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Finance Bill

There is certainly a respectable mainstream economic argument that synchronised austerity is worse for growth and could achieve the opposite of its intended effects on the deficit by increasing rather than decreasing it. My hon. Friend is exactly right. Here we have this tiny Bill of 11 clauses. After all the hysteria surrounding its creation, why is it that size? I think there is only one plausible explanation. The Bill before us contains just those measures that the Chancellor must be worrying that the Liberal Democrats will wobble on over the summer recess. I would be the first to admit that size is not everything, but we might reasonably have expected that a more complete set of measures would have been forthcoming if we really were in the emergency economic crisis about which the Chancellor has spent the last few weeks irresponsibly stoking up hysteria. Instead, we have a first instalment of the Finance Bill that has been especially designed to padlock the Liberal Democrats into the coalition so that they cannot get out and cause a mess over the summer. Looking at those on the Benches opposite, I have to say that some of them seem to be more willing hostages than the others. The twitching has definitely begun somewhere over there, and we intend to encourage that as the Bill continues its passage through the House. Other differences between the Government's rhetoric and the grim reality have become clearer in recent days. We were promised a fair Budget: the Chancellor insisted that we would all be in this together. The Budget, we were told, would be progressive, not regressive, with tax rises evenly distributed among income groups. There would be progressive cuts. The pain of spending cuts would somehow be fairly spread, with the rich bearing their fair share as we all marched together towards the establishment of a zero deficit. One by one, those loud assertions have proved to be utterly false. In an interview in the News of the World on 13 March, before the election, the Chancellor said:""We are all in this together. I am not going to balance the budget on the backs of the poor"." Then, on Budget day, he made great play of calculations about the effects of his measures which purported to show that he had delivered on that promise. On closer inspection, however, those assurances dissolved into empty Budget spin.