Speeches by Stride.

“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, which is why that behaviour was so irresponsible. There are people who would have drawn down on their pensions because they were extremely concerned about what was being briefed out by the Treasury as to what changes may be coming down the line, and about their ability to do so…”

“My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. In her heart, I do not believe that the Chancellor really thinks the right decision was to scrap the two-child benefit cap—I genuinely do not. This is a case of the political or fiscal tail wagging the welfare dog; it is as simple as that. The Front Bench has given up on any se…”

“I thank the right hon. Member for that observation. I have been cautioned by the Chair as to the language—“misleading”—that I use, but it was clearly misleading for the Chancellor to come to the House and say that she would not be putting up taxes and that this was a one-off, as she used the expression “wipe the slate …”

“How could I resist?”

“Three times might be a bit too much—we will come back to the hon. Gentleman later.”

“May I give the hon. Member a basic lesson in economics? In 2010, when my party came into office, we inherited a deficit at over 10% of GDP—as any economist will say, that is the amount of money being added to the debt every single year. It was over 10% on the watch of the Labour party, and that is the story of increase…”

“My right hon. Friend is right. To be more accurate, we can see it even from Pluto. He is also so right about the loss of jobs in hospitality; about 90,000 jobs have been destroyed, many of them the first opportunity to get on to the career ladder that young people would otherwise have had. That is as a direct consequen…”

“I will in a moment. We have seen the consequences of that up and down our country. I have spent a lot of time speaking to employers—from the large employers down to those on the high streets. They are all struggling and they do so because of the decisions that were taken by this Chancellor.”

“I thank the hon. Lady for that passionate intervention. The best way to get people out of poverty is through work. To the point made by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), the record of the last Government was exemplary. We had 4 million more jobs, and 800 new jobs every day under the last Conser…”

“The reality is that back-loading tax-paying and squeezing spending, as the Government are doing, simply pushes off the inevitable. The evidence shows that, despite its huge majority, Labour does not have the backbone or a plan to control spending and take difficult decisions, even on tax. The Chancellor is like Mr Mica…”

“I just ask the hon. Gentleman what he thinks the effect of increasing taxes on hard-working people does for poverty. Any economist will say it drives poverty up. There is also the question of the farm tax, with the changes under the inheritance tax regime. In the run-up to the general election, the Secretary of State f…”

“I will in a moment. It should be pointed out, of course, that that is a fiddled fiscal target. It is not the fiscal target that we were working to—the same definition of debt. It is not net public sector debt at all; it is something different. In fact, if we were to apply the targets that we were running to, which were…”

“rose—”

“The hon. Gentleman makes excellent points, and I will come to the issue of the market-moving effects of some of the comments made by the Chancellor. On the point that he rightly raises about the impact on people’s lives, these are real jobs. These are people struggling with real businesses. These are farmers getting up…”

“Well, no. The reason there is the obsession with fiscal headroom is that this is the Chancellor who set up too little back in the day, blew it all, had to rebuild it, blew it all, and has had to rebuild it again. That is why the markets are so sensitive to fiscal headroom. The fact that the Chancellor is now saying tha…”

“I think I have a jack-in-the-box over there. A jack-in-the-box is great to observe, isn’t it? I am not sure that is the case with the hon. Gentleman, but I might take what is probably the fourth intervention from him momentarily. The Government scrapped our plans, with the result that 450,000 people who would not have …”

“Momentarily—I assure the hon. Gentleman that I will come to him. What Labour has done in the meantime with this Budget is to take entirely the wrong decision, which is to tax all those hard-working people to the tune of £7 billion—a high proportion of that to transfer straight across to those who are on benefits, inclu…”

“The steps, as the hon. Gentleman terms them, that his party is taking to get the deficit down are to borrow ever larger sums of money—half a trillion more than was laid out in the plans that his party inherited, and that has been added to further by the Chancellor at the last Budget. You will recall, Madam Deputy Speak…”

“The process surrounding the Budget was utterly chaotic. We had months of damaging speculation, fuelled by briefings and leaks from the Treasury itself. They included briefings on 14 November that moved markets and gave the appearance, at least, of being deliberately inaccurate, which is why we need the Financial Conduc…”

“The Office for Budget Responsibility’s own guidance states: “The interim rounds are transmitted to the Chancellor in confidence”. Yet the Chancellor repeatedly stated before the Budget that the OBR had downgraded its productivity forecast. In her statement in Downing Street on 4 November, she said in relation to the OB…”