David Davis speech at Centre for Policy Studies

David Davis speech at Centre for Policy Studies; ENGLAND: London: Moorgate: Chartered Accountants Hall: INT David Davis MP (Conservative, Haltemprice and Howden) along to podium on stage David Davis MP (Conservative, Haltemprice and Howden) speech SOT **CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY ** - There is one, single policy issue that dominates British politics today. / It is the economy. / It is the preeminent issue that determines the welfare of British citizens. / Whether they have a job, how well paid they are in that job, what taxes they have to pay, what healthcare and pensions they get, how good their children's education will be, all of this depends on the health of the economy. / And the health of that economy is pretty dire./ We are making heavy weather of deficit reduction. The Government borrowed £3.4bn more in July than in the same month last year. / Growth prospects look poor. Quite simply we are bumping along the bottom. / And I say that even though I suspect that the economic figures are slightly overstating the gloom at the moment, and that we are likely to get a correction. It does not matter whether the growth figures are minus half a percent, zero, or plus half a percent: they are all terrible. / Of course, the Chancellor can quite properly point to reasons beyond his control. / The spectacular debt overhang that he inherited from a fiscally incontinent Labour government. / The depression of our export market by the incompetent and futile policies of the Euro zone powers. / The devastating impact on our economy of the bank failures. He is right to point these out. / But an alibi is not a policy. / There is a risk that by focusing on parcelling out blame, we accept our circumstances with too much fatalism. / In economics, to understand should not be to excuse. / The parlous circumstances should not be an excuse for inaction, but rather a spur to dramatic action. / There are those who think that our comparative decline is inevitable. / They think t...