Mr. Nicholas Soames (Mid-Sussex) (Con): It has been a great privilege tonight to listen to a series of impressive valedictory speeches, not least from the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn) and the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts)-one of which was semi vale and the other complete vale. I was especially taken by the words of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), who spoke of the stewardship of the economy-a concept that has deep-seated roots in this country in terms of the land, the environment, wealth, possessions, the creation of wealth and the administration of the economy. He has served his party and his country with great distinction down the years and he made a powerful and important speech that will bear further reading.

I also pay tribute to other hon. Gentlemen, including my great friend the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson), who has been an original, high-minded and brave Member of the House. Other Members of Parliament to come could do well to follow his steps. I was also privileged to be in the House on Thursday night to hear the farewell speech of the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin), who made a really remarkable speech. I am proud of the fact that I have served with him in the House of Commons, including alongside him on a number of occasions, which was a great privilege. He will be very much missed in the House, and to anyone wanting a rattling good read, I highly commend his book.

This was the most assive Budget that I have heard in my 27 years in the House. I am not quite sure what it is for, except as a kind of semi colon before the general election. It seems to be an empty Budget. I do not propose to deal with it in great detail, because there is no great detail to deal with. However, I want to make one particularly important point in relation to my

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constituency. Before I do that, however, let me say that none of my remarks relates to the Financial Secretary, who I know is a good, straight soldier. However, he serves in a rotten Administration, and I want to say a few words about the Chancellor and the Prime Minister. I hope that they both understand-because I am not sure that they do-how angry and distressed people are in this country at the financial situation that we have been dragged into. In particular, many people are angry that the Government could have done so much more to prevent the United Kingdom from finding itself in such a parlous situation, for we have truly gone backwards.

It is to the Prime Minister that the blame for the most serious failings must attach. This is not an ad hominem attack on the Prime Minister; this is business. It was his failure to respond either to the massive inflation in house prices, despite the most earnest warnings, to personal debt spiralling out of all control, or to the grave regulatory errors in the banking system that lies at the heart of the failings of this economy. As the hon. Member for Sunderland, South said so wisely, it is difficult to see how the United Kingdom's economy can prosper when its main industry is shopping.

As well as pillaging the pensions arrangements of many of our people, the Prime Minister decimated our reserves when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer by selling 395 tonnes of gold at an average rate of $270 an ounce. The price for gold now stands at more than $1,000 an ounce. That surely must be one of the most appalling errors of judgment of any Chancellor in the history of the office. He has misspent public money excessively and wastefully, and too often to very little effect. He was responsible for running up public debt when he should have been paying it off, yet he still has the nerve to come to the House and tell us that he has abolished the cycle of boom and bust. That is such a fantasy position that one almost wonders sometimes whether the Prime Minister is in full possession of his faculties.

The House must remember that it was the Prime Minister, as Chancellor, who took all the big decisions on pensions, and who effectively wrecked one of the best financial systems of provision in the world. He destroyed the system of savings in this country and will have effectively impoverished generations of old people-past, present and to come. However, what is so worrying-and, I think, so sad-is that the legacy that this Government will leave is that of a high-tax, essentially anti-wealth, anti-aspiration and now almost anti-hard work country that lags in almost every respect that matters.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor both made highly effective speeches setting out their critique of this phony Budget, but I would like briefly to mention a matter that most profoundly affects the enterprise culture in this country, and therefore reflects the entire system of wealth creation, which pays for absolutely everything. Like many hon. Members in all parts of the House, every year I carry out a simple pre-Budget survey in my constituency among businesses and business people. There has never been a year since this Government came to power when the main complaint has not been the quite astonishing level of bureaucracy and red tape that the Chancellor and his friends, most particularly the Prime Minister, have sought to impose on enterprise and strangle it

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with. The truth is that the Government now stand in the way of an enterprise economy. They are, in themselves, an obstacle to progress.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, I do not know whether you saw an excellent article in The Daily Telegraph today by Alistair Cox, chief executive of Hays, the recruitment company, but he makes this important point about what part of the problem is:

"Many businesses would like to recruit more staff, either temporary or permanent, but often feel there are too many risks involved, too many barriers to make it worthwhile. Others are suffering chronic skill shortages in key roles. Some are even scaling back their ambitions because of the difficulties involved in employing people today... The only way of creating long-term, sustainable employment is to create the right economic, legislative and social framework to nurture new businesses and encourage existing ones to grow."

In that, this Government have been a dismal and singular failure. The cost of Government regulation to business in the United Kingdom now runs at £80 billion a year. That is the equivalent of 5.7 per cent. of the United Kingdom's entire gross domestic product. Business people in my constituency spend about 13 hours a month administering the Government's red tape alone, while people in their work forces can sometimes spend more than 70 hours a month on administration. The truth is that the valuable concept of a low-regulation, low-tax, competitive economy, which came to fruition in the later years of Lady Thatcher's Government, and subsequently under the Government of my right hon. Friend the former Member for Huntingdon, has been gravely eroded, as enterprise sinks further every day into a bog of regulation and higher taxes.

We are in the midst of an enduring financial crisis, not just here but across Europe, and it has exposed our many weaknesses in coming to grips and competing in a global economy. Those failings-in competitiveness, productivity, training and education-will all have to be fixed if Britain is to play a successful part in the world. With all the other difficulties that will fall to the next Government, in terms of public expenditure there will be the most vital job to be done in fixing our national competitiveness and productivity to prepare the British economy and all our people for the difficulties of the global challenges that we face. At the same time, we will have to defend free markets, free trade and global capitalism, all of which are bound to come under attack, as they do in times of great difficulty and hardship.

This has indeed been a profligate and disastrous Government for the economy of this country. The Government have lost all credibility-that, as you know Mr. Deputy Speaker, is a most vital asset for any Government-and, much as I regret to have to say it, we are now seen as again becoming what we were in the 1970s: a political and economic backwater. With that disintegration of our financial and economic influence naturally comes a dissipation of our ability to change things in the rest of the world, because however good is our military, economics represents real power.

The resolution of those matters will require iron resolve and huge courage-qualities that I know my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor will put to good use in a new Government to fix a broken economy, deal with a budget deficit that threatens our recovery, boost enterprise and small business, get Britain moving and build an economy that really works for everyone.

Hansard Volume 508

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