Finance Bill

The Finance Bill is an inevitably enormous piece of legislation that is rightly subjected to many months of scrutiny both in Committee and on the Floor of the House. It has been a privilege to get to know the other hon. Members who have scrutinised the Bill with a degree of detail and to come to understand better their qualities—and occasionally, as in my own case, limitations. We have all got to know each other better and I hope that we have all subjected the Bill to a suitable level of scrutiny. I would like to take this opportunity to thank a few people: Hanneke Hart, my master researcher, without whose efforts I would not have been as well equipped to try to hold the Government to account; Madeline Lewis from PricewaterhouseCoopers and John Whiting, formerly of that organisation, have been very helpful; and my hon. Friends the Members for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed) and for Southport (Dr. Pugh) have shouldered the burden of the many hours of scrutiny that we have undertaken. The backdrop to this Bill is the ruinous state of the public finances. As a country, we are borrowing an extra £480 million every single day—a level of borrowing that is without precedent and clearly unsustainable in anything more than the fairly short term. That big backdrop required a Government who had big, bold measures in order to address the magnitude of the situation. Instead, we were given a very small Finance Bill containing many micro-proposals. In the last few days, for example, we have discussed a small above-inflation increase in the duty on beer at a time when pubs are closing, breweries are struggling and beer consumption is falling. The amount of extra revenue raised will be tiny, if it exists at all. Only this afternoon, we discussed further punitive measures affecting the bingo industry at a time when bingo halls are closing. Again, the amount of extra revenue will be tiny, if any money is raised at all. The Minister talked of the VAT cut. The Bill enabled us to extend it by one extra month: that is another timid measure. Even the measures that have been sold to the public as big, headline, dividing-line issues, such as the 50p income tax rate—a broken Labour manifesto promise—turn out, when subjected to closer scrutiny, to be raising very little money in the grand scheme of things, and possibly no additional revenue at all. The sad conclusion that we must reach after several months of detailed scrutiny is that this Government are exhausted, and that what is needed is a fresh start with innovative ideas and bold leadership for our country.