Dave Doogan

I do agree; I would rather not agree, but I do agree. That is why I implore the Treasury Minister, who is in his place, to have whatever private conversations Ministers have in their Departments about things that they may have got wrong. They cannot U-turn or row back on everything, but honestly, agricultural property relief and business property relief is an absolute landmine for businesses to be pulled across by this Government. He does not even have to address it in his summing up; he can just go back and quietly look at it again and have a review—kick it into the long grass at least. I want to speak briefly on quantitative tightening by the Bank of England; I probably will not have too many supporters in the Chamber on this issue, but no change there. I have raised this matter a couple of times with the Chancellor and she talks about all manner of things in response, none of which are quantitative tightening. The over-zealous nature of the Bank of England’s disposing of Government bonds is hugely costly to the Exchequer. There is no need for the rate of quantitative tightening that the central bank of the UK is undertaking. It is not replicated by other central banks. Even if the Bank was to go to a passive model of quantitative tightening that would have substantial, multibillion-pound savings for the Exchequer, at a time when the Chancellor returning from China was getting excited about £600 million for the whole UK economy over five years; £600 million is not even the annual budget of my local health board in Angus and Perthshire Glens. If those types of numbers are important to the Chancellor, the total quantitative tightening cost of £45 billion since 2022 should really be nearer the top of her red box for her attention.