Richard Fuller

To be fair, my former colleague did not last quite as long as the lettuce, and the public made their judgment clear on that and many other issues at the general election. The hon. Gentleman’s point is fair, but it is not particularly relevant to the decisions he will be asked to vote on today. Hospices in his constituency will know how he votes. GPs in his constituency will know how he votes. Charities in his constituency will know how he votes. I will be interested to see whether he votes with his conscience or with the party line. Less than one in four of the public now believe that the Government are handling the economy well. It is not just the public who have lost faith in the economic competence of His Majesty’s Treasury; it is the Prime Minister himself, who apparently on Thursday will ditch the ambition for the United Kingdom to be the fastest-growing economy in the G7, removing at a stroke one of the key planks of Labour’s economic plans. The Bill will add to that lack of faith in this Labour Government, because this measure to raise national insurance contributions directly contradicts Labour’s election promise not to increase taxes on working people. In the election campaign, the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the entire Labour Treasury team, including the Minister, repeated the phrase from their manifesto, which stated: “Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT.” Yet today, with the election behind them, increasing taxes on working people is exactly what Labour is proposing to do. The shadow Minister is shaking his head.