---

Finance Bill

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's suggestion, but I do not aspire to that office—certainly not in the next four or five years, anyway! I do know, however, that it is impossible to end boom and bust. It is part of the capitalist psyche. It is what happens. It is the price that we pay for a free market. It is what delivers the good times. The bad times are essential to blow off the froth and ensure that the good things are delivered. I do not know how the Prime Minister was able to believe that he could end boom and bust. There have been spectacular busts in the past, such as the South Sea bubble and the Wall street crash, although I accept that the current bust is probably more extreme than we could possibly have expected. The business of the sub-prime mortgages, the poor regulation of banks by both the British and the Americans, and the British over-indebtedness, which has played its own part in contributing to the world economic catastrophe, have combined to make what was always going to be a bust a much sharper bust than it might otherwise have been. Opening the debate, the Chief Secretary spoke in what I felt were uncharacteristically shrill tones of all the dreadful things that would happen if a Conservative Government came to power, and extolled the virtues of spending money for its own sake. It is the easiest thing in the world to spend money that one does not have. It is easy to say "I would like a better car; I would like a bigger house; I would like nicer clothes; I would like more holidays," but if I do not have the money to buy those things, I do not have them. The tragedy is that for the last eight years or so, we have been spending money that we do not have on things that we cannot afford. That is why we are in such a difficult position now. The Government's response in the Finance Bill is to make changes that, in my view, threaten Britain's international competitiveness, and that worries me. I am currently engaged in an interesting discussion with the editor of The Mail On Sunday, who criticised my decision to take my Select Committee for what he believed to have been four agreeable days in Dubai. Actually, it was not four agreeable days in Dubai; it was 23 hours in Dubai, a day and a half in Abu Dhabi, and a day and a half in Riyadh and Saudi Arabia. To see the scale of what is happening even in Dubai, where the froth has blown off the bubble, the even bigger scale of what is happening in Abu Dhabi and the amazing transformation of the Saudi Arabian economy is to understand the scale of the challenge that we face. This is not just happening in India, China and among our other economic competitors such as the United States and countries in mainland Europe; it is happening in Saudi Arabia as well. Five years ago, Saudi Arabia ranked 65th in the World Bank's list of the best places in which to do business. Now, as a result of conscious policy making, it ranks 16th. We still rank sixth—we are doing quite well—but Saudi Arabia's target is to overtake us. It wants to be 10th next year. The world is changing out there. We cannot arbitrarily increase taxes on entrepreneurs and wealth creators and expect that to be a cost-free option. It will cost us in the battle to maintain our global position. I fear that that is not properly understood. The people to whom I have spoken in banks, businesses and trade associations since the Budget have all said one thing: that approach constitutes a devastating attack on the entrepreneurs and wealth creators, and thus on the country's long-term prosperity. We need to recognise that. We need to move away from a culture of borrowing and debt which has been encouraged not just by the Government but in the corporate sector and, crucially, in the household sector, and return to a culture built on savings and ownership. A few days ago, I received a thank-you letter from my godson, to whom I had given £20 as a birthday present.