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Finance Bill

They do not. In the course of the debate on this Bill—in the Committee of the whole House and in the Public Bill Committee—the hon. Gentleman will discover the alternative solutions that we propose on fuel duty, corporate taxes and so on, which will explain how we would fill that gap. We are certainly not making irresponsible pledges, as I have made clear to the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer). This goes beyond the extra taxes that will hit ordinary families. The public capital investment programme will also be halved over the next five years. I ask the House to listen to what the Chief Secretary said in last year's Second Reading debate:""Previous Governments often slashed capital investment when economic pressures grew. We are protecting it".—[Official Report, 21 April 2008; Vol. 474, c. 1064.]" We truly have moved through the looking glass if halving a budget can now be described as protecting it. This is a dishonest Budget that is all about protecting the jobs of the few on the Treasury Bench rather than the many in the British economy—a crowd-pleasing, economy-damaging tax on the rich this side of an election, with a hidden tax bombshell targeted at the many timed to go off after an election.