Amendment of the Law

Debate between Graeme Morrice and Lindsay Hoyle

Monday 26th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Graeme Morrice]

Do I get an extra minute, Mr Deputy Speaker?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Yes, but somebody else will end up losing it.

[Graeme Morrice]

I will give way if the hon. Gentleman is very brief.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. Does he feel, as I and many people outside the House do, that as the threshold for a single person will be approximately £50,000, which will affect their tax credit, but for two people earning £40,000 each there will be no cut to their—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. If you want to put your name on the speaking list, do so by all means, but interventions have to be short.

[Graeme Morrice]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman.

The aspect of the Budget that has undoubtedly caused the most anger among my constituents is the decision to freeze the personal allowance of pensioners, which will help subsidise the Chancellor’s bumper tax cut for the rich. Buried in the Budget’s small print, the Government tried to make out that that was a tidying-up exercise, but nobody is fooled by that. The public are clear that it is actually a £3 billion tax raid on pensioners. No wonder it was the only aspect of the Budget that was not leaked in advance. In Scotland, there is a song that goes:

“Yi canny shove yer grannie aff a bus”—

the reason being, the song explains, that “she’s yer mammy’s mammy”. It seems to me that the Tories are quite happy to forgo a compassionate approach to our collective grandparents by shoving them all off the nation’s bus.

How will the Chancellor’s tough talk about cracking down on tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance, which he says is morally repugnant, be put into action if the resources provided to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs continue to be cut, including 240 processing jobs at Pentland House in my constituency?

Finally, on growth and jobs, it has become increasingly clear that the Government are failing to deliver for business and drive forward growth. The reality simply has not matched up to the rhetoric, with record unemployment and flatlining growth. When even the Business Secretary describes Government initiatives to drive forward growth in key technologies as “rather piecemeal”, we know that they are in deep trouble.

My constituency has an excellent track record of attracting and sustaining innovative high-tech employers, but I know from speaking to some of those companies that they are frustrated by the lack of Government support and strategy. Many of them are doing well overseas and would like to expand and recruit new employees, but the toxic mix of a UK Government who are failing to create a supportive environment for sustained growth and a Scottish Government stoking up economic uncertainty with their obsession with breaking up the UK is making many firms think twice. Labour’s five-point plan for growth offers an alternative vision, and if the Government followed our advice and implemented a £2 billion tax on bank bonuses to fund 100,000 jobs for young people, we would begin to see some progress in tackling the scourge of youth unemployment.