The Quality of Life

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 5:10 pm on 11 May 1987.

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Photo of Mr Bill Walker Mr Bill Walker , North Tayside 5:10, 11 May 1987

The hon. Gentleman should wait to hear what people have to say before intervening from a sedentary position.

As I was saying, the hon. Member for Heeley described a country that I did not recognise. For example, the hon. Gentleman must know—I know because I have a much larger than average pensioner population in my constituency—that the majority of pensioners no longer depend on the basic pension but have incomes from a variety of sources. Some of the money comes from the taxpayer—for example, in the form of assistance with housing and heating—and that is how it should be in a caring society. Those in need should have public funds targeted towards them, and that is exactly what the Government have done during the past eight years.

We have been a prudent Government in that we recognise that there is a limit to the extent to which we can tax people without adverse effects. We know that if we spend above prudent limits, raging inflation will result and we will have to borrow money. In what happened under the last Labour Government we have marvellous evidence to convince us of that. For example, some of us remember vividly the winter of discontent. The debate is about the quality of life. What quality of life could there be when we were not even burying our dead? Those are our memories of the last Labour Government. It was not a Tory Government but that Labour Government who savagely cut expenditure on all local services. They savagely reduced National Health Service expenditure and abolished many of the expenditure programmes. That was our inheritance.

We recognised that, unless we were prudent, we could certainly never be caring, because one can be caring only if one has the resources. We set about generating those resources. The hon. Member for Heeley talked about his lifetime. I cannot recall in my lifetime a Chancellor of the Exchequer being told before a Budget in which areas to reduce his expenditure—because he was going to give back taxes. In the past the chat has always been about the areas in which taxes will increase, not about the areas in which they will fall. That is what is new. We can be prudent and we can be caring which is important because we now have the resources.

My hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Mr. Soames), in his magnificent speech, said that the hon. Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) had parachuted into the Chamber from cloud-cuckoo-land. As one who knows a little about flying, may I suggest that parachuting is a risky business, particularly with a parachute that is not viable? The hon. Gentleman's programme is neither viable nor realistic and he must know that. When the flaws in one's parachute are exposed, one hits the ground with a terrible thud, and that is exactly what will happen to the hon. Gentleman and the Labour party at the next general election, when the flaws in their programme are examined and exposed.