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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)

Absolutely. The key correlation is not between top rates of tax and GDP. There is very little evidence of that. However, there is evidence that top rates of tax have a massive impact on the distribution of wealth across the deciles, and are concentrated on the richest percentage of our economy. That is the truth, and that is why the Government ought not to have made the decisions that they made. All this stuff may seem rather arcane, but it is central to the Budget. If the Treasury got it wrong—if the amount that will be lost is not £100 million, but a great deal more—the neutrality of the Budget is bust, as is the credibility of the Government. Who will pay the price of that bust? It will not be the 14,000 millionaires who are 40 grand better off as a result of the extraordinary largesse from this millionaires' Government. It will be the pensioners, the unemployed, the vulnerable, and squeezed middle-earning and low-earning families throughout the country, who will be £500 worse off as a result of this Government's activities. We fear that that is the price that will be paid. We believe that written into clause 1 are the priorities and the politics of the Government, which are ideological, value-driven and fundamentally wrong: wrong for this time, and wrong for this country. That is why we will vote against the proposed change and in favour of our amendment, and we hope that Government Members will look to their consciences and do the same.