Income tax (charge)

Robert Syms Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

I rise to support my right hon. Friend the Chancellor’s Budget. We are facing an unprecedented and very difficult situation, but we are better able to deal with it because of how the Conservative party—including in our earlier coalition with the Liberal Democrats—has managed the economy. We need to give credit to George Osborne and Philip Hammond. Philip has taken a lot of criticism because of his views on Europe, but he was a fiscally conservative Chancellor. The fact that, even with the ONS adjustments, the budget deficit will be under 2% this year gives us at least some room for manoeuvre to deal with what is going to be very difficult crisis.

I welcome the increase in investment in the Chancellor’s Budget. I have always felt that we ought to be a bit more French about big projects, because around some of those big projects, private enterprise can grow. Sometimes railways, ports and airports are necessary for an economy to grow. I also welcome the investment in roads—apparently buses as well as cars travel on roads. One of the quickest ways to get an boost to the economy is to take the road network and to add value to it. We have invested billions in roads—in bypasses, extensions and so on. In some areas, resurfacing can make our roads a bit quieter. Those are quite useful things for the Government to be doing, and they will provide a quicker hit than HS2 and other projects, which are far more long term.

In speaking in this debate, I am particularly pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra), who made a wonderful start in addressing this Chamber. He said that he was dyslexic. There are at least two Tory Cabinet Ministers who have been dyslexic, so he should take that as a sign of hope for his future career after his fine start.

I have been in this Chamber a while, and can say that there have been a number of occasions when one has been debating a subject with the full knowledge that, at 7 o’clock in the evening, somebody else will make a statement that will totally change the terms of the debate. I welcome the fact that the Chancellor will be here at 7 o’clock, and I think that we all expect other measures to be announced.

Most economic downturns happen steadily and gradually over a number of quarters. Businesses can manage the change, but what has happened recently—sometimes overnight—is that the business model has been destroyed. What we need to do, certainly for the next three months, is keep all those businesses in a situation from which they can recover and prosper. That will require a lot of money and a lot of creative effort, but I am sure that the Government are up to it. I look forward to hearing what the Chancellor is going to say at 7 pm.

As I have said, we are in a much better position because of some of the things that we have done in the past. We had a big debate over austerity in 2010, and, you know what, we won it and we won the general election. We had a debate in 2015, and, you know what, we won it. We had a debate in 2017, and we just about won it, and we had a debate in 2019 and we won it again. I am perfectly content for the Labour party to argue with us on these terms, because it is 4-0 so far and, from what I can see, it will certainly be 5-0 if Labour does not accept that the British people understand that, sometimes, the books have to be balanced.

I hope that we use the economic scope that we have to provide the firepower to get the businesses through the next two or three months. I am confident that the Government are doing the right thing in terms of what is a very difficult wicket. I am confident that the fundamentals of our economy are sound, but what we must not do is let good sound businesses be knocked down because of a short-term difficulty.