Budget Resolutions
Debate between Sammy Wilson and Tom Tugendhat(2 weeks ago)
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Sammy Wilson
Some of that redistributive impact is the result of taxes being taken off people who are on modest incomes for welfare increases. This is a figure that the Chancellor has quoted in the House time and again: one in seven under-25s is now fully reliant on benefits and is not in work. Where is that money coming from? It is coming from people who are working on a daily basis and, in many cases, for not a great deal of money, but who will be dragged into the tax system.
This is an unfair Budget, because it still relies on taking money from working people who are not mega-rich to pay for some of the Government’s grandiose schemes. Some people may argue that if it works, it is worth doing, but let us look at the record of the previous year. The OBR tells us that the outcome of the Chancellor trying the same tactic last year has been that investment is now predicted to fall as a percentage of GDP. Output growth is going to fall by a sixth, productivity is going to fall from 0.4% to -0.4%. Consumer expenditure is down by 0.5%. People are receiving less and profits for companies are going to fall from 12.5% to 10.75%, all of which will affect investment and economic growth, and undermine the very objective that the Chancellor says she is seeking to achieve.
Of course, many people will argue that that is fine, but we have levels of expenditure that we have to finance, so how do we pay for it? Let us look at some of the decisions that the Government have made over the last year. Welfare payments are going to go up quite substantially to £58 billion over the period of this Parliament. On net zero, environmental taxes are going up by 60%, affecting the profitability of companies, and the renewables obligation next year is going to cost us £3 billion. So net zero, the impact of which we are all experiencing on jobs, is going to lead to further costs. I think many people would question whether those are the kinds of things we should be spending money on at a time when we have an abundance of fossil energy in this country.
Tax avoidance has not been dealt with. I have heard tax avoidance being mentioned every time we have a Budget, including under the previous Government, but it is never dealt with. The Googles and Amazons of this world still sell goods here but do not pay taxes in this country. The budget for welfare in relation to immigration is now predicted to go up to £15 billion. Also, we have had debates in this House time and again about the bases in the Indian ocean that we had possession of. We gave them back to Mauritius and we are paying Mauritius for that. What is Mauritius going to do with the billions that we give them from taxpayers here? It is going to cut its own taxes. We are putting up our taxes in order to allow taxes to be reduced in another country when we did not even need to do it. So there are ways in which the money could have been achieved.
I welcome the announcement about the loan charge. As a vice-chairman of the loan charge and taxpayer fairness all-party parliamentary group, I trust that we will now see the Government treating the ordinary people who are affected by the loan charge in the way in which they treated big business. Businesses were given a concessionary payment of 15%, while some of the ordinary people who were affected were being charged nearly 100%. I hope that the McCann review leads to that being sorted out.
As far as Northern Ireland is concerned, I welcome the Barnett consequentials and I hope that the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Sinn Féin Finance Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly will spend the £370 million wisely—
