Finance Bill

Debate between Ann McKechin and Barry Gardiner

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Albus Dumbledore in “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” said:

“You see, Harry, it is not our abilities in life, but our choices that tell us who we really are.”

When my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) rose in this Chamber as Chancellor at 12.32 pm on Wednesday 24 March, he could look back on a year in which global recession had not turned into depression, in which unemployment, although too high, was less than had been predicated a year earlier when the recession began, and in which the United Kingdom was now infinitesimally but incrementally moving from recession to GDP growth. He faced tough choices: how to bring borrowing down without strangling growth, and how to reduce the deficit without crippling front-line public services and punishing the most vulnerable people in our country. Those choices were not easy, but they were necessary.

When the current Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), rose in this Chamber at 12.33 pm on Tuesday 22 June, he did so against the background of a further quarter of small but positive growth and a report from the Office for Budget Responsibility that predicated £30 billion less public sector borrowing. Despite that improved situation, however, he said that he did not face any choice. He said:

“This is the unavoidable Budget.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 166.]

No; this is the Budget of Tory masochistic fantasy. Right-wingers are delighted with what they see, in this Finance Bill, as the arms of the state being rolled back. They are delighted by the thought of 600,000 jobs being cut from the public sector. They are salivating at the thought of spending less on welfare at the very time when they cast 600,000 more people into the welfare net. Where is the sense in that? Oh yes, this is a Finance Bill of choice for the Tories, and in life it is

“our choices that tell us who we really are.”

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

Is it not ironic that one of the main beneficiaries of this particular Budget will be our banks, which are among the biggest payers of corporation tax in the country? The Government have chosen not to tax bankers’ bonuses this year, despite clear public outrage at the level of bonuses that are still being paid.

[Barry Gardiner]

Not only has my hon. Friend made a perfectly apposite point, but she has made it better than I could ever possibly do. I can only agree with her.