My Lords, I do not think that anyone could claim that I was other than at the wet end of the Conservative Party. I am perfectly prepared to say that. However, I have to speak after the right reverend Prelate because he has expressed exactly what the problem with Britain is: we are to spend money that we do not have on people who are in need, at a rate we cannot afford. That is not at all a Christian comment. In the end, we have to live within our means. For those of us who were brought up in the difficulties of a poorly paid Anglican parsonage, the first lesson that we learnt was to spend within our means.
I disagree with my noble friend Lord Forsyth, who said that the previous Government were not responsible. They are responsible, because they spent the money that was there and which could now be available for what we need. We were put in this position by the party opposite because they had the best inheritance of any Government, but they spent it and borrowed on top of it. I cannot find a single speech from any right reverend Prelate from that time that warns the Government of the dangers of spending money that they did not have, borrowed in a way that could not be repaid.
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I believe in an old sermon of my father’s, which distinguished between love and sentiment because “love” is a very tough word. It does not pretend there is an easy way out of the problems with which we are faced. Love says that we have to do this in a way that safeguards the future and does not merely deal with the present problem. People sometimes talk as if those of us on this side of the House do not know the problems with which we are faced. Many of us have worked for years, trying to deal with those problems and being concerned about the poor. We have found, though, that you have to be honest. The reason we have to cut in this way—not cut, but cut the addition that might otherwise have been paid—is simply because we live in a country that has spent more than it has earned for so long that it can no longer go on doing it.
I have to say to the right reverend Prelate, who did not provide an answer, that the answer is not to make things worse. All the things he is asking for are being done at the same time. Those are precisely the Government’s policies for getting the economy moving. I beg him not to pretend to people that there is another means of dealing with these matters. If we do what he proposes, in two, three or four years’ time we will not be talking about decreases in increases but about the very cuts in welfare benefits that are happening in the rest of Europe. We are talking as though we are nothing to do with the rest of Europe. Some of my colleagues on this side of the House sometimes talk
about that far too much. We are in exactly the same position, except that we have so far weathered this storm better because we have a Government who have behaved more sensibly right from the beginning. I beg the right reverend Prelate not to pretend to the world that there is a simple answer. The only answer is this tough one and I am amazed that it has not had to be tougher. Nobody can go on living on debt. I leave the House with the comment made by my noble friend: this proposal from the right reverend Prelate and the party opposite is a payday loan approach, and that is what is so serious about it.