The hon. Gentleman is now being completely stupid, is he not? There are two rates of tax that will raise no money—0% and 100%—and there is a curve between the two, which, as he rightly said, was first drawn by Mr Laffer, I believe on a napkin. Most people, including the Treasury, accept that there is a Laffer curve, and that it is a question of judgment where the rate is that maximises revenue. It is quite clear from the evidence in this year’s Revenue and Customs figures that 50% was too high a rate to maximise revenue, and that 45% gets us more revenue than 50%. I believe that 40% would get us more revenue than 45%. I am pleased to hear today that a Liberal Democrat, of all people, is writing a book on the subject. I welcome that and look forward to more progress in coalition talks about the maximising rate of income tax. If it were taken down to 20%, we would clearly lose a lot of money, so somewhere between there and where we are now is the maximising rate, and getting it right is partly science and partly trial and error. We can be sure that we are now moving in the right direction, having gone in the wrong one previously.
It is interesting that the previous Prime Minister, during all his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer, never took the top rate above 40%. I do not think that was because he liked rich people or wanted to be unkind to the left wing of the Labour party. I believe it was his judgment that anything over 40% would have cost him revenue. As a modest man, I therefore accept that there was something about which he was absolutely right—he was correct in not raising the top rate of tax above 40%.