The week in Westminster with Rob Wilson, MP for Reading East

Rob Wilson MP • Published 21 Oct 2010 12:30 0 Comments

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WHEN the Coalition Government was formed, it immediately decided to review large parts of public sector spending.

This review should have been undertaken by the previous Labour Government which, of course, knew any cuts before the last election would finish it off, so it took the cowardly way out, putting self interest before the national interest and passing the responsibility to its successor. In fact, it was even worse than that, because Labour Ministers went around the country like latter-day Bourbon kings dispensing largesse (mainly in Labour marginal constituencies).

However, the Coalition Government has accepted the responsibility thrust upon it by the deficit deniers and we must deal with our country’s massive debt now to ensure future prosperity. Our generation has spent all the money for future generations, so we must turn this around and ensure more opportunity for people to lift themselves out of poverty, with state support focused on those who need it most.

Even this won’t be easy, because Labour left us with a terrible economic legacy: the largest peacetime deficit in our history. The state is borrowing £1 in every four it spends, and every day it costs almost £120 million just to pay the interest on the nation’s debt.

The Spending Review will be difficult for everybody in some way, and there is no doubt we really are all in this together. There will undoubtedly be some anomalies and unfairness that we will need to return to in future, but we are only doing this because healthy public finances are a necessity for sustainable economic growth - and growth is where our wealth as a nation and individuals comes from!

I will do my best to protect important local spending. But we must all accept some spending is unnecessary, wasteful or indefensible in these difficult times.

Our approach to the deficit crisis must be threefold. First to prioritise promoting growth - creating the conditions for a private sector-led recovery; second, build a fairer society - with all sections contributing to tackling the deficit, while protecting the most vulnerable; and third, reform public services - improving transparency and accountability, giving more power and responsibility to citizens and enabling sustainable long-term improvements in services. If we can achieve this, we can all look forward to a much brighter future and a more self-confident country.

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