Finance (No. 2) Bill
Debate between Jim McMahon and Ian MearnsTuesday 19th December 2017
(7 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Finance Act 2018 View all Finance Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 19 December 2017 - (19 Dec 2017)
Jim McMahon
Well, well, well. When it comes to naivety, there is a very fine line; it can often be endearing before it eventually becomes quite offensive. And I did find the speech of the hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) offensive. It began in the spirit of naivety. I could see that he was nervous at the beginning of his contribution—quite rightly, it turned out, towards the end—because he did not have the data that was being presented.
The debate went on and Labour Members presented the data, but rather than actually taking account of it, the hon. Gentleman continued, in a very odd way, to try to defend what most reasonable people would say is a quite indefensible position. He was essentially saying, “Listen—if men are doing okay, surely women will eventually do okay too.” I am not sure whether the solution he came up with to the shareholder conundrum was for women to find wealthy husbands who are shareholders, as if that might somehow lift them out of poverty and allow them to be the beneficiaries of the cuts in corporation tax.
Ian Mearns
We have discovered a new phenomenon: it is called trickle-down gendernomics. It is going to be the resolution to all the problems of poverty and the disparity in earnings between men and women in all our communities up and down the country—I don’t think so.