Finance (No. 3) Bill

Whatever mistakes the previous Labour Government sometimes made—every Government will make mistakes—they believed in partnership between the public and private sector to create employment. The point is that the extra cut announced in this year's Budget will cost the Treasury about £425 million in 2011-12 and nearly £1.1 billion by 2015-16. As I have said, we support that general approach to the corporation tax cut, but if we are forgoing income of about £1 billion by 2015-16 through lost corporation tax, we need assurances from the Minister that he believes there will be a trajectory of job creation. We need to know how many jobs will be created by the cut, where those jobs will be, which regions will benefit, how we will develop the public-private partnership through those jobs and how we will develop the private sector for the future. The Minister has to tell the Committee exactly how the corporation tax cut will benefit the private sector through job creation. If it does not develop and benefit the private sector through direct job creation, we will be giving businesses a tax cut for no subsequent increase in employment.