20:15 The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Simon Clarke)

The third and final reason we need to keep our debt under control is simple: our public finances are the legacy we leave for future generations, and the decisions we take now will have a material impact on the lives and livelihoods of our grandchildren. They will help or hinder their future ability to tackle long-term challenges, from climate change to an ageing population, or indeed to seize the opportunities that lie ahead.

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20:37 John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)

It will be picked by people paid decent wages, and if that requires wages to go up a bit, I have no problem with that. It will also be picked by the growing mechanisation of agriculture. Our agriculture is not as fully mechanised in a lot of farms as it is possible to do when there are better capitalised farms, like those that have been growing more food elsewhere. How pessimistic that was—why is the hon. Gentleman not proud of the United Kingdom, Scotland or wherever, thinking that we can achieve more and do more? Why do we always have to be stopping people doing things, and saying that nothing is going to work and so let us import all our vegetables from Spain, all our flowers from the Netherlands and all our energy from Russia, Germany or the Netherlands or wherever because we are not able to do it here in Britain? It is just not good enough. We have this huge opportunity. We have a very talented people. We have many natural resources. We have a perfectly good temperate climate for growing most of our own food. So, Government, get on with it. Having a growth target would help energise a Whitehall that still seems to be very disappointed in the country it is trying to govern and seems to be trying to hold it back.

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21:39 James Murray (Labour)

The truth is that the Government’s position simply confirms that Ministers do not understand what our country needs for the future, and their failure to invest has a direct impact on people’s lives. Their failure to invest what was needed in the past 12 years in gas storage and additional energy sources has made the jump that we face in energy bills far worse. Their failure to invest in safe and affordable housing has made the housing crisis that we face far worse. Their cap on investment now means that they will fail to invest what is needed to decarbonise our economy, making the damage to our country in the long run far worse, too.

Ministers could have come here today to follow Labour’s lead by committing to £28 billion of capital investment in our country’s green transition in every year of this decade. Our fiscal rules set out how we would make that investment in the future while balancing the books and getting debt falling. That level of capital investment is needed to tackle the climate crisis and to create jobs for the future, from insulating homes across the country to ensuring that wind turbines are manufactured here in Britain. However, that would not be possible under the Chancellor’s charter, which as a result will cost our economy and our country more in the future.

The Tories are putting up taxes on working people in 2022 despite energy bills being set to soar, and they are spending their time struggling to defend their damaging investment cap rather than tackling the climate crisis, creating jobs and heeding calls from business to invest in the future. The Opposition will not vote to lock us further into a low-growth, high-tax cycle. We will back British businesses and workers by supporting the investment needed in net zero growth to create jobs for the future, fund first-class public services and improve living standards for everyone in our country.

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21:44 John Glen (Conservative)

I want to turn now to some of the substantive points made in the debate. I do not recognise the characterisation by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) of this debate as a “Maastricht tribute debate”, but I do recognise his enthusiasm for growth and his desire to target growth. That is obviously a critical element of the Government’s strategy. It is absolutely clear that we need to focus on greater productivity and it is important that, as set out in our plan for growth, with a focus on skills, infrastructure and innovation, we will deliver the key priorities of levelling up and net zero. I do not think that we disagree about the importance of economic growth and productivity, but because of the actions that we took to support our economy, we have been more successful than previously feared in preventing the long-term economic damage of covid. In its latest forecast, the OBR revised down its scarring assumption, from 3% to 2%.

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