---

Finance Bill

I am not sure that taking more money out of people's pockets would be particularly sensible at this point. The point about the cuts is that the Government rightly backed fiscal stimulus. Our view is that the recession was so deep that monetary policy was not enough. We back the fiscal stimulus, in principle, although there are issues about the VAT cut. We have seen the Prime Minister strut the world stage talking about fiscal stimulus, not least with President Obama at the ExCel centre. However, the state of Maryland, population 5 million, will have £2 billion extra in fiscal stimulus to spend in 2010, while in Australia the state of Victoria will have 8 billion Australian dollars over the same period. It seems extraordinary that even following their own rhetoric, this Government are prepared to cut public expenditure, in the teeth of a recession, when all the serious commentators say that we will still be in negative growth next year.