Luton South MP Gavin Shuker has his say on how Britain’s fragile economy is affecting Luton.
“We are paying down Britain’s debts.” So said David Cameron a couple of months ago. And with the amount of pain that many of Luton’s families are experiencing, you might have assumed he was correct to say so.
The plan to rebuild our crumbling schools has been scrapped. Tax credits for the lowest paid in work will be squeezed; tuition fees for our students will treble; pay rises for our workers have been cancelled. Luton Borough Council is seeing its budget halved, meaning difficult decisions for every service which isn’t required by law.
So here is the curious thing: Britain’s debt isn’t going down. It’s going up - and going up by a lot. This Tory-led government will borrow more in five years than the last Labour government borrowed in thirteen.
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the national debt was £800 billion. It’s now on course to rise to £1.6 trillion.
The deficit - the gap between the money coming in and the money going out each year - is around £120 billion. That’s how much we borrowed this year. It’s almost exactly the same amount as we borrowed last year, and that we are projected to borrow next year as well.
The polls show that, depending on how you frame the question, only between 8% and 12% realise the national debt is rising.
So, what to do? Well first, we need to realise that without growth in the economy, we’ll never get the economy back into balance. By cutting spending too far and too fast, this government has choked off the recovery.
David Cameron needs to start being straight with the British people. For short term political reasons he’s chosen to mislead us about the path of rising debt we are on. It would be better to be honest, so we can finally talk about the most pressing question of all - how do we get growth kick-started, and people back into work.”