I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn) is not here, because I remember that during the IMF Crisis we had to find a way of financing the beginning of the BNOC's budget.
The right hon. Gentleman has already been upbraided by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and reminded of the fact that he introduced swingeing capital cuts in the Health Service in the aftermath of the IMF Crisis and the Budgets that followed.
The 1960s and 1970s- if we except the IMF Crisis which hit the Opposition when they were in government-had seen a steady growth of about 3·5 per cent.
Many of the hospitals currently being built by this Government, and the many which have already been completed, were taken out of the Labour Government's programme during the IMF Crisis 10 years ago.
From its inception in 1974 to the IMF Crisis of 1976, the Labour Government had boosted current public expenditure by a staggering 17 per cent.
By 1992 I shall have caught up on the years of neglect of motorway and trunk road maintenance, which was initiated largely by the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) after the IMF Crisis.
That was why we had the IMF Crisis, and why the last Labour Government were forced to cut public housing investment by one third in their last two years in office.
That was important, given the IMF Crisis at the time.
That was a lesson that we did not learn in the previous Labour Government, which is why we ended up with the IMF Crisis; we thought that we did not have to take the real hit, but we did - and by "we" I mean all of us have to take it.
Having paid tribute to the Tory Government's decision, perhaps I can reveal that for six years as Welsh Secretary I battled for the Labour Government to meet their commitments, despite the difficulties of the IMF Crisis.
He has always been willing to talk to my students about the 1976 IMF Crisis when he became a prime historical exhibit while working in No.
The litany of post-war crises, which, as a professional historian, I write about from time to time - the sterling devaluations of 1949 and 1967, the Suez affair of 1956, the IMF Crisis of 1976 and Black Wednesday in 1992 - seem mere blips on the radar screen in comparison.