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Finance Bill

It is""A coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused"." Those are not my words—as a Member new to the House I would not be so bold—but those of the Nobel laureate economist, Paul Krugman, when describing another right-wing cabal, in the US, and its attempt to slash welfare spending instead of increasing growth. His description might serve well to describe and characterise the callous collaborators on the Government Benches, and the war on welfare that they are launching tonight with the Finance Bill. The coalition is heartless in its disregard for how VAT and the unprecedented spending cuts that we anticipate will hit the poorest in our society, it is clueless in the wrong-headed belief that we have heard repeated so often tonight that these savage public sector cuts will somehow liberate private sector surpluses, entrepreneurialism and growth in the economy, and it is confused. There is confusion at least on the part of the Liberal Democrats as to how they managed to enter the political fray at last, only to find themselves, as an old soldier in my constituency described it last week, on the side of the axis powers. [Interruption.] I thought that it was pretty funny. I do not, however, want to dwell on the heartlessness of the measures included in the Finance Bill, because so many people have done so with such eloquence this evening. I think that the public will be able to judge that heartlessness for themselves when they see the raising of VAT on essential goods for the poor, and Government Members cheering, as they did during the Budget speech, measures such as the decision to scrap the health in pregnancy grant designed to tackle malnourishment in pregnant mothers in the poorer sectors of our society. Opposition Members consider such provisions the hallmark of a civilised society, but Government Members clearly think they are a burden on economic efficiency. I do not really want to talk about the heartlessness. I would rather talk about the cluelessness. [Hon. Members: " You already have.] Yes I have, and I am going to do it again in a minute. We have heard lots of cluelessness this evening, mostly inspired by the primer on Milton Friedman that Government Members have all obviously read recently, and we have heard reiterated by the hon. Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord) and various others. The idea is that if we cut the public sector, which allegedly squeezes out private sector entrepreneurialism and growth, we somehow stimulate the private sector, and that leads to a flourishing of entrepreneurialism.