Finance Bill

Indeed. It is useful to be able to discuss these matters. The changes to income tax that will be introduced next year and that we have touched on were perhaps the key consideration when analysing the Budget. The issue of the winners and losers is key. Indeed, as a member of the Treasury Committee, I am pleased that the Labour-dominated Committee has recommended that, in future, the Red Book should set out a clear analysis of winners and losers, so that it is possible to see much earlier who they are. This year, the Red Book set out some examples of winners, but not of losers—curiously. I know that journalists were complaining about the fact that it was impossible to get any losers out of the Treasury. Given that this was a broadly tax-neutral Budget, if there were some winners, presumably there must have been some losers. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has been much more helpful on the matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) referred to the IFS’s analysis that stated that 5.3 million households would be losers as a consequence of the Budget changes. As we heard from my hon. Friend, that point was confirmed to the Treasury Committee by Mark Neale, a senior Treasury official. He must have felt that he was safe in saying that. He said that"““the figure…is in the right ball-park and is consistent with the Chancellor's statement that four out of five households either gain or remain in the same position as a result of the Budget measures””." He may have felt that that was a perfectly reasonable and safe thing to say. However, Mr. Neale was due to give evidence to the Treasury Committee the day after, alongside the Chancellor, and was curiously withdrawn after the quotation was used in various newspapers. Mr. Neale’s absence was not explained, but we all worried about his safety and I hope that no harm has come to him. The estimate that 5.3 million households would lose out as a result of the Budget was put to the Chancellor, and he was asked whether he accepted it. Given that his own officials had accepted it, one would have thought that he would not have had a problem. However, he advanced two arguments as to why he did not accept that estimate, which was made following the changes in income tax that he announced. The first was that the minimum wage was rising. I, too, asked a parliamentary question, which was referred to the Department of Trade and Industry. Unlike the right hon. Member for Birkenhead, I have had some success in getting an answer. It contained an analysis of those people earning the national minimum wage, broken down by salary. The fact is that the majority of those on the minimum wage have an annual salary of less than £5,000, so they will be unaffected by the income tax changes. The remaining 171,000 earn over £5,000. Let us assume that all 171,000 are losers; I do not think that we can necessarily do that, but for argument’s sake let us do so. Let us assume also that they are in separate households, which is highly unlikely. That takes us to 171,000 households who are on the minimum wage and whose income therefore, one could say, will increase over the course of the year. That will not make much of a dent in the figure of 5.3 million households that the IFS estimates will lose out as a result of the Budget, and the figure of 171,000 is, perhaps, optimistic.