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Finance Bill

My view, for what it is worth, is that the Treasury and Treasury Ministers knew perfectly well and were quite cynical in their calculations, for the reasons that I have just given. However, I think that quite a lot of Labour MPs suspended their judgment and only later came to realise the full and awful consequences of what the then Chancellor had announced. Those consequences were awful for two reasons: first, because they fundamentally undermined what those hon. Members had come into politics for, which was to try to help people on lower earnings; and secondly, because those hon. Members realised that it would be devastating for them electorally when the electorate woke up to those consequences.