Finance Bill

We can debate this until very late tonight—and I am sure we will—but the fact is that we have to make lots of assumptions about what people will actually spend their money on, because VAT is a tax on discretionary expenditure, not on essential expenditure. It was designed to be so. That is why food, children's clothing and many other items to which the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) has referred are zero-rated or exempt from the scope of VAT.