"T2. Has the Secretary of State seen this week’s report by Open Europe, which indicates that unless rights at work in this country were to be completely destroyed, leaving the European Union would cause permanent damage to the British economy? Is not the real risk to businesses and workers at …..." William Bain - View Speech
"The Minister omitted to say in his answer that nine out of 17 Departments spent less with SMEs in 2013-14 than they did in 2012-13. With just 10% of Government contracts going to small businesses, why have this Government been so poor when it comes to procurement from our SME …..." William Bain - View Speech
"This was the Chancellor’s sixth Budget, and after a Parliament of unparalleled failure on living standards not seen in decades, today was his final chance to chart a fairer course for the British people. He failed that test. He failed it because the values by which he has conducted economic …..." William Bain - View Speech
"I gently point out to the hon. Gentleman that the emergency Budget and the spending review adopted in autumn 2010 led to three years of hardly any growth at all in the economy, a dramatic fall in tax revenues, the deficit having not fallen or been wiped out as the …..." William Bain - View Speech
"Does my hon. Friend share my astonishment, and that of other Labour colleagues and indeed the whole country, that to try to persuade us people were better off the Chancellor used a metric that deals only with mean incomes—skewed to people at the very top of the income scale—and includes …..." William Bain - View Speech
"With one in six people in Northern Ireland on low pay and intergenerational poverty remaining stubbornly high, should not the Government be getting a move on to raise the minimum wage to at least £8 an hour and get as many people as possible on to the living wage to …..." William Bain - View Speech
"For hard-pressed taxpayers, the real test of whether the Government are committed to cracking down on tax evasion and avoidance will be whether this month’s Finance Bill contains legal penalties for breach of the general anti-abuse rule. Will the Financial Secretary tell us whether those will feature in the Finance …..." William Bain - View Speech
"It has been a pleasure to listen to the whole of this debate and to make a contribution at this stage. It has been a revealing debate, showing the paucity of the Government and the Conservatives’ argument for re-election. It comes down to this: “We have nearly doubled the debt, …..." William Bain - View Speech