Paul Holmes

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Makerfield (Josh Simons). I rise to speak in favour of the motion on the Order Paper in the name of the Leader of the Opposition. I do not rise to speak in this House because I think the Labour party’s Budget is vindictive, but I do think that the national insurance rise we are debating today is a proposal that runs right through the Labour party’s DNA. Labour drives down growth, when growth should be the No. 1 priority for public services. It taxes the wealth creators and the small businesses, it borrows and makes the economic situation worse, and it is always the Conservative party that has to pick up the pieces after Labour has targeted the poorest people and smallest businesses in our society and made them suffer. Ultimately, the lack of growth that the Labour party and every Labour Member have signed up to means that public services will suffer, fewer jobs will be created and more businesses will close. I gently say to the Chief Secretary that he challenged us repeatedly to outline what we would do instead of this measure to make sure that we can fund public services, and I will tell him a few things that we would not do. [Interruption.] Well, I will tell him in a minute, and he can intervene and elaborate, and I will get an extra minute. As he asked me what we would do, I will tell him: we would increase growth, as was outlined by the OBR. We would have growth, and higher growth than this Government are proposing. However, what we would not be doing is borrowing as much as him and spending £9 billion on public sector pay rises for his trade union paymasters, funded from borrowing. Those are the things we would not do.