Amendment of the Law

Chris Skidmore Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

We all agree that, after the global financial crisis, tough choices need to be made on tax spending and pay to get the deficit down, and we all agree that it needs to be done fairly. Two years ago, the Chancellor said that he had a plan—with tax rises and spending cuts, the economy would grow and unemployment would fall—but he has had to come back to the House and announce further tax rises because his plan is not working. But who is paying more tax? The pensioners. And who is getting a tax cut? The millionaires. That is the reality.

The Liberal Democrats call this a Robin Hood Budget, but they have got it the wrong way around. Robin Hood took from the rich to give to the poor, but the Budget takes from lower and middle-income families to give to the rich. Do they not see? The Chancellor is not Robin Hood; he is the Sheriff of Nottingham. As for jobs and growth, he could not give a Friar Tuck. As for Maid Marian—trapped in the castle, desperate to escape—we all feel sorry for the Business Secretary, and not just because, as a result of the pensions tax grab, he is probably the only member of this millionaire Cabinet who will be not better off but worse off as a result of the Budget—possibly with the Justice Secretary as well. I am not sure. But he cannot say he was not warned.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

I would be interested to know whether the shadow Chancellor has actually read the Budget and chart B5, which shows that the effect is worst on the top quintile? If he could be bothered to look at that and read the Budget, he might want to come back and change his mind.

[Ed Balls]

The hon. Gentleman should have read the small print. It is fine for him to accuse me of not having read the Budget, but is the effect of the 50p tax cut in that chart? I think not. I have read it. He has not. It is not there. If it were, the benefits would be off the scale.

After that disastrous and woeful intervention, let me return to the Business Secretary. The Business Secretary cannot say that he was not warned. In fact, he did the warning. On deficit reduction, before the election, he said:

“The IFS is right to point out that cutting spending further this year would be extremely dangerous given the weakness of the economy.”

He also said that

“it’s very difficult to believe that large sudden cuts would do anything other than a great deal of harm”.

He was right in his analysis of the dangers of going too far, too fast, and he is right today. In his devastating leaked letter to the Prime Minister, he said that the Government were without a

“compelling vision of where the country is heading beyond sorting out the fiscal mess”.

So why has he signed up to this completely vision-free Budget?