Finance Bill

The right hon. Lady has implied that the concern on the Conservative Benches was somehow less genuine that that felt among her own Back Benchers. I want to place it on record that this is not a partisan issue, and that hon. Members of all parties feel that it is wrong to decrease the tax burden on middle-income families by increasing the burden on the poorest. The only people who we know were prepared to press ahead with the measure in the knowledge of its distributional impact were Ministers on the Treasury Bench. We now know that they had full knowledge of the effect that the change would have on the poorest families in our society.