Income Tax

Jeremy Browne Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jeremy Browne (Taunton Deane) (LD)]

Quite right.

[Chris Leslie]

The hon. Gentleman nods and says, “Quite right” from a sedentary position, but of course he is not seeking re-election and so he is brave enough to say that. I wonder whether his Liberal Democrat colleagues would also say that about the cut from 50p to 45p. I will give way if Liberal Members want to defend the way they voted on that.

The hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) raised the issue of the personal allowance, and I expect the Minister will do the same. But the public out there are not going to be fooled by Government Members saying, “Just look over here at this particular change”, because they know very well by now that Tories and Liberals give a little with one hand but take away far more with the other. On the tax burden, there is a sense of people being worse off year after year, and they know the truth.

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[Chris Leslie]

I sometimes get the impression from Ministers that they would not understand fairness if it hit them in the face. They certainly do not get it when it comes to the moral imperative as well as the economics of ensuring that we have a fair tax system that ensures that those with the broadest shoulders contribute a fairer share.

A Labour Government would reduce the deficit in a fairer way than the approach that we have seen from the Government. Of course, we have not seen much deficit reduction in recent years. We want to balance the books as soon as possible in the next Parliament, but to do so in that fairer and balanced way. We will reverse this Tory and Liberal Democrat tax cut for millionaires. We have to make some tough choices.

[Mr Browne]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Chris Leslie]

No, we have heard enough from the hon. Gentleman.

We will stop paying winter fuel allowances to the richest pensioners. We will have to raise child benefit by just 1% for two years, and Ministers’ pay also should be restrained. But we also have to cut out the waste and incompetence of this Government —£3 billion wasted on an NHS reorganisation; the universal credit debacle; the pointless exercise of a worse than useless Work programme. A fair plan to balance the books in the next Parliament would reverse this obscene tax cut for the top 1% of earners. We will have to finish the job that this Chancellor has so patently failed to deliver, and we will do so with a plan that will create sustained and balanced growth, 200,000 homes by 2020 and a British investment bank; cutting business rates for small firms; providing a jobs guarantee and child care to help people back to work; reconnecting the wealth of our country with the finances of individuals and families; and, above all, ending dogmatic trickle-down Tory economics, which hits lower and middle income households while the Government lavish tax cuts on the rich.

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[Kate Green]

Free school meals have yet to be delivered, I should point out to the right hon. Gentleman. We see from this Government very generous promises, totally unfunded.

My final question for the Minister relates to inequality. Ministers are very fond of telling us that inequality is reducing—

[Mr Jeremy Browne]

There are more women in work.

[Kate Green]

More women in work on poor pay.

Ministers are very fond of telling us that inequality is reducing under this Government. It is true that there is a coalescing effect, with lower wages and middle wages meeting as middle-level earnings become stuck, but what is absolutely not in doubt is that the very richest continue to get richer and richer, with not only the top 1% but the top 0.1% seeing super soaraway growth. What measures are Ministers really taking to address the widening inequality between a very, very privileged sector at the top and those on middle and average incomes who are absolutely not feeling the benefit of their economic policies? The Government can look at measures on inequality that suit their arguments, but it is important that we have a wide range of measures and a wide range of strategies to address this rising incomes discrepancy.

Our proposal is one measure—a small one, I admit—to address and reverse some of the income inequality. It will not do all the heavy lifting, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) said, but it will certainly be a step in the right direction.

Finally, increasing the tax threshold, as has happened under the present Government, is certainly one strategy for improving the incomes of relatively low-paid working families, but the benefits do not reach those on the very lowest pay who fall below the tax threshold. Of course, as the threshold rises the law of diminishing returns sets in. Meanwhile many of us—in fact, probably all of us—benefit from the continuing rise in the income tax threshold as more of our income is sheltered below the threshold.

I ask Ministers to come clean on the genuine progressivity of their fiscal policies. Those policies are not genuinely progressive, and they know it. Those policies fail to address in-work poverty or to tackle rising inequality in relation to wealth and income at the very top, and the Treasury seems to think that it is perfectly okay to overlook their distributional impact.

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[Andrew Bridgen]

The right hon. Gentleman, whom I much respect, has the advantage of me in years and service in this House. His figures may well be correct—I cannot challenge them with the information I have—but he must look at the economic backdrop of the relative growth of other economies in the world at the moment, and at the challenges that we face, such as the drag of the eurozone. There is no doubt that this Government are set to deliver the highest economic growth of any developed economy in the world this year.

[Mr Jeremy Browne]

I hope that my hon. Friend can shed light on an aspect of the Opposition’s outlook. Given that the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury thinks that the introduction of a 50p rate would have no behavioural impact, and that it is inherently virtuous to have higher taxes on people who create businesses and wealth and who employ people, why would he be willing to stop at 50p when he could go up to the levels of personal taxation that Labour presided over last time they were elected without Tony Blair as their leader?

[Andrew Bridgen]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. [Interruption.] It is in the nature of the Labour party that there is always another tax. Labour Members say, “One more tax will do it”, but it never ends, does it? He is quite right that the ability to earn—I stress that the word is “earn”, not “be given” or “inherit”—£150,000 a year or more does not—[Interruption.] Madam Deputy Speaker, this is ridiculous.

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[Geraint Davies]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, being from south Wales I normally support miners, but I would say that he is very much an intellectual minor. [Interruption.] Yes he is. Yes—we all know where Lord Myners came from, God help us.

Focusing on the 50p tax rate, I have already made the case that income tax receipts are not going up owing to Government mismanagement—a low-wage economy with low skills and low productivity, and raising tax thresholds, which does not add up. It may be desirable to raise tax thresholds, but it does not add up and it is incompetent. Labour is talking about people making a marginal contribution at the 50p level.

[Mr Jeremy Browne]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Geraint Davies]

I will not just now. We have heard the hon. Gentleman muttering for a while, but I shall take an intervention in a moment.

Let us consider behavioural changes. The rate of tax went from 40p to 50p to 45p. The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire, being a business man, knows that if someone running a business who wants to minimise their tax liability faces that quick succession, they will move their finances. Instead of bearing down on the 50p rate, they will pay much more tax in the 40p year, and then the following year they will move their expenses from the previous year into that year at the 50p rate, so they do not pay that as tax, and then to the 45p rate. It is therefore no surprise that companies, like his own probably, made behavioural changes in a rational way to limit the amount of higher rate tax. But it does not follow that if the rate is kept forever at 50p rather than going up and down, they can play games and not pay that tax. Of course, there would be behavioural changes, and the Labour party’s assumption is not that instead of raising £3 billion, £100 million would be raised—that is one thirtieth, which is frankly ridiculous and preposterous; it is more likely to be well over a third. We appreciate that there may be some behavioural changes, but we are talking about taking billions of pounds from the richest people at a time when the Minister, who is sitting there pointing, is basically arguing that we should save £400 million—against, say, a £1 billion take from the richest—by taking money out of the mouths of some of the poorest children through the bedroom tax.

[Mr Browne]

On the higher rates of personal taxation, I would like to quote Tony Blair from 2001 when he was Prime Minister. He rejected higher tax rates for the rich in a “Newsnight” interview, saying:

“It is not a burning ambition for me to make sure that David Beckham earns less money.”

This is the only Labour leader who has won a working majority in the past 48 years. Why has Labour decided to abandon his wise approach and adopt an avaricious socialist approach instead, which has proved to be both a political and economic failure?

[Geraint Davies]

I do not want to say anything rude about David Beckham. Tony Blair was obviously a very successful Prime Minister, and as I have already pointed out, he increased the size of the British economy by 40%. If we were not sitting here after four years of the Tories borrowing more than Labour did in 13 years and with the debt going up and up, we would not have to think of measures to raise more money. It is because of the economic incompetence and failure of this Government that we need to raise more tax at this point.

I have pointed out that there are people who already pay marginal tax rates of 62p—national insurance plus income tax. They are doing that and they are not suddenly leaving the country. This is a sustainable tax that can be borne at this point in the economic calendar, and we need to do it to protect the very poorest. As I have already pointed out, we are ripping £400 million—incidentally, the area most affected by the bedroom tax is Wales, where 42% of council households face it—away from people who have virtually no money. It is simply unfair that those judgments are made.

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[Sir Malcolm Bruce]

No, I will not at this time, and I want to let other hon. Members in. That is what happened and I had the debate then.

The point I want to make is that the Labour party has never yet had the will to say sorry to the British people for what it bequeathed to us. The fact is that the economy collapsed by 7% in a single year. It has been a huge heavy lifting task for this Government to rebuild the economy to the point where we now have a strong and balanced recovery. My party’s objective is precisely to have a stronger economy and a fairer society. We believe we have made a very significant contribution to achieving that. In particular, I am slightly surprised at the disdainful way Labour Members treat the raising of the tax threshold, which has been hugely beneficial to many people on low earnings by taking them out of tax.

I have to say that I am astonished that the motion refers to the 10p tax, which has been nothing but a source of political embarrassment and division for the Labour party ever since it was thought up, invented and abolished by the Labour party. It is not clear to me whether Labour Members want to replace the 0p rate by a 10p rate, which of course means that what we are talking about is a tax increase, or whether they will follow the advice of the IFS, which says that raising the tax threshold is a much more efficient way of delivering benefits to poor people than a 10p rate. That is why we have supported raising the threshold and delivered it.

[Mr Jeremy Browne]

My right hon. Friend’s memory has momentarily failed him. The previous Labour Government did not abolish the 10p rate; they doubled the 10p rate. Everybody who was paying a marginal rate of tax at 10p started paying 20p. Some of the poorest people in my constituency and his were clobbered with a doubling of their tax rate under the previous Labour leader.

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[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

I do not envy the historian who will eventually write the book on the record of this Government. When such a history is written, the decision to cut the 50p top rate of tax will surely be seen as a turning point—the moment when this Government revealed their true colours; when they talked of hard choices for those on lower incomes, while awarding the richest 1% a tax cut worth £3 billion; and when the phrase “We’re all in this together” turned into material for satire.

People in my constituency and across the UK are facing a cost of living crisis, the scale of which the Government are unable to understand or empathise with, never mind tackle. The one part of the previous speech that I agreed with was the bit at the end, about how so many people continue to struggle. We all need to come up with a way forward that serves their interests. That is what I want to focus on. On average, households will be £1,600 a year worse off by 2015 due to tax and benefit changes made by this Government. Changes made to taxes and benefits since 2010 have meant that families where one parent is working to support children are nearly £4,000 worse off.

Let us consider youth unemployment, which is still close to 800,000. Why is it that Government Members—[Interruption]—I hope the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne) will stop heckling—cannot consider how this tax break could have instead been used to get those 800,000 young people back to work? Surely they deserve a chance to make a contribution to our economy. Time and again—

[Mr Jeremy Browne]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Rushanara Ali]

I think the hon. Gentleman has had plenty to say already. I am going to continue, because the time limit—

[Mr Browne]

rose—

[Rushanara Ali]

If I get through my speech without the hon. Gentleman interrupting and heckling, I might consider giving way to him.

Time and again, it is those most in need who are suffering on this Government’s watch. Shockingly, 2.6 million children across the UK face poverty, which is 600,000 more than in 2010. The recent report by the End Child Poverty coalition found that half the children in my constituency are growing up in poverty, a figure that has risen since 2010. Of those, two in three are in working households. One in five people across the country face low pay. Against that backdrop, it says everything about this Government that they chose to focus their efforts on reducing tax rates for the highest earners. Surely we should think about putting in place a more just and fairer tax system, but also one that gives opportunity to young people who are out of work.

Those working people across the country who are struggling at the moment will no doubt wonder why this is happening. In this House, the Chancellor said in 2011 that he was

“not going to balance the budget on the backs of the poor”.

At the same Budget, he went on to say that it would not be right to remove the 50p tax rate, asking those on much lower incomes to make sacrifices. The Government should be clear: the working people in constituencies such as mine and beyond do not feel as if they have stopped making sacrifices. We must keep remembering that. They have not stopped making sacrifices. Those people face low wages and they continue, day in, day out, to experience hypocrisy from this Government, who refuse to tackle poverty—both in-work poverty and child poverty—and when child poverty continues to rise, year in, year out. It is a disgrace and it needs to be taken seriously.

The hypocrisy continues. Only last month, the Chancellor remarked at the Conservative party conference:

“there remains a large budget deficit and our national debt is dangerously high.”

What was his answer? It was a two-year freeze of tax credits and benefits, yet two thirds of those who will be affected are in work. Such a measure, hitting the least well-off, is deemed necessary, but the pressure on the top earners is off. How is that acceptable? How is that fair? How is that justified?

[Rushanara Ali]

If I am going to give way, it will be to the hon. Member for Taunton Deane—unless he starts heckling again.

According to calculations by the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Treasury lost around £200 million from top earners due to them deferring income, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) said in his opening speech. The Chancellor will also struggle to resist calls to cut the top tax rate even further, as he and the Prime Minister have refused to rule that out. Perhaps the Minister will clarify whether the rate will be reduced further, or perhaps she will be able to rule that out.

Our approach on the Labour Benches is about a broad-based recovery, where everybody makes a contribution and where those who are most able to can make a bigger contribution. If we are serious about getting people back into work and giving young people an opportunity, this tax cut should be reversed. We need fairness embedded in the tax system, starting with top earners. That is why I support today’s motion.

I am happy to take an intervention from the hon. Member for Taunton Deane now, but I hope he will show some manners.

[Mr Jeremy Browne]

I am always respectful of good arguments in this House; I just do not understand the hon. Lady’s argument that the way to help with youth unemployment is to have a much higher top rate of personal tax than existed under Tony Blair. We have had a fall in youth unemployment under this Government. We have had a fall since the top rate of tax was cut from 50p to 45p, and we have a much lower rate of youth unemployment than France, which has higher rates of personal tax on high earners. With all due respect, I just do not understand the central premise of the hon. Lady’s speech, but at the end of it maybe she can clarify it for me.

[Rushanara Ali]

The hon. Gentleman seems to have forgotten that we got a 1 million young people into work, while over the last four years youth unemployment has remained close to 1 million. It has only recently gone down, but it remains at some 800,000. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could explain to those young people who do not have an opportunity, who have been unable to get work and who do not have much to look forward to when it comes to making a contribution by getting jobs what he and his party, working with the Government, propose to do about it. Frankly, he is living on another planet if he cannot understand the plight of some 800,000 young people who remain unemployed today.

Time is running out, so I shall conclude by saying that we need to think carefully about how best to support those who cannot manage to make ends meet. We need to be aware that the £3 billion-worth of tax cuts could have been used to stimulate the economy by supporting those who are not in work at the moment. Frankly, that £3 billion could be used to create more apprenticeship and training opportunities for those not currently in work. I hope that Government Members will consider what it means to create a fairer society. It does not mean giving tax breaks to those who are most well off—the top 1%—when everyone else in our country is struggling.

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[Mr Jeremy Browne (Taunton Deane) (LD)]

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for letting me make a short contribution to this debate. I want to make only two main points—a practical one and a philosophical one—but first, let me make a brief political point.

I say this as impartially as it is possible for an aligned Member of the House of Commons to be: it is a great tragedy for the Labour party, but actually a sadness for our country, that new Labour has been so emphatically buried by the leader of that party and by the sort of speech we just heard from the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), who, we must remember, is a former Cabinet member and was happy to pay a top rate of tax of only 40% on his inflated Cabinet salary, but seems happy now to have rates much higher than 50p—he was not willing to stop there.

It is no coincidence that the last time Labour won a working majority without Tony Blair as leader, England won the World cup. The reason why it has been such a long time since Labour—the principal Opposition party and one of the two largest parties in the country—won without Tony Blair as leader is that there is no majority in the country, as we can see now, for avaricious, punitive taxation levels and the punishment of successful, entrepreneurial people who create wealth. It was not a difficult realisation that Tony Blair came to, but it was an important one and it is sad to me that the Labour party has abandoned that.

The New Statesman, the only publication that supported the current Labour leader when he put himself forward in 2010, has published an edition today entitled, “Running out of time”, referring to Labour. The article on Labour states:

“Miliband is very much an old-style Hampstead socialist. He”—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Mr Browne, you know full well that this debate is not a general debate on the Labour party or its leader, but a debate on income tax. You are now ranging far too wide, and I should be grateful if you came back to the point of today’s debate. I am sure you will find other ways to express your wider political views on the Labour party.

[Mr Browne]

I will do, and thank you for your guidance. I will move on to my practical and philosophical points.

My practical point echoes much of what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier). The basics of being a globally successful, wealth-creating economy are not that difficult to grasp. What we have to do is make sure that businesses can start up, expand and create jobs. I was struck by the fact that quite a few contributors to this debate said that they do not have many people in their constituency who earn over £150,000. However, that is not a source for celebration: we want to have more people who are starting companies successfully and are able to earn more than £150,000 because they are employing hundreds of people, exporting around the world and meeting demand in markets. The idea that these people should be reviled is utterly perverse. We want more of these people in every constituency.

[Mark Garnier]

Was my hon. Friend not struck, as I was, by the previous speech, which ended up being an endless rant against the bankers and did not take into account any of the wealth creators in this country such as the entrepreneurs my hon. Friend has just described, or the risk-takers who mortgage their houses to invest in creating jobs? These are the people, who have taken huge risks, who are being punished by this tax. The bankers are irrelevant in this argument.

[Mr Browne]

I do not understand why so many Members of Parliament have such an antagonistic attitude towards people who start up businesses, create wealth and employ people.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Browne]

In a moment—the hon. Gentleman has only just come into the Chamber. It seems to me that those people should be lauded and celebrated for their achievements, and they should pay a reasonable amount of tax—and they do under this Government—but they should not be reviled by politicians. The reason why unemployment is falling and the economy is growing is that we have more wealth creation, and that is what we need to do more to encourage.

The Labour party—not just Labour; there are others, I am sure, Madam Deputy Speaker—seems to me to have an extremely narrow, parochial focus. There are economies right around the world that are expanding and are wealthier than ever before. Hundreds of millions of people in Asia are being lifted out of material poverty because those countries are embracing the basics of free-market economics and wealth creation. Those countries are seeing the benefits of improved health care systems, improved life expectancy, reduced infant mortality and improved education outcomes. We must not allow ourselves to adopt an approach of insular socialism in just this one country. That approach involves a belief that we can continue to penalise a small number of wealth creators for being successful, which is completely counter-productive.

We need to step back and ask ourselves what a country would do if it wanted to be competitive in a globalised economy. What could we do to encourage businesses not to locate to France, Germany or the United States or, increasingly, to Mexico, Brazil or India? What could we do to encourage them to locate here? Could we ensure that we had competitive levels of corporation tax? I congratulate the Government on achieving that. Could we ensure that we had competitive levels of personal taxation? In my view, we are in a reasonable place on that. We would be in a worse place if the gist of this motion were accepted.

Perhaps we could ensure that the percentage the state took from overall GDP was sustainable. At the moment, the Government spend a much bigger proportion of GDP than they did in any of the 10 years that Tony Blair was Prime Minister, and in my view that is too much. It is unsustainable. Could we ensure that we were not borrowing too much and living beyond our means? At the moment, we are clearly living beyond our means. These are all straightforward propositions for a country that wants to be successful in a global marketplace.

[Mr MacNeil]

I am almost sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman’s sermon in favour of inequality. Why, according to this Government, do the poor have to be punished and the rich have to be incentivised? The only thing that the bedroom tax, VAT and the millionaires’ tax have in common is that Labour abstained on all those issues, which were designed either to punish the poor or to incentivise the rich. The hon. Gentleman seems to believe that the poor must be punished and that the rich must be incentivised. Why?

[Mr Browne]

I have not the faintest idea what the hon. Gentleman is talking about. It seems like complete nonsense. I am not in favour of punishing anybody. If people can keep a higher proportion of the product of their labour, they will be incentivised to keep working and be productive. That applies to people who are earning £20,000, and who have seen a big cut in their income tax under this Government, but it also applies to people who are earning £220,000 and who might have set up successful companies employing 150 people in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency or in mine. I am not seeking to punish people. I am not one of those politicians who believes that we can make some people happy only by making others unhappy. I want us to be a harmonious country in which everyone is incentivised to work and can see the product of their labour.

[Andrew Bridgen]

My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. Does he agree that Opposition Members are still failing to appreciate that we need a strong economy, driven by entrepreneurial people, in order to have the strong public services that we need? That is where all the money comes from.

[Mr Browne]

I do agree with that, although I do not always agree with everything put forward by those on the Government Front Bench. For example, it is important—as the hon. Member for Wyre Forest said—that we should remain a member of the European Union. I know that some Conservative Members are uncomfortable with that, but we are part of the world’s biggest single market. It is an attraction to investors from outside the EU that they can invest in the United Kingdom not only because it is the sixth biggest economy in the world but because we can act as a stepping stone into the largest single market.

We also need to adopt a broadly liberal approach to migration. It is extremely important for our country that we can attract high-talent people from outside the European Union. We see quite a lot of that in London, with people coming to our capital city as well as to the other parts of the United Kingdom to invest and to grow businesses. That is important for our national prosperity.

I take an economically liberal approach across the board, but it is important that we have an enterprise economy for all the reasons that I have stated. An enterprise economy is important if we are to fund public services, for example. Many Members will have travelled widely. I would simply recommend that they try out the public services in countries that have had a heavy dose of socialism. After all, people were only escaping over the Berlin wall in one direction. They were not trying to escape from the west to the east in search of a better quality of life or better public services. A lot of the dysfunctional countries with real social problems are those that do not raise enough money to be able to fund decent public services. In no country in the world do politicians want to have bad hospitals and bad schools. Some countries do not have good hospitals and good schools because they cannot afford to fund them, and that is because they do not have an economy that raises enough revenue to do that. That is because they keep deterring wealth-creating entrepreneurial behaviour. It is all so straightforward that it feels frustrating having to explain it to people.

My philosophical and concluding point is this: all the money we are talking about is being earned by individuals working; it is not our money, the Government’s money or the Leader of the Opposition’s money. When he talks about giving money back, as if he were some sort of Santa Claus figure who is there to decide how much of your own money you are allowed to have and we should be extremely grateful to him, or to the shadow Chief Secretary, for benevolently allowing us to keep a bit of it—

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Mr Browne]

Let me finish this point. The crucial philosophical problem I have with a 50p tax rate is the underlying presumption that the state co-owns your income with you, and that when you work you are in a 50:50 shareholding relationship and for every extra hour of work you do, half the money belongs to the former Member for Shipley and half belongs to you. It is as though it is good of him that he is letting me keep half my cash; I do not accept that as a basic philosophical argument.

[Chris Leslie]

The hon. Gentleman’s conversion to Conservatism is now complete. Let me ask him a clear question. He is implying that the 50p rate is on the entirety of somebody’s income. Does he accept that it applies on earnings of more than £150,000 of income or has he totally abandoned any notion of progressivity in our tax system? Is he arguing for a flat rate of income tax?

[Mr Browne]

I will finish in a moment, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have not abandoned that, which is why people earning up to £10,500 pay no income tax under this Government, whereas under Labour the relevant figure was £6,500. Of course there is then a standard rate and a higher rate. The hon. Gentleman made a mistake in his speech when he talked about tax cuts for millionaires. Let me give an example, which is party political. The Leader of the Opposition is a millionaire who does not pay this top rate of tax, but somebody who has just got a job earning £160,000 a year is not a millionaire but does pay his 50p rate of tax. It was deliberately misleading from the hon. Gentleman and it reflected badly on him.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman will rephrase his point about the shadow Chief Secretary misleading the Chamber and then he will conclude his remarks because he knows we now need to move to the wind-ups.

[Mr Browne]

I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I do not really understand in what way it was inaccurate to say that was misleading, because it clearly was misleading.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. You are not to question the Chair. I am telling you, as the Chair, that you have accused the Opposition spokesperson of misleading this House, and that is unparliamentary and unworthy of you as an experienced parliamentarian. Therefore, I am asking you to rephrase it.

[Mr Browne]

I am extremely apologetic for implying that somebody who earns £160,000 a year is not a millionaire if they have only just started earning that amount, and—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Don’t play games, please, Mr Browne. You clearly said on the record that the shadow Chief Secretary, in his opening remarks, misled this House. Under the conventions of the House, that is not permitted. So I am, again, asking you now to rephrase or withdraw that remark.

[Mr Browne]

I withdraw the remark that I made a few moments ago and I apologise, of course, for behaving inappropriately in my speech. I conclude, as you would wish me to do, Madam Deputy Speaker, before we have the wind-ups, by urging the House to reject the motion, which would make the country as a whole poorer and make it harder for us to fund the public services on which everybody, including the least well-off, rely. It would also undermine the personal freedom of people who work, are entrepreneurial and create the necessary preconditions for us to be a successful country.