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Finance Bill

I am delighted to hear that. However, I do have a little uncertainty—I hesitate to use the word "criticism" of such a distinguished body of people as my own Front-Bench team. I wish that they would be a little more explicit about the extent of the debt that we have been talking about. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham said earlier—I have a lot of sympathy with this—that the figures can add up to as much as £4.2 trillion. I have figures from the ONS, confirmed by the Library, that show that there is absolutely no argument about the fact that there is a minimum figure of £2.2 trillion. They show also that if we include public sector pensions, which I do not believe any Government could refuse to underwrite, and private finance initiative projects, nuclear decommissioning, the banks and one or two other things, all of which are full commitments, the figure is a minimum of £3.2 trillion, which is 200 per cent. of GDP. That is truly frightening, but it is also true. That is where the problem lies. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) has produced an extremely interesting paper on climate change. I cannot recall the figures precisely, but the figures that we have been given and those that the ONS has given have not included the ones that my right hon. Friend gives on climate change, which run to more than £1 billion. If we add all that up, it becomes clear that we are in need of a Finance Bill that will measure up to the requirements that are being imposed on the British people and by which, I am afraid to say, they are being gravely damaged. The other point that I want to make relates to the point that the hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Browne) made just now about domestic items of expenditure, which include health. On paper, vast sums of money have been ploughed into the health service. I should say—we all know this—that vast sums of money have also been ploughed into the administration of the health service. You represent a constituency that is not very far from mine, Madam Deputy Speaker. Indeed, if I may presume to say so, you were the Member of Parliament for the same area, albeit with boundary changes, that I now have the honour to represent. You will also know about Stafford hospital, because your then constituents used to use it a great deal.