Tom Tugendhat

There is a fundamental misunderstanding between the Conservative Members and Labour Members. Labour Members seem to believe that the Government create jobs, wealth and everything, but we recognise that individuals get up in the morning to group together into what we call companies, and they come up with ideas, stretch themselves and try different ideas. Some of them succeed and some of them fail, but relieving the pressure on them is not somehow letting them get away with something, but enabling them to express the freedom of the ideas they have. A second fundamental misunderstanding is that this is not about who has had job experience and who has not; it is who has had an HR department and who has not. The problem is not that those on the Labour side of the House are bad people or good people—as we all know, there are bad and good people on both sides—but that, in reality, someone with experience of a business that has only ever had an HR department, or only ever been large enough to look at different in-year cost savings in such a sense, is not the same as someone trying to pay for one person, two people or three people. Actually, 80% of businesses in this country have fewer than 10 employees, and we are talking about them.