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Finance Bill

The hon. Gentleman is letting the Government off the hook. The current Prime Minister, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, made decisions in Britain on how much we spent on health, education, the military, social security or whatever it was, and he made decisions about income tax, corporation tax and stamp duty. All those decisions have come together to create circumstances in which we have a massive budget deficit. Of course there are global factors that contribute to that as well, but I think that the hon. Gentleman would be better off listening to his own Front Benchers, who seek to apportion at least a large proportion of the blame to the Prime Minister rather than give him the cover of saying that this was all the fault of people in Brussels and nothing to do with the Labour Government at all.