---

Finance Bill

I can tell from the look on your face, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I am dangerously close to falling foul of exactly what I was complaining about. For this debate is about the Finance Bill, what the Government are offering, the challenges that we face and the solutions to make sure that we can get ourselves out of this financial mess. The Government failed to comment on why more than half of all tax increases are hitting the poorest half of the nation, why national insurance increases will hit all citizens earning £20,000 or more, why the impact of the VAT reduction has now been deemed such a failure of strategy, and why the full impact of the Budget will not come to fruition until 2011, conveniently after the date of the next general election. This has been a discredited Budget. Within hours, the IMF announced that there was a huge hole in it to the tune of £23 billion. The Chancellor forecast growth for 2009 at minus 3.5 per cent., for the following year at 1.25 per cent.—already, apparently, we are moving into a new boom—and then, for 2011, at 3.5 per cent.