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Finance Bill

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. That serves to show us the ignorance on the Government Benches of the lives of some of the poorest people in this country. I could forgive them if their Budget and Finance Bill were simply the product of ignorance, but they are the product of ideology. It is the Government's decision to take £40 billion out of the economy, to raise VAT and to cut investment allowances for business, and it is a purely ideological decision. They pin their hopes on an increase in growth, yet even their own leaked Treasury figures tell us that we will lose 1.3 million jobs as a result of these measures, not only in the public sector but in the private sector. We know already the plans of the Government parties for jobs. They began early on by cutting the future jobs fund—118,000 jobs for young people, 18,000 in a region such as mine, wiped out. I want to quote what the Liberal Democrat candidate in my constituency, described on his leaflet as the strong local candidate, said before the election. He was so strong that he managed to come third in the parliamentary election and third in what was previously a Liberal Democrat council seat. He said:""Lib Dems believe that if you are unlucky enough to lose your job you should be helped there and then to get another one."" Yet the measures in the Bill and the Budget will destroy jobs and introduce no measures to create them.