argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Robert Lamont (Conservative, Centre-right): My constituents have not forgotten what befell the UK economy the last time Labour was in power. The party which has left unemployment higher than it found it every single time it has been in office, and which left a note joking about the fact that there was no money left, might have approached this subject with a degree of humility The motion before the House invites us to reflect on the last 10 years of Conservative-led economic management. We should start with the situation that the Conservatives inherited in 2010 after 13 unlucky years of Labour misrule. The deficit was higher than at any time since records began in 1948, £1 in every £4 that Labour spent in its last year in power was borrowed, and unemployment was up by nearly half a million. Labour Members now say that it was all because of the global financial crisis, for which they should not be blamed, but that ignores two key facts. First, that Britain suffered one of the worst banking crises in the world was a direct consequence of the spectacular failure of Labour’s system of financial regulation. Secondly, the UK entered that crisis running a deficit. We were borrowing too much even before that crisis hit Restoring order to the national finances was the defining economic mission of the decade leading up to the covid crisis. By the time that covid hit, the deficit had been reduced by over 80%, putting our public finances back on a sustainable path. The unemployment rate was halved and employment reached record highs. Conservatives doubled the personal allowance and have taken 1.75 million people out of income tax. The lowest paid have received a £4,000 pay rise through the national living wage. Income inequality is lower now than it was in 2010. The highest earners are now paying a greater share of tax than at any time during the last Labour Government. All this meant that we entered the pandemic in a position of strength. This shows how vital it is to take the difficult decisions when times are relatively normal, so that we are able to take extraordinary measures when times get hard Labour has spent 11 years opposing every single one of the steps that we have taken to fix its mess. In 2019, having learned nothing from its mistakes, it suffered its worst defeat in a generation. The counterfactual, had Labour succeeded in that election, hardly bears thinking about. Labour’s last shadow Chancellor was actively preparing for a run on the pound if he ever got into office. His goal was to "overthrow capitalism". That was the economic agenda that the Leader of the Opposition and the present shadow Chancellor both urged the British people to vote for. As we enter what I hope to be the countdown to the permanent reopening of our country, we should learn the real economic lessons of covid—that we have to take the difficult, responsible decisions to be ready for when the storm rolls in, and that we will all do better to be united and weathering storms such as covid together.
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Lee Anderson (Conservative, Centre-right): Another Opposition day debate, and another chance to remind the Labour party exactly why it is in opposition. The British people do not trust them on the economy. They do not trust them on the NHS, immigration, defence, Brexit and law and order, and the last four general elections have proved that We have an incredible record since 2010, with record employment before covid, the national minimum wage reaching new highs, and income tax payers £1,200 a year better off. There are fewer children in workless households and fewer families in poverty. The list goes on and on Locally, for residents in Ashfield and Eastwood, it gets better. Since being elected, I have managed to secure £6.2 million through the future high streets fund and another £1.5 million from the accelerated towns fund. We now have funding to get us through to the second round of the Restoring Your Railway fund, which could see train passenger services return to Selston for the first time since the 1960s. On top of that, I am currently working on a multimillion pound bid with Broxtowe Borough Council to ensure that the forgotten town of Eastwood finally gets its fair share of investment That is in sharp contrast to Labour’s record in Ashfield, and I will tell the House why. In 2005, King’s Mill Hospital in Ashfield was given away by the then Labour Government on a disastrous PFI deal. The hospital was rebuilt and should have cost about £300 million, but thanks to the financial incompetence of the Labour Government, the PFI now costs £1 million a week and the total cost of the hospital could be £2.5 billion. You do not need a degree in hindsight to know that was a bad deal from the start, but if the shadow Chancellor can guarantee that Labour’s British recovery bonds will provide a £2.5 billion return on a £300 million investment, let me know, as I am sure my residents will snap them up Labour’s incompetence is staggering, and I half-expect to see the shadow Chancellor and other shadow Front Benchers go to market one day and return with five magic beans, because their economic policies are like fairy tales. They make great bedtime reading for anyone under five, but no one else believes them Three years ago, while still a Labour councillor, I was asked in a Labour group meeting if I had read up on the economics of Karl Marx. I said, "No." I was then told to join the Tory party. I took their advice, and now I am their MP. That’ll teach them. Finally, socialism is a nice idea, but it is just like Labour’s Front Bench: it has never worked, it never will, and no one takes it seriously.
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Virginia Ann Crosbie (Conservative, Centre-right): Employment in the UK has always been a critical barometer of success, and I am proud that between 2010 and 2019, under a Conservative Government, an additional 3.8 million people have been employed. That equates to an additional 1,000 employed each day. And then the pandemic hit. Over the past 12 months, the world has experienced its largest economic shock in decades. The critical question for the Chancellor was how to minimise the impact on our economy, and he stepped up. My constituency of Ynys Môn is beautiful, and, as a result, it has become a tourist paradise. In the past 20 years, under a Welsh Labour Government, we have experienced under-investment and the loss of major local employers, and we have become increasingly dependent on tourism. Tourism is not just about our hotels and B&Bs, like the Valley Hotel. It is not just about our caravan parks and static sites, like Pant y Saer. It is part of the fabric of our economy, from eateries like the Pilot House Café in Penmon and craft shops like Oriel Amlwch to our suppliers. Businesses like ET Jones Sons and Daughter—a family-run craft butcher in Bodedern—and Seapig, whose owner Cara White crafts beautiful jewellery from sea glass, all rely on tourists visiting the island to keep them afloat Our tourist season should have started at around the time the whole country went into lockdown last year. Suddenly, there were no tourists. Business forecasts lay in tatters. The island was staring into the jaws of disaster. The Chancellor’s innovative schemes to support the whole UK economy offered a lifeline to thousands of people across Ynys Môn, with more than £7 million in coronavirus business interruption loan scheme loans, just under £37 million in bounce back loans, 3,400 employees furloughed, 2,000 claims made under the self-employment income support scheme, and nearly £1 million claimed on the eat out to help out scheme This Government are focused on supporting business and the economy. Their swift and decisive practical support has kept the UK going over the past year—not handouts as compensation for jobs lost, but hands up to help businesses ride the storm and come out the other side still intact. That is why the UK needs this Conservative Government—because when the going gets tough, we step up.
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Christopher Mark Clarkson (Conservative, Centre-right): I was going to describe today’s topic as mind-bending, but after listening to some of the drivel from Labour Members, I think the correct word is probably "psychotropic". The only way that this could be any more surreal is if they get the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) to close with a lecture on fiscal discipline As we have a short amount of time to speak, I will focus on recent events. Last week, the Leader of the Opposition gave a speech that was trailed as being the equivalent of the 1945 Beveridge report, so imagine everybody’s disappointment when he rocked up to the podium with Sir Keir’s new clothes—pound shop knockoffs of Government policies that he had been deriding the week before that somehow managed to be both dear and nasty. We can imagine the essay crisis moments at Labour HQ as he tried to concoct this diet Beveridge only to have the shadow Chancellor slip him a copy of the Treasury spending plans and say, "Change a few words and no one will notice." The absolute brass neck of it is absolutely gobsmacking. But of course people in the real world know exactly what is going on. We only needed to watch the response on ITV when the right hon. and learned Gentleman gave his Oscar-worthy performance and see the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (James Grundy) give their judgment on his performance with a look so pained it would have made Torquemada wince People in the real world get that this is a Government who are actually making some tough decisions. They understand that paying down 80% of Labour’s £150 billion deficit enabled us to pay 80% of people’s wages. They understand that this is a Government who lifted 1.74 million people out of income tax altogether. While Labour eliminated the 10p tax rate, we increased employment and the living wage, whereas no Labour Government have left power with more people in work than when they came to power. The simple fact of the matter is that Opposition Front Benchers are so feckless and covered in torpor that they have no creative response to this crisis except to throw rocks at the Government as they try to deal with an emerging national crisis. They are like the French intellectual sat in a coffee shop watching the revolutionary crowds go by and saying to one another, "We must find out where our people are going so we can lead them." Well, let me tell them: they are not going in your direction.
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Julie Marson (Conservative, Centre-right): A decade is a long time. Memories fade—or they do for Members on the Labour Front Bench who would like to rewrite history. My memory is very clear. I clearly remember the desperate state in which the Labour Government left our national finances, and that they told us exactly what they had done at the time. In their own jaunty words: "I’m afraid there is no money." When the Labour party took office in 1997, the deficit stood at around £13 billion. When it left, it was £153 billion. It took the Conservative-led Government almost 10 years to reduce that deficit by 80%, while growing the economy, creating millions of jobs, cutting taxes for 32 million people, increasing the living wage and improving the lives and life chances of millions of people throughout our country. Labour opposed every effort to do that Thank goodness we cleaned up Labour’s economic mess. Think of the mess we would be in now if our public finances had been in the hands of the Labour party for the past decade. Think of the mess if current Labour Front Benchers had had their way and the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) was in charge, alongside his overturning-capitalism, little-red-book-waving shadow Chancellor That we have had, and have now, a Conservative Government means that we have had the resources to support the NHS through the pandemic and the economic resilience to provide more than £280 billion of economic support for lives and livelihoods and to invest billions of pounds in sustainable public services—our schools, our police and our infrastructure The Chancellor will set out new measures in the Budget to support our country and its post-pandemic growth, but many of the foundations are already in place, including a world-beating business start-up ecosystem and a vision to build back better. What has the Labour party offered as its vision for the future? Two policies: one a Conservative policy from 2012 and the other pinched off the centre-right think-tank the Centre for Policy Studies My mum grew up in Limehouse. Her MP was Clement Attlee. The Leader of the Opposition is no Clement Attlee, and his party has nothing to offer this country but the same record of economic failure that it had over a decade ago. Attlee himself said: "In a life-and-death struggle we cannot afford to have our destinies in the hands of failures"—[Official Report, 7 May 1940; Vol. 360, c. 1094.] I agree with him. We cannot afford to leave our destinies in the hands of those with such a dismal record of economic failure: the Labour party.
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Jack Edgar Brereton (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a bit rich of Labour Members to talk of economic failure ascribed to anyone but themselves. To them, it is never their fault—they never did wrong. They think that voters just didn’t get it quite right, but for most, the reality of the decade of Labour economic incompetence before this decade of Conservative economic repair is plain to see Nowhere is that more true than in Stoke-on-Trent, where the decade of Conservative competence has seen a renaissance of our local economy. Prior to covid, Stoke-on-Trent was one of the fastest growing economies nationally. After decades of Labour’s neglect and failed representation, Royal Doulton, Spode, Tams, Sadler, Beswick and Kiln Craft—the list goes on—were all victims of Labour’s tax and waste policies. Our communities were left dependent, with no hope of a better future or of ever getting out of the downward cycle. Thankfully, things are now very different. We are starting to see our city prosper again, with people aspiring to achieve more. Duchess China 1888, for example, has been rescued and revived, thanks to Heraldic Pottery, enabled by a decade of Conservative policies It was Gordon Brown who clobbered the ceramics industry with the climate change levy. Thankfully, George Osborne reformed that levy. It was Conservative competence that restored our international financial credibility, so that even this extraordinary covid crisis can be carefully navigated. Thank goodness we have this competent Conservative Government and not the Front Benchers opposite, let alone the Marxist leadership they wanted in Downing Street just over a year ago In the Conservative decade pre-covid, UK manufacturing as a percentage of total gross value added increased for the first time since Major’s Government. In Labour’s 13 years of incompetence, it nearly halved. In the last decade of Conservative Government since 2010, we have seen the longest unbroken run of manufacturing growth for over 50 years I am passionate about the manufacturing renaissance in my home city, which is supporting the prosperity of people in Stoke-on-Trent and growing opportunities and new industries such as advanced manufacturing, digital and green technologies. That is vital. This Government are focused on levelling up opportunities across the whole country to ensure we build back better and emerge stronger from the pandemic. We must keep going with policies that deliver more prosperity, increase skilled employment and pay better wages. Stoke-on-Trent is finally on the up, and not even covid will be able to keep us down for much longer. Only the Labour party would keep us down. We must not go back to where it left us.
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Jerome Patrick Burke Mayhew (Conservative, Centre-right): The last 10 years did not weaken the foundations of the economy; they did the exact opposite. We took the painful decisions to repair public finances during a decade in which the Government also managed to provide uninterrupted economic growth I am not the first person in this debate to mention the fact that the Government fixed the roof of public finances. They reduced Labour’s deficit by more than 80%. Why? So that we would be able to respond with hugely increased funding in a real crisis. Labour never fixes the roof. It is because of the responsible decisions of Conservative Governments that the UK has the financial firepower to support the whole economy—the economy in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England—throughout the pandemic, by spending more than £280 billion in support, and counting Conservatives fix the roof of public finances while at the same time reducing inequality in our society. Labour’s claims to the contrary are wrong. All measures of inequality, whether they measure original, gross or disposable income, have narrowed under the Conservative stewardship of the economy. Labour talk the talk, but the Conservative party has delivered for the low-paid. In fact, the Conservative stewardship of the economy has led to the lowest-paid people being up to £5,200 better off, in real terms, than they were in 2010—and that came after 13 years of Labour Government The approach to fairness that I have outlined needs to continue. The motion calls for a further pay rise for public sector workers—the heartland of Labour’s union bosses—and we would all love to be in a position to deliver that, but we need to recognise that as a result of the pandemic, private sector wages have fallen by almost 1%, while at the same time last year public sector wages rose by almost 4%. Unlike the private sector, wherein people have lost jobs, been furloughed and had insecure employment and reduced working hours, the public sector has been largely protected In the circumstances, is it fair to tax the private sector even more to pay for further public sector pay increases? It might be popular, but it would not be fair or in the long-term interests of the country. Let us get the economy growing, with private sector pay increasing, so that we can afford to pay the public sector more as well. The Conservative Government can be trusted to steward the economy for the long term; Labour simply cannot.
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Lee Benjamin Rowley (Conservative, Centre-right): Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to contribute today I start by scratching my head, as I often do when looking at the motions for Opposition day debates. They always have a limited and distant relationship with the truth and what is happening on the ground, but this one is a particularly telling example of that problem. Let us look at the words in the first sentence of the motion— "that the last decade of UK economic policy" undermined "the foundations" of our country. Even having that discussion is almost ridiculous. But we seem to have to have that debate, because those in the Labour party consistently fail to understand the repair that has gone on since the challenges and the problems that they left us in 2010. I have noted, over the last 10 years, both as a Member of Parliament since 2017 and, before that, as somebody who was interested in politics, the lack of alternative policies and programmes of any credibility or coherence; so the suggestion that there is now some kind of brilliant answer on the other side of the debate is the epitome of chutzpah, and I do not find it credible in the slightest Colleagues have spoken earlier of many of the things that have been achieved over the last 10 years, in extremely difficult circumstances—the highest rate of employment for many decades; a consistently growing economy, whose growth was at the higher end of that of some of our western neighbours; a massive reduction in the deficit caused by the bad decisions taken in 2008, 2009 and before; tax cuts to both business and people; and, for the first time, before the coronavirus pandemic hit, a debt-to-GDP ratio that was starting to come down—the fact that we do not leave more debt to our children and grandchildren The most interesting part of the debate so far came in the intervention by the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), who I have the greatest of respect and time for, on my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). He asked the Labour party to consider some basic tenets of fiscal responsibility and credibility, for the first time in a decade and a half. The hon. Lady said—I had to go back to check it on Parliamentlive—"the quantum is not important. How much we spend is not important"—in the same way as the deficits are not important, or the debt, or fiscal restraint, or paying our own way?
Government's Management of the Economy — House of Commons, 2021-02-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Lee Benjamin Rowley (Conservative, Centre-right): I am sorry; the hon. Lady had many minutes to explain that, but I do not have the same time as she does The only thing that is important for the Labour party is spending—spending more, whatever the type, whatever the situation, whatever the issue. Be it in times of economic surplus, like under Blair and Brown, spend more—a £15 to £25 billion deficit. In times of economic hardship, like in 2008, 2009, spend more. In times of economic recovery in 2010, like in Ed Balls’ Bloomberg speech, fiscal stimulus, spend more. Then the, quite frankly, Lilliputian Corbynite economics of spend, spend, spend. This is the problem with the Labour party: they fail to understand the basic tenets of the economic problems and opportunities that we have. For that, they will be on those Benches, calling Opposition debates, for much longer.