Finance (No. 3) Bill

I am acutely aware that in my constituency the public sector and the private sector remain intertwined. They are interdependent. The fact that we have public spending cuts does not mean that only jobs in the public sector work force will be lost. The cuts will also have a strong impact on the private sector as a whole, because contracts are won in housing, local government, transport and capital projects, all of which are put at risk by major cuts in public spending across the board. This is an important part of the debate, because in his arguments for the corporation tax cut, the Minister maintains that one of the ways in which we can regenerate the economy to compensate for those public sector cuts is by cutting corporation tax.