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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)

That may well be the case. However, if a Government have to make that decision—and, yes, there are occasions when that has to be done—then they must first convince people that the economic case is sound, and on the basis of the Government's own published information, that is not so. Indeed, even the Prime Minister did not seem to know what his own Government's information said when he was answering Prime Minister's questions earlier. It cannot be argued that there are times when the economic case is more important than the politics and so the right decision has been made, because the Government have not made a sound economic case. We have a political context in which the Government are saying to people: ““Make sacrifices. If you're working in the public services, take a pay freeze. If you're a motorist, you're going to have to pay more for your petrol. If you're a pensioner, you must have your tax allowances frozen for some time so that allowances can catch up, with the result that you're collectively going to lose £1 billion a year. You're going to have to do this because we've got a deficit that we've got to address.”” I could go through a whole lot of other measures. If people are going to be asked to follow a policy that is designed to reduce the deficit and to accept those impacts on their standard of living, then they must understand that the weakest are not being selected for the heaviest burden. This decision is not only economically flawed but politically flawed because it will call into question the Government's sincerity when they argue that we all have to make sacrifices together. I have another role in Northern Ireland as Finance Minister. We have frozen wages. We have stopped all bonuses in the public sector where that has been possible and there are no contracts. We have said to people that there will be no recruitment or promotion within the public sector. We have said to people who work in the private sector, ““You're going to have it tougher because we're going to be spending less on public sector contracts and so on, with the impact that that has on people's jobs.”” We have said about new house building and a whole range of other things, ““This can't be done.”” We have said to voluntary groups and community groups, ““You're going to get cuts in your grants because we don't have the money to do this.”” By and large, I have found that most people accept that when they see that it is evenly spread. People stop me in the street all the time and talk about the impact that it is having on their lives. They say, ““We don't like it, but if we have to put up with it because we know we can't carry on spending money we don't have, we'll do it.”” Nothing undermines the argument made by those of us who wish to responsible about the budget deficit more than the news that the Government are saying to people, ““Make sacrifices””, while those who are earning more than they need to live on will get a 20% or a 10% tax cut. That is why the politics of this is all wrong. The economics is not sound and the politics is not sound, and for that reason we will vote against it.