Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I absolutely agree with my hon. and learned Friend. [Interruption.] The shadow Chancellor is chuntering away, but this is what he said on the radio this morning: “I don’t think I’ve been too pessimistic in the last few years.” He predicted that the economy would be choked off and that jobs would be lost, but the reverse is happening. In Sleaford and North Hykeham, as my hon. and learned Friend knows, the claimant count has come down and 1,700 jobs have been created.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

T4. When the Chancellor said earlier this month, “If you are hiding your money offshore, we are coming to get you”,did he mean “coming to get you to work in the Treasury”?

[Mr Osborne]

This Government have taken action against tax avoidance that the last Government never dreamed of taking. We have increased the resources for tackling avoidance and evasion. I will tell the House something else: we do not preside over a tax system in which cleaners pay higher tax rates than the people they work for. That was the tax system that the Labour party voted for, and we have got rid of it.