Liam Byrne

I can tell the hon. Member. I do not know what his facility with maths is like, or if he realises that a trillion has 12 noughts, but we left the national debt £1 trillion lower than it is today—£2.7 trillion. That is how much this country is now borrowing. The great tragedy is that if the previous Government had borrowed money at low interest costs and invested it in something that enhanced productivity, we would be in a better position today and the Chancellor would not have had to deliver the Budget she had to deliver today. Don’t take my word for it; the International Monetary Fund was clear in its report on 25 July that our productivity growth under the Conservatives collapsed by a third compared with the good old new Labour years. Our productivity divergence with the United States is so serious. Our productivity growth has been half that of the United States, and the OBR is clear today that the downgrade on growth that it has baked into its numbers is entirely due to the productivity collapse because the Conservatives wasted the money during their 14 years in office. I should just say, by the bye, that because the Conservatives are the Conservatives, they managed to put £1 trillion on the debt and to collapse the productivity numbers, and still to put inequality through the roof. That is why we have all had food bank queues in our constituencies that we will never forget. I will never forget for as long as I live the phenomenon of collecting food in inner-city Birmingham because our food banks had run out of food. I will never forget the children at Adderley school who were literally helping restock our food banks by taking Penguin bars out of their lunch boxes to put them in food collection crates so their classmates did not go hungry at lunch time. That is the reality of the child poverty legacy the Conservatives left us with, and that is the legacy that the Chancellor got to grips with today. The Business and Trade Committee looks forward to scrutinising the proposals that have been laid out today. We have been travelling the country over the last couple of weeks talking to businesses about what they wanted out of this Budget, and three things were clear. These are isles of wonder. We now stand on the threshold of an extraordinary new era of innovation. This is an extraordinary and inventive country; we have been since the industrial revolution started in Birmingham back in 1761, but that will be nothing compared to what is about to unfold in this country. We are at the front of the grid in the race for the 21st century, but we need to mobilise capital on a completely new scale. That is why certainty, certainty, certainty for business was so important. I welcome the fact that the headroom has been put up to £22 billion today. I welcome the fact that the Chancellor is ending the biannual circus of fiscal speculation by having one forecast a year. I have to say to the House that I seriously think that Mr Hughes needs to consider his position. The fact that we had a leak of the OBR forecast before this House got to debate the Budget is appalling, and this uncertainty has bedevilled us. Alongside that, we have to step up the mobilisation of capital on a completely different scale.