Sir John Whittingdale

The investment summit announced a lot of investment for which the Conservative Government were actually responsible. Let us wait and see. The Budget was yesterday. Businesses will have to look very carefully at their plans, but I do not expect them to do so in a mere few hours. I am happy to have this debate with the hon. Gentleman again in a few weeks’ time once we have seen the impact of the measures that have been announced. There are two specific measures that I want to touch on because they have a particular impact on my constituents. One of them, which has been mentioned a number of times in this debate, is the removal of agricultural property relief. The Country Land and Business Association estimates that that will affect 70,000 businesses. Family farms in particular will feel the impact worse. It is hardly surprising that the president of the National Farmers’ Union has said: “This Budget not only threatens family farms but will also make producing food more expensive… The shameless breaking of those promises on Agricultural Property Relief will snatch away much of the next generation’s ability to carry on producing British food, plan for the future and shepherd the environment.” This is a measure that the Labour party said it would not introduce, but it has broken that promise and is now proposing to introduce it, with enormous damage not just to farmers but to food security and our environment. The second measure that I would like to touch on—[Interruption.] Madam Deputy Speaker, I see you have acquired Speaker’s cough. I will heed your warning, but I want to mention VAT on private schools. In my constituency I have three small independent schools: Heathcote school in Danbury, Elm Green in Little Baddow and Maldon Court school in Maldon. The parents who send their children there are not rich; they make huge sacrifices. In Essex we are very fortunate to have really good grammar schools. Those parents make that sacrifice to help their children hopefully get into the grammars, but they will not be able to continue if there is 20% increase in fees as a result of the imposition of VAT. They will withdraw their children and those schools will be threatened with closure. The consequence is that the children will need to be placed in state schools, which are already under huge pressure. My constituency is growing rapidly, and there is enormous pressure on schools. This will simply make it worse. This policy is simply vindictive and will do enormous damage. Very quickly, I note that the Minister for Secondary Care, the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) has come back into the Chamber, and she would be disappointed if I did not say that I welcome the hospital building programme in the Budget and the announcement of new money. However, once again I reiterate that a hospital in my constituency is threatened with closure. We have been promised a new one for 30 years or more, under both my Government and the Government before that. She was good enough to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) and me the other day, so that we could make the case. If she does hold this money, I hope that she might be able to direct some of it to my constituency. This Budget is one of the worst I have heard in all my time in this place. It will do enormous damage. I am grateful for this opportunity to put that on the record.