Pre-Budget Report

I am sure that my hon. Friend is absolutely right. She has identified just one of the many groups who will be hit by this Labour tax on the many. There were a couple of other noteworthy points in the PBR. A Labour PBR would not be complete without some spectacularly unjustified rhetorical flourish and some sleight of hand that comes out only when we analyse the small print—and we did, indeed, get both. Some hon. Members, perhaps on both sides of the House, have not recovered from their mirth at the Chancellor's assertion that he was taking these decisions from a position of strength. There was a sleight of hand: an unannounced reduction in the NHS budget, which was caused by the £446 million that the Treasury will claw back from the national insurance tax hike. That means that Britain's biggest employer faces a real-terms budget cut rather than the maintenance in real terms that the Chancellor announced. There was also a shockingly cynical pre-election bribe. We have got used to some of those. The Chancellor said in his pre-Budget report speech that there would be above-inflation increases for benefits, including disability living allowance and child benefit, but it later transpired, when the IFS started crunching numbers, that the Government's published plans include a 1.5 per cent. real-terms cut in benefits in 2011. The Prime Minister could not bring himself to be any more honest about that cut than he has been about others. The following day, he was reported on Sky News to have denied the charge by claiming:""Benefits will continue to go up"." If the Chief Secretary wants to put the record straight and confirm that benefits will continue to go up in 2011, I would be happy to take an intervention from him. Some of my hon. Friends might remember the council tax rebate for pensioners in the Budget of 2005, which was, surprisingly, discontinued in the Budget of 2006.