Finance Bill

That is true. There was speculation at the beginning of this fiasco as to whether it was a simple error—a failure to understand the distributional consequences of the measure—but I well remember saying in the Committee of the whole House that, while I deferred to no one in my enthusiasm for criticising the Prime Minister, I had never suggested that he was either stupid or innumerate. Subsequently, in evidence to the Treasury Committee, officials have made very clear that a full distributional analysis was undertaken, that the measures announced in the 2007 Budget were announced—as the phrase goes—with eyes wide open, and that the Prime Minister knew exactly what he was doing. What his game plan was at the time, when he was faced with the Labour party leadership and a possible election in the autumn, is anyone's guess, as I have said. Members will form their own views on what his ultimate intentions were.