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Pre-Budget Report

It is a great privilege to follow the hon. Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Robinson), who speaks with great authority on these matters. I respect everything that he said, and I agree with some of it. We owe a debt of gratitude to Mr. Speaker for granting us this three-hour debate, which was the maximum time that he could grant us. We must consider the scale of the Budget measures announced on Monday—which dwarf anything that I have known in real Budgets over 25 years—and the calamitous state of the public finances that was therein revealed. Given the gravity of the economic situation, our constituents would have found it positively incomprehensible if Parliament had not debated the measures that we are discussing for this brief and inadequate period today.