---

Finance Bill

The hon. Member for Newport, East (Jessica Morden) gave an extremely attractive maiden speech that was very competently delivered. We learned a lot about Newport—or I certainly did, as I did not know much about it before. Many Members on both sides of the House will appreciate the hon. Lady’s kind words of tribute to her predecessor, Alan Howarth. It was a model of a maiden speech that augurs well for a new parliamentary career, and I know that we would all want to welcome her to that. My hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) made an extremely well informed speech about the Bill that made me feel that I should try once again to get on to the Finance Bill Committee, because it sounds as though we will have some very interesting subjects to discuss. Clearly, he could not give such a thorough account of the Bill’s strengths and weaknesses and at the same time say much about macro-economics. However, that does not mean that there is not a lot that needs to be said about macro-economics, not least because the Government—I am afraid that the Paymaster General is very much in the model of her boss in this matter—continue to take a consistently self-righteous, self-congratulatory and complacent tone in everything that they say on the subject. That is disgracefully reflected in the way in which the Red Book is drafted. The Red Book used to be regarded as something that was drafted as dispassionately as possible from a party political point of view by Treasury officials, but—I said this last year but I shall say it again as it remains true—it has increasingly become a work of political propaganda in which everything that happened before 1997 was terrible and everything that has happened since is absolutely brilliant. It is extremely difficult to find some of the essential facts that one needs because those facts, which are not flattering to the Government’s performance, and any problems are skated over. Against that background, it is important to use this debate to redress the balance—albeit slightly, because that is all that one can do in a very short space of time.