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Budget Resolutions

I am delighted to have caught your eye in this important Budget debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am also

pleased to follow the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), although I disagree with almost every word he said. That is the nature of this place —we are entitled to debate these matters.

I have listened to the speeches from Opposition Members today. Both they and most of the financial commentators who have criticised the Budget—I totally agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) on this—have failed to mention that we have been through two catastrophic world shocks: namely, the pandemic and the unexpected war in Europe, in Ukraine. They have had catastrophic effects on our economy. I ask all the Opposition Members who have criticised the Budget this: would they not have spent the money on the furlough scheme or the business loan scheme? Would they not have helped people out with energy loans? Of course they would have, so they would be in exactly the same place as we are, grappling with today’s economic problems.

A number of measures in the Budget are to be warmly welcomed, and I will come to one or two of them. I am particularly pleased that inflation has come down from a high of 11.4% to 4% today, and it is forecast to be below the Bank of England’s target of 2% by the end of this year. That is the most important thing we can do for the cost of living of all our constituents, above all tax reductions or anything else. I warmly welcome that. I will turn to some of the individual measures in the Budget, before moving to public sector productivity measures. After that, as my hon. Friends on the Front Bench will not be surprised to learn, I will mention the tourist tax.

My constituents will welcome a number of measures set out in the Budget, particularly the cut in employee national insurance contributions. Taken with those of the autumn statement, they amount to £900 for the average working person in this country earning £35,000. I suggest to everybody across the House that that is a significant increase in the take-home money that our constituents will see in their pockets today. That, combined with the number of our constituents who are self-employed—a particularly important and growing sector—means £650 for someone earning £28,000, which is also warmly welcome. That will encourage our hard-working constituents to work longer hours and become more productive.

As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said yesterday, national insurance is a double tax on working people. National insurance combined with income tax is an unfair tax arrangement for working people. If we are to start making tax cuts, which I hope we will, it must be right to try to drop one or other of them, and that is why I warmly welcome the cut in national insurance.