Budget Resolutions

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

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

[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.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the people who are in the income bracket that he describes are likely to be the most mobile and will therefore simply take their wealth somewhere else?

[Andrew Gwynne]

It is interesting that Conservative Members seem not to want a fair taxation system whereby those who have done the best out of society can pay back into society.

--- Later in debate ---

[Leo Docherty]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. The wholesale economic devastation that would be the consequence of Labour’s nationalisation plan—I do not know whether it has a plan to nationalise sausage production, but I hope not—would be clear. We have to make the case for the free market. In this day and age, it is astonishing that Labour Front Benchers espouse an ideology that totally opposes the free market.

The shadow Chancellor is a self-declared Marxist. The House will know that in 2006 he said:

“I’m honest with people: I’m a Marxist”.

He said of the 2008 crash:

“I’ve been waiting for this for a generation”.

In 2017, he stood in front of Communist flags at a May Day parade in London, and just this year he attended the Marx 200 conference in London, at which he claimed:

“Marxism is about the freedom of spirit”.

[Eddie Hughes]

I understand that Alf Turner served for 20 years in the Royal Army Service Corps—in complete and stark contrast to the shadow Chancellor.

[Leo Docherty]

I am very grateful for that intervention. Absolutely—it puts those two sets of values into stark and very worrying contrast.

The free market is not an ideology but an inevitable human condition, which Conservative Members rightly espouse. We must call out at every turn the Marxist ideology of Opposition Front Benchers, and we must also reflect that those who had the unpleasant experience of living in countries with the devastating experience of the doctrine of Marxism being applied in reality, such as the Soviet Union, have bitterly regretted it. Shadow Front Benchers and the shadow Chancellor would do very well to read the moving autobiography of Elena Gorokhova, “A Mountain of Crumbs”, which describes the devastating famines of the 1920s and the wholesale shortages of foodstuffs in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, which meant that when she went to the United States, she was simply amazed by the range and variety of foodstuffs on the shelves of the supermarkets there.

Before I conclude, I would be happy to take an intervention from an Opposition Front Bencher if they wish to deny that the shadow Chancellor is a self-declared Marxist. There is no movement from them, so the record will show that they are happy to confirm this depressing fact. We must reject the Marxist ideology of the current Labour party and rejoice in the bright future of the free market that we have in our country, burnished by free choice, a growing economy and the freedom to choose.

--- Later in debate ---

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be called early in the debate, Mr Speaker—or at least a little earlier than I thought I might be called. The right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable), who is no longer in his place, seemed to have a bit of a downer on optimism. As I feel powered by optimism, I felt affronted by that idea. In the west midlands, we voted for Brexit because we are completely optimistic about what the future will hold for us, and I completely endorse the Budget, because it puts us on a great footing to make the most of those opportunities when we leave the European Union.

One thing about Conservatives is that they invariably poll high in people’s consideration of who is best to run the economy, because we do it so well. That is not just because of the things we see in this Budget. If we look back to 2010 and compare it with 2019, we see that there will be a 93% increase in the tax-free allowance, which will have gone from £6,475 to £12,500—when you represent a constituency with an average income of £27,000, changes like that are significant. People are not continuing to vote Conservative because of what we do in a single Budget; they are continuing to do so because they see a trajectory and they see us making life better for them year on year.

Why I am optimistic about the future? Because this Budget allocates £1.6 billion to ensuring that this country stays at the cutting edge of technology and innovation. I went to see Professor Kai Bongs—clever guy, clever name—at the University of Birmingham. He is leading on quantum technology. His team are working on gravity sensors. This might seem a bit abstract, but gravity sensors will help us to see beneath the ground for construction projects. Invariably, people do not get price certainty with construction projects because they do not know completely what is in the ground. Imagine if this country developed technology that allowed for that certainty and then created products that were sold throughout the world. We did it with DNA—identified at the University of Leicester and now used in 120 countries for DNA profiling. We can do it again with other technologies because we believe in our country. We know we have the people to lead us into the future, and it is tiring and depressing to hear people on the Opposition Benches talk down this country, when I know that our future is bright.