Amendment of the law

I am grateful for the hon. Lady's intervention, but I think the Budget did go as far as making projections up to 2015—a fact that was picked up by the Leader of the Opposition. As I have indicated, and as is clear, we are steering our way through the first global recession in history, and much depends on the framework and measures of the G20 group of countries that other nation states use. I am talking about the economies of Germany, France and the United States; as they pick up, we will pick up. The Chancellor referred to green shoots of recovery, which means that at the end of this year and into the next we will move from zero growth into growth—even if only at 0.3 per cent. The Chancellor said that that could happen at the end of this year; my personal view is that it may not be until next year, but there will be a turning point—a prospect that this Budget has to deal with. The Chancellor's point was that we must not have sudden lurches bringing recovery to a juddering halt on account of the free-market principles of the right hon. Member for Wokingham, other Conservative Members or even, if I may say so, the leader writers of the Financial Times. I was surprised to read in a Financial Times editorial this week—perhaps the one mentioned by the right hon. Member for Fylde—that we were picking winners and losers in our economy. We are doing no such thing; we are guiding the economy in areas where it should be guided. We are not choosing one particular industry or firm against another. We are not in the '70s; we are not in Tony Benn's industrial regeneration programme of 1975-76. We have a new programme; we are going to guide the economy and be active in it. Let me close where the Chancellor began and ended his speech. We should be looking to a confident and successful Britain. The word "Britain" is important because we all have to pull together. It is not a matter of one section against another or St. Albans against Wokingham. It is not a question of what the Budget is going to do for me; rather, it is about how the people of Middlesbrough may relate to the people of St. Albans as we all work together and all plough this particular furrow together. At the end of the day, when the election comes, we will go forward, able to say that we did the best for our country. We will say that we saw it turn a corner, moving from negative to positive growth. We will say that we handled the banks so that people did not lose their money. That is the way forward. At that time, the people will have to decide between a Labour party that believes in growth to get us out of a recession and a Conservative party that believes in cuts. We will then have to ask the Opposition what cuts they want and what cuts they propose. ID cards may be one area for cuts and Trident missiles might be another.