| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Gardiner: The hon. Gentleman's speech has been extremely thoughtful, and there is much in it with which
I agree. I wanted to pick up his remarks in relation to middle-income Britain bearing the burden of tax increases. Has he had the opportunity to see the Institute for Fiscal Studies report that shows that every decile of the population has benefited from the Budget? Obviously, there are some losers in each decile, but every decile of the population has benefited overall, especially the lower deciles.
Mr. Wells: I admit that I have not had a chance to focus on the IFS analysis of the Budget, and if we start to talk about deciles of the population, we shall soon lose the attention of most of our constituents. I believe that our constituents must experience what happens in their schools, what happens to bus and train fares, what happens to food prices and, if they have a car or a motor cycle, what happens to the cost of petrol, before they decide whether the Budget has been a good thing for them. That is the sort of thing that they understand, although I am sure that those in the IFS will--
6.9 pm
Mr. Gerald Howarth (Aldershot): Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in the debate. I apologise to the House for not having been present throughout the debate, but I have been in my constituency with the Minister for the Armed Forces. The Minister cut the first sod, which required the tearing up of the tarmac on the old Mons barracks parade ground, for the creation of a brand new, world-class swimming pool and sporting complex for the Army in Aldershot and for wider public use. I was pleased to entertain the Minister in my constituency.
It is significant that, on my return to the House about an hour ago, I was astonished to find that the Chamber was so empty. I had been reading in the newspapers about what a fantastic Budget this was and about how it was being lauded by Labour Members. The tabloid newspapers were swooning over the Chancellor's extraordinary munificence to the British people. I thought that if it was so good, there would be many more Labour Members wishing to participate in the debate. I was shocked to find that there were not.
Mr. Caplin:
I understand that the hon. Gentleman had an important constituency engagement, but if he had been present at half-past one, he would have seen a much more crowded Chamber. There have been about 15 speeches on either side, so it has been a well-attended and well-received debate.
Mr. Howarth:
There may have been 15 speeches, but I understand that the majority of contributions have come from the Opposition Benches.
Mr. Robert Ainsworth (Lord Commissioner to the Treasury):
That is not so.
Mr. Howarth:
My hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe), who has responsibilities similar to those of the hon. Gentleman, tells me that that was the case.
However, I wish to move on, because this is an important Budget. My hon. Friend for Faversham and Mid-Kent said to me on Tuesday while the Order Papers were fluttering and huge cheers were going up on the Labour Benches, "Do you remember when we last witnessed this?" It was in 1989, during the Budget of my noble Friend Lord Lawson. We had cause subsequently to reconsider the impact of that Budget. My hon. Friend said to me, "They will experience the same thing." We have not had to wait months or years for this Budget to unravel: it has done so within a couple of days. This was a Budget of presentation and appearance: it was not a Budget of substance.
I am happy to acknowledge that I agree with one or two measures in the Budget. Some of my hon. Friends felt that mortgage interest tax relief could be allowed to wither on the vine. Indeed, that was the policy of the previous Conservative Government, and we welcomed that. It was inevitable that it would disappear in the natural course of events.
However, the substance of the Budget is much more damaging. It has been presented as a tax-cutting Budget when it is no such thing: it is a tax-increasing Budget. It is old Labour coming back--the tax and spend party. It is astonishing that the Labour party fails ever to acknowledge the sound basis on which the economy was left when the Conservatives left office in 1997. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Warrington, North (Helen Jones) may laugh, but the truth is that, although we got things wrong in the late 1980s and early 1990s, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) did a superb job in putting the economy back on track.
It is deeply distressing when Ministers go to the City and say, "Aren't we good, aren't we prudent? We have stuck to the Tories' spending limits." When their hon. Friends ask for more public spending, they say, "I'm sorry, we can't do that, because we are stuck with the Tories' spending limits. We've inherited them." If the economy is in such sound shape, it owes a great deal to the way in which the Conservative Government, under my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), managed to restore it and put it once more on a sound footing. Labour Members never acknowledged the achievements of the Conservative Government, such as the conquering of inflation and the reduction in interest rates. It is about time that they did so.
Mr. McNulty:
Given that the hon. Gentleman is renowned as one of the Conservatives' economic experts, will he remind us of the level of debt that the Conservative Government had got us to by May 1997 and the projected level of debt for this year? If he thought that the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) was such a genius, did he vote for him in the leadership election?
Mr. Howarth:
The great advantage of our party is that we have an extensive range of talent, of which my right hon. and learned Friend is a very good example. We had a rich array from which to choose.
I am well aware of what the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty) is saying. We allowed the public sector borrowing requirement to grow. Many of us were critical of the fact that we had got to that position.
However, my right hon. and learned Friend had got the problem under control. What is happening now is the natural corollary of the policies put in place by the previous Conservative Government. This Government have continued those policies by sticking to the previous spending limits. I praise them for that, but the policies are Tory, not socialist. They said that they would stick to the spending limits because they wanted to ensure that they did not frighten the middle classes at the election. The best way in which to make themselves appear prudent was to pretend that they were Conservatives. That is how they won the election.
One of the most galling characteristics of the Government, after their lack of respect for the House, is the way in which the Prime Minister repeatedly dismisses the facts put forward by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition as wrong--and therefore as lies--when it is the Prime Minister who is guilty of misleading the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Wells) mentioned Anatole Kaletsky's article in The Times today. It would be instructive if I mentioned some of the points in it.
Mr. Kaletsky reminds his readers of the question that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister yesterday:
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. No Member of Parliament deliberately misleads the House or is involved in any falsehoods.
Mr. Howarth:
Thank you for pointing that out to me, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was simply pointing out what commentators outside the House have been saying.
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
The hon. Gentleman cannot use someone else's words to defame another Member of Parliament.
Mr. Howarth:
I am perfectly content to believe that the Prime Minister had not had time to read all the facts and figures in the Red Book. He may wish to make a correction in the House in due course, when he has had an opportunity to study the various press comments. I did not intend to suggest that the Prime Minister deliberately lied to or misled the House, but I hope that he will pay attention to the remarks of commentators.
"'How much has the Government raised taxes in its first three Budgets?' Mr Hague repeatedly demanded. 'We have not raised taxes, we have cut them,' Tony Blair insisted again and again. Yet this was simply false",
Mr. Kaletsky maintains. He continues:
"As shown unambiguously in the Government's own Budget statement, taxes have risen in each of the past two years and will rise even more in the next financial year."
The Prime Minister is incapable of differentiating between the truth and falsehood. I have quoted a respected commentator who has analysed the figures and realised that the Prime Minister's claims are false.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |