Tories defend handling of public services and economy
The shadow paymaster general has defended the Conservatives’ handling of public services while in government and accused Labour of “breaking all their promises” from their general election campaign. John Glen: "The facts show we had tough times with high borrowing costs, but we achieved 0.7% growth, the fastest in the G7, and inflation is down to 2%." Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00I mean, we had clearly very tough times with a massive amount of borrowing and the cost
00:04of borrowing was high. But if you look at where we got to in terms of the growth in
00:09January to March, 0.7, what's projected being the best across the fastest growing economy
00:16in the G7, inflation down at 2%. Yes, there were pressures. There always are. I was a
00:23Treasury Minister for many years and the PPS to a Chancellor. At every budget, there are
00:28pressures from spending departments. The challenge of government is to work out how to deal with
00:32it, how to have a programme of public sector reform, productivity reform package and to
00:39urge restraint. And last year, for example, when we had a higher than expected settlement
00:45from the public sector pay bodies, we didn't borrow more. We didn't have inflationary solutions.
00:54We made departments absorb those extra costs. And I think the problem for Rachel is that
01:00she's trying to make up this narrative in a world where the OBR not only creates an
01:07open book, but it also shows how we balance those budgets. And of course, figures move
01:12around a lot up and before fiscal events. But, you know, to actually have speculations
01:19now about significant tax raises for working people, working people have pensions and investments
01:27and some of the changes, you know, be it equalisation of capital gains tax to income tax levels
01:33or changes to the levels of pension relief will have an effect on working people, even
01:38if the Prime Minister seems very reluctant to define who working people are.