Jerome Mayhew

We are debating the Finance Bill following an election. In usual times, such a Bill would enact what was said in the winning party’s manifesto, but not this time. On the electoral trail, all the Labour Members who are now Ministers repeated what was said in the Labour manifesto time and again: their plans were “fully costed” and “fully funded”. They repeatedly said that they had no plans to raise taxes beyond VAT on private schools or to increase public borrowing. The manifesto said, in bald terms, that “we will not increase National Insurance”. There was no qualification to that—it was there in black and white. It is extraordinary that we are debating a Finance Bill that has no correlation to the manifesto that it comes after. The electorate were profoundly misled. The reality is that the Labour party is increasing spending by more than £70 billion. Labour Members use the argument of their fantasy black hole, which has been thoroughly debunked by the independent Government body, the Office for Budget Responsibility, the independent IFS and the Financial Times. No one believes Labour, because that black hole is not there. It is not a black hole; it is more like a red herring. The reason for that red herring is that Labour needed it as the excuse to do what it always intended to do—put up taxes and increase spending on public workers. Why did it do that? Because Labour Members—all of them— knew that if they had been honest with the electorate and told them that Labour was going to be a tax and spend party, no one would have voted for them. Even then, only 34% of the public did. It was a big con on the electorate. That is why we have a petition live on the Government website that says: “I believe the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election.” As of this afternoon, 2.75 million people have signed that petition because they feel misled by this Government.