Amendment of the Law — House of Commons, 2015-03-23
Topic: Macroeconomics
Kenneth Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): No, I will not, because, with great respect to the right hon. Gentleman, it would not be fair to the 30-odd other Members who wish to speak. The hon. Member for Leeds West keeps criticising the Chancellor for not succeeding in eliminating the deficit entirely in the last five years. I am very glad that he did not do so. It is the same with all forecasts—[Interruption.] It is not possible to find a Chancellor who has produced forecasts that are three, four or five years out and which resemble what actually happened. It is necessary to take account of what is happening in the real world. Macro-economic policy has to be pragmatic I cannot tell what will happen over the next five years, and nor can any Opposition Member. Will China actually have a soft landing? What will happen to the oil market? Is the recovery in the United States really sustainable? Will the eurozone begin to achieve a bit more growth this year and beyond? What about difficult emerging markets like Brazil? The fact is that we are part of a globalised economy—quite apart from the impossibility of forecasting with exactitude what will happen here The Chancellor has cut the deficit substantially, and has moved nearer to getting it under control. Had he moved at a faster pace, heaven knows where we would be now, but we would be in a very difficult situation. Actually, I do not know whether the Labour party thinks that he should have moved faster or more slowly, but I am sure that it is not capable of maintaining progress. I hope that we can achieve a surplus in the next Parliament—and so, obviously, does the Chancellor—but that will depend, again, on whether circumstances permit us to do so. In five years’ time, we shall find out where we are Meanwhile, having that kind of responsibility is an essential precondition to raising our educational standards and continuing to tackle the skills shortages which always slow up the British economy—we are making great progress with apprenticeships, and we have much further to go. At last we are beginning to see business investment come through, with more confidence and, I hope, improved credit for businesses. That should pave the way for the productivity growth that we desperately require. We need infrastructure investment, which the Government are pressing on with. We need the EU reforms, which the Prime Minister was talking about earlier. If we can complete the single market—if we can extend it to services, if we can have a common energy market, if we can have a common market for the digital economy, if we can have an EU-US trade agreement—all that will reinforce the efforts of the Government to put this country in a much better position than any other to look optimistically to the future If we were in the world of traditional politics of 30 or 40 years ago, this Government would be on a walkover in this election, producing figures to die for after taking over a disaster. We still have to rise above the cynical comedy of today’s protest politics. This Budget shows that a competent Conservative Government can finish the job.