Oral Answers to Questions

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman may not have been aware of it, but an announcement was made yesterday that was germane to his point: the announcement of the extension of High Speed 2 to Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester, which, in 13 years in government, his party never got around to delivering.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

The Minister may be aware of the report on football governance which was published today by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. I want to record my thanks to him and to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for their help in dealing with Portsmouth football club. Will he assure us that his Department will play its full part in ensuring that prospective owners who are not fit and proper do not get their mitts on these important community assets and destroy them?

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)]

The Government will, of course, look closely at the Committee recommendations. As my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport has made clear, it is time for football to get its house in order.

Oral Answers to Questions

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

As I have said, we will not take any lectures from the Opposition on child poverty. I used the previous Government’s figures. She talks about workless households, but they increased by 200,000 during Labour’s last term in power and I believe that the policies the Government have in place to deal with the root causes of poverty are the right ones.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

5. What consideration he has given to the introduction of transferable tax allowances for married couples.

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)]

The Government’s commitment to introducing a proposal to recognise marriage through the tax and benefits system remains firm. We want to show that we value commitment, so we will consider a range of options and advance proposals at the appropriate time.

[Penny Mordaunt]

With the introduction of the tapered removal of child benefit with one parent earning between £50,000 and £60,000, will the Minister give further consideration to how we can support families at this difficult time?

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the fact that we have introduced a range of measures that will have an impact on all parts of society, including the highest earning 10% to 15% through the child benefit changes. Of course, we look to do whatever we can to support families. That includes providing free early learning for three and four-year-olds and extending the 15 hours a week of early years education and care from 2012-13 to all disadvantaged two-year-olds.

--- Later in debate ---

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

T9. Unlike suppliers, who are in a position to judge whether to continue giving goods and services to a company in difficulties, many consumers are not so well informed. Is it not time we amended administration law to make savers and gift voucher holders preferred creditors?

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Sajid Javid)]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about the protection of individuals using saving or voucher schemes, and I commend her work on raising awareness about that important issue. I know that she raised the issue recently during business questions and received a response from the relevant Minister. If it would be helpful, I will speak with the Minister and raise her ongoing concerns.

Air Passenger Duty

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

I welcome this debate and the motion tabled by the Backbench Business Committee and moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel).

Of all campaigns in this Parliament, I have received the highest level of communication from my Windsor constituents about the air passenger duty, and that says a lot. My constituents are wonderful people. They are incredibly articulate and eloquent, and although they are extremely good at writing letters on all sorts of subjects, I was taken aback by the level of communication on this issue.

Although we love our noisy neighbour, Heathrow, do not wish to see it close and hope that its status will be maintained, the air passenger duty lies right at the heart of the airport’s future. We will need further capacity in the south-east, but Heathrow is not fully utilised at the moment, and I wonder whether part of our failure to use it to its full capacity is due to air passenger duty.

Let me make some brief observations about APD. First, it is an odd tax in its own right; it is a tax on the free movement of people and goods in our country, the European Union and the world in general. It is a harmful tax—it harms competition and trade—and it is damaging to our reputation and connections with the rest of the world. The tax directly affects people’s behaviour. I am sure that many hon. Members have had their mouse hovering over the online basket when buying air tickets, and then suddenly realised that on occasion, the tax is higher than the price of the ticket. That bizarre anomaly lies at the heart of today’s debate.

It strikes me that there is an evidence-sized hole at the heart of this debate. The Treasury may have conducted reviews into how much revenue is raised and how much money APD brings in, but the absence of a full review leaves a huge hole and lack of information about the overall economic impact of this tax on our nation.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

I represent Portsmouth, which is quite a deprived area, and my constituents are concerned about keeping interest rates low and expect the Government to be watchful of the cost of living and life’s necessities. Much like my hon. Friend, however, the volume of mail that I have received on this issue suggests that my constituents are sceptical about whether air passenger duty produces a positive return for the Exchequer.

[Adam Afriyie]

My hon. Friend puts her point incredibly well. This issue has led to more than 200,000 communications with Members of the House of Commons, let alone the House of Lords and other places. Interestingly, just 100,000 names on a petition would have, in any case, triggered a debate in this Chamber, and the Government would have had to listen closely to that.

APD is a very blunt tool. The hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) referred to his days studying economics in the ‘80s. I also studied economics at that time, and it is clear that air passenger duty does not recognise the elasticity of demand, and potentially the elasticity of supply. It does not differentiate between different types of consumer or passenger.

The APD is also a blunt instrument and an anomaly because it does not deal with carbon emissions or global warming—the EU emissions trading system deals with them. The APD does not recognise opportunity cost. By raising revenue through the APD, the Exchequer might be forgoing a great deal more revenue from trade and travel, which might generate economic activity in other spheres.

The APD is an odd tax, but I should give a little credit to the Government, who had an opportunity to raise even more money from it in the past year or two. Thankfully, they contained the rate of increase. Nevertheless, it is beholden on them to consider the overall economic impact of the APD to ensure we have evidence and move forward on a rational basis and tidy up the matter.

The beauty of the motion is not just its presenter, but the motion itself and the fact that it is reasonable. It is not strident and does not attack the Government, and it is not party political. We have had a free and easy debate because all hon. Members recognise that we are talking about the rational outcome of tax. The motion is not party political or contentious; it is plain common sense. I urge my good and hon. Friend the Minister wholly to embrace the direction of the motion and to commission an overall review of the economic impact of this rather bizarre tax that is holding our country back.

Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Monday 17th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

Let me explain to Members who do not know Portsmouth well that there are three roads leading to the island. Those who take the western road will enjoy a plum view of an area called Stamshaw and Tipner on the left as they head into the city. It is part ships’ graveyard and a dumping ground for disused troop carriers, part Ministry of Defence shooting range, part former dog track and part disused industrial site. Local people have been desperate for the area to be regenerated for decades.

Before I became a Member of Parliament I met one of the landowners, who was keen to invest in cleaning up the site and proceeding with plans to build more homes and community facilities. The council had written to him saying that it would not welcome the seeking of planning permission while it did not have a vision for the whole site, and that the issue of road infrastructure was still in question. He produced that letter for me. He then produced a second letter which had been written to his father in 1973 by the same local authority. Apart from the fact that the former letter had a jazzier logo on the header and an Arial font, and the latter had been typed on an old-fashioned typewriter, the letters were the same, almost word for word.

Local residents were fed up with having endless discussions about opportunities resulting in no delivery. That has changed now that the go-ahead has been given for the new motorway junction on the M275 at Tipner, as was announced in a statement last year. That has enabled the whole area to be regenerated. The new road will provide access to the development site, and will greatly reduce the impact of construction traffic on local roads. At present, the only access to the site is via narrow Victorian streets which are heavily and unavoidably used for street parking, servicing and local access,

Regeneration of the Tipner area would bring major benefits to Portsmouth, most notably the cleaning up of former industrial land and the creation of new open spaces, parks and waterside walks, and much-needed homes and jobs. The master plan for the area includes 1,600 new homes, 30% of which are to be affordable housing, 25,000 square metres of business accommodation for 1,500 new jobs, and a new hotel complex. The transport infrastructure will not just enable development to take place, but help to ease congestion and parking pressures which, in the most densely populated city in the UK apart from London, are considerable.

A new, additional bus priority lane on the M275 will improve public transport between Tipner and central Portsmouth, and bus reliability. As it will be an additional lane, it will not remove any capacity for general traffic. There will also be a new means of access to a park-and-ride site from the new motorway junction. That is all good stuff, and I am happy to report that work started this summer. The Homes and Communities Agency has begun the cleaning up of the land that it owns, along with some owned by the council, as the first phase of the scheme, and contractors have begun work on the old PD Fuels site off Twyford avenue as part of their work to clear and prepare the other three plots for development.

I have been struck by the ambition that exists in our city. Business has challenged the local authority to do more to enable the whole harbour to be developed and to make best use of MOD unused sites, creating a destination port for cruise ships and potentially achieving world heritage status. I have been impressed by the collaboration between the different sectors in the city and the emerging of a shared vision of the exploitation of the heritage and natural assets possessed by Portsmouth, as a deep-water harbour. I am very pleased by what the Government have done to remove obstacles in order to enable those complex partnerships to flourish, and especially pleased by the pragmatic steps that they have taken to enable us to use former MOD land. I urge the Government to continue to build on the pathways that they have created between the Treasury and English Heritage in that area in particular.

I have some sympathy with the Opposition, because the job of this Opposition is a difficult one. They do not have a plan themselves that they can articulate, and they cannot criticise the Bill or the investment that it would allow—investment that would come either directly from the public purse or from the private sector, the Bill serving as a catalyst in the latter case. Instead, they say that the Bill is not required. I would argue that good financial management and parliamentary scrutiny suggest otherwise. The Opposition are also in denial about the rate at which work is proceeding, and, in their criticism, are sending the message that Great Britain is closed for business.

In the coming years, £1 billion will be invested in Portsmouth through a pioneering partnership between business and civic leaders. That will be made possible by the infrastructure projects that the Government have announced. Members need not take my word for it: by happy coincidence, today’s edition of the Financial Times contains an article by James Pickford about that £1 billion investment, which includes the Tipner scheme.

The Opposition have no credibility in this regard. The infrastructure projects that I have described were not advanced under the last Labour Government. They promised a £200 million investment in school buildings for Portsmouth, and not a brick was laid. More peculiar still, when I submitted a freedom of information request to the Department for Education after I had become a Member of Parliament, asking what correspondence had taken place on that major investment project, I was told that none existed. I found that extremely suspicious: I had thought that at least a couple of letters would have been written. Let us not forget, as well, that Labour presided over a private finance initiative contract for our local hospital that provides very poor value for money for the local health economy and forced the closure of wards.

If we are to judge a Government’s infrastructure plan on the basis of value for money, return on investment and “cracking on with it”, the Opposition will not fare well. I urge them to show a little humility today, and, if not to reflect on their record—I realise that that might be painful—at least to support our communities in their ambitions. Portsmouth’s ambitions require both positive thinking and positive action, and I urge all political parties, their Members of Parliament and their councillors to get behind our communities’ plans for growth and help to attract that investment. The whole House should support this Bill.

Tax Avoidance and Evasion

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

Over the past few months we have heard much about the morality of paying tax, whether it has been through the pillorying of the rich and famous, scrutiny of the conduct of big business operating in the UK or through the auspices of the Christian Aid tax fairness bus currently touring the country focusing on the conduct of UK businesses operating overseas.

Today there has been much discussion about individuals’ and businesses’ tax obligations to the state for the benefit of one’s fellow citizens. We have not heard much about the state’s obligations towards our citizens and businesses with regard to tax collection, and I want to rectify that today. Paying tax, being compliant and paying a fair amount is a two-way street. It is morally right that we should pay our taxes; evasion and aggressive avoidance are wrong. But just as the Government have a moral duty to spend taxes wisely and get good value from our public services, so, too, HMRC has a moral obligation to the taxpayer to ensure that its requests are reasonable and fair.

HMRC has extraordinary powers, frightening in their extent and enormity, that are enshrined in laws seemingly as complex and wide-ranging as the current tax code. Fifteen years ago, the relationship between taxpayer and tax collector was much more evenly balanced. Now there are punitive penalties for failing to submit returns, even if no tax is due or if HMRC owes the taxpayer a refund. The old tax tribunal system has been replaced with one that is far more rigid and less even-handed, and HMRC is able to issue completely unreasonable tax assessments to force taxpayers, who may have a legitimate dispute, to pay tax that they might not owe while their case is being investigated.

I often think that all that is missing from HMRC is the uniform and that it could be argued that we live in a state of financial martial law. It is time that the debate on the morality of tax turned its focus on those extraordinary powers, which often have a detrimental effect on precisely those citizens who have been absent from this debate so far—those on low incomes, the isolated, the vulnerable and older people.

Our tax code is hugely complex. The most popular edition of the tax guide now has over 17,000 pages; if my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) has not read it, he can comfort himself with the thought that he would have had little chance of remembering what was in it if he had.

The system is especially complex for pensioners. In the last year of the Labour Government, the National Audit Office estimated that some 1.5 million older people had overpaid tax. Those overpayments have serious financial implications for the elderly, whose income is about 25% under the national average. Although the elderly are generally more compliant than taxpayers as a whole, they are often less aware of what they should do to comply and what allowances they are entitled to and they are more likely to face massive life changes such as retirement, bereavement or serious changes to their health that bring with them inevitable tax consequences.

Picture the confusion of the 91-year-old who after being widowed becomes a taxpayer for the first time, or the lady with inoperable cancer, whose husband has Alzheimer’s, pursued for failing to provide tax returns that HMRC had been sending to an address she had not lived at for nine years, despite its being clear that her allowances exceeded her income. Imagine the chaos caused to the life of a widow who received a tax demand for £3,500 as the Revenue had not been collecting tax on her state pension due to the fact her P161 was not sent to her when she retired at 60. Picture the gentleman who was being chased for underpayment wrongly, because neither he nor HMRC realised that he was entitled to the blind person’s allowance.

I applaud the work of Age UK, the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group and Tax Help for Older People. With their help, all the examples that I mentioned were resolved with a happy ending—evidence that the staff at HMRC are perfectly reasonable when these issues are pointed out. However, without that professional help and advocacy, many people end up paying more than they owe, with substantial detrimental consequences to their quality of life. That situation is not acceptable.

The complexity of the tax code and the frequency of HMRC errors mean that it is not reasonable to expect the burden of responsibility for checking demands to lie entirely with those vulnerable people. HMRC must at least have some responsibility for its own mistakes, especially if the consequence to the taxpayer of fulfilling that underpayment would be great hardship and would over the long term be detrimental to the public purse, as we saw with tax credit maladministration under the last Government. I would go further and say that HMRC should have an obligation to ensure not only that codes are correct but that for those on low and fixed incomes allowances are being used and people are as tax-efficient as they can be. That should be a performance measure that we judge it against.

Governments must take responsibility for their mistakes too. The Minister will be aware that I have had correspondence with him on the principle of retrospective taxation. It obviously behoves the Government to close loopholes as they are revealed, or better still to anticipate and remove them during the legislative drafting process. Nevertheless, when a loophole has been found in legislation, it is not illegal for it to be exploited—possibly morally repugnant, but not illegal. When clause 55 of the 2008 Finance Bill was discussed in Public Bill Committee, the Minister voiced the Conservative Opposition’s concern about its retrospective nature. If it was wrong to legislate retrospectively in 2008, it cannot be right now. We must work to close tax avoidance loopholes, but we must consider whether it is morally justifiable to take retrospective action on tax avoidance in the case of relatively low earners who signed up to schemes that were advertised openly and publicly and of which the Government and HMRC were aware.

Finally, I want to raise the subject of digital exclusion, specifically in relation to HMRC’s policy which makes it compulsory for all businesses, including the smallest, to file their business returns online. As a result, the proprietors of many micro-businesses who are unable to use a computer—for various reasons, including disability, age and lack of broadband access—have had to incur often disproportionate costs to employ an agent to file online for them or face penalties for not being able to file by electronic communication. Several proprietors have appealed their penalties, and those appeals are waiting to be heard by the First-tier Tribunal in November this year. The amounts charged are tiny—£100 for not filing online—but the costs to HMRC and the public purse in pursuing these cases are significant. The three lead cases involve older people, all with disabilities, who are unable to file online, and there is no statutory exemption for those with disabilities. There are many examples of otherwise compliant taxpayers being pursued relentlessly for small sums because of their inability to move to a digital channel to transact with HMRC.

The age of austerity and the recent focus on the moral good of paying taxes should not give HMRC any respite from simplifying the tax code, publicising allowances, reducing errors, and supporting businesses in hard times. It is in its interests and everyone else’s that it does so. It is better for the public purse that a business that has been paying tax on time for decades but has fallen on hard times survives and those jobs are kept. It is better for the public purse that an older person has that little bit of extra income to which they are entitled in order to stay well and independent. It is better for the public purse that HMRC’s resources are not taken up with correcting silly mistakes and are focused on tackling high-value evasion and aggressive avoidance.

I congratulate the Minister on the progress that he has made in simplifying the tax code, promoting common sense, and lifting many people out of paying tax altogether. May I urge him to go further, faster for the benefit of the Exchequer and the most vulnerable in our society?

Professional Standards in the Banking Industry

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

That is a very important point. Banks play a very important role in our economy. Hundreds of thousands of jobs depend on our retail and global wholesale banking industry. It would be very dangerous to take risks with that industry and those jobs. It makes no sense to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I say to the Chancellor, and those who use the importance of our financial services industry as an argument against a broad-based inquiry, that they badly under-estimate both public anger and what needs to be done, because banking is a profession which above all needs trust, and that trust is currently badly undermined.

The Chancellor said earlier this week:

“We know what went wrong”.—[Official Report, 2 July 2012; Vol. 547, c. 613.]

When the public hear that, I do not think they believe him. That is the problem. In the light of recent events, when they find out that the Government have decided, against the recommendation of Sir John Vickers, to allow complex derivatives inside the retail bank ring fence, they think, “Well, could this allow the appalling mis-selling to happen again?”

Let me quote to the House the comments of Mr Martin Wolf, a member of the Vickers commission, who was asked last week whether he agreed that any sort of derivative should not be sold to a retail bank. He was asked whether they should be kept separate, and he replied:

“We wanted to separate them completely and the Government has gone back on that and we think that is really quite dangerous. It leads to the very serious risk of mis-selling which we have seen has been a constant theme of the relationship between retail banks and relatively inexperienced, uninformed clients.”

That is right, and that is why a LIBOR inquiry is not enough. We need to look at these Vickers issues as well.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

The shadow Chancellor may know that a constituent of mine is a former Labour Treasury Minister whom I unseated at the last election. For her sake, if not for mine, will he tell us who were the Ministers Bob Diamond was referring to?

[Ed Balls]

We return to the smears of the Chancellor and his aides. We have had answers to that question from the City Minister at the time, the Chancellor and Shriti Vadera. I have asked the Chancellor to provide the evidence or withdraw and apologise, and he cannot. That says quite a lot about the Treasury team that he leads.

It is our view that a comprehensive review of the whole culture of banking must start with the conduct of bankers and traders, look at the institutions in which they operate, and cascade outwards into the rules, corporate governance, industry approaches and regulatory and legal frameworks in which banks have done business in past decades. There are many important, searching questions that we need to answer, and the only way to answer them—I have them here, but for reasons of time I will not go through them all—is through the broad-based inquiry that we need, not a narrow, LIBOR-based inquiry.

LIBOR (FSA Investigation)

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I repeat that we need brief questions and although I know—[Interruption.] Order. Although I know that the Chancellor is seeking to assist the House, pithy replies would also help.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

Does the Chancellor find it odd that the Opposition are calling for Barclays to face a criminal investigation, given that when they were in office they set up a regime that did not make this abuse a criminal offence?

Jobs and Growth

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Thursday 17th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

rose—

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

rose—

[Ed Balls]

I will give way first to the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller). We have nothing in the file for him, because unfortunately we were unable to find anything interesting that he had said during the last two years.

[Ed Balls]

The right course is to take a balanced approach that combines medium-term deficit reduction with getting jobs and growth moving. The problem with austerity is that it chokes off jobs and growth and ends up costing more in spending, more in unemployment and more in borrowing. We have set out a clear alternative. We have said “Repeat the bank bonus tax, and use the money to create jobs.” We have said “Rip up the failed national insurance cut introduced by the Chancellor, and use the money for a tax cut for small businesses.” We have said “Yes, cut VAT by £12 billion for a year to get the economy moving.” We have not said how many shovel-ready infrastructure projects can be launched, because we do not have the details.

The Prime Minister says that you cannot borrow your way out of a debt crisis, but unless you grow, your debts get bigger and your deficits get worse. That is what the Chancellor has proved over the last two years. It is not only the Labour party that is advancing that argument. Only last week, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund said:

“We know that fiscal austerity holds back growth and the effects are worse in downturns... so the right pace is essential”.

Even the head of the European Central Bank is now pressing for a jobs and growth plan.

The Prime Minister and the Chancellor must wake up to the fact that our economy has not grown on their watch for a year and a half. Instead of trying to divert the blame for their failure and using the eurozone as an excuse for Britain's problems, they must admit that they got it wrong—that they gave the eurozone the wrong advice—and start pushing for the right solution to the eurozone crisis. I agree that there should be a proper role for the European Central Bank and a greater emphasis on fiscal burden-sharing, but there should also be a change of course on austerity, because only a balanced plan that puts jobs and growth first will succeed in getting the deficit down. When the International Monetary Fund, the OECD, the European Commission, the European Central Bank and even the United States are urging policies for jobs and growth, this Chancellor and this Prime Minister are looking increasingly isolated and out on a limb.

[Penny Mordaunt]

Since April 2010, in my constituency the number of job vacancies has risen by 316%, the number of apprenticeships has doubled, the number of jobseeker’s allowance claimants has fallen by 12%, and the number of claimants aged between 18 and 24 has fallen by 15%. Those are the facts. I understand why the right hon. Gentleman does not want to give Ministers any credit for that, but will he stop talking down the businesses and entrepreneurs in Portsmouth who have made it possible?

[Ed Balls]

I am sure that the hon. Lady and I can agree on one thing. There has been a 130% rise in long-term youth unemployment—unemployment lasting more than six months—in her constituency over the last year. [Interruption.] It is up by 129% in her constituency, and that is really worrying. Constituencies of Members on both sides of the House saw the damage done by long-term youth unemployment in the 1980s, and we should act to prevent a repeat of that rather than being complacent.

IMF

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I can be very clear that the British Government would not allow the loan we are talking about—the loan from Britain—to be used for the eurozone bail-out fund. It is for specific countries, not currencies, as set out in the communiqué.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

What my constituents want to know is whether their money will be safe. Is the Chancellor aware of any instance of a country that has lent money to the IMF not being repaid in full?

[Mr Osborne]

No, there are no such instances. Every single country that has lent money to the IMF has got its money back.

Finance (No. 4) Bill

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the measures in the Budget will raise five times more than changing the 50p rate?

[Danny Alexander]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. The figures in the Budget book, certified by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, show that in each and every year, money raised from the wealthiest in the land will dwarf by five times at least the cost of reducing the 50p rate to 45p. In doing that, we are also, for example, clamping down on the avoidance of stamp duty—something that was left as an open door by the previous Government. They seemed to be in favour of a tax system that encouraged avoidance, rather than clamping down on avoidance, ensuring that everyone pays their fair share and thereby raising five times as much money overall, which we can use, for example, to fund the massive cost of the substantial reductions in income tax for people on low and middle incomes in this country.