Budget Resolutions

Debate between Andrew Gwynne and Bim Afolami

1st reading: House of Commons
Thursday 1st November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I beg to move an amendment, after “tax year 2019-20” insert

“provided that the condition in paragraph (2) of this resolution is met.

(2) The condition in this paragraph is that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has, no later than 5 April 2019, laid before the House of Commons a distributional analysis of—

(a) the effect of reducing the threshold for the additional rate to £80,000, and

(b) the effect of introducing a supplementary rate of income tax, charged at a rate of 50%, above a threshold of £125,000.”

We have had the fiction and now it is time for the fact. It is a pleasure to open the final day of the Budget debate for the Opposition. This Budget was sold as ending austerity, but it does not do that remotely. It is a Budget of failure; a Budget of broken promises.

Labour is not opposed to any modest benefit—however modest that may be—for lower and middle-income earners, but that measure is the only one that puts some money in their pockets. We also need to support those who do not reach the lower threshold, which is why we support a real living wage, and the restoration of sectoral collective bargaining and trade union rights. However, putting more money into the pockets of higher earners is obviously wrong, which is why the next Labour Government will increase taxes on only the very wealthiest—people with incomes in the top 5% and the corporations that have had a tax cut under the Tories.

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman clarify what the Opposition would regard as “the very wealthiest”?

[Andrew Gwynne]

The hon. Gentleman was clearly not listening. It is in our amendment and was in our manifesto at the last general election. We mean the people in the top 5% of incomes, and Labour’s amendment sets out the changes to income taxation that we would introduce in order to achieve that.