---

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

It is a pleasure to contribute towards the end of this important debate about the Budget. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr. Cash), who made an important point about the Government needing to wake up. This is an interesting Budget, but we needed to wake up during the statement itself, because the Chancellor's performance was so lacklustre. My hon. Friend also paid tribute to our hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker), who began his speech by saying that he was not a nice person. I shall not comment on that, because he is a thoroughly delightful person now and a credit to his constituents, who I hope will see the light and ensure that he is back here in his place on the other side of the election. My hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Bill Wiggin) made an important contribution about apples and the taxation now hitting cider. I visited his constituency and saw how important that industry is. I represent Bournemouth in the county of Dorset and I know that, likewise, the industry is important there. I am sorry that the Treasury deem it appropriate to introduce taxation or changes to legislation without discussing them or properly thinking them through with other Departments, and that is a theme to which I shall return. I am sure that if the Treasury had engaged with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, it would be aware of how wrong it is to tax all ciders, rather than those that contribute to binge drinking. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall) made one of the most succinct points of the entire debate. If the Economic Secretary to the Treasury is listening I shall repeat what my hon. Friend said, because he pointed to the Minister and asked, if an election had not been coming up in the next two weeks, would we have seen this particular Budget? [Interruption.] I shall repeat what my hon. Friend said, because the Minister is still talking. My hon. Friend asked, if the election had not been coming up in two weeks' time, would we have seen this particular Budget? The honest answer is absolutely not. It has been interesting to experience this Budget debate far more closely than I have any other. The start of this ritual that we go through is a bit of a farce, partly because the Opposition and, indeed, the nation are denied the details until the debate gets going. That is a strange position to be in, considering that we, as Her Majesty's Opposition, are here to challenge and scrutinise what is going on. We then have to play catch-up during the debate in order to work out what the Chancellor is saying. Because of the Chancellor and the absence of substance, spark and detail, the Budget statement was a painful experience, as I have said. I think that Members from all parts struggled to stay awake. It was certainly painful for me, because, with the Chamber being crowded, I had to sit on the steps of the Gangway, so I ended up getting sore buttocks halfway through. However, that is a separate, personal issue on which I shall not dwell. This ritual borders on the ridiculous when we are denied access to the full report, and when the Leader of the Opposition has to react to what is leaked to the papers in the lead-up to the Budget statement and what the Chancellor has literally just said. Those are hardly the conditions for open and fair debate about the state of the nation's finances. It is like being given a jigsaw with some of the pieces missing and the picture on the box having been removed.