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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

I support Bank of England independence and, like the Chancellor, I am looking at ways to entrench it still further. I enjoyed the New Statesman interview with the hon. Member for Normanton (Ed Balls), in which he described himself as a socialist. He said that the finances of the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport were baffling, and that the Secretary of State for Education and Skills had not handled the Education and Inspections Bill very well. I suggest that he spend more time trying to win friends among those on the Labour Benches than trying to intervene on us. The situation in the NHS is not the fault of the Secretary of State for Health. The fault lies at the Treasury. The Chancellor of the Exchequer provided the money, but he blocked the reform that would have made the money count. NHS productivity has fallen year on year. Three quarters of the money has disappeared in cost pressures. Now we have close to £1 billion of deficit and thousands of job losses. The NHS is not the only thing missing from the Budget. There is not a word on the pensions crisis brought about by the Chancellor’s £5 billion pension tax and his extension of means-testing. I hope that he reads the speech made yesterday by the right hon. Member for North Tyneside, who said in the House:"““I do not think that, when we come to consider a new regime for pensions, we can continue as we have since 1997.””—[Official Report, 27 March 2006; Vol. 444, c. 613.]" Does the Chancellor agree with his former Chief Secretary? We do not know. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire pointed out so powerfully, there was no mention in the Budget speech or the Red Book of the decision to cancel the £200 council tax rebate. My right hon. Friend is right. The Chancellor talks about restoring trust in politics and gives speeches on the subject. How much more dishonest can one get than announcing before an election that pensioners will get a £200 cheque, then withdrawing it without a word of explanation after the election? I guess it is just the Chancellor’s own special way of helping the Prime Minister with his local election campaign. The Chancellor should at least tell Labour councillors what he is up to. This weekend, after the Budget speech, the leader of the Labour group on Lambeth council wrote to a Mr. Patrick McLoughlin of Kennington Park road, London. A copy of the letter has mysteriously fallen into my hands. It comes with a glossy leaflet—it is interesting that the Prime Minister’s picture does not appear on such leaflets any more. Under the heading ““What will Labour do?”” it states:"““We will:""Press the Government to provide more help for pensioners to pay their council tax bills.””" No doubt the leaflets are being pulped as we speak. Labour says one thing in the Chamber and another thing outside. It makes the Liberal Democrats look like amateurs—which is not very difficult with the new leader of the Liberal Democrats. Of course, the Chancellor did mention education. It is striking that hardly a single Labour Member who spoke today mentioned the great pledge to raise state school spending to private school levels. That was supposed to be the centrepiece of the Budget, but where is the timetable? How much will it cost? Over what level is spending to be increased? The Chancellor never told us that the Prime Minister made exactly the same pledge five years ago. There we have it—the first great statement of what a Brown premiership would do, and it turns out to be a reheated broken promise from the high days of the Blair premiership. I have a depressing feeling that this is the shape of things to come.