UK Parliament / Open data

Finance Bill

I will not go too far down that route, but this Chancellor—in this sense and this sense only—has been saved by the Brexit vote. He was never going to meet his forecasts for getting the deficit down in the lifetime of this Parliament. He also completely failed when he forecast in the previous Parliament that the deficit would be down to zero by 2015. He then forecast that it would be down to zero by 2020. That was never going to happen. We predicted that and I am sad that it was the case.

Now, with the Brexit vote, as my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) says, the forecast will be nowhere near right, but no doubt the Chancellor will then use the vote as an excuse. The Brexit vote has revealed some of the underlying problems in the British economy that just about every serious economist has been pointing out for the last five years. Cutting corporation tax in this circumstance is a bad idea, and I urge all hon. and right hon. Members to vote against clause 42.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

612 c221 

Session

2016-17

Chamber / Committee

House of Commons chamber
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