Here’s the email from Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, on the Autumn Statement:
Today’s Autumn Statement has been delivered in incredibly difficult and uncertain economic times. But as Liberal Democrats, Nick, myself and the Ministerial team have worked hard to ensure the Autumn Statement as a package of measures remains true to our party’s values and to the commitment we made to the British people when the coalition was founded. Every decision has been informed by our desire to help to people working hard to make ends meet in difficult times and to put the economy on the right course for the long term.
Getting the economic fundamentals right is crucial. Throughout Europe, countries are being held to ransom by their bond markets. Their failure to take firm control of their spending has had catastrophic consequences. But our resolve to pay down the deficit is sheltering households and businesses across the country from the worst impacts of this storm.
Before the General Election, British long term interest rates were roughly equivalent to Spanish and Italian ones. Now they are much lower. It doesn’t just mean the cost of government debt is cheaper, it keeps mortgage rates and business borrowing costs down too.
These benefits of economic credibility have been secured by the Coalition’s firm resolve to tackle the terrible economic legacy left by Labour. Meanwhile, not only has Ed Balls failed to learn from Labour’s past mistakes, he is also ignoring the sobering evidence from the Eurozone. Labour wants to spend more, borrow more and increase debt – just at the point where we see that countries that borrow more end up in a state of crisis.
In tough times, it’s even more important to ensure that every penny of public money is well spent. As Liberal Democrats we have pressed for resources to be prioritised towards offering practical help to those that need it most and towards investing in infrastructure and social mobility to rebalance our economy
Liberal Democrat policy being delivered in Government has already secured income tax cuts for people on low and middle incomes and action to tackle youth unemployment through the Youth Contract announced by Nick last week. The Autumn Statement goes further – offering help with fuel duty, rail fares, and extending care for 2 year olds so it now reaches 40% of children. It has also increased in the bank levy to ensure they continue to pay their fair share.
Most important, the Autumn Statement secures further investment for the long term – delivering an extra £5bn in capital spending on projects across the country, an extra £1bn to the Regional Growth Fund, and a credit easing package of £20bn to secure cheaper access to finance for small businesses.
This is a package we as Liberal Democrats should be proud of – in difficult times for everyone, working together as a coalition we are taking action to protect the British economy from the storm around us and build a better, more sustainable economy in the future.
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15 Comments
Are the Lib Dems really proud of supporting George Osborne’s plans, including his attacks on the public sector?
Dreadful Autumn Statement or rather Emergency Budget. Pretty good rebuttal from Ed Balls. As for growth swinging round from next year’s 0.7% to 2.1%, thereafter, dream on. Last year Osborne said his budget would put the fuel in the economy’s tank. He got his speech mixed up – he surely meant to say that his budget would ensure the economy tanked.
This isn’t because of a European Crisis. The Government from day one talked down the public’s confidence and has cut far too deep too quickly. Just like paying off the mortgage to quickly they have starved the economy of life’s essentials – growth.
In this desperate package the onslaught against the Public Sector continues – now over 700,000 jobs to go not 400,000. A 1% pay increase after two years of a pay freeze. A move to regional pay, attacking TUPE, Health & Safety, planning laws and protected habitats and making it easier to hire and fire.
Please don’t tell me these are core LibDem values and the sort of thing you asked me to vote for in the last election. The LibDem brand is toxic and deserves to be as long held values are jettisoned, one after the other, to support a rabid, doctrinaire rightwing Tory Government. Wakey, wakey – will the last one leaving the Lib Dem Party turn the lights out.
He can’t really believe all that, can he? It seems the worst kind of government micro-management has replaced the plan A, with little continuity from the previous aims (such as the mess with child tax credits). We can be thankful the Lib Dems have managed to stop some of the more silly ideas, like cutting benefits.
Interesting to note that the saving due to lower interest rates is only 50% of what Osborne claimed because so much flows back to the Treasury in tax payments.
“This is a package we as Liberal Democrats should be proud of”
Deep down in your hearts ask yourself if you really truly believe that…. I worked for the party for 6 years and i’m not proud. On the contrary I’m ashamed.
The growth projections are rose tinted, given that Osborne has already tanked what little recovery there had been. What’s needed now is a way of generating capital so that borrowing can be kept down. More indirect tax rises and cuts will damage consumer confidence and are also unfair , as well as politically inept. Ordinary people’s budgets are over stretched. This means that Taxation and Tax loopholes need looking at. Ed Ball’s plan though much better than Osborne’s is still based on an equallly futile atempt to perpetuate the mistakes of the last 30 or so years. Basically. it’s time to hit that 1% , so that money can be put back into people’s pockets via reductions in indirect taxation. Plus we need to stop wasting energy on policies that will only make the poor poorer, thus depressing economic black spot’s even further. The failed economic ideas of The Reagan, Thatcher and Blair years need to be ditched.
It is indeed time to think about making those at the top pay properly for this crisis. Where are our billionaires who are asking to be taxed more? I see many French, German and even American million/billionaires asking to be taxed, in the national spirit, to help the recovery and take the burden off the poorest. It seems that we simply don’t have very many “decent” rich people willing to be patriotic and have a sense of duty to our nation that helped them to become rich in the first place. It’s as if they see the City as their own personal country-within-a-country and have no sense of community or duty to the rest of the nation.
We are obviously not all in this together. If we had had these kinds of rich people here during WWII, we would never have won, because the rich in the UK today seem to have no sense of sacrifice in the national interest, no sense of solidarity and community with those “below” them.
What the government should be doing is increasing the supply of money where it will be of the best use.
All quantitative easing achieves is, increasing the balance books of the banks.
The banks have already been told that they need to hold much more in reserves due to risks and exposure to the Euro Crisis and the possible defaults from European Countries,
Quantitative easing has not resulted in banks lending more to small and medium size businesses and it certainly has not lowered the colossal interest rates that they have charged to those they have loaned to.
When this government came into power, They slashed the support for Mortgage Interest Payments for those who had lost their jobs or became ill. The rate was slashed from 6% to 3%
Whilst hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, Income Support only covers with assistance with the “Interest” payments on a mortgage not the whole monthly mortgage payments, and only then do they pay at 3% despite hardly any people having a mortgage at 3 %, in fact a majority of mortgages are at least 6%
This means thousands of people who have lost jobs through no fault of their own and struggling to make up the shortfall of mortgage payments, many facing repossessions.
It makes far more sense for the government to have put the support for mortgage interest payments back to 6%. This money goes “Direct” to the mortgage company, increasing their balance sheets, but it also increases the disposable income of the claimant who then has that little more available income to spend elsewhere in the economy. These people struggle to get by each month and any extra disposable income they have would be spent directly on other commodities, Food, Gas, Etc etc.
This seems a far better approach to me as the supply of money has benefited twice, the banks directly and the consumer. instead of the billions being wasted in Quantitative easing shoring up the banks balance sheets.
The Paradox of Thrift. Proven again.
@Danny Alexander:
” Nick, myself and the Ministerial team……..”
A bit of pupil premium needed here?
It’s ‘interesting’ that the person trotted out to support “Osbourne’s Axe” was a A Lib Dem (Danny Alexander). Nice move by Cameron/Osborne; it gives a nice slant to “We’re all in this together”…..
Listening to Danny I was reminded of Orwell’s last line in “Animal Farm, “…..looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Was I the only one nauseated by the sight of Danny Alexander’s enthusiastic nodding in approval of Osborne’s extolling of the wonders of Gove and his free schools?
Vince used to say that the economy was in intensive care. Looks like they have the crash trolley standing by.
Is it true that on Newnight, Danny committed the party manifesto for 2015 to copy the Tory manifesto on the economy and that it would contain a list of all the things we would continue to cut
@libby: That is indeed true. This was also admitted by Alexander on Channel 4 News as well. I was apprehensive about the Coalition, but if we are going to sign up to a Tory economic policy post-2015, I think I may have to reconsider my support of our party. Which makes me sad indeed.
@BrianD,
You most certainly were not. I really really, regret the time and energy I have spent in campaigning for this part 9and its predecessor) over many years. Having stopped delivering Focus, I shall have to find some other form of exercise to keep my weight down
This is an interesting email. But I can’t find the part where Danny ties the party to Osbornomics for 2 extra years before he announced it on live television. I know Osborne’s 5 year deficit reduction strategy was a rolling target but I really don’t remember the coalition agreement being a rolling one, I must have missed that.