Finance Bill

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Forsyth is entirely correct: it was clearly designed to be a bit of the detail that would never be fully analysed until after the general election, by which time the Prime Minister hoped that it would all be too late. Of course, the timing and life did not work out quite as he expected, so those proposals got the scrutiny that they deserved—by all parties, I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Newby, including the Prime Minister's own party. On how that moves on, the Government have claimed that it is for one year only, but the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that in that case, the reversal will affect 18 million people. Can the Minister give us some clue about how the Government are going to dig themselves out of that hole? My noble friends also referred to vehicle excise duty. That is another example of the Prime Minister’s nasty little habit of hitting the poor, because the small print on the vehicle excise duty changes, as my honourable friend, Justine Greening, managed to get revealed in another place, the retrospective element of the changes, meant that the poorest families, who typically drive the older cars, are the ones who get hit. It was not correct for the Government to claim that most families would benefit from the changes. It was dressed up as a green tax, but the retrospective element does nothing to alter behaviour; it just picks the pockets of the less well off. The Treasury Select Committee in another place stated in its report entitled Budget Measures and Low Income Households that the Budget shows that the Prime Minister's policies are driven not by conviction but by short-term political calculation, with the poorest in society paying the price. For all the Government’s fine talk of lifting people out of poverty, their record is poor. The latest report on households below average income showed that income inequality is at its highest since records began and that both relative and absolute poverty have recently been increasing. Does the Minister think that the Government will hit their target of halving child poverty by 2010 and, if so, how? My noble friends have already referred to the way that this Finance Bill includes the final version of those panicky measures on capital gains tax and non-domiciles introduced in the Pre-Budget Report. The sub-committee on the Finance Bill was rightly scathing about this whole saga and reported the widespread criticism from the private sector about the development of policy and the lack of proper consultation. It will not be clear for some time whether these measures will be as damaging to enterprise and business as many now expect, but it is clear that the Government have forfeited the trust of those who act for taxpayers, if not of taxpayers themselves. The Government have been warned for many years that the cumulative effect of their attacks on the multinational corporate sector would result in companies that are internationally mobile upping sticks. This year, it has started to happen. The Chancellor has at last emerged from a state of denial and promised to take those concerns into account. This Finance Bill does not contain a big attack on business but, as the sub-committee of the Economic Affairs Committee pointed out, the overall impact of the Bill on business is negative, because it damages the UK's competitiveness. In the period since the Budget, we have learnt all we need to know about this Government. They deliberately aim to hit the poor and will tell any number of untruths until finally found out. They backtrack, U-turn and dither over major changes. Worst of all, through incompetence and recklessness, they have failed to prepare our economy for the hard times that are now hitting our citizens.