My hon. Friend makes an astute point. That is one of the things that is going on here.
The Chancellor is also shifting more and more from direct taxation on income to indirect taxation on spending. In doing so, he is pushing the burden of tax from those on middle incomes to those on lower incomes. They are the true target of this Government, as we shall see in the debate on tax credits later this afternoon.
The hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer) claimed that this measure was about low tax, but I would ask her to reconsider that. For whom is it about low tax? For all the reasons given by the hon. Member for North West Hampshire, including the fact that not raising the basic rate of national insurance is a good thing to do, it is clear that this is a tax on labour. At a time when we want more people to have more good jobs, that seems rather perverse.
The most perverse thing about national insurance is the upper earnings limit, and including that in the legislation is a highly political act. We shall have a debate on tax credits in a little while. Let us look at the marginal rate that the Chancellor is giving to people, taking account of the tax and benefits system. After the Budget, the effective marginal tax rate faced by second earners in couples on very low incomes with two children will be 75%. However, for those earning more than £150,000 a year, the normal marginal tax rate of less than 50% will apply. Even when universal credit is introduced, the marginal rate for people earning around £10,000 a year will be 65%, but the withdrawal rate for people earning more than £150,000 will be 48p in the pound. That is not about low tax or certainty. It is clearly about protecting the Tory party’s rich friends and rich donors.