Following the Minister’s example, I will be brief. We have had a useful debate containing some impassioned speeches, not least those from my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) and from the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who, interestingly, sought to give advice to the Labour party. My hon. Friend gave an interesting critique of Laffer curve economics but related it, importantly, to what happens in the real world. He spoke with a great deal of passion and experience from his time working in the financial services sector. He was absolutely right to say that not everyone working in the banks was wrong, and many people working on the front line are trying to change things and to clear up the problems. These people did not adopt the principles that got the banks into such difficulty.
Earlier, I read out a couple of quotes from various hon. Members about cutting the top rate, but, to keep a balance across the coalition, let me cite one that I missed from the president of the Lib Dems. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) has said:
“Cutting the top rate was a stupid thing to do. It probably raised up to £3bn a year. We should pledge to restore the 50p rate at the next election. It’s not enough to be fair, you have to be seen to be fair.”
That has been one of the threads running through this afternoon’s debate. [Interruption.]
Again, I hear Government Members muttering from a sedentary position about what the Labour party is going to do. I outlined this earlier, but I will state it again: we will, of course, set out our manifesto in due course, in time for the general election—that is absolutely the correct thing to do—but we will not make false promises. We will not make promises that we will not be able to keep. Let me remind the House of that quote from the Prime Minister:
“I have been very clear—we have all been very clear—that we have to do this in a way that is fair so that the broadest backs bear the biggest burden.
That is why we haven’t changed… the 50p tax rate.”
As I outlined, that particular pledge was not kept and those with the broadest backs do not appear to be carrying the biggest burden.
The Minister said that he wanted to be charitable and to understand why we tabled the new clause, and I know from Finance Bill Committees that he does at least reflect on things. He rarely gives in to temptation to resist the advice he is given to reject all amendments and new clauses, but he does at least give the appearance of reflecting. In this case, I cannot understand why he will not accept a mild-mannered proposal that simply seeks to have a review of the impact of this measure and to bring forward further information for the interest of hon. Members across the House. That is a reasonable and sensible thing to do, and I know that the Minister, certainly in opposition, has regularly argued for this type of review. We have heard nothing from him today to explain why, suddenly—[Interruption.] Given the side conversation that is going on, I am sure that the Minister never got any of those reviews into the legislation at that time, but I say to him that there is a first time for everything. He could, even at this late stage, decide it was the correct thing to do to allow the review to go ahead and ensure that the House had further information.
I do not want to repeat all the points made earlier, as that would not be helpful at this stage. However, I simply remind the House that it is not only Opposition Members who are claiming or suggesting that there are concerns about this measure. To go back to the IFS, it stated:
“By giving out £3 billion to well-off people who pay 50p tax…the Government is banking on a very, very uncertain amount of people changing their behaviour”.
Much of the Government’s argument has been predicated on the notion that people will change their behaviour, but I have heard nothing from the Government that suggests to me that behaviour would be changed in such a way that there would suddenly be a huge influx of resource into the Treasury. The IFS went on to say:
“There is a lot of uncertainty, a lot of risk on this estimate.”