I appreciate the optimistic tone of the previous speech. We can support the Conservative motion today, but I want to concentrate, actually, upon the Labour amendments, in particular amendment 3, because this is a mantra that we hear in many debates in this place, about this so-called damaging policy of austerity. Well, what is austerity in current circumstances? The dictionary defines the word as ‘sternness or severity of manner or attitude’, much like the speech we heard from Rhianon Passmore earlier on, perhaps—I’m not commenting on the content of it, but I mean the style of delivery. But all it means, actually, in this context—austerity is living within your means. It’s something that we all have to do in private life and yet that is what the current Chancellor of the Exchequer is not doing, because between April and August this year, we’ve run up a budget deficit of £33.8 billion against a forecast in March for the entire year of £55.5 billion. The Chancellor has missed his target for spending reductions by a very significant margin. In effect, we are overspending by £6.5 billion per month—that’s £80 billion a year and that is equivalent to 5 per cent of our national income. It’s quite clear that that can’t continue indefinitely.

There was a time, of course, when Labour Governments were committed to a balanced budget. The Blair administration, between 1997 and 2001, was a model of fiscal prudence, because, of course, they were following the plans of Kenneth Clarke in the previous Government. But after the 2001 general election, of course, the brakes were removed from the train and the foot was placed firmly on the accelerator, and instead of running surpluses on the current account, which is what happened in those years, everything went rapidly into reverse.