Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Tim Loughton and Lucy Powell

Monday 20th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell]

I will come on to say something about that, but as my husband is an A&E consultant I am all too familiar with these issues. As the IFS said, it was a golden

“sledgehammer to crack a very small nut”.

The realities facing our public services are not addressed in this Budget.

It is another Tory Budget so divorced from reality that it exposes, once again, who the party in government is really for—tax cuts for the wealthiest, tax hikes for the rest. The last Tory Budget had a cut to the 45p top rate of tax; this Budget has a pension tax cut for the top 1%. Government Members might groan and wail, but that is the reality.

Wealth managers already see the Budget as a bonanza, and not only a huge tax break for the super-wealthy but an inheritance tax wheeze for the super-rich too, with one wealth adviser describing it as

“a great opportunity for tax-free growth.”

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady has been quoting experts and the newspapers. Will she now admit that the figures that her colleague, the shadow Chancellor, gave about the benefit that the pension changes will bring was grossly miscalculated? A quote that appeared in the Financial Times said it was

“based on a muddled understanding of how the pension tax rules operate”.

Will she apologise for the calculations in the Labour press release or are they just muddled?

[Lucy Powell]

I will not apologise for those figures, and in the next part of my speech I will explain that the figures are perhaps worse than previously thought. There are issues for doctors, but only 16% of those who will benefit from this massive boon are doctors, and that is before all the speculators dive into this new wheeze. That is the political choice that this Chancellor and this Government have made—trickle-down economics, and tax perks for the tiny few. That is the record that they just will not be able to dodge.