Sir Mel Stride

This King’s Speech is an empty vessel, which is a surprise, because only last week the Prime Minister was telling anybody who cared to listen that the Government would be leaning into economic growth in a more radical way, and would eschew managerial incrementalism, yet we have heard nothing other than managerial incrementalism, at best, from the right hon. Lady just now. [Interruption.] Of course, I meant the right hon. Gentleman. If only the Chancellor were here, Mr Speaker, I would be right about everything. The Prime Minister also said that Labour would tread more lightly on our lives. Well, we have seen what that has meant in the last few weeks. The Chancellor said that it would all be growth, growth, growth. The Secretary of State trots out and trumpets the latest uplift—a very modest one—in the International Monetary Fund’s forecast, but he neglects to mention that although it is forecasting 1% growth today, it forecast 1.3% back in January. The Secretary of State also neglects to mention that the increase in growth in the first quarter of this year is on the back of risible growth performance in Q4 of last year. The situation in Q4 was exacerbated, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Bank of England, by the Chancellor’s making every possible tax rise; that had a material impact—it depressed the economy. Some of the growth is simply a bounce back from the mistakes made at the end of last year. The Secretary of State refused to answer the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) about what happened to GDP per capita, so let me tell him that it has been utterly anaemic throughout this Government’s period in office. He also failed to mention that the notes to the IMF’s comments on upgrading the growth forecast for this year point to domestic uncertainty possibly weighing down on consumer spending and investment decisions. I wonder what “domestic uncertainty” could possibly be referring to. As to our record, I remind the Secretary of State that on the day of the general election, the previous Conservative Government had inflation bang on target at 2%. It is now 50% more than that. We also had the fastest growth in the G7, employment at near record levels, and near record low levels of unemployment, and we had 13 consecutive months of real wage growth.