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Finance Bill

I would not want to set the business model for any bank or building society. If there was a particularly wealthy individual to whom it was quite safe to lend 100 per cent., it would be quite safe to do so. For others, the old rule of three or three-and-a-half times one salary, or two or two-and-a-half times a joint salary seems to make perfect sense. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: we cannot go back to lending at five times joint salary based on future pension provision; that was an act of absolute madness. But as his right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham said in a debate a few weeks ago, if we need to invoke counter-cyclical measures from time to time when we begin to grow out of the recession, then perhaps we need to look again at some of the rules and restrictions. With clause 12—this bears repetition—we are seeing six fuel duty rises in just over two years. With record prices at the pump and the barrel price having gone up by, I think, $30 in a year, that could be catastrophic for the haulage sector, for families and for those who need to drive to work, and the measure is, of course, inflationary in its own right.