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Capital Gains Tax (Rates)

The hon. Gentleman continues in the vein that the Opposition have adopted today, which is to try to score cheap political points. The message from the British public at the last election was that they want a constructive debate about how to solve the deep financial crisis that our country faces. We have had nothing from the Opposition. No alternative is being presented to all of the measures that were raised as concerns by Opposition Members. I presume that we can now start ticking them off as measures that the Opposition would say a Labour Government would take. We will rapidly reach the conclusion that there are no measures that the Opposition would take to solve this deficit. After all, they were happy to cancel their spending review, and now they are happy to play no role in having a constructive debate with the public and the Government about how we dig ourselves out of this mess. It is simply not true to say that the Opposition had no role in it. We were running a deficit long before the global crisis hit. That is why we went into the recession first, that is why we came out of it later, and that is why our recession was deeper. We have now had the longest and deepest recession since the second world war under the Labour Government. We need take no lectures from them.