Kit Malthouse
MP for North West Hampshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“We have heard time and time again that the situation that thousands of our constituents live with every single day is so horrific and appalling that even the best palliative care cannot alleviate their pain. I urge colleagues to consider what their vote may mean today.”
“I will not. Some of those Members had just a few months before been specifically rejected by the electorate and replaced in this House by others, and I am afraid that they cannot be trusted not to do the same thing again. I grant my right hon.”
“The Health and Social Care Committee of the House of Lords found that in territories that have assisted dying, palliative care generally improves, because people become less afraid of talking about death.”
“One of the most affecting people I have met over the last 11 years of campaigning on this issue is Warwick Jackson, who came to our party conference a couple of years ago. Warwick’s wife, Ann, was diagnosed with terminal peritoneal cancer. She basically knew that she was going to die a slow, suffocating death at the end.”
“I respect my right hon. and learned Friend’s expertise in this matter, but, as he has already heard on the Floor of the House, it is perfectly possible for this House to suggest amendments, negotiate them with the promoters of the Bill, place them against the legislation in the House of Lords and then have them come back to this House for…”
“As co-sponsor of the Bill once again, I am acutely conscious that there is more at stake today than merely the fate of those who are facing their end, because the conduct of the other place means that our democracy is also on trial today.”
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“It is a great pleasure to appear under your wise guidance, Mr Hollobone. I have a few questions and challenges for the Minister. Before I get to them, I would just say that I broadly support the thrust of the Government’s policy, and I am already seeing the impact in my constituency. I represent 220 square miles of Hampshire chalk downland, which had not been ploughed in previous centuries, but much of which was then brought under the plough and was able to be productive with the application of chemicals. We are seeing more and more of that land now returned to its historical function, which is essentially as grassland for the cultivation of protein, in the form of sheep and cows. That is of great benefit to our landscape and our ecology. I have a couple of issues. On the SI on reductions to direct payments, I feel—a bit like the hon.”
“From the Government’s point of view, it is perfectly possible for the inspector in a high-vis jacket with a clipboard to come along and say, “Do you know what? On balance, we would rather have the beans, so we will give you a bit of flex on the pesticide. We recognise that you have a huge infestation that needs to be dealt with, and if we do not deal with it, we are not going to have any beans.” That is the conundrum that a lot of farmers with those particularly pest-prone crops are juggling.”
“There is a third element to the decision that should surely be of interest, which is whether we want the food. For example, there are certain crops that are particularly prone to aphids—for example, beans. If someone grows beans, the risk is much higher, because that crop is much more likely to get aphids. As the Minister will know, there can be a massive infestation, and the farmer will have no choice—either they lose their crop or they spray it. If they spray it, they lose their subsidy. Quite a lot of farmers will say, “You know what? Beans are too much trouble. I am not going to grow beans. I will grow something else, because I know what is going to happen with beans. They are going to get aphids, because that is what they do.” We may see a migration away from the farming of some crops, because of that risk.”
“We should have a look at some kind of review overall, and in particular at the critical role the medical profession play in general community safety. What more does the Minister think we can do to impress upon that profession the duty they have, not just to the community more widely, but to the wider body of those who shoot and operate firearms for work purposes or leisure purposes? The profession should not stand in the way of that process. We often found medics who would refuse to issue certification to people or would charge excessive fees for certification, and who were therefore not fully participating in the system. Given that this case proves the crucial nature of their assessment to all our safety, what more does the Minister think we can do to impress that on the medical profession?”
“May I welcome the Minister’s suggestion that there be an IOPC investigation of Devon and Cornwall’s operation of firearm regulations? I think I am right in saying that they have the largest number of licences within their territory. If they have not been getting it right, we need some reassurance that they are. I also welcome the Minister’s underlining of the fact that this particular person should not have received his firearms back even under the existing regulations. It was a misapplication of those regulations that resulted in the situation we find ourselves in. Having said that, I am sure the Minister will accept—he will have had the same experience as me—that firearms legislation is in fact an accretion of policies over the years, and it has become a bit of a thicket for us all to navigate.”
“I wanted to expand a little on the point made by the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). There will be more police officers overall than we have ever had in our history, but they will not be evenly distributed. In general, the police forces that will have more than they have ever had started from a higher base, and that was the product of decisions made by police and crime commissioners in the previous decade. Although it is not totally the case, it is generally the case that forces that will not have more than ever before had a Labour PCC during that decade. Those that did not, such as London, which had a Conservative Mayor who prioritised police numbers over other staff, who may or may not be unionised, and over buildings and other bits and pieces, are now benefiting from those decisions over the previous decade.”
“When the Chancellor acceded to the Treasury throne, he appointed a panel of four advisers drawn from the City. Has the panel met, has he added anybody from small business or industry, and where can we find the minutes, please?”
“Forecasts that should and could be produced by the Treasury would be produced under the name of the Chancellor, so if they are proven to be wildly wrong, there is direct accountability in this House through him or—hopefully in time—her. However, that is less the case with the OBR. It will appear periodically in front of the Treasury Committee, which is ably chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), who is here this evening and who has spoken. Other than that, however, the House will have no opportunity to properly scrutinise, test and understand why the OBR thinks the way it does.”
“What do you think?” and the OBR will say, “Well, we’re not sure this is going to produce quite the number you need.” So policy is formed in an iterative process. I might have expected the Chancellor to ask his analysts in the Treasury what the impact of certain policies might be on forecasts. However, doing that directly with the OBR, which is supposedly independent, draws it into the policy formation process in a way that may not be helpful to its sense of independence or, indeed, to our sense of its assessment of the Treasury rules. Effectively, that imbues the OBR with an authority that should, in theory, bring with it an element of accountability.”
“At paragraph 4.11 the charter states that “the OBR will provide independent scrutiny and certification of the government’s policy costings.” Certification is an interesting word in this context, because it means that the OBR is basically approving the Government’s policy costings, which implies an element of negotiation and justification rather than assessment and opinion. Paragraphs 4.20 and 4.21 on page 16 then say that there will basically be an iterative process between the OBR and the Treasury—and presumably the Chancellor—over the formation of the forecasts. That implies an element of negotiation—that the Chancellor will go to the OBR and say, “This is what we’re planning to do.”
“I would hope that the Treasury would produce its own forecast driven by what the Chancellor wants to do, and the OBR would produce a parallel forecast, and then differences between the two could be highlighted and justified or argued about. Then those of us who rely on forecasts for policy making or investment decisions could decide where the fan chart of growth or of debt was likely to go. I am sure the Minister has the charter in front of him. It says in this paragraph that the Treasury still retains the analytical capability to produce those forecasts and reserves the right to disagree with the OBR, but in truth, because it is not producing a forecast, it does not and cannot.”
“As the Minister knows, there has been a lot of concern in the media and elsewhere about the role the OBR has played in the financial turbulence over the last few years, and in particular I want to talk about independence, accountability and its role in the formation of fiscal policy. On independence, I must express to the Minister, an old friend and constituency neighbour, some concern about the evolution of the role of the OBR. The charter points out at paragraph 3.13: “The government has adopted the OBR’s fiscal and economic forecasts as the official forecasts for the Budget Report.” That means the Treasury is not now making its own forecasts; it is relying entirely on the OBR’s forecasts. In my view, that creates an element of conflict.”
“Before the Minister panics, I will say that I am here this evening to support the motion and the charter. While others have mentioned the renewal and the evolution of the charter over the years, it is a useful instrument that George Osborne introduced, albeit that I think he probably did so in contemplation of uncertain victory in 2015, wanting to jam an otherwise profligate and untrustworthy Labour party into a little more discipline for the future. But it is useful in giving guidelines to the wider world, and indeed the markets, about the Government’s intentions in the short and medium term. However, I have some questions for the Minister on this year’s mandate. The first is about the independence and role of the OBR.”
“I have seen many displays of nerve in this Chamber over the last seven years, but I congratulate the Labour Front-Bench shadow, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), on his sheer chutzpah this evening. He was part of a Government who exploded the deficit under Gordon Brown, having been bequeathed a golden financial legacy, and then drove us off an economic cliff with a crash the like of which this country had not seen since the second world war. I draw attention to my entry in the register, because I still own the business that almost went to the wall during that crash, and I determined then, as I do now, to make sure that the right hon. Gentleman and his party never have stewardship of the economy of this country for fear of what they may repeat.”
“That, and the debts we incurred during covid, may well mean that we miss the next upswing in the world economy, unless we are willing to take risks with the mandate. There has been much debate in this House, and certainly in the media, about going for growth, but if we miss this upswing in growth, we really will miss a huge opportunity for the next generation of our fellow countrymen.”
“We sat on the operation of capital and, as a result, we missed the swing. That is why we do not have an Apple, a Microsoft, a Facebook or a Google. We have some companies coming, and we had some nascent companies. Some Members will be old enough to remember Acorn. For a while it was going to be a great world-beating company, but it fell by the wayside. The Minister thinks about these issues carefully, and is conscious of the need to energise capital in a way that will build the businesses, products and jobs of the future. I urge those on the Treasury Front Bench to reflect on the longer-term issues that I have raised, and to recognise the kind of straitjacket that we are putting ourselves in.”
“We stand on the verge of another technological revolution—a great leap forward with automation, artificial intelligence, the way we do things and the green economy. We are on an ellipse of scientific discovery. Life sciences are a particular passion of mine, because there are a number of companies on the verge of curing cancer. If we are to capture this upswing in human ingenuity, we have to think about the model of our economy and the operation of capital within it, and whether we have the right fiscal measures to encourage the kind of buccaneering capitalism that took advantage of those three previous upswings. We did less of that in the third period, the IT revolution. We went through a period of what I suppose we could call centre left or socialist Governments, and it was not de rigueur until the ’80s to be an entrepreneur.”
“Unless we start chasing our tail—raising taxes to pay more in welfare and Government spending—we will be in big trouble, which may exacerbate our GDP issues. When we put together the whole cocktail of forecasts—short, medium and long term—they scream out at us to think about the model we are operating. The wealth of this country was built on three great leaps forward in growth. We had the industrial revolution. That was followed at the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century by mass industrialisation, and since the ’70s we have had the IT revolution. In some of those periods, particularly the last, growth was quite turbulent, but throughout them, there was a very high average level of growth; 3%, 4%, 5% or 6% a year was not uncommon.”
“In addition, the OBR’s financial stability report from last year—it now does a long-term financial stability report—forecasts that, on the current trajectory, although our debts will start to fall in the short term, by the time we get to the middle of the century, they will be well above 200% of GDP and heading towards 270%, and we will be running at a deficit of 10% of GDP. These long-term trends are driven fundamentally by demographic issues. As a country, we are growing older. We have fewer workers per pensioner, and we are not replacing ourselves from a birth rate point of view, and that will cause an enormous problem. Other countries are in a worse situation. In Japan, on current rates, the population will have halved by the end of this century, which will be economically catastrophic for the country.”
“He will know that there are alarming reports that look way into the future, and if he has looked at the significant work done by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) before he was a Minister, he will know what I am talking about. To take an example, the Government Actuary’s quinquennial review of the national insurance fund basically says that it will run out of money in about 20 years’ time. Indeed, the rise in the pension age that we have just put through may mean that that period will be shorter, unless there is significant Government intervention in the form of more money going into the fund, which will basically mean tax rises.”
“However, if GDP does fall, the ratio that the Treasury is chasing will worsen, unless there are significant spending cuts or yet more tax rises, both of which may exacerbate the fall in GDP. That is why I am nervous about the mandate. The objective of reducing debt against GDP is absolutely right, but I ask the Minister to guard against the issue that I have raised. Finally, I want to say something about the longer term. As politicians, we often focus naturally on a three to five-year horizon. We do that because, guess what, there are elections in a three to five-year horizon, and it is a horizon that is understandable and controllable. However, as the Minister will know, there are significant long-term issues for this country, which are driven by demographics and the nature of our economy.”
“The things we have to do to hit that target may also, paradoxically, reduce GDP even further, so we end up chasing ourselves down a spiral against a moving target. That is why, in last year’s charter, which has changed, the idea of balancing the budget within three years, and ensuring that our expenditure did not exceed our income, was quite helpful; it meant that there were two absolute numbers over which we had some control. Fortunately, in its February forecast, the Bank of England says that if there is a recession, it will be shallower than we thought, which is good. That is not least because last year’s Budget represented a mild fiscal loosening in its initial stages, although not so much later on, with the energy price cap and all the rest of it. That may have helped with aggregate demand, making the recession less severe.”
“Are they a monetarist? What is the impact of those kinds of belief system? Drawing the OBR into the Treasury machine therefore creates some difficulty for an organisation that, as I know the Minister will agree, has value because of its independence and its alternative view of what the Treasury is trying to do. The second issue I want to raise is about the mandate. The previous charter contained a point about balancing the budget within three years; that is omitted from this charter. As the Minister said, things have changed, so that has been dropped. When we are effectively chasing a ratio as measured against GDP, we are chasing a moving number, which may make our lives more difficult. For example, if we are chasing a debt-to-GDP ratio, and our GDP is falling, we have to work ever harder to hit our target.”
“For example, do the people who produce these now Treasury —but actually OBR—forecasts appreciate, understand and believe in the Laffer curve? Do they think that if we reduce taxation, income will rise? That sits at the heart of the argument the Conservative party has had over the last few months about corporation tax. If we cut it, will we collect more money? Seemingly, the forecasts say not. Those are the kinds of judgment that anybody forming economic and fiscal policy must make. There are also more fundamental issues—about, say, the operation of capital. If the head of the OBR is going to be so involved in policy formation—if there is to be a negotiation between the Chancellor and the OBR on an iterative basis—will that person be operating on the same ideological basis in terms of capital versus labour? Are they a Keynesian?”
“My hon. Friend puts it in a pithy way, as he often does. It is not so much that there is some kind of trap or problem here; it is that a situation has evolved—probably more by accident than by design—whereby the OBR has been drawn into the machinery of the Treasury and therefore acquired an authority and an effective veto, in a way that is perhaps not helpful. The reason that is a problem is that economics is an inexact science—if we put three economists in a room, we will have five opinions. Economics is not delineated in the way chemistry is; it is as much an art as it is a science, and much of it is actually psychology. So if the OBR is to be so involved in policy making, it is important that we understand the economic basis of its assessments.”
“I guess the issue is: whose forecasts are they? If the OBR produces forecasts and Treasury officials say, “Well, Chancellor, we have looked over the forecasts and we think they are right,” that is qualitatively different, in the public’s mind, to the Treasury producing a forecast and the OBR saying to the public, “Well, we have looked over them and we think they are right.” While it does say that the Treasury reserves the right to disagree with the OBR, the nature of the iterative process presumably means that will never happen, because they agree before anything is published.”
“I understand that the right hon. Lady’s mission today is to paint a dystopian picture of crime, but before she elaborates, will she take the opportunity to congratulate the police on the significant falls we have seen not just in specific crimes such as burglary, robbery and knife crime, but in overall crime? She will know that the recently published crime survey of England and Wales shows that, in the year to September, overall crime was down 10% on pre-pandemic levels. Surely she wants to congratulate the police on that before enumerating their sometimes obvious but none the less difficult failings.”
“There may be a Member present who is able to translate it quickly and tell us, but I do not know whether it is usual to vote on legislation that is in a language I do not understand; I have not done that before, as far as I am aware. Those questions are for you as Chair, Mrs Cummins—”
“I have a couple of points of procedure and then some questions, if I may. First, the legislation obviously refers to the amendment of EU regulations, but I have not, I am afraid, been able to get hold of those regulations, so it is quite hard for me to understand the amendments being made. Normally, one would expect such regulations to be available in the room. Secondly, I do not know whether this is usual, but from reading the legislation over the past couple of days, I see that a section of it is understandably in Welsh. Although it may be appropriate for the legislation to be in that language, I am at a loss to know what it says. Section 6, which is in Welsh, may be a faithful reproduction of section 5, which is in English, but I cannot tell whether that is the case.”
“I had some difficulty understanding that—it may just be me being thick. Could the Minister explain to me what the impact of that is on the seed potato industry from those two regions of Lebanon, or whether it is a general Lebanese exclusion? Other than those points, I am broadly content to support the regulations.”
“Is it a purely ministerial discretion? Is there a bar of disease and infection that needs to be reached? Is it on advice from some body? Similarly, on removal, where is the judgment made and by who? Obviously, it is quite a draconian power in certain circumstances. Having some kind of understanding of how it might be executed would be helpful. I could not find anything in the legislation or the guidance notes that told me that. I also want to explore the issue about Lebanese potatoes, which seems to be of particular interest. I understand that verticillium wilt is prevalent in the Bekaa valley and is of some concern. But my reading of the legislation is that there is essentially an absolute bar on the import of potatoes from that country, which is currently struggling and for which the agricultural sector is a huge earner.”
“I am grateful for that reassurance. We are fortunate on the Committee in having a native speaker of that fine, although for me incomprehensible, language. If my right hon. Friend had not been here, Members may have found themselves in some difficulty with the legislation. I have some questions for the Minister. I understand that the intention of these imposed regulations is for Ministers to be able to demarcate an area to allow for disease control. At the moment, in my constituency, I am living in the middle of one of those areas, which is to deal with avian flu—although the demarcation seems to be some road signs and not much else. Owners of chickens have been told to keep them indoors, and that type of thing. What I am unclear about is, while Ministers have the power to introduce those zones, how would they actually give effect to them?”
“Is the Minister able to give an example of a plant or animal disease being controlled by the imposition of one of these zones in the past, and therefore being eradicated from the UK? It strikes me that what we are learning—whether from Dutch elm disease, ash dieback, avian flu, or even tuberculosis, which we are obviously trying to control—is that these techniques are actually not that effective from a disease control point of view. As the Minister said, our most effective defence is at the border, by stopping the stuff coming in in the first place.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I take his point. Obviously, there has been a phytosanitary boundary around the whole of the island of Ireland for some time now, which has protected it from diseases coming from the continent of Europe, the wider world and indeed the rest of the UK. However, my constituency, for example, is being devastated by ash dieback. We have hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ash trees that are struggling and will be gone from the landscape quite soon. While I understand the scientific advice that will be given, that is the same scientific advice, presumably, that resulted in the awful foot and mouth disaster that hit farming a couple of decades ago, which people remember well. Mounds of carcases were burnt on farms. Whether that was the right approach has been debated, even to this day.”
“Tim Godwin was then deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police, and his view was that the police would then have a strong case to invest even more in this line of investigation, and they would therefore have more success and there would be more money to go around for everyone. It is not necessarily the case that legislation will solve the problem. It is more to do with the deal between the police and the Government.”
“I understand the right hon. Lady’s point about the cost to the police and other authorities of failed investigations but, in my experience, much of the problem stems from the division of the spoils in those cases that succeed in securing the proceeds of crime. As she will know, the money is divided between the Treasury, the Home Office and the police. When I was at City Hall, we tried to cut a better deal in which the police would effectively recover the full cost of a prosecution, and any profit would then be split, so that pursuing such prosecutions would be costless to the police.”
“I know that the Minister cares profoundly about the fate of these children, and it is reassuring to hear of the assertive action taken by local authorities and police when they go missing. However, if dozens of children had been going missing from, say, boarding schools across the country, I have no doubt that there would be a national mobilisation involving the NCA and indeed the National Police Chiefs’ Council. Could the Minister enlighten us as to what the national response in British policing looks like at the moment? Does he feel that more could be done to address this systemic problem, not least given the possible links to serious and organised crime?”
“The significant rise in the number of rape convictions is extremely encouraging. As the Secretary of State will know, at the heart of that success, and indeed of support for rape victims, lies a new operating model: Operation Soteria. Can he update us on how many police forces and Crown Prosecution Service areas have now adopted that new operation, and when does he expect the 100% roll-out so that we can see that kind of rise across the whole country?”
“They often found it much easier than fumbling around for coins and notes to be able to park, as well as having the ability to extend the time using the phone. There are great advantages to the elimination of cash in society too.”
“Notwithstanding the support that the Minister is giving to the notion of free cash, he will recognise that the Government cannot sit there like King Canute, and that between 2010 and 2020 the number of payments made in cash went from 50% to 17%. That has fallen yet further during the pandemic. There are significant advantages to cashless transactions, not least in the elimination of crime. Actually, it is a bit of a myth that there are sections of society that struggle, and we see that most apparently in the advent of cashless parking. There are hardly any councils left in the country now that use cash for their parking. They are all using apps on smartphones. When we introduced it when I was at Westminster City Council, we did not have a single complaint from an elderly person—quite the reverse.”
“I am grateful to the Minister. He may not be old enough, but some of us will remember the moment the cheque started to go out of usage. There were lots of claims of damage to certain sections of society, and that lots of people would be outraged when the cheque disappeared. Now people operate without chequebooks on a daily basis, and no retailers, as far as I am aware, accept cheques. On the idea that we should mandate that cash be accepted, we cannot stand in the way of the fact that consumers are voting not to use cash. The market is telling us that cash is running out of use, and let us scotch the myth that there is such a thing as a free ATM. The network at the moment costs about £5 billion to operate. That is paid for by every user of the bank, whether they use the ATM or not.”
“Can the Minister expand on the notion of “accredited technology”? The definition in the Bill is pretty scant as to where it will emerge from. Is he essentially saying that he is relying on the same industry that has thus far presided over the problem to produce the technology that will police it for us? Within that equation, which seems a little self-defeating, is it the case that if the technology does not emerge for one reason or another—commercial or otherwise—the Government will step in and devise, fund or otherwise create the technology required to be implemented?”
“I may not have been clear in my original intervention: my concern is that the legislation relies on the same sector that has thus far failed to regulate itself and failed to invent the technology that is required, even though it is probably perfectly capable of doing so, to produce the technology that we will then accredit to be used. My worry is that the sector, for one reason or another—the same reason that it has not moved with alacrity already to deal with these problems in the 15 years or so that it has existed—may not move at the speed that the Minister or the rest of us require to produce the technology for accreditation. What happens if it does not?”
“Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin)—said yesterday, that effectively means that the Government were shorting inflation. At a time when we had lost track of the money supply, or in fact, had decided that the money supply did not matter, that proved to be a foolish bet.”
“Also, within that market, we discovered to our horror that pension funds were effectively gambling with borrowed money, shorting inflation through the so-called LDI— liability-driven investment—strategy, which became so systemically problematic for the economy that the Bank had to intervene again. That points to lax supervision and comprehension of the weaknesses in the bond market. The third lesson is that we as a House have perhaps not concentrated enough on the operations of the Debt Management Office. I have yet to see anywhere an obviously declared policy decision to move our debt more towards index-linked or inflation-linked bonds. We have moved from 6% of our debt being index-linked 10 or so years ago to about 22%. That is a near-quadrupling of the figure. As I think the Chair of the Treasury Committee—my hon.”
“The second lesson is that the Bank’s handling of the bond market really matters as well. We had assumed that that was a benign market that we could take for granted, but it became clear that the Bank’s hangover from its quantitative tightening—its declaration of sales forward into the market—had a significant impact. That was then exacerbated by the so-called fiscal event. We also bear huge losses on that market from the Bank’s dealings. Admittedly, there have been profits in previous years, but the fact that we are bearing about £11 billion-worth of losses from the Bank’s trading in that market matters.”
“The denial of the kind of Bank of England orthodoxy that the money supply mattered has come back to haunt us in a big way. The enormous growth in the money supply has outstripped the growth in our economy—yes, coming out of the crash in 2007-08, but in particular coming out of the pandemic—and resulted in the inflation in this country that is now taxing every family. It is hard to see that the Bank has moved with alacrity to deal with it—if anything, I think the criticism is that it has been a bit slow—but I hope the lesson we learn for the future, and on which this House should concentrate and focus, is that the money supply matters. When we look around the world we see consensus around a loose monetary policy for far too long and we need to bear that in mind.”
“I have only a few minutes, so I want to outline three lessons from the recent turmoil, two warnings and a hope for the future. The first lesson is predicated on a phrase that does not go down well in either marriages or politics—the four little words, “I told you so.” For those of us who have been tracking the path of the UK money supply over the last 10 years, the underlying inflation, which was baked into our system and has emerged over the last 12 months, has not, I am afraid, come as any great surprise. The fact that the Bank of England has been slow to recognise the importance of monetarism and money policy over the last couple of years is a cause of great dismay, not least because a number of us consistently raised this issue with the previous Governor when he was in front of the Treasury Committee and since.”
“First of all, however, I should point to one of the bright moments in the statement, which was the Chancellor’s pledge on education funding. The £2.3 billion extra on top of what is already in the baseline over the next two years was very welcome. I am grateful to the 27 colleagues who, along with me, signed a letter urging the Chancellor not only to protect schools funding, but to invest further. Our view was that one of the groups most hard hit by the pandemic and that awful disease was children. The case for investing further in their education to deal with the backlog, helping them to catch up and ensuring they can have productive lives in the future, felt to us morally strong and it would have been indefensible to cut that spending. We are therefore extremely pleased that he responded in such a positive way.”
“It is obviously foolish for the Opposition to pretend that a pandemic and a continental war, with its associated energy shock, would not be felt economically in this country. At the same time, it is clearly preposterous for them to try to talk down the UK economy as some kind of basket case, when we compare very favourably to some of our peers on debt to GDP, employment is still very high and we have an economy that exhibits so many underlying strengths. At the same time, it is fair to say that the autumn statement was greeted with some dismay on the Government Benches. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has obviously had to make some very difficult and challenging decisions, given the economic headwinds we face.”