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Finance Bill

The right hon. Gentleman is right about the impact of currency fluctuations. He is right that duty and tax amount to approximately two thirds of the price of a litre, but the real killer is in wholesale diesel. Before tax, our diesel is among the cheapest in Europe; after tax, it is possibly the most expensive. From my point of view, as a Scot in an oil-rich nation, I find that quite abhorrent, especially when people are struggling to make ends meet and when we are seeing six rises—a 17 per cent. hike—in fuel duty over two years. Schedule 1 deals with the levy on bankers' bonuses. The Minister said, as the Chancellor has previously, that it had brought in £2 billion, but the bankers do not pay the tax: the banks pay it. If there is £2 billion in the Treasury coffers, there is £2 billion less to lend to real people in the real world. As for scrutiny of these proposals, schedule 1 is 21 pages long, and we could easily have a two-day debate on that schedule alone to ensure that there were no loopholes in it. Instead, we are going to skip over it in the next hour-and-a-half. This Bill is not a plan for recovery or growth; it is not even part of the package of proper fiscal consolidation. It is merely a harbinger of the deep and savage cuts to come. The Prime Minister said today, "We cannot cut our way to recovery, but we could cut our way to double-dip recession." That was hyperbole—delivered in the style of practised statistics oratory—but given the real-terms cuts now proposed, and the £57 billion that will come out of the economy in a single year a couple of years hence, why are those on the Treasury Bench not listening to him? Why do they think that the cuts proposed in the Bill and in their other measures will lead to anything other than a return to recession?