Finance Bill

With respect, the hon. Gentleman is making a partisan point in a quite unfair way. I was about to make a point on which I hope there is consensus in the Committee. We all now know what the impact of the VAT increase on charities will be, and all of us will be worried about the impact we foresee on smaller charities. The truth is that there is strong cross-party consensus on the need to support charities further. I was studying this afternoon not just the rhetoric but the reality set out in some of the manifestos put before the country at the election. The Conservative manifesto said:""Britain has a proud and long-standing charitable tradition, and we are convinced that the voluntary sector should play a major part in our civic renewal."" The Conservatives' specific proposal was to""introduce a fair deal on grants to give voluntary sector organisations more stability and allow them to earn a competitive return for providing public services."" The Liberal Democrats had a slightly different take on the right policy prescription, as page 85 of their manifesto talks about the need to reform gift aid still further. They proposed that it should""operate at a single rate of 23%—giving more money to charity while closing down a loophole for higher rate tax payers."" Labour Members are very proud of our record in supporting the third sector in this country. Over the past 10 years, we doubled the amount of public sector income going to the third sector and Britain's charities, from £5.5 billion to more than £11 billion. So although we had not finished the job of sorting out VAT, what we had delivered was a doubling of income going into the charitable sector in this country. That was the biggest single increase in income going to the third sector in this country almost on record. In the past 10 years that meant that the sector was stronger in taking on public service delivery contracts. Indeed, those contracts with the third sector doubled since 2000 and by the time Labour left office there were about 60,000 social enterprises, worth £8.5 billion. We are proud of our record.