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AMENDMENT OF THE LAW

I suspect that the figure would be about 42 per cent., if not slightly higher. I am sure that was the figure the hon. Gentleman had in mind. I have another general concern about the Chancellor’s record—the unreformed state of our public services. The real losers now and in the future will be the impoverished, the vulnerable and the voiceless. The question that faces all of us in the political world is how to manage an ever larger state, which within the next few years will gobble up £680 billion and rising. Whether health care, law and order, education or security, the public services are in something of a mess—although not for the want of significant expenditure over the past six or seven years. Many of the Government’s more recent NHS reforms are to be welcomed, even though, to a large extent, they merely re-establish the position before 1997. My party has started a campaign to say ““No”” to what are regarded as NHS cuts, although we all appreciate that they are not actual cuts and that ever more money is being spent on the NHS—albeit at a decelerating rate. The Government used similar tactics to criticise the Conservatives during the general election two years ago. However, we need to consider not just tactical benefits; we need greater strategic insight on the better running of health care. We have a stark choice in health care. The Budget was supposed to be a Budget for the NHS. Perhaps that will be more apparent in the Finance Bill and beyond. We need to support local decision making. I want the empowerment of primary care trusts and foundation hospitals. It is beholden on everyone who wants a locally oriented health service not to make cheap political points about postcode lotteries. Nothing will guarantee firmer, more inflexible centralised control of our public services than campaigns on those lines. I should have liked more vision, insight and political courage from the Chancellor. In the Government’s first two terms he had an enormous parliamentary majority and, in the early years at least, limitless public good will to bring about some of the fundamental reforms required in the public services. I fear that opportunity has been wasted. We have an increasing number of supplicants of the state. One of the more shocking elements of that was the inadvertent revelation from the Paymaster General at the last Treasury Question Time that the parents of more than 10,000 children in the constituency of the shadow Paymaster General, my hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois), were in receipt of child tax credits. That is a relatively prosperous, middle-class, southern English constituency. None the less, even in that sort of constituency, a five-figure number of children are getting tax credits. As a backdrop to the changes in the income tax regime that were announced today, there will be even more reliance on child tax credits and working tax credits for those who are paid at the lowest levels, who will no longer benefit from a 10 per cent. tax band.