We will undoubtedly be able to judge the success of these issues, but there are some deeper flaws in the design of the Help to Buy scheme; we will debate that issue in more detail this week. It all reeks of a policy that has not been thought through properly—designed in haste and yet again not having the intended effect.
Understanding what the Government have put into the Finance Bill requires an understanding of what they have not put in. This was the Budget and the Finance Bill that were supposed to learn the lessons of the 2012 omnishambles Budget and Finance Bill—the pasty tax, the granny tax and the caravan tax. Here is the product of all the Government’s care and vigilance this year; I am sure that the Minister’s officials will be proud of him. The Government have painstakingly avoided anything that will have a positive and significant impact on growth, meticulously evaded any measures that might stimulate job creation and sidestepped anything that might repair the mess that they are making of the public finances.
In fact, the only real aspiration in the Bill is to get through it without any more U-turns. But by avoiding the bold action that we need to stimulate the economy, the Government have created a Bill bereft of the major reforms we need. So many measures are conspicuous by their absence. The Government have cut public investment, and now they are cutting back on policies, too.
I had hoped that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury would be here today; normally, he would open the debate on the Finance Bill. I do not know whether his not being here is a deliberate strategy or whether he has a decent reason; the shadow Chief Secretary has a decent reason for not being here, but that could not apply to the Chief Secretary.
We had hoped, before the Budget, that the Liberal Democrats would stick to one pledge—their pledge to support a mansion tax. We even tabled a one-line motion for Lib Dems to vote for, but they did not want to offend the Conservatives. But they should not worry because we will give them another chance to support their own policy later in the week—a mansion tax on properties worth over £2 million to deliver a tax cut for lower and middle-income households. We favour a 10p starting rate of income tax as the best way to do that and we think that should be in the Bill.
Why have the Government not legislated for their child care voucher extension, which has been pencilled in vaguely for some time after the general election? Where is the national insurance help for small businesses that we have been calling for and which the Chancellor should be acting on sooner? Why is that not in the Bill? It is not good enough for such provisions to be in black and white in a Budget book; it needs to be in the Bill. There have been so many promises in the media, but they have not been seen through in the Finance Bill.
The Finance Bill could be the moment when the Government change their mind on the bedroom tax, and it should be the legislation that repeals their lovely gift of an average £100,000 tax cut for Britain’s lucky millionaires through the cut to the 50p tax rate. As I have said before, it seems that with this Government there is one rule for the rich, but only one room for the poor.
Where do the Government get such a gratuitously unfair sense of priorities? The language used to validate a cruel, harsh, selfish approach is breathtaking—they insist on the caricature of the “spare room subsidy” and bristle at the term “bedroom tax” because they know that the public can see the policy for the disaster it is proving to be. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who is not here, wrote in The Sun on Easter weekend that he wanted to tackle the “bedroom blockers”—that from a Liberal Democrat Chief Secretary who could and should have blocked the bedroom tax in the first place.