Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:12 pm on 15 November 2022.
Mark Drakeford
Labour
2:12,
15 November 2022
Llywydd, Huw Irranca-Davies makes a really important point. We have already had a decade of a flawed and failed experiment of austerity in the United Kingdom, which has left us all worse off than we otherwise would have been. And the facts simply speak for themselves, Llywydd. Between 2010 and 2021, every one of those years a year of Conservative Government at Westminster, gross domestic product per head in the United Kingdom grew by only 6 per cent in real terms. It grew by 11 per cent in Germany, it grew by 17 per cent in the United States of America. In 2010, disposable household income per head in the United Kingdom was 90 per cent of the German figure. By 2021, it had fallen to 81 per cent. The New Economics Foundation estimate that the direct impact of austerity is to make the UK economy £100 billion smaller than it otherwise would have been. Who ever would think of repeating the same experiment? It wasn't attempted elsewhere in the world. They had a different approach, they had an investment approach, they had a Keynesian approach, and they came out of the dilemmas of 2008 in a far stronger way.
We see the same pattern already repeating itself. Last week, inflation in the United States fell below 8 per cent. The Bank of France announced last week that the French economy will escape recession in the fourth quarter of this year. The German economy grew by 0.3 per cent in the third quarter of this year. Every single one of those things is not true of the United Kingdom under the stewardship of the Conservative party.
I don't often, Llywydd, quote The Daily Telegraph in answering questions here, but, if you had looked at The Daily Telegraph yesterday, you would have seen a very serious article that argues that tax rises and public spending cuts at this point in the economic cycle are exactly the wrong prescription for the UK economy. Here is an economy already in recession, according to the Bank of England, and now to have purchasing power drained out of it at an ever-accelerating rate, mortgage rates rises by the Bank of England, and money taken out of people's pockets by the UK Government as well. This will guarantee, it seems to me, that the recession that we are facing already will be longer, it will be deeper and, once again, it is those communities and those organisations that can the very least afford it who will be on the front line of another dose of Tory austerity.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
The political party system in the English-speaking world evolved in the 17th century, during the fight over the ascension of James the Second to the Throne. James was a Catholic and a Stuart. Those who argued for Parliamentary supremacy were called Whigs, after a Scottish word whiggamore, meaning "horse-driver," applied to Protestant rebels. It was meant as an insult.
They were opposed by Tories, from the Irish word toraidhe (literally, "pursuer," but commonly applied to highwaymen and cow thieves). It was used — obviously derisively — to refer to those who supported the Crown.
By the mid 1700s, the words Tory and Whig were commonly used to describe two political groupings. Tories supported the Church of England, the Crown, and the country gentry, while Whigs supported the rights of religious dissent and the rising industrial bourgeoisie. In the 19th century, Whigs became Liberals; Tories became Conservatives.
