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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I want to respond to the hon. Members who have made contributions to the debate, and who have been in here for longer than he has. We are able partly to pay for the package by abolishing the 10p starting rate, but by taking action to increase the child tax credit, the working tax credit and pensioner allowances, we are able to target the resources more directly on our three priorities: families with children, pensioners and work incentives. Despite what the hon. Members for Tatton and for Wycombe and others have said, the results of the package of reforms are that a single-earner family with two children on median earnings—about £27,000—will be £500 a year better off by 2009; four fifths of families will be better off or see no change; households with children in the poorest fifth of the population will be £350 a year better off, on average; and 6.4 million households in the bottom half of the income brackets will gain an average of £4 a week. The hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) has an established interest in the independence of statistics, which he mentioned today. I wish to make sure that he has seen on page 42 of the Red Book the box headed ““Independence for statistics””, which covers the reforms that we are making. It also confirms that the budget for the next five years for the statistics board and the statistics system will be £1.2 billion. That will allow the new board to be established and to deliver on its new functions, as well as deliver a high-quality census in 2011. The hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring) voiced concerns about the business taxation changes and in particular about the competitiveness of our rates and regimes with those of other countries. I should have thought that they would welcome the changes that the Chancellor announced yesterday. By cutting the main corporation tax rate from April next year from 30p to 28p, the rate in the UK will be lower than those in America, Germany, France, Japan and all our major competitor countries.