Finance Bill

I am very grateful for the opportunity to say a few things in conclusion to our debate about the panic Budget that has been sped through this place. To all those who have observed these debates about the Budget and the Finance Bill, it is now clear that the Budget is born not of economic necessity, but of political anxiety—anxiety that, if Liberal Democrat Members are allowed to see any more evidence of the damage that the Budget is doing to confidence and growth, they will remember where they buried their Keynesian tradition, disinter it and refuse the Chancellor their support. The great question that this Budget and Finance Bill should have answered is how do we lock in the recovery that Labour left? Winning that recovery dominated our final two years of office. Not since 1945 has the world been hit by a recession on the scale of that which hit our shores in 2008. The global economy shrank by some 1% for the first time since the war, G7 economies shrank by some 3% and world trade fell by some 12%. What started as a collapse in confidence on Wall street rapidly infected the world's financial system and triggered a disastrous domino-like collapse in confidence among markets throughout the world. No country, not least one of the world's great trading nations, could be isolated from its effect, and we were not.