Finance Bill

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point and I shall come to the city of Durham in just a moment or two.

The situation that I am describing, with reducing consumer confidence and increasing stresses on business, would definitely be helped by a reduction in VAT, even if it were temporary.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

May I congratulate the hon. Lady on making such a fine and powerful case in favour of the new clauses tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards)? Given the case that she is making, why do we need yet another review?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

That is an interesting point, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said earlier from the Front Bench, we would like to see a time scale and an end point.

As I was saying, we need a full assessment about whether a reduction in VAT would really help to turn around areas such as the one I represent. I also want to know exactly what the impact is on growth, and I will come to that in a moment or two. I want to take up the point that my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) made point about retail, but my argument is that almost every single sector in Durham is being affected by the rise in VAT that was brought in by the parties in government. We are a constituency that has a large public sector not because it is crowding out the private sector, which is the mantra we always hear from the Government parties, but because it is an administrative centre and so has a large number of public sector jobs. However, the public sector is being hit by public expenditure cuts as well as by the rise in VAT.

--- Later in debate ---

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I can only suppose that the hon. Gentleman was not listening to the answer that I gave earlier to his colleague, who made the same point.

[Hywel Williams]

Will the hon. Lady give way?