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Finance Bill

I would categorise the position of the official Opposition as follows: opportunistic, contradictory and wrong. So far, we have had crocodile tears from Conservative Members, although I do not necessarily include the hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley) in that. I have to say to some of my own colleagues that there is an element of naivety in the approach to the 10p tax rate conundrum. That has two parts: the issue itself, and all that it means, and the context in which this Finance Bill and the Budget were produced—that of the global economy. We cannot unpick those two elements. It is all much of a muchness in relation to the stability package that the overall Budget was designed to address. The right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) said in a recent article in The Daily Telegraph:"““We would not double the 10 pence tax rate for five million of the lowest-paid families””." He went on to list a litany of unfunded tax-and-spend promises to the value of about £20 billion. However, having stated that he would not double the 10p tax rate, he did not say what he would do on that issue. The shadow Chief Secretary did not say that either. He hid behind the technical defence—I think, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you were asked about it in several repetitious points of order—that the Opposition cannot table amendments to make positive suggestions on the Budget. That is not what the Opposition are duty bound to do if they are suggesting, as the right hon. Member for Witney suggests, that the abolition of the 10p tax rate is wrong. What the Opposition can do, and I invite the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban) to do this in his winding-up speech, is tell us their policy. I know that they cannot put it down in a technical amendment and affect the Finance Bill in that way, but they could tell us their policy on the 10p tax rate, and what they would do about the £7 billion it would cost to vote against the measures in the Bill. The contradictory nature of what has been said comes from the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne). I do not know the gentleman who wrote an article recently in The Parliamentary Monitor describing the hon. Member for Tatton as ““petulant and unremarkable””. Whether he meant that personally or with regard to policy is for hon. Members to decide, but I want to address policy. In a recent article on 8 April, the hon. Gentleman said:"““Today's generation of bankers, economists and politicians across the Western world are also confronting problems that few had imagined possible even a year ago””." In other words, the credit crunch could not be foreseen, but that is exactly the contradictory charge that the Opposition have made.