Cameron calls for spending apology
Updated on 24 June 2009
Gordon Brown and David Cameron locked horns over public spending at the first PMQs chaired by new Speaker, John Bercow.
Conservative leader David Cameron repeatedly urged the prime minister to apologise for having wrongly claimed that government capital spending will rise between now and the Olympics.
Cameron said that the Government's own figures showed this was incorrect but Mr Brown was not a "big enough man" to admit it.
But Brown angrily insisted that capital spending had been brought forward because of the recession and accused the Tories of planning 10 per cent cuts in public spending.
Mr Cameron said: "Last week you told the House that capital expenditure will grow until the year of the Olympics.
"The government's own figures show that is just not the case. Will you take this opportunity to correct what you told the House last week."
Mr Brown replied: "Yes. In the building of the Olympics capital investment will rise very substantially.
"I can tell you that capital investment is rising from £29 billion to £37.7 billion and then to £44 billion in 2009-10 and that is to help complete the building of the Olympics."
He added: "Thereafterwards it will fall as a result of decisions that we made."
As the row escalated, the new Speaker made the first of several interventions to calm things down, saying: "There is simply far too much noise. The public doesn't like it and neither do I."
He later said he hoped his third intervention to quieten MPs' jeers would be "third time lucky".
Nick Clegg vs Brown
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg raised recent U-turns on the Gurkhas and MPs' expenses, and asked when Brown would apply the government's "reverse gear" to public spending.
He accused Mr Brown of "dressing up cuts as investment" but the PM told him it was right to invest in homes and jobs at a time of low inflation and interest rates.
