Member

The 38 amendments with identical intent add up to a set of wrecking amendments, since they wreck the Chancellor’s Budget judgment. Moreover—this is hugely important in the context of this House considering what is essentially a money Bill, because of the technicalities of national insurance—the 38 amendments embody two serious fiscal errors. First, consider the fact that every exemption, every adjustment of a threshold to diminish revenue, is an expenditure of taxpayers’ money. Are the proposers of the 38 amendments really prepared to endorse this scattergun, blunderbuss approach to public spending? All the proposals in 37 of the 38 amendments involve commendable, valuable public services and contributions to the economy and society, but this wild scattering of public funds is not a serious way to determine the structure of public expenditure.