Finance Bill

Debate between Clive Efford and Helen Jones

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Helen Jones]

My hon. Friend is right. The Treasury’s own forecast shows a huge loss of private as well as public sector jobs. Many private firms depend on public sector contracts to keep going. More to the point, enterprise does not flourish when so much money is taken out of the economy that it becomes devastated. If the Government cut benefits, freeze wages and cut public sector jobs, that does not lead to a vital entrepreneurial culture but to a culture of fear in which people do not take risks.

Let me take one example of the way in which the Government have failed to consider the knock-on effect of the Finance Bill. They propose to increase VAT. That will have a damaging effect on the retail sector, yet that sector provides many entry-level jobs and jobs for women who wish to combine work with looking after children. It provides jobs for the women whom the Government want to get back to work when their children go to school. If those jobs are not there, where will those women go? There is simply no joined-up thinking here.

[Clive Efford]

My hon. Friend has moved on from investment in the construction industry, but I wanted to point out that that industry accounts for 10% of our gross domestic product and public sector expenditure accounts for 40% of the activity in the construction industry. That shows up the regressive decisions made by the Government.

[Helen Jones]

I could not have put the point better than my hon. Friend has.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Jones]

If the hon. Gentleman is so confident about that, perhaps he will get his right hon. Friend the Chancellor to publish the Treasury forecasts that he is currently failing to publish. The OBR figures are based on forecasts of growth that I do not believe we will achieve because, to be frank, those forecasts have never been achieved in 40 years.

[Clive Efford]

Does my hon. Friend find it as curious as I do that the figures leaked from the Treasury are produced by the same people who produced the figures for the OBR, and yet those figures conflict? Is she confused about that?

[Helen Jones]

I am extremely confused and rather surprised that, although the Chancellor said that he would make sure that nothing was hidden in the small print and that he would show us all the figures, he declines to publish the Treasury’s own forecasts.