| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
5.38 pm
Mr. Stephen O'Brien (Eddisbury) (Con): We have had an interesting, informative and stimulating debate, although it has not been over-attended by Members from either side of the House, due to the nature of the parliamentary diary. The debate was opened expertly with a great speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Collins). As the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) finished his speech slightly earlier than anticipated, my hon. Friend has not yet returned to the Chamber, but no doubt he will enjoy reading these comments.
My hon. Friend raised serious issues about education that had been left unanswered by the Budget. The enormous strengths of the approach and policies proposed by the Opposition were proved both by the list of our policies that my hon. Friend gave the House and by the fact that the Secretary of State for Education and Skills did not contest them. Indeed, the Government are adopting some of our policies, which, of course, we
welcome—even if half of them have been re-branded by the Government, who are particularly good at re-branding and spin.The Secretary of State followed the excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, and he has done me the courtesy of explaining that he cannot be here for the winding-up speeches. Speaking of notable absences, he will not be at the NUT conference on Easter Sunday, unlike the shadow Secretary of State for Public Services, Health and Education, my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo), who will attend. As a result of the Secretary of State's response to my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk will have an opportunity to discuss Labour cuts to the schools budget, which became apparent during the debate, with the NUT. Those cuts contrast with the Conservative commitments detailed by my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale and, indeed, my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor.
When the Secretary of State was invited to attend the NUT conference, he said that he had something better to do on Easter Sunday, although he does not know what it is yet—when one digs a hole for oneself, how deep can one get? If that were not bad enough, he spent just seven minutes trying to justify his policies and 23 minutes discussing ours—proof, if proof were needed, that we are setting the education agenda with our policies to give control and choice to parents through pupil passports, which will give good schools the freedom and ability to expand. The Government want to choke off that choice and control.
The hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Rendel) spoke for the Liberal Democrats. He stood in for the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Mr. Willis), who has unfortunately lost his voice. I am sure that all Labour and Conservative Members wish him well in recovering his voice, which, every time he uses it, tends to remind us why we are not Liberal Democrats.
We heard from the Chairman of the Education and Skills Committee, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), who is not in his place. He forcefully asserted his right as Chairman of the Committee to be political if he wants to be. His contribution was characteristically partisan—having served on that Committee under his chairmanship, I did not doubt that it would be.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Sir Michael Spicer) made a clear speech on the genuine worry and concern within our economy about the severe decline in productivity rates since 1997. He also made an important point about the difficulty of holding the Government to account and of seeing a full picture of the economy when the Government will not publish the relevant tables of productivity rates.
Mr. Todd: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. O'Brien: Given the time, I must decline. The hon. Gentleman had a lot longer than I have to make his contribution.
I dispute the claim by the hon. Member for Warrington, North (Helen Jones) that the whole world of Warrington began in 1997—I remember often being
in Warrington, which is near where I live, before that year. However, I share her absolute determination that the west coast main line must be improved, because it is fundamental for both her constituents and mine up in the north-west.In a characteristically well-crafted and wide-ranging speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) discussed the genuine burden of cumulative regulation. When the Government are charged with over-regulating and imposing burdens on business, they often use the defence of asking which regulations should be repealed. Of course, there are several candidates, but given the precedent that the Government have set of waiting for our proposals and then rebranding and using our good ideas, I am sure that we will reveal our candidates sufficiently close to the date of the next election—whenever that is—so that the Government do not have time to do that. The Government should look at the cumulative effect, and we will continue to hold them to account on that issue.
The hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd) focused on early years education. I listened carefully to what I thought was a good speech about the culture of organisational change, an area in which we have both been involved. It was a helpful contribution, as was the speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field), who stood up ably for his constituents, especially those in the City of London. He was followed by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Butterfill), whose authoritative survey enabled the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd to refer to the particular interests of Wales.
It is all too easy to lapse into considering only the broad sweep of the Budget, and the Chancellor is especially keen on doing so. However, we have to look at the detail and how it affects people's daily lives. It is an essential doctrine of democracy that there should be no taxation without representation. However, the Government appear to think—and more and more people feel the effect—that everybody is a crook or potentially a crook and has a duty to pay tax unless they can demonstrate that they do not owe it. Indeed, the Paymaster General and I discussed that issue in proceedings on last year's Finance Bill. That has meant a change in the burden of proof in terms of the payment of tax, as a result of the Government's desperation to levy money from the populace. The Government have moved away from the old and proven position that they have to prove that an individual owes a tax before they can seek to collect it.
One example is the 33,000 van drivers who will face a huge increase in their tax liabilities if they use their vans out of work time. Basic rate taxpayers will suffer an increase from £100 to £600. Higher rate taxpayers will see an increase from £500 to £3,000. The Paymaster General will doubtless seek to justify that increase, but the big question is, who will police it? The Government have already asked accountants and lawyers to act as snoopers. Will they now ask schoolteachers and school bus drivers to report parents who take their children to school in a van? The increasing tendency towards a snooper society is a grave danger.
It is a similar situation for small companies. More than 100,000 of them will now pay 19 per cent. tax on distributed dividends. Those sole traders and micro-
businesses were encouraged by the Chancellor to incorporate, through his 2002 policy of nil rate corporation tax for the first £10,000 of profits. Thousands went to the expense and effort of doing just that. We debated the issue considerably in proceedings on the last Finance Bill and the year before, but the Government have decided to backtrack on their position. Those individuals and small businesses will have to pay for the Government's mistakes and miscalculations, and that should not be allowed to happen. There will be opportunities later in the debate on the Budget and in Committee for many of the details to be considered, but despite the rhetoric the Budget fails when it comes to small businesses.The Government's borrowing is causing grave concern, not least because everybody recognises, with sheer common sense, that if the Government now put up the amount borrowed—effectively on each household's credit card—to £6,300, that has to be repaid. If the Government, in making any efficiency savings that they can deliver, then spend further on public services, that will have to come out of tax rises if there were to be a Labour third term. We have explained how that can be avoided without affecting the front-line public services that people deserve. I hope and very much wish that the Government will now listen to the much more sensible alternatives that would avoid Labour's third-term tax rises.
5.50 pm
The Paymaster General (Dawn Primarolo): We have now had two days of debate on the Budget and more than 25 Members on both sides have contributed. It has been an interesting debate and many interesting points have been raised, as they have been this afternoon.
The key themes of Budget 2004, as announced yesterday by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, is to lock in the economic stability of this country to ensure that this stability endures and to enable Britain to rise to the challenges of the future global economy. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) touched on that issue several times, as did other hon. Members, and I shall return to it.
We have to enable Britain to become a world economic leader in this new global age. We need to make the long-term commitments to invest in the drivers of future prosperity—education, science and enterprise. There is general agreement on both sides of the Chamber that that should be our objective. We are able to do this as a Government because of the existing strengths of our economy.
Since 1997, Britain has had sustained growth and, since 2000, our growth has outperformed the European Union area, Japan and even the United States. In the last year, the economy grew by 2.3 per cent., meeting all Treasury expectations and despite the reckoning of Opposition Members who are at it again today by trying to undermine those forecasts.
In addition, this sustained growth has been combined with the lowest inflation for 30 years. New employment figures show that, since 1997, more than 1.8 million jobs have been created, and the majority of them are in the private sector. Every working day, another 600
businesses start up. World trade is now strengthening and manufacturing—the industry worst hit by the global downturn—has grown for four successive quarters. The Treasury expects the British economy to continue to strengthen throughout 2004. It is fair to conclude that the United Kingdom has successfully weathered the global economic downturn. Now is the time to lock in this economic stability so that it endures and to focus on the priorities that will make the UK a global economic leader in the future.The challenge is to combine that stability—and our new-found confidence in the future—with the resolve to make the right long-term choices and to initiate the reforms that will enable Britain to excel in education, science and enterprise. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills reinforced that point strongly in his opening remarks.
Yesterday, the Chancellor announced that we have met our fiscal rules. Debt this year is just 33 per cent. of national income, net borrowing is just 2.4 per cent. this year and our deficit is lower than that in all the major competitors of the industrialised world. Because of that, we are able to afford all our existing commitments abroad and at home and yet release extra resources for the nation's priorities in the years leading up to 2008.
Let me reiterate to the House those priorities. The first is to entrench the stability and growth that we have already achieved. The second is to ensure our security and to support our armed forces and police in these troubled times and to meet our commitments. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster touched on that vital point. The third and most important, in the context of the debate opened by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, is the need to invest in skills and education to enable the British population to meet the challenges of a science, education and enterprise-based economy. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, North (Helen Jones) graphically demonstrated that point in terms of the benefits achieved by her constituents, and those still to be achieved. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster set the debate firmly in the dialogue of global challenges and emerging economies. We have to equip our citizens with the best of skills.
Several things that were said in the debate were simply not true, so let us make sure that we put those to one side. It was suggested that compared with other EU countries, the UK did not have a low-tax economy, but a high-tax economy. That is simply not true. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development figures show that the total tax take in Britain is lower than the European average, and lower than that in 10 member states.
The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) derided this country as a place to do business and said that the Government were not meeting the challenges required to take competitiveness forward. Let me give him two quotes. First, Digby Jones, the director general of the CBI, said:
- "I would much rather be doing business in Britain than anywhere else in Europe . . . we are still the most successful economy in Europe."
Indeed, an International Monetary Fund article from March 2004 said:
- "The UK economy has weathered the global slowdown well, supported by an appropriately countercyclical monetary policy and an expansionary fiscal stance . . . Crucial to this performance, macroeconomic policies have been expansionary without undermining confidence—owing to well established and transparent monetary and fiscal policy frameworks with a distinct medium-term orientation."
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |