Industry (Government Support)
Debate between David Anderson and Chris Heaton-Harris(13 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Anderson
No, I won’t—I’ll tell you the orders, right?
The Robin Hood tax—a tax on banks’ international financial transactions—was rubbished by Government Members, but it would take care of a big chunk of expenditure on public services. Public sector workers are asking me, “Why should we pay Dave? Why should we carry the can for the failures of the banks? Why should we have to lose our jobs? Why should we have to stop looking after people we want to look after, when people who have robbed this country blind are getting away with more robbery?” Everyone in this House should agree with that.
I will say it: we should put the national insurance contribution charges on employers as well as on the work force. Why should it be the work force alone who carry the can? If the Liberal Democrats have a voice in this place, I would like to ask them what they would do to pay for the £17 billion of tax cuts. I am all for giving tax cuts to the low paid, but why should people at the level of pay we get also benefit from those tax cuts, when we will be shutting hospitals and schools and sacking home care workers? We keep hearing that we are all in this together. It is like a vuvuzela sounded every week by George Osborne, or a rattle in the background. No one in the working class believes that we are all in this together—nobody who works in school meals or hospitals. They know that those with money will be looked after and those without will go to the wall. That is the way that it has always been in this country. Saying something often and loudly does not make it any truer.
Should my party say sorry? No, it should not, because it stopped this country going into depression as a result of the failures of global finance and capitalism. We stopped that being any worse. The G20 said clearly that the actions we took brought the country into recovery more quickly than would otherwise have been the case.
The most ludicrous suggestion is one in, one out for regulation. That is daft. Who decides which regulation should be done away with to bring in another one? It is nonsense and it should be abandoned now.