Amendment of the Law

Part of Orders of the Day — Budget Resolutions – in the House of Commons at 4:51 pm on 7 March 2001.

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Photo of Charles Kennedy Charles Kennedy Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Leader of the Liberal Democrats 4:51, 7 March 2001

To boil all that diatribe down, it seems that the leader of the Conservative party is rather upset that the Chancellor is behaving like a politician this afternoon. That was basis of the Leader of the Opposition's critique. The Chancellor is behaving like a politician and he is certainly behaving like the chairman of the Labour general election campaign—there is no doubt about that.

Let us put all that we heard from the Chancellor in a political and financial context. In terms of the expenditure that has been announced today, he is devoting five times as much financial priority to tax reductions as he is to investments in health and education. That is the truth of the matter. That comes on the back of a four-year Parliament in which, with a colossal parliamentary majority, for the first half of that Parliament he stuck to Conservative spending plans that his predecessor said on air in an interview the other day he would not have stuck to. As a result, we have had persistent underfunding in vital public services. So before the Chancellor blows his own trumpet to such a huge extent, let us remember the truth of the matter and the context against which this pre-election Budget must be judged.

Let us also consider a few facts. Secondary class sizes are at their highest since 1979; the number of people waiting to see a hospital consultant is higher now than when this Government came to office; police numbers are down by 3,000 and violent crime is up; public transport has effectively been immobilised in many areas; and last year—this is a terrible reflection on modern society—there were a record number of winter deaths among pensioners in this country. Those are the facts, and that is the backdrop against which the reality of the Budget and the looming general election should be judged.

There are measures to welcome. I do not think anyone in the House of any political party could fail to agree with the Chancellor when he rightly spoke about social policy and the need to tackle the absolute evil that is the drugs problem in our society. Additional hope and help for families are important. The greater emphasis on individual savings accounts is welcome. However, we must look at the detail of the social policies so that we are clear and specific about the extent to which we might end up loading extra costs on people and organisations, not least small businesses.

As for our hospitals, schools, pensioners and the fight against crime, so much more could have been done if only the Government had not displayed such a poverty of ambition over the past four years. That is the truth of the matter. We need front-line police on the streets and in communities, preventing as well as detecting crime.

The Chancellor has succeeded in reducing the Conservative deficit and replacing it with a Labour war chest. Yet spending on all the major heads of public services has been squeezed savagely as a result. He said that it is right to choose the prudent course for Britain. I know that he is fond of the word "prudent", because he uses it often. Such has been his prudence that official figures show that spending as a proportion of national income on schools, hospitals and pensioners is lower under this Government than it was under the previous Conservative Government. That is an undeniable fact.

What was missing from the Budget? I raised the countryside and the plight of the farmers with the Prime Minister earlier, but the Chancellor did not have an extra word—far less an extra penny—for the agricultural community. Although we welcomed the additional compensation, the Government have to understand that it is not just the farmers who are suffering considerable knock-on consequences and losses because of the foot and mouth crisis. I appreciate that Governments have never paid compensation for so-called consequential losses, but these are unprecedented times and precedent must not be an excuse for inaction. I hope that the Government will reconsider that issue as a matter of urgency, because the knock-on effect goes further than our rural communities. For sad reasons, the crisis is uniting urban and rural Britain, because no one is immune from the effect of the catastrophe. The Government have to address that.

Surely the mark of a society is what sense of opportunity it gives its youngsters and how much security it offers the most elderly and vulnerable. There was nothing today about the imposition of tuition fees. Like me, the Chancellor of the Exchequer represents a Scottish constituency and is a Scot. He must know what the figures reflect. The statistics show that student applications in Scotland are increasing, which is a result of the partnership Government in Edinburgh—at the insistence of the Liberal Democrats—abolishing student tuition fees.

The story elsewhere in the United Kingdom is that such applications are decreasing. Youngsters—I spoke to some in Devon at the end of last week—tell us that they cannot envisage taking up a university or college course because they know that they will take their first step on the job ladder saddled with £12,000 to £16,000 of debt. There was not a word about that in the Budget, despite all the money that is available. It would cost £0.7 billion to get rid of student tuition fees for Britain as a whole. The Chancellor has been boasting to us of the extent of the funds at his disposal, but he has chosen not to do that.

That matter is at one end of the age spectrum; at the other end is long-term residential care for the elderly. Again as a result of Liberal Democrat insistence, the Scottish Parliament and Executive have committed themselves to free provision of such care. The situation is not the same elsewhere in the country. That is what we can do when we are given the opportunity. The big choice that the country faces will provide a real chance for real change in, probably, a few weeks' time, and that chance comes not from an over-hyped pre-election Budget, but from an honest, rational and sincere Liberal Democrat alternative.