Sir Mel Stride

I have made the position extremely clear. What is very clear is that we actually left the current Government with an excellent inheritance—[Laughter.] Well, where has it all gone now? We left the Labour party with the fastest growing economy in the G7. We left the Labour party with a near-record level of employment. We left the Labour party with a near-record low level of unemployment. We left the Labour party with 13 consecutive months of real wage growth. And we left the Labour party with inflation figures, which had gone up to over 11% in October 2022 due to the Ukraine war, of just 2%—bang on target—on the day of the general election. That is a decent inheritance. It has taken the Labour Government seven short months to completely trash it, so we will take no lectures from them. We would do things very differently, because we recognise that small businesses and family businesses are the backbone of our economy. They are the life and fire of our economy, but there is no life or fire in the Chancellor—just tragic mistakes and miscalculations. The sugar rush of borrowing and spending that we saw in the last Budget further bloated the size of the state and forced taxes ever upwards. We have seen the Government failing to grasp the nettle of productivity, giving into those trade union paymasters, and awarding above-inflation wage settlements with no strings attached whatsoever. They have had absolutely nothing to say on the issue of welfare, the budget for which has been ballooning out of control. When we were in government, we reduced the welfare budget on my watch by £5 billion. The OBR recorded over 400,000 fewer people going on to long-term sickness and disability benefits as a result of the reforms that we brought in. There was, however, more to be delivered. We went into the last election with a clear plan to save a further £12 billion every year as a result of our welfare reform. Where has the zeal for welfare reform gone? It has evaporated entirely under the Labour Government—in fact, it was never there. Simply, if the Government have the backbone to come forward with some serious proposals to deal with the welfare budget, such that the Chancellor says at the Dispatch Box on 26 March that she will unwind the national insurance increases, the Opposition will support her.