Finance (No. 3) Bill

To be honest, I do not know. I was not a Treasury Minister in the last Labour Government. I spent my time in Northern Ireland, in prisons, in probation and in the Home Office—[Interruption.] Perhaps that is not an area into which we should progress this afternoon, however. In the spirit of cross-party discussion of these matters, I acknowledge that the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) has made a valid point, but, whatever the previous Government did or did not do, the economy was stronger than it is now when those cuts were made to the capital allowances. We can debate the reasons for that for a long time, and we can disagree or agree on the issues, but we now have growing levels of unemployment, slowing growth and public spending cuts that have not yet hit the public and private sectors. There are estimates that up to 500,000 people in the public sector will lose their jobs, which will have a knock-on effect on the private sector. We are seeing the squeezing of the middle in relation to child benefit and working families tax credits, and poverty and wage freezes are hitting hard. All those factors are going to hit the economy hard in the next 18 months to two years. The Minister is proposing to cut the capital allowances from April next year, and all we are asking in this modest amendment is that the Government review where we are in October 2012, given the tortuous procedures that we are going to go through in the next 18 months as the squeeze has its effect. The Minister will undoubtedly accept that that is going to happen, because it is part of the Government's policy to make it happen, and we are keen to ensure that, at the end of that period, we do not lose valuable manufacturing capacity and jobs.