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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

I am grateful for that intervention. The vision of removing all those on low pay—I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) suggested the figure of £15,000—from the labyrinthine attentions of the tax credit system, in which half the payments made are wrong and are dragged back from those who have least, is an attractive one. I doubt whether the time frame of five years or one Parliament that my hon. Friend suggested can be met, but I agree with him that when the Conservatives return to power in 2009 or 2010, over the following 15 or 20 years we will see those on low pay removed from that system, a transformation of people’s economic activity and, therefore, an eventual increase in the tax take. We could fulfil the vision, which my hon. Friend did not entirely detail, of more investment in public services, while lifting the low paid out of paying tax. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr. Blackman-Woods) is bouncing up and down; does she want to intervene?