Indeed; my hon. Friend makes a good point. The way in which the decision was announced, and the aftermath of that announcement, does perhaps suggest that the Government were rushed into this. Also, many Government Back Benchers agreed that the fuel duty increase should be dropped. A number of them made that clear in a good Westminster Hall debate, and others publicly signed up to support the FairFuelUK campaign.
We tried to be helpful. We suspected that Ministers might say—as, indeed, they did—that they could not afford to stop the increase, even though they had found the money to give a tax cut to millionaires. As has been suggested, if there is money available, it ought to go to those whose household budgets are being squeezed the most. It is still astonishing to me that the Government seem intent on punishing families—especially those with children—while at the same time giving a massive tax
cut to millionaires. [Interruption.] Government Back Benchers can shake their heads and look at the ceiling, but real people are being affected by this Government’s Budget, and those who are benefiting are the best off.
We suggested some ways of raising the necessary funds. We said that the Government could perhaps consider closing the tax loopholes that the Prime Minister had been condemning, and stopping hundreds of millions of pounds being lost through offshore tax havens. We also suggested that they might want to reverse the pension tax relief boost that they have given to people who are already well off—namely, those earning more than £150,000—and that they might want to use the £500 million underspent in the Olympics budget.
We were not being opportunistic. We understand that difficult decisions have to be made if we are to get the deficit down, and as a responsible Opposition we looked at the figures. We also recognised that, at difficult times in the past, Labour had put up fuel duty. On many occasions, however, we also delayed or cancelled planned fuel duty rises in the light of the circumstances at the time—including at the height of the global financial crisis —because it was the right thing to do to give assistance to the people who needed it most and to ensure that we balanced and grew the economy.
We know—and more and more commentators are agreeing with us—that raising taxes and cutting spending too far and too fast have backfired. Britain has been pushed into a double-dip recession, more people are out of work, and the result is a bigger benefits bill and £150 billion of extra borrowing. That is why we need a fairer and more balanced plan for our economy that will get people back to work, and why we are calling again for the Government to change course and put their efforts into tackling youth unemployment, as well as using the skills of people who have been made redundant, and who have something to give back, to support young people into the jobs market.
We agree with the Government that stopping August’s 3p rise in fuel duty is the right thing to do for British businesses and families. I do not know whether the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have ever had to worry about the cost of filling up their cars in the way that the nurse in my constituency does. She works night shifts, and she does not know whether she will have enough money left at the end of the month to fill up her car so that she can get to work. In response to the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), we are glad that the Government have at last started listening to those who face those difficulties, and we will therefore be supporting the Government tonight on this issue. As I said earlier, however, the manner in which the announcement was made raises a number of questions. It looked as though the issue had brought about the quickest U-turn in politics. The new benchmark for “a long time” in politics is no longer a week but overnight, with changes being made 24 hours after the initial announcement.
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The Chancellor made the announcement to Parliament during Treasury questions. It was right and proper that he did it in the House; I have no complaint about that. However, the shambles of the aftermath made it abundantly clear that people on his own side had not been expecting it, especially those Back Benchers who had religiously stuck to the “lines to take” that had been circulated in
advance. We actually felt a bit sorry for some of them, because they had not stuck their necks out and done what they knew in their heart of hearts to be the right thing—namely, sign up to the campaign and call on the Government to change course. Instead, they went out and defended the Government’s proposals, right up to the last minute. We heard that confirmed this evening by the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who said that the change had come as a surprise to him.
It is not clear exactly how many people were surprised by the announcement. There was a strong suspicion that many of the Chancellor’s fellow Ministers, including perhaps the Transport Secretary, who gave that interview to The Daily Telegraph on 24 June, were caught on the hop. Of course, the Chancellor and his senior colleagues were posted missing, leaving the Economic Secretary to tour the television studios, even though she clearly did not have the information that she needed on how the measure would be paid for. That turned what the Government’s spin doctors were expecting to be a good news story into yet another shambles, and it was a shambles entirely of the Chancellor’s own making.
Now, we are nearly a week down the line, which must count as an eternity in the light of that new benchmark—[Interruption.] I would be more than happy to take an intervention from the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), rather than listen to him commenting from a sedentary position.