I would like to ask the hon. Gentleman—although I am not inviting him to come back in—how he would explain the fact that in the latest quarter the growth rate was 0.4%, up from 0.3%. In the last three quarters it has gone down from 0.9% to 0.6%, and then to 0.3% or 0.4%. It was clearly a short-term growth surge, which is now fading.
We all regard productivity as crucial, but the UK’s investment as a percentage of GDP is now among the lowest in the world at barely 14%. By the time depreciation is netted off the growth figure, we are actually down at just 2.5%, which hardly even keeps up with our rising population.
Why does the OBR’s Budget report forecast a never-ending decline in Britain’s share of world exports, even compared with 2014, when this country experienced the biggest proportionate balance of payments current account decline since 1830? Why have the Government squeezed the economy so hard that they are now looking to a steep rise in household borrowing as the main source of future demand? Dangerously, the borrowing level already exceeds £2 trillion and may well be the source of the next economic crisis?
For all those reasons, the Chancellor’s boasts about the state of the economy do not bear even superficial scrutiny. Nor is his explanation of the cause of the economic crisis any more truthful. He continually lambasts the last Labour Government for overspending, but their economic record actually shows the opposite. The largest budget deficit under the Blair and Brown Governments in the 11 years from 1997 to 2008, before the crash, was 3.3% of GDP. The Thatcher and Major Governments ratcheted up budget deficits in excess of that in 10 of their 18 years. Who were the profligate ones? It was not Labour.
Then there is the question of which party has handled better the enormous rise in the deficit, caused by the bankers and the international recession. Again, it is
valuable to look at the economic record. Alistair Darling, the last Labour Chancellor, gave the economy a big fiscal stimulus worth nearly 5% of GDP, allowing the automatic stabilisers to work and bringing forward public investment projects worth more than £30 billion.