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Legislative Programme and Budget Statement (Wales)

The VAT increase will not help small businesses or their employees, will it? As for their pensions, that is why we introduced the new personal account pension scheme. As Secretary of State, I introduced that scheme to establish in every workplace a compulsory pension, to which both employees and employers would have been required to contribute, topped up by the Government. For companies, there is a reduction in the headline tax, but allowances that make all the difference to investment and future jobs growth have been cut. We should not be surprised. Just two weeks ago, the new Government scrapped our plans to extend a loan to Sheffield Forgemasters and secure the promise of high-quality jobs. Tories and Lib Dems should not insult our intelligence by trotting out the line that they can renege on their election promises because the books were worse than they thought. That is also simply not true. The Tories and Liberals are constantly scaremongering and comparing us with countries such as Greece. That is ridiculous. We are a large, developed economy and no one believes that our positions are anything like comparable. The truth of the matter is that the Tories, with Lib Dem help, have done what Tories always do—cut, cut and cut again, until public services for all give way to private profits for the few. The Budget is a Lib Dem summer sell-out. It turns the Lib Dem orange book into a Tory blueprint. Britain needed a Budget to give the green light to growth; instead, it switched all signals to stop. Instead of driving the economy forward, the Budget has engaged reverse thrust. Because there is no room left for interest rate cuts, the Budget increases the danger of a double dip recession that could take Wales back to the dark misery of the 1980s and 1990s, when whole generations of young and old people were condemned to suffer. It is an outrage and I warn the right hon. Lady that the people of Wales will not take it lying down. We will fight back.