Finance Bill

Oliver Heald Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

My right hon. Friend makes exactly the point I have been advancing: not only is the approach the Opposition are taking counterintuitive, because the evidence suggests that higher corporation tax will yield less money for our public services and fewer opportunities to redistribute taxes to the most vulnerable in society, but it will send a signal that Britain is no longer open for business, which is exactly the opposite signal from the one we want to be sending to the world at this time. The point is that that is being done by the Labour party, against the evidence and for purely party political, ideological reasons.

Margaret Thatcher once said that the left would

“rather that the poor were poorer, provided that the rich were less rich.”—[Official Report, 22 November 1990; Vol. 181, c. 448.]

Today’s Labour Members would rather that there was less money for public services, less wealth and less opportunity, so long as they could claim that they were punishing the wealthy from the comfort of their Islington townhouses.

The public should be under no illusions: the Labour party’s economic plans will not bring in the tax receipts it claims they will, will not fund the commitments it claims to make, including on tuition fees, and will pose a real risk to public services. The only tax receipts that we can be certain will increase under a Labour Government led by the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) will be the air passenger duties levied on the businessmen and women—the entrepreneurs and innovators —stampeding to leave the country after the next general election.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that every time Labour has tried tax, borrow, spend, they have left government with the country poorer and with people earning less—the wealthy and those on lower incomes? They just do not know how to run the economy.

[Robert Jenrick]

I could not agree more with my right hon. and learned Friend.

The evidence I have tried to bring forward shows that under Conservative Governments—both from 1979 to 1997, and from 2010 to the present day—the money spent on public services increased dramatically while those Governments have been able to take more tax receipts from the wealthiest in society by applying a sensible, credible economic policy and not. purely ideologically, seeking to increase taxes on the rich and our business community, which is counterproductive for everybody concerned.

In closing, I want to make a simple point about Brexit and the state of the economy. The only way Brexit can be a success is if Britain charts a course towards economic liberalism. Our survival and our success outside the European Union entail Britain becoming more competitive. We must open up markets. We must find ways of building competitive advantages, of reducing and deregulating wherever possible, of getting inward investment into the country and of embracing free trade. That means encouraging enterprise above all else.