Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — amendment of the law

Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Prime Minister – in the House of Commons at 2:33 pm on 24 March 2010.

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Photo of Stuart Bell Stuart Bell Second Church Estates Commissioner 2:33, 24 March 2010

That is another wild and woolly forecast far removed from reality from the Conservative Benches. We are talking about a nation state. The Chancellor made the point that we are the fourth largest economy in the world. We are not a tin-pot economy, therefore. The hon. Gentleman talks of funny money. His party colleague, the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden, mentioned quantitative easing. They should get together and try to work out what they are talking about. With a general election coming up, it is important that the Conservatives get their act together but, unfortunately, that is not happening.

My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire mentioned the private and public sectors, and he correctly said that if the policy is not right, it leads to unemployment. That was the great scourge of the '30s, and we have sought to avoid it. That is why unemployment is coming down. That is also why, unlike the French economy, we do not have a 10 per cent. unemployment rate. The French have had such a rate for years, and it has caused many severe ructions in their economy.

My right hon. Friend also mentioned youth unemployment. We have done all we can over the years; we even introduced the national minimum wage for employed youth in order to get people into work. I am making an important point, but Conservative Members do not seem to get it. They have completely lost touch with reality, and they do not understand that destabilising the economy leads to unemployment, and that is not a price worth paying in this time.

May I now return to the speech that I wished to make in the interests of my constituents, on the basis of what the Chancellor has said? A long time has passed since the good news was brought from Ghent to Aix, as Robert Browning said in his great poem. Browning did not say what the good news was, and I leave that to historians.