Finance Bill

I accept your advice, Mrs. Heal. I was illustrating that there are other ways of finding £100 million, and a lot more besides. We are discussing whether £100 million is absolutely essential to the future of the Government, and I was making the point that there are many popular ways for them to show that that £100 million is not essential to them. My hon. Friends on the Front Bench are probably worried, because they have seen what the Government can do, about what would happen were they to recommend that we vote against the measure. It would be scored as £100 million that the Conservatives would not have when they came to power. The reality is completely different, however. We all know that the Government are going to take this £100 million tonight, and many more hundreds of millions of pounds through this tax in the run-up to the next general election. Any sensible Government would accept the Opposition’s position, which is that, in due course, nearer to the election, we will set out our tax proposals for a future Conservative Budget, but I hope that that will not get in the way of our vigorously opposing measures such as these, which are mean-minded and unpleasant. I hope that the Minister will think again, but I am sure that he is not going to. He obviously believes in retrospectively taxing the poor.