a triple whammy. He would reduce joblessness by a fifth, he would get income tax and national insurance contributions and he would get VAT, all by having people working rather than drawing benefits. He could well get Britain moving again. That is what the Labour party stands for, and it is about time the Chancellor, who has wreaked such devastation, caught on to a plan that will reduce the deficit fairly and sustainably and finally produce some growth in this country.