Instead of talking about the future, the Tories want to re-write history

By Rachel Reeves MP

The leaked documents we have seen in the newspapers over recent days come at a very convenient time for the government. They are in trouble on a number of fronts as rash decisions start to come unstuck – on their NHS reforms, on sentencing and this weekend with Michael Gove performing another u-turn on cuts to local council budgets for schools in the face of the threat of legal action.

But, the intrigue and hyperbole surrounding the documents will not distract my constituents. They are worried about their jobs, worried about the future of our NHS and struggling with the rising cost of living – not least thanks to the VAT rise, cuts to tax credits, childcare support and the child benefit freeze introduced by the Conservative-led government.

As Labour has set out, George Osborne’s decision to cut too far and too fast has seen the economy flatline – and we are now set for slower growth and higher unemployment than forecast just a year ago. On Friday we learned that manufacturing output had fallen 1.5% in April – a real blow to the recovery and to government hopes that we can miraculously power ahead when government policies are taking money out of the economy at such a fragile time.

Instead of talking about the future, the Tories want to re-write history. By blaming the last government, rather than the financial crisis for the recession and the deficit, Osborne thinks he can deflect criticism about the speed, scale and fairness of his own decisions. But the reality is that the Tories were committed to matching our spending plans up until November 2008 when David Cameron and George Osborne panicked about what they would have done if they’d been in charge when the crash happened.

The Tories want to claim that Labour spent and borrowed too much so they can blame us for the global financial crisis – even though it affected every major country, was caused by the banks and was not a recession made in Britain.

While we must reduce the deficit that was the result of the global crisis and the efforts taken by the last Labour government to protect people from the effects of the recession, the reality is that when the global financial crisis hit, Britain’s deficit and the national debt were both lower than those we inherited from the Tories in 1997. And we had lower national debt than in America, France, Germany and Japan.

In other words, we did fix the roof when the sun was shining – quite literally in some cases as we built schools, hospitals and children’s centres, got waiting lists down and more police officers helped to bring crime down across the country. In my constituency schools were rebuilt or refurbished, new health centres were opened and PCSOs have become a valued part in all of our communities.

Of course there need to be tough decisions now to get the deficit down, but by cutting too far and too fast the Conservative-led government is putting front line services at risk. We are seeing new school buildings cancelled, NHS waiting lists increased Sure Start Centres at risk and frontline police officers and PCSOs cut.

And on the economy the government is getting us into a vicious circle. Their policy choices have slowed growth and led to higher unemployment: making it harder to get the deficit down. More people out of work, on benefit rather than paying taxes, will make the deficit worse not better. Indeed, George Osborne is now set to borrow £46 billion more than he was expecting to last autumn because growth is slower and unemployment is higher – a damning indictment on his economic plans.

That’s why Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are right to stay firmly focused on opposing this government’s mistakes, talking about the future and developing the policies to build a stronger fairer Britain.