Public Spending (Hansard, 15 June 1995)

§ 10. Mr. Amess
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if it is his policy to reduce public spending as a percentage of gross domestic product. [27042]

§ Mr. Aitken
Yes. The Government's policy, unlike that of the Labour party, is to reduce the share of national income taken by the state.

§ Mr. Amess
I welcome my right hon. Friend's robust commitment to controlling state expenditure. Will he confirm that that is in marked contrast to new Labour, which apparently has no commitment to increase spending, taxation or borrowing, but which in reality can be relied upon to increase all three?

§ Mr. Aitken
My hon. Friend is right. Scratch the soundbites of new Labour and we find old spending Labour in full swing. Let me list, for the benefit of my hon. Friend and of the House, the high spending to which the Labour party is committed. It includes income support for 16 and 17-year-olds, new regional assemblies and development agencies, an emergency employment programme, a defence conversion agency, a flexible decade of retirement, and above all, a national minimum wage. Labour is still the same old high-spending party, and it will be a high taxation party too.

§ Ms Eagle
After 16 years in power, is it not a demonstration of the Government's utter failure that GDP continues to rise because they are paying the cost of economic failure by keeping so many people on the dole, at a cost of £9,000 per person? When will the Government tackle the problems rather than the symptoms of their utter failure to adopt a decent economic policy?

§ Mr. Aitken
As the hon. Lady is so interested in the public expenditure dimension of unemployment—I take it that that is what her question is about—she may like to know that the unemployment total is falling at a rate of 1,000 per day. Every time 100,000 people come off the unemployment register, £400 million or so is saved in public expenditure. That is good news for the taxpayer as well as for the unemployed people who become employed.