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Finance (No. 3) Bill

I shall make some brief remarks in this Third Reading debate on yet another Finance Bill. Unlike the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), who is lucky not to have sat through every stage of the Bill, I have endured all of it, from the Budget and Second Reading right the way through to the upstairs and downstairs stages. I too congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on being named tax personality of the year, which is indeed an exalted position. The tax personality of the year should, of course, know that 5 July is the end of a tax month; in fact, it is also the end of the first quarter of the traditional tax year, so he could have mentioned that too. I can only assume that the judges made their decision before they heard his Bananarama joke. Unfortunately you were absent at that point, Mr Speaker, so you will have to look in Hansard to see what I am talking about. In the spirit of cross-Chamber harmony, I too briefly congratulate the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) on his birthday. He has also been with us for all stages of the Finance Bill, apart from this one. I can only assume that he has thought of somewhere better than the Chamber of the House of Commons from which to watch the final stage of the Bill. This is a good opportunity to weigh up the credibility of both the official Opposition and the coalition Government, after all the various stages of the Bill. We have heard many times that the Labour Opposition believe that fiscal tightening and a reduction in the budget deficit are needed. However, although we have heard from many Opposition Members about the cuts that they oppose, we have not heard from any of them about the cuts that they favour. We have also heard about their difficulties with the various tax changes that the coalition Government are making. As my hon. Friend the Minister pointed out, the Opposition pulled a rabbit out of the hat in the middle of our proceedings when the shadow Chancellor announced a great new policy with a flourish. His policy was that the Opposition would, after all, oppose the VAT increase to 20%. However, first the Scottish National party gave the Opposition an opportunity to vote against the increase and they abstained, and then Plaid Cymru gave them another opportunity and they abstained again. Indeed, the Opposition could have given themselves an opportunity to vote against the increase, but they failed to get their amendment in on time. That is two official abstentions and one botched attempt to oppose the Government's policy, so the next time any Labour MP says that they oppose the rise in VAT, they will not have much credibility. The Opposition also even opposed tightening a tax avoidance measure in Committee, and this morning the last vestige of Labour credibility—if Labour had any—in dealing with the economy was stripped away by the hon. Member for Nottingham East, when Labour refused to support the extension of special drawing rights arising from Britain's contribution to the IMF. Of course, that was part of the initiative launched by the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), when he supposedly saved the world—I think that was the phrase—at the London G20 summit in 2009. And today, his successor spokespersons for the Labour party refuse to support the spirit of internationalism in dealing with bail-outs around the world.