I am sorry if I am upsetting the hon. Gentleman by having to emphasise some of the things that are going wrong in the Government’s plan, but somebody has to wake up the Back Benchers after the scintillating comments that were made from the Government Front Bench. If the hon. Gentleman thinks he has the capability to stand up and defend his Government’s record on economic growth, we would all be impressed. He must surely accept that it has been a massive and total failure and a disappointment which has not only hurt all our constituents, but has made the public finances far worse than the Government were predicting.
The Government said that they wanted to rebalance the UK economy, but look at the latest trade statistics, which showed our trade deficit increasing by £1 billion between January and February, with the balance of payments deficit for our country now at £36 billion. Despite the depreciation of sterling, our exports are shrinking, and despite the problems in the eurozone, our exports to other non-eurozone countries, such as the United States, are getting worse as well, and all that from the Chancellor who two years ago promised he would deliver
“a Britain carried aloft by the march of the makers.”