Ways and Means

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Your intervention enables me to make the point that struck all of us listening to the Economic Secretary. Fascinating as it was when he gave us a tour d’horizon of market rents in the commercial sector, the real aim of his speech was not so much the more effective operation of the property market as to speak in service of yet another tax increase. Fluent and authoritative as he so often is, all that fluency and authority were bent towards one end—ensuring that the Chancellor can get the £900 million additional revenue that this measure will raise every year. The most compelling argument in favour of the measure was not made at the Dispatch Box today by the Economic Secretary, but in the Red Book when that figure was produced. That is the principal justification for the change. The Chancellor’s imperative is plugging his black hole, not the sensitive rebalancing of rates and reliefs to secure the better working of the property market. The Economic Secretary mentioned Sir Michael Lyons’s report, and it is fascinating reading. If the Economic Secretary had told us everything that the report contained, he would no doubt have reminded the House that it had suggested that any change to the relief be introduced only in 2010 after extensive consultation. He is introducing it two years before Sir Michael envisaged, without the consultation that he requested.