The hon. Gentleman may not have noticed, but we do not have a fixed-term Parliament. But he raises an important point, because the Prime Minister, quite rightly, desperately wants and needs a mandate. However, he has not dared to go to the electorate to get one and has had to postpone the election twice. He has twice turned away from the people of Britain because he knows that they have turned away from his Government. He lacks a mandate, and that shows in the Queen's Speech.

We should have had a new Parliament, a new programme and a new mandate today. Instead, we have the tail end of an old Government portraying old ideas and determined to drag out their old life to the bitter end. The Queen's Speech lifts the curtain on the general election, which will not—however much the Conservative party may try to persuade the public that it will—be a judgment on the new Prime Minister. Rather, it will be a judgment on the Government over a period of a full 12 years in which the Prime Minister and his Front Bench have been fully and consistently implicated.

We can look at one of two aspects of the Queen's Speech: an affirmation that the Government have been right for the past 12 years and that they intend to continue—a convincing conviction that that is the right way to proceed; alternatively, we could look for a new direction under the new Prime Minister—a new spirit. The question is, continuity or change? The answer is that the Government are confused. They have now been revealed as unable to justify their past and having no clear idea of where they want to go in the future. That split seems to run right through the Cabinet, some members of which support the continuation of the past while others are opposed to it. Some are prepared to tell Mr. Walden on Sunday that they are opposed to it and then say, the following Wednesday, that they are prepared to support it because of their colleagues.

That does not add up to a programme for the 1990s, nor to a justification for what happened in the 1980s. We should not be surprised, because the record of the 1980s and the past 12 years is pretty miserable. The Prime Minister tried to massage the figures in his speech but people know what has happened in the past 12 years. Despite their propaganda, we now clearly see that the Government have brought about no economic miracle. There has been no industrial renaissance. As in the previous three decades, prices have risen ahead of the average for OECD countries; the balance of payments deficit returns to stalk our economy again and again; and Britain has been forced around the back-breaking cycle of boom and bust twice. Wages have continued to rise ahead of inflation faster than those of our competitors, just as they did in the previous 30 years. Despite the Government's promise, inflation has returned to beset us and it must now be tackled in a way that damages our industry and loses jobs.

The Government say that inflation is now going down. Good. They say that it will stay down. We shall wait and see because we have heard that before. If the Government have achieved that, has not it been done at a terrifying price? Throughout the country, today and increasingly in the approaching months, thousands of business men and tens of thousands of their employees are paying with their livelihoods and jobs for the Government's economic mismanagement. That will increase, as all the figures, including those of the Government, now show. We are approaching what will come to be known as the bleak mid-winter of 1991 for lost jobs and lost employment.

However the Prime Minister may like to dodge the fact, our industry has been weakened by two recessions, starved of investment and denied access to the skills that it needs to compete. It is too emaciated to meet the demand which the Government desperately hope will occur around Christmas this year. If that demand occurs as the Government want, our industrial base may fail to meet consumer demand. We know what happens next because we have seen it before. Demand goes up, British industry cannot supply it and imports are sucked in. That results in a balance of trade deficit, the pound comes under pressure and round we go again on the appalling cycle which, decade after decade, has broken the back of British industry and the morale of our people.

Britain now lies exhausted after two Conservative recessions in a single decade, with its infrastructure under-funded, its education system demoralised, its public services in decline and its private sector burdened with debt. The public must now ask, what has changed after 12 years of this Government? Almost nothing has changed. I do not deny some of the changes that the Government have made with respect to the trade union movement. They were necessary, important and should not be undone. But the fundamentals of our economy remain unchanged. Britain has now suffered 40 years of decline under the Conservative and Labour parties. They have shared equally in the government of our country and we have not pulled out of what has happened consistently for 40 years. Those two parties share the responsibility for that and, if they have their chance, it will continue.

The leader of the Labour party spoke about his promises and undertakings for our country, but how are they to be delivered? The Labour party is good at complaining. It complains about under-funding of the health service but will not guarantee a penny more to spend on it. It is rather poor on action. Labour Members complain about under-investment in education but will say not a single word about a commitment to increase that fundamental investment in our education and training system which this nation needs so badly. We often hear about the Labour party's priorities—whatever the subject this week, it is always a priority. The problem with the Labour party is that everything is always a priority, but nothing is ever a commitment.

The Labour party now says that it has changed its mind on Europe. That is not unusual, as it has done so twice each decade for the past 40 years. There is a new solution. Since yesterday, we now understand that the Labour party will accept a single currency, but it attaches a series of conditions to that. If those conditions were attached, could the Leader of the Opposition have signed the text now proposed by the Dutch at Maastricht? The Labour party says that it is in favour of Europe but the conditions that it attaches are such that it could not now sign the deal which we hope the Government will sign in Maastricht later this year. Indeed, it now imposes conditions on the running of European monetary union that are totally irresponsible. Without an independent central bank we cannot have that central rock upon which a firm anti-inflationary European economic policy must be based.

The Government say that they are not prepared to propose solutions on Europe that are unacceptable to the House. The Labour party says that the conditions that it proposes would be unacceptable to the German parliament. I suspect that they would be unacceptable to almost every other parliament.

Britain would be mad to choose either of those two parties. Why should we allow the Government, who are responsible for two recessions in one decade, to take over the continuous economic running of this country? Why should the people of this country entrust the recovery, if it comes, and the next Parliament, into the hands of a Government who have given us two recessions in a single decade? Why should the people trust the Opposition, who have abandoned all their past policies and principles, and refuse to say how they will fund their present ones?