Economic Policy

Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Defence – in the House of Commons at 3:33 pm on 25 February 2013.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of George Osborne George Osborne The Chancellor of the Exchequer 3:33, 25 February 2013

The shadow Chancellor finds himself in the contradictory position of seeking an urgent question on a rating decision which he says we should ignore, about a debt burden that he admits he would add to, in order to attack a Government who are sorting out the mess that he created. What exactly is his policy? Six times on the radio he was asked this weekend whether the answer to too much borrowing is to borrow even more, and he would not answer the question. It is an economic policy that dare not speak its name, from a shadow Chancellor who refuses to be straight with the British people. Finally, he was confronted on the radio by the simple statement:

“I, Ed Balls…would borrow more” and he admitted,

“Yes, that is what I would do.”

Does not that admission completely undermine his entire argument today? A deliberate decision to borrow more—[Interruption.]