Listening to Government Members this evening, one would think that there was no economic situation in 2008, but in fact it started in America because of the irresponsibility of the bankers—not only in this country, but in America. It is also worth reminding the House, when the Government try to blame those on the Labour Benches, that in his last four or five weeks as President, George Bush pumped billions into the American economy, because he realised right away that the fault lay with the American banks.
I remind Members, too, of the catastrophe associated with Lehman Brothers, with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for example. We need to remind the Government of those aspects because the Government were very light, to say the least, when it came to dealing with the bankers who caused the problem in the first place. What they have tried to do is to blame the previous Government for things that they never understood at the time. I remember that when we were in government, their solution to the problem was “Oh, well, we have too much red tape and we must cut it”. I do not remember any Members now on the Government Benches providing any solutions whatever at the time, yet they are pretty good at coming here and trying to blame us for a situation that their friends, the bankers, caused in the first place.