Finance (No.2) Bill

James Murray Excerpts

3rd reading
Thursday 23rd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, may I begin by paying tribute to you for your years of service and thank you for your guidance? If I may, I will tell one brief anecdote, which is actually from a previous Finance Bill. I had not quite realised that it was my duty to move the Opposition’s amendments before the time of voting, as I was distracted by being in conversation with my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) at the time. The Chamber was full. I think that you cleared your throat three times at me until I finally moved the amendment. On the way out, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) said to me, “You will never forget that, will you?” It is true—I will not. That was great advice and guidance that will stick with me throughout any future years that I may have in this place, depending on the election. Thank you very much.

We are here to consider the Third Reading of the Finance Bill, which the Opposition hope will be the last in the line of 14 years’ worth of Conservative Finance Bills. The Bill comes after 14 years of Conservative failure on the economy and leaves a legacy of higher taxes, falling living standards and stagnant economic growth. The truth is that whatever the Conservatives say or try to do, whether in the Chamber today or on the campaign trail over the next six weeks, it is too late to repair the damage that they have done to the economy and to people’s standard of living.

I do not think that any of us were expecting to be completing the Bill’s remaining stages in the rushed end of this Parliament. Many of us had assumed that the Prime Minister would call the election later in the year, and I still have not heard why he ultimately decided to call it for July. I have one theory, which is that he realised that prolonging the general election would raise the prospect of there being another Finance Bill in which the Government may have had to legislate to end the non-dom tax status.

Let us face it: the Prime Minister really does not want to get rid of the non-dom tax status. Maybe he thought this was a way to avoid the Conservatives having to keep their promise to end it. I am afraid that he may still be disappointed as, if Labour wins the general election, we will end the non-dom tax status and the new loopholes planned by the Conservatives once and for all. Now that we are to have a general election, perhaps the Conservatives will finally tell us how they will pay for their £46 billion unfunded spending commitment to abolish national insurance altogether. Given their track record, I will not be holding my breath.

The Opposition have tried to amend the Bill during its passage to force the Government to come clean about the impact that their six-year freezing of the income tax personal allowance and the higher rate threshold is having on taxpayers across the country. We have tried to force the Chancellor to set out what impact his and his predecessors’ policies are having on pensioners, and how more of them will pay tax and more of them will have higher tax bills as a result of decisions made by the Conservatives. Alongside the impact on individual taxpayers, we have tried to amend the Bill to encourage the Government to follow our plan to bring back certainty for businesses by capping the rate of corporation tax at 25% for the whole of the next Parliament.

Finally, we sought to give certainty to the oil and gas industry by being clear that our strengthened windfall tax or energy profits levy would end no later than the end of the next Parliament. We were disappointed, though sadly not surprised, that none of our amendments became part of the Bill.

The Opposition will not oppose the Bill’s Third Reading, but let me close by saying two things. First, I pay thanks to the Clerks and the House of Commons staff for all their support throughout the Bill’s passage and to outside organisations, including the Chartered Institute of Taxation in particular, for all their help not just with this Finance Bill, but with all six Finance Bills for which I have been responsible as a shadow Minister. May I also put on record my appreciation for the way in which the Financial Secretary to the Treasury and the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury have drawn a line between the tough and sometimes barbed exchanges we have in the Chamber and their courtesy and respectfulness outside the Chamber? That is not always the case in politics, but when it happens, I believe that it makes the House of Commons a better place while not for a second compromising on the sharpness of the political questions that we are here rightly to contest.

Ultimately, we are all here to do what is best for our country, and I do not believe that five more years of the Conservatives would serve that goal. Not only have they become defined by chaos and division, and put party before country at every turn, it is also clear that they have done too much damage to the economy. They have squeezed living standards too much, and they have stretched public services to breaking point. I hope that this is the last in a 14-year line of Conservative Finance Bills, because the country needs change. We finally have the chance to ask the British people what Government they want for the next five years. I hope that they will put their trust in our changed Labour party to change our country for the better.