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Finance Bill

The situation that my hon. Friend describes is also typical of my constituency, where we have a very high level of people working in the public sector who are threatened with job losses from the parties in government. We also have a large number of small businesses that depend on those public sector workers for their custom. Those businesss are finding, as other Members have mentioned, that the VAT rise makes it very difficult for them to keep prices at the same level, and that has made it very difficult for them to trade effectively.