26 September 2008
Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Philip Hammond has slammed Gordon Brown for labelling Conservative Party leader David Cameron a novice.
In his speech to the Labour Party conference in Manchester on September 23, the prime minister said he was the man to steer the country through tough economic times and it was 'no time for a novice' — widely interpreted to refer to Cameron and his youthful shadow chancellor George Osborne.
But Hammond said that was 'pathetic'. He told Public Finance: 'What the country needs is change, and it's very clear that Gordon Brown and the Labour Party can't provide that.
'They've been in office for 11 years, [Brown] was the man who presided over the economy for ten years, he's presided over the management of the economy that's delivered us to where we are now — less well prepared than almost every other advanced country.'
The Conservatives are set to reveal more details of their economic policy at their own conference in Birmingham next week. Hammond confirmed that Osborne would set out details of the Tories' 'fiscal responsibility framework' in his keynote speech on September 29.
Brown's two fiscal rules had not acted as an adequate curb on government spending, Hammond said — something the Tories aim to put right. 'What George Osborne will be announcing is a different approach to constraining governments throughout the [economic] cycle so there's an effective constraint upon us in the good years as well as the bad years.'
Hammond added that the Conservatives wanted to get public debt to a prudent level, 'as quickly as we can'. The mantra of sharing the proceeds of economic growth meant ensuring public spending grows at a slower rate than the economy over the course of a cycle.
'What that means is at the end of each economic cycle government is taking a smaller percentage of the total cake than it was at the beginning,' Hammond explained, leading to either a reduction in borrowing, a package of tax cuts or a combination of the two.
PFsep2008
