The following is a transcript of PEF Council member Lord Skidelsky’s speech in the House of Lords on 9th January 2020 commenting on the economic direction of the United Kingdom’s Conservative government and the case for introducing a public sector job guarantee as an automatic stabiliser. He argues:
“It is claimed that, thanks to years of austerity, the Chancellor now has the “fiscal space” to boost investment, but the logic of that is all wrong. Trying to balance the budget when the economy was depleted did enormous damage to millions of people; making the economy smaller made the budget more difficult to balance. The result of that has been missed targets, less investment and rising national debt. To say that the nation had to sacrifice itself for 10 years in order to enable the Government to spend more on the health service or infrastructure now is simply terrible fraud.”