---

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

What we know is that last year we got £1 billion from the rate—not £100 million, but £1 billion. What we also know is that the OBR thinks the estimate of £100 million is highly dubious. That is the reality. If we had waited two or three years—a reasonable period—to make the estimate, when people would not be able to pull the money into an earlier year, which is increasingly difficult as the years go by, we should have seen a reasonable number. The real issue is not the estimate, but what will actually happen as a result of the Government's cooking the books in that fashion. Ordinary people will pay the price. In this country, 4.77 million pensioners will pay between £80 and £280 extra as a result of the changes to the personal allowance. That is the reality of the Budget, not what the hon. Gentleman describes. What about the 1.3 million ordinary working people earning about £41,000 who have been sucked into the 40p rate? We have not heard a lot about them in the Budget. We have not heard about the teachers, policemen and middle managers who will be paying more, or indeed about the 1.3 million who will be affected by the big cut in their child benefit—£1,300 for most of them. That is the reality of the Budget for ordinary working people. Many Members talked about business and growth. We heard a fascinating contribution from the hon. Member for West Suffolk about the need for an interventionist business and industrial strategy. I completely agree. There were two measures in the Budget along those lines: one was for video games and the other was the patent box that is said to be benefiting GSK. I know a bit about the patent box, because I was one of the industry side negotiators with the Labour Government back in 2009 when we struck the deal on the patent box. It was not a Tory policy—an industrial strategy made not by the Tories, but by Labour, and we are now reaping the benefits. What about the video games measure? The hon. Gentleman thinks of himself as a bit of a historian of economic facts, so he should look back to the first Budget of his great friend the Chancellor, when the right hon. Gentleman got rid of tax relief for video games. Two years later, with the video games industry pointing out that it was a really duff move, the Government have reinstated the relief: not a policy made on the Tory side, but on the Labour side. What is the reality? It is 0.1% extra growth, 4.77 million pensioners paying the price, inflation still at 3.2% and wages only up 1.4%. The reality is that the Government are ill serving our economy and ill serving Britain. They do not know what they are doing. They are making a mess and the time has come for us to think again.