Sir Mel Stride

The steps, as the hon. Gentleman terms them, that his party is taking to get the deficit down are to borrow ever larger sums of money—half a trillion more than was laid out in the plans that his party inherited, and that has been added to further by the Chancellor at the last Budget. You will recall, Madam Deputy Speaker, that after her first Budget, the Chancellor said that she would not be coming back for more tax, which brings me to the issue of her being misleading. That was clearly a misleading statement, because the recent Budget sets out that £26 billion more will be raised in tax in the year 2029-30. But £26 billion is not the extent of the increased tax rises. Because the Government have fuelled inflation, for the reasons that we have been discussing among ourselves, fiscal drag has dragged in a total of £38 billion of additional taxation in that year. The Labour party must start to understand that if it taxes and taxes and taxes the economy, it will get less growth, less productivity and less employment, and that is precisely what we are seeing. The Labour party also said—if you recall, Madam Deputy Speaker—that the Chancellor would not be taxing hard-working people. Well, that simply was not true. By freezing the income tax thresholds for those extra years, the Chancellor is increasing taxes by £7 billion, which is a direct contradiction of what she said—with great gusto—in the previous Budget. She said that she would not do that because it would hurt hard-working people and that she would stick to her promises. Clearly, she did not mean it when she said it.