Pre-Budget Report

If we had to adopt a policy to cut £28 billion of public spending now, it would be the equivalent of closing down most schools in the country. It would not just prevent capital investment, but mean that we could not hire teachers or pay the other bills of schools. Conservative Members will have to think about this. They are promising to spend more, but they say that they are going to tax less and that they would borrow less because they say that we have a structural deficit. They then say that their fiscal rule requires a reduction in spending. None of that adds up, but that is typical of the Conservative party. It left us in exactly that situation in the early 1990s and we are not going back to that.