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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)

Thank you, Sir Roger. That gives me the opportunity to repeat, for those unable to hear because of the conversations, my point about the harsh reality of the Budget, which has done nothing to give Britain the jobs and growth we desperately need, and about how it fails the fairness test. It has done nothing to help support families and pensioners on modest and middle incomes. We will discuss that further tomorrow so I shall not dwell on it now. It would, of course, be outwith the scope of the new clauses. I shall only say that families are already finding out just what the Government's decisions will mean for their household budgets. As we will hear, businesses are also now finding out that the botched Budget makes no economic sense for them either. There was a time when people might have given the Chancellor some credit for his strategic brain. Some on middle incomes and small businesses might even have given him the benefit of the doubt on economic policy, notwithstanding our many warnings about cuts that go too far and too fast. They might have given him the benefit of the doubt even if they did not completely agree with everything he was doing. But how times change. The Chancellor has had several weeks of torrid headlines—The Mirror: ““Half-baked Tory tax a mistake-and-bake from Osborne and co””; The Sun: ““PM David Cameron is urged to show leadership over pasty-gate””; The Guardian: ““'Pasty tax' is the last thing people need””; the Evening Standard: ““Heston says pasty tax will stop artisan bakers earning a crust””; and even ““Tax on beloved Cornish pasties sparks furore in Britain”” in USA Today and ““'Pasty tax' row heats up for British PM”” on the al-Jazeera website.