Accounts mean accountability. Every set of accounts needs contingency lines—sometimes quite annoyingly, in my experience—but this crisis has shown the importance of having a contingency fund.
I agree with my right hon. Friend the Minister: the Government have acted swiftly, decisively and with a great deal of flexibility in respect of the schemes they have rolled out. Almost every businessperson I speak to in my constituency is supportive of what the Government have done in this regard. It is not just the Government who have acted swiftly and decisively; bodies such as Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs have done a tremendous job in getting some of the grant aid out to businesses, and we should be grateful for those efforts.
When I listened to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ealing North (James Murray)—who I do not think is even in his place at the moment—all I got was a deep suspicion of the private sector. It was quite astounding. It was reminiscent of that great Churchill quote:
“Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.”
I just do not understand why the private sector is still anathema to Labour, even though it has been responsible for so many things in this crisis, not least the development of the vaccine, the first of which, the Pfizer vaccine, was rolled out without any public support whatsoever.
Things such as bounce back loans and coronavirus business interruption loans have all been delivered by the private sector, through the banks. As I am sure you recognise, Mr Deputy Speaker, I am not shy of criticising the banks, but this year they have done a tremendous job in getting the money out to businesses, yet we see no recognition from those on the Opposition Front Bench of what the private sector has done throughout this crisis.
All the money that flows through the contingencies fund will of course be accounted for and the Government will be held to account for the related spending. It is important that the Opposition should also be held to account for their spending. I find it quite astounding that the shadow Minister talks about value for money; I have sat through so many debates over the past five years in which Labour has called time and again for more spending via pensions, social security, health services and social care—whatever—despite our spending challenges and without any assessment of value for money. Labour just wants that money to be spent without any consequence or accountability. That cannot be right and the shadow Minister’s claim about value for money was quite laughable. Every bit of spending has to have somebody to pay for it, and that is, of course, the taxpayer, which is why we have to be careful and judicious with Government or public money. It comes from the taxpayer.
Most recently, Labour has been calling for a greater increase than 1% for nurses. Who is not sympathetic to that? But I do not hear Labour saying what pay rise it would give or how it would pay for it. It is surely a responsibility of any responsible party that wants to be in government to say how it would pay for things.
Finally, I think the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) was quite disgraceful in some of her comments. I may be wrong, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I thought she described Ministers as corrupt. I think that is something you might look at, because it is entirely inappropriate and entirely inaccurate. I am very much looking forward to talking more in Committee about procurement and why the Opposition are wrong again.
12.38 pm