Finance (No. 2) Bill

Julie Marson Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con) [V]]

The Financial Secretary set out very clearly that the post-pandemic context of the Bill is unlike anything that we have faced before. What I see in the Bill is an understanding that it is not Government’s role to create growth and prosperity. Government does not create wealth or growth—consumers and businesses do that. We, like a groundsman, have the crucial job of preparing the pitch for our players. We have the crucial job of ensuring that the players—consumers and businesses—have the right pitch that they can play on to create that growth and prosperity. There is no doubt that we are playing on a really tough wicket at the moment, so we have a really tough job on our hands as that groundsman; but I think the Bill rises to that challenge.

With that in mind, there are two questions that I ask about the Bill today. The first is whether it maintains and secures support for businesses and consumers in my constituency and throughout the UK. In Hertford and Stortford I have spoken to so many businesses—so many pubs and restaurants, and those in hospitality—that will greatly welcome the extension of the VAT cut, the business rate holiday, restart grants and the many other measures of support that the Chancellor is delivering through the Bill. We could combine those with extending the lost carry-back, providing new VAT deferral payment schemes and extending furlough—things that I do not have time to cover. The Government are clearly innovating and continuing to provide packages of flexible support that will maintain protection for those businesses and the jobs that are still subject to restrictions.

The second question is whether the right combination of policies is in place to enable long-term, sustainable economic growth. That is the area most important to the long-term health of our economy, and that is where the Bill contains measures that I particularly welcome, such as the super deduction, freeports, the UK Infrastructure Bank, Help to Grow, the Future Fund breakthrough and refinements of our tax system, which will ensure that investment levels keep pace in this country and grow to support innovation and promote growth in strategically important sectors of the future—I commend the remarks on that subject by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman).

To keep it brief, I am very happy that with the Bill the Government have risen to the challenges that we face and I wholeheartedly support Second Reading. It gives us the pitch that we need, as the economy’s groundsman, to withstand the bouncers and the strength to knock the ball out of the park—well over the boundary—for the future. I commend the Bill and look forward to seeing its results on the ground, particularly in Hertford and Stortford.