The hon. Gentleman is entitled to his own views, but the misunderstanding at the heart of his intervention is that he probably thinks we should equate generosity in spending other people’s money with generosity in spending our own money. Those of us on my side of the argument are keen to encourage people to participate in giving aid for good causes, including causes overseas. We support, and have campaigned strongly for, encouraging
tax relief for those sorts of donations. It is easy for people to say, “I want to be generous with somebody else’s money.” As the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood has just said, we are talking about being generous with money—taxpayers’ money—that we do not have but will have to borrow. We should be very careful before we put a burden on future generations.