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Indeed, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need to stand up for everybody—even our toolmakers. Let us be frank: we have had to table this motion today, which seeks to do nothing other than reaffirm the commitments that the Labour party has already made, because of the litany of broken promises that I have just shared with the House.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and under his stewardship, things were so much better. As he points out, the Government have resiled from any attempt to control the welfare bill—an unfunded tax commitment of £5 billion. That, plus the U-turn on the winter fuel payment, is more than £6 billion of unfunded commitments that the Government are responsible for—unfunded commitments that they said they would never see themselves making. He is absolutely right: the legacy that he left when he was Chancellor in the previous Government was the highest growth in the G7 for our economy. We had near record levels of employment, and near record low levels of unemployment. We had had 13 consecutive months of real wage growth, and inflation had been brought down from over 11% due to the Ukraine war, to bang on 2% on the day of the general election. Where is inflation now? It is almost double what the Government inherited.
I think what the hon. Gentleman said was a gross impertinence, Madam Deputy Speaker. He also referred to you as an absolute “shower”, which is totally unreasonable. I have always been a great admirer of yours, as you know, and always will be. [Hon. Members: “ Name him!”] Name the hon. Gentleman—quite. We have a Government who are grossly incompetent. As soon as they came into office, what did they do? They talked down the economy. It is no surprise that the British Chambers of Commerce is now saying that the No.1 concern of its members is high taxes, or that the latest survey by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales once again shows that business confidence is down—and that is for the fourth survey in a row.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. When it comes to criticising this Government, it is always confusing whether to address those on the Front Bench or on the Back Benches, because they are never quite in the same place. The big mistake that the Government made was to talk down the economy by going on about this confected black hole of £22 billion—something that the Office for Budget Responsibility has already debunked. The Government should stop using that number. They are the ones who created a black hole of some £6 billion, as I have just set out, and they should focus not on the black hole that they have invented, but on the one they have created. It is that black hole that is creating speculation across the summer about what will happen in autumn, damaging confidence and damaging businesses up and down the country.
I am not sure that I fully understood the point, but the hon. Gentleman seems at least to accept that there is a real black hole when it comes to this Government, of at least £6 billion.
Well yes, exactly. The Government will look to any floating branch or whatever to cling on to, to try to look a little better than they truly are. We have seen a Government who have indulged in spending like it was the 1970s. The result of that has been to push up inflation, which has led to interest rates being higher for longer than they otherwise would have been. It is all very well for Labour Members to trumpet the fact that there have been four interest rate cuts since they came into office. The reality is that if they had not lost control of inflation, there would have been more and they would have come more quickly. The headroom that the Chancellor has against her fiscal targets is wafer-thin. This is the usual Labour way: spending and spending and spending until it runs out of other people’s money.
It would be sensible for the hon. Lady to look at those on her own Front Bench and ask why they take these appalling anti-business decisions. The answer is that hardly any of them have any experience of private business or of setting up a company—in fact, not one senior Front Bencher from her party has that. That is unlike the Conservatives—whether that is myself; the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp); the shadow Business Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith); or others—who actually understand the real world of business.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The reality is that if we tax something, we tend to get less of it. This Government have taxed business, so it is not surprising that the economy has been damaged as a consequence. An often fair question asked of the Conservatives is: what would we do? Let me answer that question directly. First, we would have taken very different choices. We would not have loaded up taxation on businesses and stifled growth in the way that Labour has: we would have focused on productivity. We would not have come into office and given the train drivers 14% and the junior doctors 22% with no strings attached whatsoever. We were told by the now Health Secretary during the run-up to the general election that all we needed to do was get around the table with the unions and settle and the problem would go away—well, the junior doctors are back for more.
I will momentarily. We would of course have tackled the welfare bill, as we did when we were in office. We made £5 billion-worth of savings, as scored by the Office for Budget Responsibility, and we had 450,000 fewer people going on to long-term sickness benefits as a direct consequence of our policies. We had a clear plan to go into government and save £12 billion a year in addition.
I think this debate is actually about the tax policy of this Government. As I have clearly set out—[Interruption.] To be fair, there was the small matter of covid, which came along and shrank the UK economy by 10% overnight. People at the time speculated that we would see mass unemployment, the like of which our country had never, ever seen, yet through our intervention we ensured that that did not happen. Likewise, when the Ukraine-Russia war brought inflation to our shores through energy price spikes, peaking at 11.1% at the back end of 2022, we took the tough decisions, along with the Bank of England, to bring that inflation down. In the meantime, we protected millions of low-income families up and down the country from the consequences of that inflation. That came with a £400 billion price tag, so it is not surprising that some taxes had to rise in order to pay for that.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. With the increasing Government debt to which this Government are constantly adding, and the higher interest rates for longer for which they are responsible because of their extravagant spending, we are spending about £100 billion a year on simply servicing that debt, which is twice what we spend on defence. That is not sustainable, and things will get worse under this Government.
I would be delighted to talk the hon. Gentleman through that. The preceding Labour Government left this country with a deficit of 10.1%, or £160 billion a year, so clearly we had to get on top of that deficit. It is a simple fact of economic life that if a country is running a large deficit, its debt increases, but by the time of covid, we had largely settled that deficit. For the reasons that I gave a moment ago, of course we added to the debt and the deficit at that point, because we had to intervene to stabilise the economy. However, the inheritance that we received in 2010 was the start of that debt climbing. The hon. Gentleman should acquaint himself with the economic history. What approach can this Government take in the autumn? They are not going to be saved by growth—that is for the birds. The OBR, the Bank of England and the International Monetary Fund have all downgraded growth, and the Office for National Statistics recently announced that for the second month in a row, we have had an economic contraction. How else might the Chancellor make the numbers add up? Well, despite Ministers insisting that their commitment to the fiscal rules remains non-negotiable, there are reports of potential changes to the broader fiscal framework, including the early use of the flexibility of a 0.5% of GDP range for the current budget target, which would allow £12 billion to £13 billion of extra borrowing. However, that would be a breach of faith. There are similar reports that Ministers might move to just one OBR forecast a year, to avoid an embarrassing emergency Budget like the one we saw in March. However, that would completely abandon the commitment not to sideline the OBR, so when the Minister comes to the Dispatch Box will he reconfirm that the Government’s commitment to the fiscal rules also applies to the fiscal framework, and that we will continue to have two OBR forecasts per year? The Government should be looking not for yet more borrowing, but to rein in spending. However, the welfare debacle shows that they are utterly incapable of doing that, so that leaves just taxes. The motion before us today simply asks the Minister to confirm the Chancellor’s commitment not to extend the freeze on tax thresholds. She specifically said in her Budget speech that such a move “would hurt working people. It would take more money out of their payslips.”—[Official Report, 30 October 2025; Vol. 755, c. 821.] When the Minister comes to the Dispatch Box, will he confirm that he, too, holds that position? Will he also rule out wealth taxes? We have already seen tens of thousands of people—high net worth individuals—leaving our country. I know that socialists may say, “Good riddance to them—they are wealthy”, but the Adam Smith Institute calculates that the tax forgone as a consequence of their departure is equal to the tax paid by around half a million people on average earnings. The Labour party has no plan to stem that exodus of talent and wealth creation. Whatever decisions are taken in the autumn, they will be bad ones, and as nervous markets look on, they may prove disastrous. It may even be that this Government take us to a dark place; it is hoped not, but if history is any guide to the future, the lights are surely flashing red. Surely, too, the British people, those hard-working men and women up and down our country—the businesses, the entrepreneurs, the farmers who toil all hours, our charities, our hospices, our veterans, our elderly, and all those who embody the very best of all that our country can be—deserve answers about the promises made to them, and about whether their pay packets, their pensions and their savings are safe. Surely, they deserve better than this wretched, rotten and defunct Labour Government.
What worries me more than the lifting of this super-injunction is the fact that we have closed down all the Afghan schemes at the very time that undocumented Afghans who felt it necessary to flee to Iran and Pakistan are being rounded up for forcible repatriation to an Afghanistan led by the Taliban. I understand that the investigation into our obligation to the Triples—the special forces that our forces trained—will continue, and I welcome that. Will the Secretary of State confirm that despite the closure of the schemes, anybody who is found to have worked closely with our armed forces and is in imminent danger can still be rescued and admitted to this country?
25. What steps his Department is taking to help reduce industrial electricity prices.
On Friday, I visited C&M Precision Ltd, a small manufacturing company in my constituency. Electricity represents easily its biggest cost. What is the Minister doing to listen to small and medium-sized enterprises like C&M who feel that their voice is simply not being heard?
I am proud to be a member of the party of Wilberforce, Shaftesbury and Disraeli, who all understood that it is essential to free people from need, and that in that effort the state can be a force for good. But in freeing people from need we should not limit them to a life of dependency. It is entirely possible to believe that although welfare can be a force for good, so too can personal responsibility, and responsibility means making the kinds of choices that my hon. Friend has set out.
I am mindful of two of her predecessors in Birkenhead. The first is F. E. Smith, the great Tory, who talked about “all must have prizes”. Sometimes, in our modern Britain, it feels that all must have state support. The second is the late Frank Field, who is much regarded and revered in this House for his honesty about welfare reform. The Minister is right that successive Governments have failed to grasp this nettle. The truth is that the relationship between the state and the individual has changed over time. We need a welfare system that focuses support on those in the greatest need. She surely believes that, and that requires bold welfare reform. Is she up for that or not?
I spoke earlier about F. E. Smith, who spoke about all having prizes who had “stout hearts and sharp swords”. The stout hearts drive us to do the best for those in the greatest need, but our sharp swords should make us brave enough to recognise that there are those who are absorbing welfare expenditure that should be spent on those needy people. That is what the Government ought to do, but I heard none of that from the Minister.
My hon. Friend is right about the cost of benefits, but he is also right to suggest that they need to be directed to those in the greatest need—the most deserving. That is what we all want across this House. Sadly, because of family breakdown and the fragmentation of communities, the state has stepped in to do what was once done, in my early life, by families, individuals and communities. It is really important that this welfare reform is seen in that broader context, and that we direct the money to those with the greatest need.
There are two fundamental macroeconomic problems facing this country. One is productivity, and the second is mass immigration, which has displaced investment in domestic skills. The Budget did nothing about those, and yet the tax system could be used to address both.
The Minister will recognise that one way to increase the supply of clean energy is to enable community energy projects to supply local energy markets. When Ministers are asked about that, as he knows they have been many times, they generally say that there is no technical obstacle to it happening, but will the Minister recognise that there is world of difference between, on the one hand, something being technically possible and, on the other, that same thing being facilitated and encouraged so it really happens? Will he focus on the latter as the Government develop their energy market reforms?
Does the shadow Chancellor agree that, following the welfare U-turns, public finances today are in a far worse state than they were a year ago when the Government came into office? There is a crucial difference: a year ago, the Conservative Government were taking difficult decisions to bring taxes down in order to grow the economy; because this Labour Government are failing to take those decisions, there is only one way taxes can go, and that is up.
I commend the Secretary of State’s statement. I will not dwell on the past, because I am sure that the Defence Committee and other Select Committees will have a look at that. I want to ask him about where this goes in future. All these schemes are closing, but there are still people out there who do not recognise the statement in the report that there is no longer a widespread campaign of targeting individuals. I have one case in my mind. The Minister for the Armed Forces knows exactly who I am referring to: Sami Atayee, who has fled and is in hiding in Pakistan, and whose brother has been arrested during the pursuit. He was not directly employed by the British Government—he could not have been, for security reasons—but the testament of General Olly Brown and others all say that he saved lives for British servicemen and servicewomen. We surely owe people like that a debt of honour and gratitude for their work, so I simply ask the Secretary of State to look at what might replace the schemes that he has got rid of, which were inflexible, very narrow and often left out those who really did this Government a service. I would be grateful if he came up with some flexible idea that allows some of these people to seek succour here in the United Kingdom.
I commend the Secretary of State for the calm and sensible way in which he has announced the change in Government policy today. I can already announce to the House that, since the briefing earlier today, I have made preliminary arrangements for MOD officials to address the Public Accounts Committee to examine the cost implications. Some £400 million has been spent so far, and I think the Secretary of State said in parentheses that another £400 million will be spent on the 600 people currently based in Afghanistan who have received invitations under the scheme. Can he give me and the House an assurance that if those 600 people, who must be in some danger, do need assistance, it will be rapidly provided?
Before Mike Martin moves the motion, I should say that 16 Members wish to speak, so I will probably have to impose a three-minute time limit after he has spoken. My aim is to try to get everybody in, so if we can cut down on interventions, that should give everybody a chance to speak.
It’s all right—it is a very good speech, but we have to keep to time.
Order. The Minister needs to give the Member in charge some time to respond.
I will call Jessica Toale to move the motion and then call the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.
I commend the Secretary of State for his honesty and I agree with everything he says in his statement. What an appalling mess, but part of the original sin was our intervening militarily and then scuttling out. On a wider point, may I take it that we have learnt our lesson and have got over the liberal imperial itch of the Cameron and Blair eras to intervene militarily in ungovernable countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya? Let us now move on, but I support what the Secretary of State said.
The UK’s benefits system is designed to act as a financial safety net. It exists so that people in hardship through no fault of their own can be supported. Supporting families and helping parents into work requires a balanced and fair system. It must provide meaningful support for those who need it most, while maintaining a sense of fairness for taxpayers. That is why the Conservatives introduced the two-child limit and believe it should be retained—so that people on benefits face the same choices as those in work. The welfare system is growing unsustainably, with spending on health and disability benefits alone set to hit £100 billion by the end of the decade.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making that point. It is essential that we put Britain’s finances on a sustainable path. All benefits are funded by taxpayers or borrowing, so every time the cost of benefits rises, so does the burden on taxpayers, or the debt we place on future generations.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making that point. I know that he, like all Conservatives, believes in personal responsibility, living within our means and fairness to the taxpayer.
I will not take any more interventions. Many thousands of couples think every year about whether to have children. They make that choice based on several factors, but one of the most important is whether they can afford to bring up that child as they would like to. Under the previous system, pre-2017, there was a fundamental element of unfairness in the system. A family in receipt of benefits saw those increase automatically every time they had another child. That is not true for a family not in receipt of benefits. Why is it that someone on benefits should not have to make the same choices and sacrifices as someone in work? Why should a taxpayer who is unable to afford to have more children subsidise the third, fourth or fifth child of someone not in work? The welfare bill in this country is increasing at an unsustainable rate. Unemployment is rising, thanks to the action of the Government, and more people than ever are receiving disability benefits, but this Government seem completely powerless to do anything to reverse that trend. The Prime Minister says that his welfare reforms strike the “right balance”, but the truth is that he was forced into a humiliating U-turn by his own Back Benchers and has had to totally gut his plans. Scrapping the Government’s PIP reforms means that the welfare Bill will make no savings at all—indeed, the total package will end up costing the taxpayer about an extra £100 million a year. What a fiasco! The Government set out to save £4.5 billion, and have ended up spending more taxpayers’ money to buy off Labour rebels. No thought was given to the burden on the taxpayer, or to the extra debt that the Government would incur and the interest that will have to be paid on it by our children. The fact that so many Labour Members want to remove the two-child benefit cap is testament to the irresponsibility with which they treat the public finances. Their solution is always to spend more money—preferably belonging to someone else. Now, we have the spectacle of the leader of Reform UK, the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), saying that he also supports scrapping the two-child cap, despite having been an outspoken supporter of it when it was introduced. Reform supporters in my constituency are rather puzzled by his decision. It suggests that the hon. Member is not guided by any political principle, but is chasing votes in the red wall, where he hopes to win seats from the Labour party. In my view, that confirms that he is wholly unserious about governing this country. There is only one party in this House that is serious about sound money, and that is the Conservative party. We are the only party that is serious about stopping the creeping reliance on welfare, and that cares about taxpayers keeping more of the money they earn.
I can make a very short speech today, Madam Deputy Speaker, because my right hon. Friend, the shadow Chancellor, in his brilliant speech at the beginning of this debate, set things out so clearly. There are common themes running through both Opposition debates today. The first is that the Government have lost control of expenditure and the second one, which I want to develop very briefly, is that the Executive have failed to listen with appropriate care to what people in this House have said. On the first of these points, my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) said in an eloquent intervention just a few minutes ago that the Government need to work out how to fix last week’s fiasco with the welfare Bill. Far from saving money, this is virtually now another spending measure. It is important to remember that as the former Chancellor my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) set out clearly, had we been successful in winning the last election, we would have reduced the number of working-age welfare recipients to pre-covid levels, thus saving £49 billion by the end of this Parliament. The reason I focus on this welfare issue is that it is welfare expenditure with which this Government must get to grips, and they have failed to learn the lessons of the past. I was a very junior welfare Minister in what was then the Department of Social Security between 1995 and 1997. I learned two very important rules, which this Government would do well to consider. On both, it is clear that welfare reform is extremely difficult. The first is that we cannot take away from poor people benefits that they are already receiving. I think I am right in saying that no Conservative Government have ever reduced disability benefits in payment. But Labour did not absorb that vital lesson, which is why they got into so much trouble last week. The second rule is that if a Government want to reduce the benefits bill, there are only really two ways of doing it. The first is to freeze the level of benefits; that has been done in the past, and it means not falling into the trap that the Government fell into last week. The second is to narrow the gateway into those benefits for future recipients. I urge the Government to absorb these important rules, because they will have to return to the issue of welfare expenditure if they are to make any progress at all on the economy. I hugely praise the rebellion last week by Labour Back Benchers. They have hopefully taught the Executive a most useful lesson: listen to Back Benchers with respect and close attention. As a former Chief Whip, however, I deprecate rebellions unless I am involved in them. It usually takes years for the Executive to get into the habit of treating their Back Benchers with contempt and derision as unelected Downing Street special advisers strut up and down Whitehall, but this lot—this Government —managed to accomplish it extraordinarily quickly. They have learned the hard way not to treat their Back Benchers and elected Members with so little respect.
The hon. Gentleman brings me elegantly to my final point. Having praised Labour Back Benchers and encouraged them to speak out, my one ask is that they now stand up for the election pledge, clearly set out in their manifesto, to restore development spending to 0.7%. I ask them to show the same zeal and enthusiasm as they did on welfare for bringing back the 0.7%. Inexplicably and astonishingly, their Prime Minister has cut the figure from the 0.5% they, alas, inherited from us down to 0.3%, and it is already causing massive difficulties, of which the hon. Member, with his background in Oxfam, will be fully aware. When the House comes back in September, I urge the hon. Member, particularly given his experience, to join other Back Benchers in saying to the Executive, “We will not put up with this. We said in our election manifesto that we would restore development spending to 0.7%, and in the same way that we showed the Government Front Benchers that they could not proceed as they planned with welfare, they cannot proceed as they plan to with development spending.” I urge Labour Back Benchers to ensure that this rethink takes place in the autumn, when the folly of what has happened will be even clearer.
Does my right hon. Friend find it extraordinary that when the Government came into office they made a big play of putting the OBR on a pedestal, but because they did not like the news, they now want to dismiss it and water it down?
The motion is simply asking the Government to commit to what they put in their manifesto. It seems that we are hearing every sort of speech other than speeches that address that point. Let us first take the national insurance rise. It is extraordinary to ask us to believe that businesses in Labour Members’ constituencies are delighted that their taxes have gone up because that will help public services. I am sure that they are all keen to see their taxes go up again to satisfy the new 30% pay rise that resident doctors want. We were told that that would not happen, and that that was why the Government had to put up taxes the last time. A bit of reality has to come to this conversation, given that local businesses are either cutting people’s hours, on a recruitment freeze, making redundancies or going into liquidation. Let us think about companies that go into liquidation. After 30 years of trading, a company in my constituency went into liquidation last month, simply because it could no longer cope with the NI rise. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Twelve people were made redundant immediately, meaning there would be no more taxes—no more income tax or purchasing tax—from that business, and on top of that, benefits would have to be paid. We are on a downward spiral of tax and spend in this country. Indeed, it is quite incredible to listen to the speeches from Labour Members. It is as if nobody has left the country, no money has been withdrawn from the City, and no person has taken their assets elsewhere. Those are literally the headlines on the economy, day after day, in the Financial Times and other newspapers, yet we get a lot of harking back to the past, rather than recognition that Labour has been in power for more than a year.
My hon. Friend sums things up perfectly. What terrifies me is that the Government do not seem to be taking any notice of that. When they talk about bringing in more taxes, such as a wealth tax, Labour Members all cheer. When my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor—I think it was him—said that Labour Members do not care, and would like to see more people who have wealth go, someone on the Government Benches shouted “Good!” It is absolutely incredible to say that the people who generate the wealth in this country are the enemy. Let us just think about my constituency of Wetherby and Easingwold, which does exactly what it says on the tin: Wetherby and Easingwold are the two main market towns in the constituency. Market towns are part of the big ecosystem of the economy that is linked around farming, and the farming tax has created a huge problem in the farming community. People are scared to invest in capital equipment. That is the first thing. “How are we going to pay these bills? Is it even worth passing the farms on? So let’s pause our investment.” That ecosystem in my constituency is not just about the farmers and what gets sold at the farmers’ market. It is about the businesses that service farm equipment. It is about the businesses that supply mechanical support. It is about the businesses that are involved in every aspect of the supply chain around farming in my constituency, and the worry and concern that is being felt throughout the communities means that they do not spend any money. That means that the Government are now losing out on VAT and on other taxes. So, what is their answer? Let us bring in a wealth tax; let us tax more—it is quite frankly frightening. In terms of taxation, I am terrified of where this country is heading.
I am sure it has just slipped the hon. Gentleman’s mind that people have the ability to do that. Famously, when Stanley Baldwin was the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, he gave a third of his wealth to the country to try to help with the national deficit. He did it behind the scenes and just signed it “FST”. He did not actually declare that it was from him. People can pay more tax if they wish. What they cannot do is sit in an unfair position where they can see that we do not have the most competitive taxes in the world; otherwise, they would stay here. It is blatantly obvious what is happening. If I were to throw a party at my house and I locked everybody in and halfway through the party they were trying to tunnel under the fence or get out in a hot air balloon, I would not say, “Well, that’s going really well. Let’s lock some more doors.” This is an overall assault on the lifeblood of the economy of this country. All this motion does today is ask whether the Government will be sticking to their manifesto promises. When the Chancellor came to the Dispatch Box last July, about a year ago, she kept talking about the OBR. She talked up the OBR, saying we could never again have a situation like under the Tories where they ignored the OBR. She announced £22 billion-worth of taxes for the alleged black hole. The OBR immediately came out and said, “That’s not true, it doesn’t exist.” At best, it was £9 billion, and most of that had been caused by giving pay rises to the public sector because, allegedly, that would solve the problem. We on these Benches warned that, without reform, the public sector would come back. And boy, have they come back! If the Government wanted to be believed that there was a £22 billion hole, one, why did they raise taxes by £44 billion; two, why did they then do another £30 billion-worth of borrowing; and three, how come we now have a £30 billion hole? That is a £100 billion hole in the economy that has been created since 12 months ago. How can anybody say that the Government have taken responsibility for the economy and are building it up? Somebody on the Labour Benches said that we were trying to rewrite history, but they are trying to rewrite the last two weeks! Labour is the only party I have known to come to the House trying to cut welfare and increased the bill! Where is the money coming from? What do we hear? We hear that we must get rid of the triple lock, because it is now going to cost £15 billion instead of £5 billion. How about we stop people self-declaring just to have time off work and get on universal credit, which is costing £40 billion, and we do not hit people who are on fixed incomes who do not have the ability to do other things? A great number of the retired people in this country are carrying the burden of supporting their families in work, looking after their grandchildren, and doing those things unpaid. We should be grateful to pensioners in this country and not be saying, “You’re the ones whose income we’ve got to cut” because the Government are letting welfare run out of control. This does not stop at what the Government have done to businesses in my constituency or to the ecosystem that relies on a rural economy, and it does not stop at them wanting to put solar panels all over credible farming land, pushing those businesses out even further, because they have brought in VAT on schools, and they have done it through pure ideology and envy. My constituents are not rich people. They have cars that are 15 or 20 years old. They do not go on holidays. They have been putting money in to give their children the best education, and they are now having to withdraw their children from those schools.
My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. I am just wrapping up, but I will tell you this, Mr Deputy Speaker: I am a comprehensive schoolboy, and I am not going to take any lessons off the private schoolboy on the Front Bench who tells me that it is unfair that we are not taxing people who are trying to do the best for their children—talk about pull up the ladder, I’m all right, Jack. Overall, the economy is being destroyed under this Government. We will have a political kickabout this afternoon, but I am terrified of where we are going. The 1970s is back good and proper—public sector strikes, ridiculous pay demands constantly bringing the Government down, 240% debt to GDP ratio predicted on this path, more and more taxes to come, and more and more wealthy people leaving. We saw what happened by 1977 when we went off to the IMF. The situation was so bad that the IMF said no! We are on that path, and it terrifies me.