Orders of the Day — Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:56 pm on 1 December 1993.

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Photo of Gordon Brown Gordon Brown Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer 4:56, 1 December 1993

I will not give way again. I have given way a number of times, and were I to do so again I would have to remind the hon. Gentleman of his own election manifesto commitments.

What did the Chief Secretary say in his Enfield manifesto? He not only said that national insurance payments should not rise; he said: I offer you a vision for the 1990s. It is a society prosperous enough to provide for those in need and invest in public services. That is the Chief Secretary who has made some of the biggest cuts in public services that we have seen.

What has the Chief Secretary said about tax in the past? He is the man who told us that the poll tax would be an election winner for the Conservative party. Let us remind ourselves of what he said: Far from being a vote loser, with your help the poll tax will be a vote winner. A few months after the tax was introduced, he said in a speech: If this is what the community charge can do for the Conservative party after just one month, think what it can do for us after one year. The Chief Secretary is a man of few words on tax, almost all of them wrong.

I consider, however, that the Chief Secretary's highest point on the question of tax was reached when he published a pamphlet—only a few months ago, before he became Chief Secretary. It was entitled "A Vision for the 1990s", and one of the main chapters was entitled "Towards an Ultra-Low Tax Economy"—not a low-tax economy, or a very low-tax economy; an ultra-low-tax economy. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) cheers the idea of a low-tax economy. I assume that he will be voting against the Budget on Tuesday.

The Chief Secretary said that lower taxes were "a total political commitment". It might be thought that, if that political commitment was not being met by the Government in which the right hon. Gentleman served—given that it was a total commitment—he would give up, saying that he could not be part of that Government any longer. He said: Our European competitors lack the political willpower to introduce low-tax policies. What about the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chief Secretary himself? Do they not lack the political will power to deliver low-tax policies now?

The right hon. Gentleman also said—I believe that this will resonate throughout the country as we move towards election time— There is no point in going through a Parliament delivering every little promise you made and failing on the big promises. What are those little promises? Promises about income tax, about national insurance, about VAT on fuel, about public services and about the social security budget? Those are not little promises; they are promises that affect the lives of millions of people. The right hon. Gentleman should be ashamed of himself.

Conservative Front Benchers are virtually incapable of keeping their promises, whether those promises relate to tax, spending, recovery or youth employment—or, indeed, to the supposed end of the recession the day after the general election. I believe that they are incapable of telling the difference between truth and falsehood—incapable of telling the truth, or even recognising it; incapable, perhaps, of distinguishing between right and wrong.

How can the Front Bench explain this astonishing record of personal irresponsibility? Recently, the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have spoken out on moral decline and personal responsibility. Like them, I would resist any tendency to place the blame for breaking promises and being unable to tell the truth elsewhere. As the Home Secretary said: We should have no truck with trendy theories that try to explain things away by saying someone else is to blame. That is the view that the electorate will take.

Will the Government now blame the Church of England for the breaking of promises following what they said during the election? Was it the absence of a father figure during the war that prevented their promises from being kept, or is it the tragic loss of a mother figure as recently as 1990 that prevents them from telling the difference between right and wrong? Let us be absolutely clear: the Government are repeated offenders in the business of making and breaking promises. They went joyriding with the British economy, they crashed out of the exchange rate mechanism and they left a trail of destruction and chaos behind them.

The Chancellor began his term of office by admitting that the country was in a dreadful hole. His Budget, however, fails to understand that our problems relate not to too high a quality of services, but to insufficient growth during the period of Conservative government. It fails to recognise that the root of our problem is the smallness and the diminished capacity of our economy. It fails even to appreciate that the problems of trade deficits, unemployment and inflation will return again and again as long as the Government do not tackle these basic and fundamental issues.

This Budget cannot even begin to recognise the importance of the Government's role in helping to secure the investment in people, industry and our social and economic fabric that we need if we are to have a high, sustainable rate of growth. As a result of this Budget, we are worse off today without the slightest prospect of being a great deal better off as a nation tomorrow. It is a Budget without a strategy for jobs, industry and long-term growth, because it cannot begin to address the foundations of the Government's failure.

We wanted a Budget for employment, and the Government cut the employment budget. We wanted a Budget for industry, and the Government cut the industry budget. We wanted a Budget for investment, and the Government cut public investment in our economy. We wanted a Budget for fairness, and the Government ended up penalising 95 per cent. of the population.

This Budget does nothing for fairness, jobs, industry and investment in the way that the country needs. For that reason, it will not commend itself to the country.