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(Clauses 1, 4, 8, 189 and 209, Schedules 1, 23 and 33, and certain new Clauses and new Schedules relating to value added tax)

What I would accept is that the rate was raised to 50p in the end because we felt that there was still an overriding imperative to help through the period of recession the people in our economy who are the most vulnerable and to ask those who are the most fortunate in our economy to bear the broadest and biggest burden in order to allow that transfer to occur. That is the totemic rationale from our perspective. What is totemic for this Government, I fear, is the idea that the 50p rate is not approved of in the City or by the wealthiest people, but I do not believe that that provides a justification for making this decision—and nor does the Chancellor, which is why he eschewed the possibility of arguing from a political or ideological perspective to justify the cut to 45p. He argued that it was being done on the basis of evidence. In fact, that was the only Keynesian bit of logic in the Chancellor's Budget speech. He effectively said, ““The reason I no longer believe what I believed in 2009 and 2010 is that the facts have changed””, and he changed his view accordingly. In his view, based on the dodgy dossier, the rate was not bringing in the anticipated amount of money, which is what justified paring it back to 45p.