I do not recall whether the hon. Gentleman was present in the debate on the health and social care levy, but if he was, he would have heard us set out that any increase in taxation should fall on those with the broadest shoulders, not directly on working people. This Government are laying the worst possible tax rise at the worst possible time on the shoulders of working people. In the long run, the way to fund public services sustainably is through growth, but this Government have become a low-growth Government, and therefore a high-tax Government. That is the truth of their economic model, and that is what we would seek to change.
Since September, when the Health and Social Care Levy Bill was pushed through Parliament, our arguments against April’s national insurance hike have only got stronger. The difficulties that people face in making ends meet have been mounting by the day. Inflation jumped again yesterday from 5.5% to 6.2%, with the OBR now forecasting it to hit 7.4% this year—the highest rate in 30 years. Energy bills that have been rising rapidly are set to soar next month, and the crisis in Ukraine will put even greater pressure on the cost of energy, petrol, and food. The pressure on the Chancellor to change course has been rapidly growing, yet he has backed himself into a corner. He has nailed his colours to the mast, stubbornly refusing to reconsider his deeply unfair national insurance hike, and that seems to be how we have ended up where we are today.
We have a Chancellor who has found himself politically unable to cancel his national insurance hike, yet also unable to ignore the fact that this is the worst possible tax rise at the worst possible time. That is why he has tried to respond by making these changes to national insurance thresholds, with promises of further tax cuts at some point in the future. Whatever the merits of the individual measures, that approach is driven not by what may be the right thing to help people now, but by the Chancellor’s desperate ambition to portray himself as a tax cutter, despite all evidence to the contrary.