If the Prime Minister brings back a settlement from the Dublin talks, even if it is not as much as has been forecast by every pundit in the United Kingdom, I shall watch the faces of Opposition Members, who will be hard put to raise a smile, because the impression I get is that the anti-Marketeers of many years' standing are using Our Present Fiscal Crisis as a lever to bring the United Kingdom out of the Community.

There is now a major tax revolt, a Fiscal Crisis, because the Government lack resources and have a deficit equivalent to 10 per cent.

No one is proposing the dismantlement of the welfare state, but there is a growing realization that the structure is in urgent need of pruning and reform … Across Western Europe social security systems are now either grappling with Fiscal Crisis or being stretched to the danger point.

The Fiscal Crisis comes from that, not from the imposition of rates on small firms.

Even I am astonished at how the right hon. and learned Gentleman can turn a Fiscal Crisis into a political drama.

The Fiscal Crisis point has now been reached.

I commend to the Minister, if I can catch his eye, a work entitled "The Fiscal Crisis in the United Kingdom" by Professor Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan of Nuffield college, Oxford.

I disagree with the Leader of the Opposition: I do not believe that there is a Fiscal Crisis, but there is a fiscal deficit problem that needs to be addressed.

As I said, whatever party is in office after the next election - this is my key point - it will probably find itself having to deal with a Fiscal Crisis early in the next Parliament.

It is unlikely to recover quickly because it has been accompanied by a fall in personal consumer demand, crushed by the level of household debt, and an impending fall in public demand because of the Fiscal Crisis and mounting debts.

The difference between the position of the present Government and the Thatcher Government in the early 1980s is that the Thatcher Government had inherited a Fiscal Crisis from their predecessor, and Sir Geoffrey Howe made determined efforts to get it under control and to get budget deficits and public borrowing requirements on a downward path, whereas this Government have presided over a steady growth in the level of public debt and are belatedly, after many years of warning, finally realising that they have to address that.

The country faces a Fiscal Crisis, yet all the anchors of fiscal policy have been cut loose.

The next defence review must place the armed forces on a sustainable footing and ensure that, once the Fiscal Crisis is over, we are ready to make the kind of investment that the brave men and women who serve in them deserve and which is necessary for the future security and prosperity of our country.

Let me return to the issue of how this Government operate: they are not thinking about what is best for the country; they are not thinking about addressing the Fiscal Crisis that we face; the way they operate is all about political positioning and trying to damage their opponents.

] I am asked to name a country that has not applied a fiscal stimulus - Ireland and Iceland, which are suitable comparisons for a country that has been governed by new Labour for the past 12 years and had an Acute Fiscal Crisis before the dip even started.

Is it not now clear that even if the Treasury Ministers recognise the scale of the Fiscal Crisis, they are too weak to do anything about it?

A poll in yesterday'sFinancial Times found that a Fiscal Crisis was the biggest single risk facing the British economy at the moment.

That is the most systematically reckless, cynical and dishonest strategy for dealing with a Fiscal Crisis that anyone in the House will be able to recall.

Nearly half the economists polled by theFinancial Times in a new year study cited the Fiscal Crisis as a key threat to the economy.

This debate has been a good deal less emotional than bits of the one that I heard on Tuesday, in whichthe right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) among others proclaimed that the Fiscal Crisis was comparable to the crisis in 1940.

It looks as though the higher education and training budget has proved to be one of the first and worst victims of the Fiscal Crisis that the Government have created.

How can the cost of half a billion pounds, which is double the cost of the last census, be justified at this time of Fiscal Crisis?

FT went on to say that, "the only national party that has publicly come to terms with the scale of the Fiscal Crisis is the Liberal Democrats".

This Bill, if we allow it to go through in its present form, will mean increases in taxation or cuts in services or both, and that at a time when we are already going to get increases in taxes or cuts in services or both to deal with the nation's Fiscal Crisis.

I am afraid that the Secretary of State and his predecessors, but most of all the Prime Minister, who has been either Prime Minister or Chancellor throughout that period, have to bear the responsibility for this disaster for defence-that is what it is-and reconcile it with the Worst Fiscal Crisis for the Government since the Invergordon mutiny.

I am disappointed that the Government have not proposed ways to deal with the Fiscal Crisis that we face and to ensure that people have a say and a stake in the process.

We cannot expect to tackle the Fiscal Crisis without adequate reform of our public services, which will need to demonstrate value for money.

The main elements of the document-and the PBR-are a forecast that carries very little credibility, a plan to deal with the Fiscal Crisis, which nobody believes, and proposals for a Fiscal Responsibility Act to replace the shattered fiscal rules.

It is about money: the question is whether we allow this single Fiscal Crisis to relegate the UK for all time.

I took over during a comparatively Minor Fiscal Crisis, albeit an important one: £50 billion was the annual deficit figure that frightened me when I became Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Such capabilities take decades to create and will take decades to re-create if we give them up now in the face of a one-off Fiscal Crisis.

I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced in the emergency Budget, even though the focus was inevitably on averting a Fiscal Crisis, two measures that will support that investment.

Secondly, in the context of last week's Budget, in which the Chancellor set out the scale of the Fiscal Crisis bequeathed us by the previous Government-a crisis that means that of every £4 of public expenditure, £1 is borrowed-I want to make it clear why our coalition Government stand four-square behind our commitment to the world's poorest people, and why we will increase our expenditure on international development to 0.

That is even more important in the Current Fiscal Crisis.

The Bill provides for many of the key measures in the emergency Budget, which was needed to address the Fiscal Crisis that we face in our country and get Britain growing.

My hon. Friend is right to say that as well as having to deal with a Fiscal Crisis-which has been handed over to us by the Labour party-there is also a social crisis: social mobility has gone down; inequality has gone up; the gap between rich and poor has increased; and child poverty has increased by 100,000 since 2004 alone.

No decisions have been made as yet about future fare increases, but he correctly identifies that, as a result of the spending review precipitated by the Fiscal Crisis that we have inherited, there may have to be a trade-off between fares and continuing vital investment in our railway.

We have to deal with the Fiscal Crisis facing this country and prioritise investment in matters that will support economic growth and the decarbonisation of the economy.

At a time of Fiscal Crisis, should PFI projects be exempt from contributing to the public purse?

Ultimately, we need to remember that we are all here because we are convinced of the need for a television channel broadcasting in Welsh and feel that, whatever settlement is made as a result of today's announcements, it should be a long-term settlement, not a short-term response to a Current Fiscal Crisis.

Are we supposed to cut apprenticeships, which we are increasing by 50,000, or is it just a general belief that public spending can rise, from the party that brought us the Fiscal Crisis that we are having to tackle?

It does families and everyone else in this country no good if we do not get to grips with the Fiscal Crisis.

Again, that is unfortunately another melancholy consequence of the Fiscal Crisis that we face.

A slower process would have been not only unfair to prospective students and their families but irresponsible, because of the need to tackle the Fiscal Crisis that the previous Government left behind.

It ill behoves a serious party of government to come to the House, as those on the Labour Front Bench did today, and show no recognition of its part in causing This Fiscal Crisis.

Councils face difficult decisions owing to a Fiscal Crisis that was not of their making or of ours.

Members will be aware of that volatility, which occurred after the 2007 Fiscal Crisis.

I hope the hon. Lady will accept that the Government whom she supported left behind a Fiscal Crisis.

I will move on to that stage of the argument in a moment, but let me just explain to the hon. Gentleman why this measure, which is not mine but that of the report commissioned by the Government whom he supported, is very straightforward, simple and absolutely the right way to tackle the challenge of financing higher education at a time of Fiscal Crisis.

I hope noble Lords understand the very important distinction between a Fiscal Crisis, which has hit a number of countries that are members of the eurozone and have the euro currency, and a crisis for the euro itself.

The figure is calculated like this: if we implemented it, we would be in a Fiscal Crisis.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the graduate tax favoured by the Labour leader would make the Fiscal Crisis that we have inherited far worse.

We need to earn our way out of the Fiscal Crisis, the massive over-borrowing and the large deficits.

7% and the ring-fencing of development aid in the context of the so-called Fiscal Crisis.

The main things that changed are the Fiscal Crisis that we have inherited and the need to restructure our forces in the post-Afghanistan era.

Clear limits have to be set by the UK Treasury, as the noble Baroness readily acknowledges, otherwise the problem can get out of control, as happened in Spain with the degree of devolution of borrowing powers to the autonomia and the difficulty of the Spanish federal Government in dealing with Their Fiscal Crisis.

Our reforms ensure that students will continue to get well-funded higher education, while at the same time - we make no apology for this - saving money for the Exchequer, because of the Fiscal Crisis that we inherited from the previous Government.

The Government's Fiscal Crisis is of long standing.

What those countries have done to deal with Their Fiscal Crisis - I am not saying we should follow it, but we have to remember that their deficits are better than ours at the moment - is to make swingeing cuts to public spending in the form of benefits.

I think that they have all left the country with a Fiscal Crisis, so let us make sure that history does not repeat itself.

However, it is not fair to argue that welfare benefits cannot be excluded from the work that we have been doing in order to respond to Our Fiscal Crisis.

That plan restored stability in a Fiscal Crisis, but it was also designed to address the deep-seated problems of unsustainable spending, uncompetitive taxes and unreformed public services for which there are no quick fixes.

When we first started, the argument from the Opposition was that the attempt to deal with the Fiscal Crisis would result in mass unemployment.

People will remember the Fiscal Crisis facing this country five years ago: a deficit that stood at more than 10% of our national income; a Government borrowing £1 in every £4 they spent; a Treasury whose departing Chief Secretary left a note saying simply that there was no money left; a country described by international bond investors as sitting on the financial equivalent of a bed of nitro-glycerine; and a British economy whose ability to pay its way was questioned in the world.

Their own audit of Scotland's public finances confirms that they would have struggled from the start with a Fiscal Crisis under the burden of the highest budget deficit in the western world.

They would have plunged that new country into a Fiscal Crisis the likes of which few western countries have ever seen.

We understand that if we do not control spending, we will have a Fiscal Crisis.