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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

If the hon. Gentleman had been listening, he would have heard plenty about what the Opposition will do. I do not know where he was yesterday, when we spent most of our time telling the world what we plan to do. Ending Labour's tax on jobs is our first mission. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, wearing his "I am ever so reasonable" straight face, tells us that the reason why we do not have a comprehensive spending review is because it "does not make sense" to set departmental spending totals when we do not yet know what unemployment will be next year or the year after next. However, he does not mind setting a Budget based on a growth projection for next year and the year after, which nobody outside the four walls of the Treasury, and probably not many people inside them, thinks is a sensible Budget assumption. What the Government's press releases did was confirm that Labour has identified, on its own estimation, £11 billion of waste. That is waste that it says it can eliminate without affecting front-line services, but that it will not eliminate until some time after 2011-12. Move over post-neoclassical endogenous growth theory, because we now have a new economic theory from the Labour party: Labour's waste-induced growth theory. It appears to state that Government waste is an essential ingredient of economic recovery. Presumably, on the Schools Secretary's logic, higher economic growth—perhaps even the achievement of the Chancellor's 3.25 per cent. target—will require even more waste to be identified, but not eliminated. Let us be clear that Labour's stated plan is to carry on wasting and raising taxes to pay for that waste. Its approach is about taxing jobs in a recovery to pay for Labour waste, which the Government have identified but have not got the wit or the commitment to eliminate. I lose track of who is allied to whom in the Government, and who is speaking to whom this week, but some hon. Members may remember that just a couple of weeks ago the Chief Secretary said emphatically that there would be no tax increases. He was immediately slapped down by the cardinal archbishop and by the Chancellor, and now we know why. Although we would not have heard most of them in the statement that the Chancellor delivered last Wednesday, the Budget contained plenty of Labour's hallmark stealth taxes. It contained a £2.2 billion hike in income tax through the freezing of thresholds—that is a £48 bill for every taxpayer in the country, which did not even merit a mention in the Chancellor's speech. Indeed, he seems to think it a matter of yawn-inducing indifference that everyone will pay £48 more in tax. The temporary abolition of stamp duty for first-time buyers, which, incidentally, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury said was not""an effective use of public money"—[ Official Report, Finance Public Bill Committee, 21 May 2009; c. 108.]" when we proposed it, is being financed by a permanent tax increase on higher value property. That is another sleight of hand. The huge tax hikes on cider drinkers put at risk an industry that employs thousands of people in the west country, and I shall ask my hon. Friends to vote against that ill thought through tax proposal. Despite the Chancellor's rhetoric about helping small businesses, there are yet more stealth taxes on businesses, including an increase in the small business corporation tax rate. There was an apparent cut in business rate relief, but the small print of the Red Book shows that revenues from business rates will go up by £1 billion, not down. The product of a botched rates revaluation and the deferred hikes from last year will mean soaring bills for many small firms from April 2010. That is literally the last straw for many cash-strapped businesses that are struggling to raise credit. There is also the telephone tax on households and businesses across the land—a tax of £7 a year, including VAT, for every line. What is that for? It is to pay for an objective that we have clearly shown can be delivered without any tax rise. Just when people might have thought that things could not get any worse, tucked away in a footnote on page 204 is the admission that the Government more than doubled our contribution to the European Union between 2008 and 2010. They have gone to extraordinary lengths today to bring back Tony Blair. Perhaps they would like to bring him here to explain what he meant when he told the House:""The UK rebate will remain and we will not negotiate it away. Period."—[Official Report, 8 June 2005; Vol. 434, c. 1234.]" He was right in one sense, of course. They did not negotiate it away; they gave it away. Britain deserved better then and it deserves better now. What we needed was a Budget for the future. We needed a Budget that took tough decisions, rather than shirking them, such as the decision to start reducing the deficit in 2010 with a credible plan to eliminate the bulk of the structural deficit over the lifetime of the next Parliament. We needed a Budget that answered the critics in the markets, in the business community and among overseas investors who have repeatedly condemned the Government's plans as inadequate, incomplete and incredible. When the family budget gets tight, people have to think about what they can afford. When the national finances are in this kind of crisis, we as a nation have to think about what we can afford. It is clear that Britain cannot afford five more years of this—five more years of Labour's debt, waste and taxes. That would bring a risk of interest rate rises choking growth, mortgage rates soaring for millions of families and the UK's credit rating in play. It would mean five more years of a Labour Government who were elected on a bogus promise to carry on spending, which they know they cannot keep. It is time for a change and for a new Government with the vigour, the commitment and the energy to sort out the mess this country is in and to get us back on the path of sustainable economic growth, securing both private prosperity and high-quality public services for future generations. Let us do that now. Let us stop Labour's waste so that we can stop Labour's tax rises. Let us tackle the debt, not talk about it. Let us put this discredited Parliament and this discredited Government behind us. Let us vote for the change that Britain needs.