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Finance Bill

Thank you for calling me, Mr Speaker. I am constantly amazed by this Chamber. I had had ambitions to speak in this debate today, but I now discover that it is tomorrow—[Hon. Members: "No, it's still today."] Of course it is not tomorrow; it is still today. That is another surprise. I shall keep my remarks characteristically short. We have been looking at two opposing risks in the debate today. The one that has been mentioned most by those on the Government Benches is that we would find ourselves in a debt crisis as a result of a lack of confidence in the cuts that we are making. I might have a different view from those on the Government Benches. The other risk is that we will cut too deeply and take out investment that would otherwise go into growing our economy. To remove the bulk of the structural deficit, as the Government have chosen to do, reflects one of those positions very strongly. However, it does not reflect the fact that we must walk a path between those two risks. We must find a way. I was pleased to stand for Parliament on a manifesto commitment to reduce the deficit by half over four years of the next Parliament. That struck me as a good route to take between those two risks. To go further than that, as the Government are choosing to do, is ideological. We all have different ideologies—I understand that—but at a time when risk is such an important aspect of the debate, not to recognise that fact is deeply worrying. Today, we have been talking about VAT, capital gains tax and insurance tax. There is one other tax that I would like to talk about tonight.