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Finance Bill

At the beginning of my speech, I said that we had a deficit reduction plan at the last election. When I was a Minister at the Home Office in the previous Government, we forwarded plans for £1.5 billion-worth of expenditure cuts. The Conservative-led Government are cutting £2.5 billion in that Department, which is why we are losing police officers and police community support officers, and why I fear that crime will go up. There was a plan. There were certainly issues that we had to tackle, and we will tackle them. The way in which the Government propose to tackle the deficit goes too far, too fast and too deep. It is being done in an unfair way that hits the poorest people hardest, and it will damage the long-term business interests of the United Kingdom.