Lewis Cocking

There are no two ways about it: this is a surrender Bill with no benefits to my Broxbourne constituents. Ministers have shamefully attempted to hide the shocking cost of this deal from the British people and the public at large. When the new Labour Government took office, they kept telling us in this Chamber about the pretend £22 billion black hole in the public finances. If the black hole of £22 billion that we are continually told about by the Government did exist, I could solve it overnight—don’t do this deal. This deal is £35 billion to the Mauritian Government. The Labour Government go after British family farms with the family farm tax. They go after our pensioners and take their winter fuel allowance away, and they increase national insurance contributions for businesses, to make it more expensive for them to employ people, but they could just not do this deal. They talk in fiction, and this is an absolute disgrace. How will Mauritius spend this money? By cutting taxes for its own citizens and paying their debts. Is the Minister proud that the only income tax cuts that this Labour Government will deliver are 6,000 miles away at the expense of the British taxpayer? The last time I checked, this was the British Parliament and we are supposed to stand up for British interests, not the interests of foreign countries or foreign citizens. We should be cutting taxes here and turbocharging the economy, not giving stuff away that we already own. We already have a base, and now we are going to lease it back, as we have heard from a number of colleagues.