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Finance Bill

Given that the hon. Lady says that I should refer to the speech that she made in 2007, she might wish to read the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond), in which he set out very clearly why we did not vote on last year's amendments. The hon. Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley), who spoke about the damage that the Budget will cause to the licensed trade, echoed the remarks made by the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in the Morning Advertiser—until, of course, he had to recant and say that his comments did not represent his views. Clearly, the call from No. 10 that kept the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Ms Smith) on the Government team also worked in his case. My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) talked about a Budget without a theme and expressed the view that perhaps the Government held off on increasing fuel duties because they understood that taxes were starting to be painful. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley) spoke about the challenges posed in this Budget to small businesses and the increase in the rate of taxation for small companies. The speech by the hon. Member for Wirral, West (Stephen Hesford) was rather like that of the hon. Member for Taunton, except that there was no style and no substance. The hon. Member for Dundee, East (Stewart Hosie) highlighted the fact that there was no room for manoeuvre in this Budget—a message that we have been hammering out for the past few months. I am pleased to find that he is on board on that. The right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher) gave a remarkable shopping list of tax increases that demonstrated exactly why he could not find the supporters to stand against the Prime Minister for the leadership of the Labour party. My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) again highlighted the fact that no Labour Members could explain the changes announced in last year's Budget leading to 5.3 million households losing out. The hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) discussed environmental taxes. Conservative Members believe that new revenues raised from environmental taxes should be used to reduce the burden of taxation on families, unlike the appalling measures put forward by this Government, who put a green gloss on environmental taxes. My hon. Friends the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway) and for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) also highlighted the issue of people who have lost out as a consequence of the abolition of the 10p rate. The focus of today's debate has been on the announcements made not by this Chancellor but by his predecessor in last year's Budget. The pitfalls of scrapping the 10p rate were pointed out last year, but the argument has gathered momentum as people have started to realise its impact. Members in all parts of the House will have had letters and e-mails from constituents about it. It has cropped up on doorsteps time and again over the past few weeks, as those on low incomes who do not qualify for or do not take up tax and pension credits work out that they are worse off as a consequence of scrapping the 10p rate. A constituent who wrote to me last week told me that she earns £15,000 a year and works for only 30 hours a week so as to help to look after her mother. She asked me to raise in Parliament what she felt was the unfairness of the new income tax rates for people such as herself who have contributed into the system for all their working lives only to be let down by the Government once again—a view that many thousands of people up and down the country have expressed over the past few months. Hard-working people on low incomes feel penalised by this measure. It is no wonder that 70 Labour MPs have signed early-day motions critical of the scrapping of the 10p rate and that Parliamentary Private Secretaries and ex-Ministers are queuing up to criticise it, with the exception of the Prime Minister's PPS—the only PPS who was wheeled into the Chamber to support the scrapping of the 10p rate.