the Tories are cynically using the Crisis in Our Public Finances as an excuse for their ideological mission to end the welfare state.

No; the Tories are cynically using the Crisis in Our Public Finances as an excuse for their ideological mission to end the welfare state.

The accusation, which is never quite openly made, is that somehow we are working towards a Crisis in Our Public Finances and that it will all end in grief.

All the indications are that the Secretary of State faces another bruising battle with the Chancellor, who himself faces a funding Crisis in the Public Finances entirely of his own making.

It will go into the Chancellor's depleted coffers to help tackle the growing economic Crisis in the Public Finances.

I am convinced that we must maintain our global role, in which case the defence review must nurse us through the current Crisis in the Public Finances.

Selling the family silver will not solve the Crisis in the Public Finances.

At a time of Crisis in the Public Finances, we need leadership that will rise to the occasion.

BNP Paribas says: "The UK's public finances are in such a poor state that delay could lead to a loss of confidence, a downgrade of the UK credit rating and a Crisis in the Public Finances".

The blame for the Crisis in Our Public Finances lies squarely with Mr Brown, and begs the question that if our public finances were in such disarray in July 2008, thanks to him, why did the Government not introduce this paltry specimen of legislation then instead of now?

Given the Crisis in the Public Finances, what do we have from the Government?

The context and backdrop for this year's St. David's day debate is, of course, the Crisis in Our Public Finances.

Because of the Crisis in the Public Finances, all parts of Government face great pressure to find savings.

We debate this Bill in the context of a Crisis in Our Public Finances, yet we do not see the two right hon. Members most responsible for that here: the shadow Chancellor and the right honourable-and absent-Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown).

However, the essential problem-I am sorry to have to keep coming back to this central point-is that we have a Crisis in the Public Finances.

I make no claim that everything that disabled people will need is zero rated, however, and I come back to the point I made in earlier debates: the fact is that we face a Crisis in the Public Finances.

However, she will appreciate that, as I said previously, the Crisis in the Public Finances that we have inherited means that I cannot give guarantees on additional funding from central Government at the moment.

I turn now to the third element of Government policy that is relevant to the matters under consideration: delivering additional capacity, where that can be reconciled with our commitment to address the Crisis in the Public Finances that we inherited from the previous Government.

There is the seriousness of the Crisis in Our Public Finances that we inherited from the Opposition; I have to say that it is disappointing not to see more of the people responsible for the crisis here this evening.

The coalition is committed to fairness in rail fares, but the reality is that the Crisis in the Public Finances means that we might have to take some difficult decisions on fares, as in other areas.

It gives us no pleasure at all, but the truth is that we have inherited from Labour an historic Crisis in Our Public Finances.

We hope that we will be able to fund this scheme, but at the moment the deficit-the significant Crisis in the Public Finances-that we have inherited means that we cannot take forward all the good schemes that are on the table.

I had hoped that the shadow Minister would recognise that it is a great result that we have been able to save Crossrail despite the Crisis in the Public Finances.

However the Crisis in the Public Finances means that all councils face difficult choices on how they use limited capital budgets.

In conclusion, it is clear that the coalition will face difficult decisions if we are to address the Crisis in the Public Finances that we have inherited and get our economy back on track.

The Crisis in the Public Finances puts significant constraints on the funding available but, as I said earlier, the Chancellor has clearly accepted that transport infrastructure projects can often yield high value for money for taxpayers.

I am sure that he will agree that decisions will have to be based on affordability, given the Crisis in the Public Finances that we inherited from our predecessors.

Despite the Crisis in the Public Finances, the Chancellor has prioritised rail, and £18 billion will be invested in rail capital projects during the spending review period.

Despite the Crisis in the Public Finances, the Government have secured investment of more than £18 billion in rail capital projects, including Thameslink and Crossrail, which will deliver major benefits to the south-east as well as to the national economy.

On the contrary, despite a Crisis in the Public Finances as grave as any that this country has faced in its peacetime history, the coalition is investing more than £30 billion in road, rail and local transport schemes throughout Britain over the next four years, and that includes the most extensive programme of rail upgrades in modern history, to which was recently added the Ordsall Chord scheme, which was welcomed by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington.

Given that we face a Crisis in the Public Finances, and given that even the previous Government had planned £14 billion of saving, how does one best deliver those in a departmental budget which I do not think any of the three parties represented in the House said could be exempted from reductions?

We note also that even in this time of financial Crisis in the Public Finances, it is making additional spending commitments.

Because of the Crisis in the Public Finances that we inherited, we have taken a range of measures to provide credibility and to get our deficit down.

That is what caused the Crisis in Public Finances.

As a generation, a Parliament and a Government, we face, and have to deal with, the most massive Crisis in Our Public Finances.

We have a structural Crisis in the Public Finances - in pensions, in welfare, in health and in debt interest.

Labour still seems to be in complete denial about the Crisis in Public Finances that we inherited in 2010 owing to failures by the Government whom the hon. Gentleman supported in managing public finances.

The shadow Minister could have come to the House, in a statesmanlike way, and acknowledged that there was a serious Crisis in the Public Finances that the previous Government made a considerable contribution to creating; that the Government faced a difficult task; that the four-block formula was widely discredited; that for 13 years under Labour council tax spiralled in areas such as mine, more than doubling and creating hardship for those on low wages and the elderly; and that for 13 years MPs for rural areas tried to persuade Ministers that the four-block formula did not capture need properly.

It may have escaped the hon. Gentleman's notice for the purposes of this debate that the present Government and our predecessors, the coalition Government, have had to confront a very serious Crisis in Our Public Finances on behalf of us all, but on behalf in particular of the young of this country, whose debts these are not and who did not make the decisions and are not responsible for incurring them, but who have entered a society and an economy mired in debt.