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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

I remind the House of my interest that is recorded in the register. My right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) has already told the House that a Budget cheered on the day quickly loses its shine. However, I cannot recall a Budget that has disintegrated quite as rapidly as this one. The Chancellor’s speech yesterday, which I understand was a record in terms of time, was itself a guide. He seemed quite unaware of the fact that after the speech anybody outside the House could go on to the web, turn up pages 208-09 of the Red Book and discover that, although they were being offered a tax cut next year of £8 billion, £7 billion and other bits and pieces would be taken away from them. It is a strange Chancellor who does not understand that our constituents, who are already faced with an increase in air passenger duty, who will be faced in October with significant increases in fuel duty, and who will be faced this year and next year with council tax increases in the order of 5 per cent., will not suddenly fall over in gratitude at a reduction of merely 2p. There are a number of tables in the Red Book, and if the Chancellor is to claim the credit for cutting tax for a significant number of people, it would have been more honest if he had published in the Red Book the table that is now beginning to emerge, and shown exactly who the winners and losers in that exercise would be. Given that the Financial Secretary is going to the trouble of making our statistics service more independent, perhaps the new statistics board could undertake to ensure that the Red Book at next year’s Budget is accompanied by a proper independent assessment of who the winners and losers are by category, so that the Chancellor will be unable to throw up smoke and mirrors in the immediate aftermath of the Budget.