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Amendment of the law

We have had a fascinating debate this afternoon, with a number of thoughtful contributions. I should like to highlight one or two of them. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning) made some important points about the role of savings in our society and the falling savings ratio. She also made a point that she made last year, and I feel that I must correct her again. She claimed to have been born in 1946, but I think that she is misleading the House. She must have transposed those last two numbers. She made that claim in her very valuable speech last year, and she has done it again today. I do wish that she would stop doing it. My hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon) made a thoughtful speech in which he highlighted three requirements for the Budget. He said that it should help the hardest hit, rebalance the economy and address the public finances. He detailed how this Budget and this Government had failed on all three fronts. In particular, he highlighted the schemes that the Government had announced and re-announced, and noted how little they had achieved. The hon. Members for Crawley (Laura Moffatt) and for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) highlighted housing issues and the hon. Member for Northampton, North particularly addressed issues connected with the schemes. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) expressed his excitement about the Budget's green proposals, although I think most of them were based on pre-publicity rather than what is actually deliverable. Even the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change said relatively little about the green proposals, most of which were, like the electric car proposal and as I said, more about gaining publicity beforehand than any kind of delivery. The hon. Member for Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr (Adam Price) began his speech—an excellent speech, I have to say—by stating that the Government had run out of self-belief. He then made a persuasive case to show that the Government were entirely justified in running out of self-belief. My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) raised a number of important constituency issues. As he has done with some tenacity, he detailed the increasing unemployment levels in Wellingborough—something that the Prime Minister, thanks to my hon. Friend's many interventions, also follows very closely. The hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir) highlighted some of the Budget's environmental issues, while my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) revealed how he sat in stunned silence during the Budget speech. If my hon. Friend's stunned silence demonstrates anything, it underlines the magnitude of the difficulties this country faces. It would be remiss of me if I failed to say a few words about the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. He began by criticising my hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor for spending most of his speech criticising his opponents, and then proceeded to deliver a speech almost entirely devoted to criticising his opponents. I have to say that his speech appeared to be a rehearsal, or perhaps an audition, for one day being shadow Chancellor. I am not sure whether that is his aspiration.