The hon. Gentleman might say that, but it is incumbent on Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition to specify the amounts and where the cuts would be made in other ways. It is not acceptable to dodge the issue, and that goes even for the simple question of what is “strong growth”. At what stage would that be measured? How would we quantify “strong growth”? It is rather mealy-mouthed.
Let us look at the wider context. Interest rates are historically low. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is not old enough—or maybe he is—to know that in 1975 they were 27%, under a Labour Government. Inflation was substantially higher through most of the ’70s and ’80s. We now have big cash balances, lower interest rates, relatively low inflation, lots of money in the economy and quantitative easing, which has been in place for many years. Even if we accept the traditional Keynesian
view—that just pumping money into the economy will deliver growth, jobs and prosperity, which seemed to inform the argument that the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun made—we should accept that it has not worked so far through quantitative easing, with the balances that are available. The issue is business confidence.
In the wider context—wider even than that—between 2000 and 2010, public expenditure rose from roughly £450 billion to more than £700 billion. That is the context in which we should look at these fiscal changes. It is not as if we have starved the economy of money in the public sector. The difficulty for the hon. Member for Ynys Môn in arguing in defence of the Government at that time is that the economy was so unbalanced. It was focused disproportionately on the housing market, public expenditure and financial services. Part of our challenge as a Government is to try to rebalance the economy, so that it can make people prosperous and create jobs across wider economic activities, which is happening organically on its own.
Those on the Opposition Front Bench also fail to take into account the other, bigger policies that the Government have embarked on. I will not pretend that things such as the national insurance holidays or the regional growth fund have been an enormous success. I serve on the Public Accounts Committee and we have been critical of things that the Government have pursued in some areas. Nevertheless—the hon. Gentleman alluded to this—the Government are looking at tariffs for utility bills, the beer duty escalator and the fuel duty escalator. We are looking at substantial changes that will have a fiscal impact on welfare, through the universal credit and so on making work pay, rather than paying for idleness and allowing people’s talents to be wasted. We are also putting money into the mortgage market and assisting new house building. Some 42,000 of my constituents had a tax cut last week as a result of the massive fiscal changes that this Government have made, with 2,000 of my constituents paying no tax at all and 24 million people affected. It seems rather unfair not to take that on board.
I also alluded earlier to the progressive nature of our tax changes. Whatever we say about them, it cannot be argued that we have not looked at the top 5% or 10% of income earners in this country to ensure that they are paying a significantly higher share than others. They are the people who will specifically be more worse off than anyone else, whether the hon. Gentleman likes it or not.