Budget Resolutions

Debate between Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Dominic Raab

Thursday 9th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Raab]

Having taken two interventions from the hon. Gentleman, I have to say that the suggestion that I am frit is a bit silly.

The truth is that the Labour party will want to put up taxes on not just the super-rich, but low and middle-income families. Frankly, that is fantasyland.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Budget statement is about not just arcane statistics and numbers, but societal change for the better? Did he notice, as I did last week, that the number of families in which no one works is at an all-time low under this Government? We have therefore delivered economic stability and positive societal change.

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. The key thing the Government can do is to create the conditions for record levels of employment, with real wages rising, and with inflation—yes, it needs to be looked at—stable and under careful control. Even on the worst-case scenarios that have been forecast, inflation would rise above 2%, but come back down shortly thereafter.

The reality of this Budget is that we have a Chancellor and a team of Ministers grappling with difficult decisions at a sensitive time, when there is a degree of uncertainty because of the referendum result, and coming up with a sensible, measured package. We have the Labour party talking about printing money and £500 billion of spending commitments when it has no idea where it can fund them from, and we have a Government who are committed not to tilting at socialist windmills, unlike the leader of the Labour party, but to building a better Britain—not only an enterprise economy but a meritocratic society for our children—and to making sure that the most vulnerable, and particularly the elderly, have the social care they need. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) would like to intervene on me rather than chuntering in frustration—more in frustration at his own party, I suspect, than at me—I will give way.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Dominic Raab

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Since when was it the practice of foreign legal and other entities to decide the views of this Parliament, and to traduce its sovereignty and the electoral mandate we have to introduce a British Bill of Rights? It is a tragedy that the European convention on human rights, which was founded by British jurists, has been distorted by perverse decisions such as trying to give an axe murderer the vote, which we have rejected. Is it not time that we got on with our manifesto commitment to a British Bill of Rights?

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and makes his point in his characteristically powerful way. I would point out that the Labour Government had problems with how the Strasbourg Court operated. They did not implement prisoner voting—I do not remember the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) calling for it to be implemented when he was a Minister—and nor did they implement the Abu Qatada judgment.