Jerome Mayhew

My hon. Friend is entirely correct. The Prime Minister tried—half-heartedly, admittedly—to save £4.5 billion from the welfare budget. He put his Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in the ridiculous position of starting a debate arguing for £4.5 billion of savings from long-term disability and health benefits, only for her to end the very same debate advocating for a £300 million increase in those same benefits. The Prime Minister has lost control of his Back Benchers, and he has lost control of his Government’s spending. We have had no global event, but we do have Government policies that have been economically disastrous. Labour is truly the tax-and-spend party. It has raised the tax burden to the highest in history—certainly since the second world war. As for spend, it raised £40 billion in tax, borrowed a further £30 billion, and increased spending by £70 billion. According to the Government’s own plans, they intend to borrow half a trillion pounds extra during the course of this Parliament. And for what? Has there been reform of public services? No. Public sector productivity has declined. We are getting less for our money—even more so in healthcare, where the decline in productivity is fully 8.3%. What they have done is increase wage inflation. For public sector pay, it is more than 6%, whereas in the private sector, it is a third less. The Government are coming back for more. They intend, we are told through multiple briefings to newspapers, to breach their core election manifesto pledge and raise taxes, because they cannot reduce spending.