Finance (No. 2) Bill
Debate between Alison Taylor and Mel Stride(1 day, 7 hours ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sir Mel Stride
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman and then I will come to the hon. Lady.
Sir Mel Stride
As I have to say so often following his interventions, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. There is a huge difference between the position of a dynamic, growing organism of a company and the other situation that he has described. Loading up these taxes on the death of the principal owner or one of the significant owners of a business means loading it up with uncertainty, and quite conceivably the business must be broken up as a consequence.
Alison Taylor
As someone who used to be part of a small family business in Glasgow, I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman agrees that stability in relation to inflation and corporation tax and reducing interest rates are equally important to a small family business.
Sir Mel Stride
It is interesting that the hon. Lady should raise the issue of inflation. Inflation is currently at about twice the target of 2%, and it was bang on target on the day of the general election, at 2%, because of the action that we took, alongside the Bank of England. The International Monetary Fund is forecasting that inflation in our country will be the highest in the G7 this year, and the highest in the G7 next year. If we ask why that has happened, the answer is relatively simple. If national insurance increases are imposed on employers, they pass on some of those additional costs by way of higher prices, and that is inflationary. If vast amounts of money are borrowed, and, notwithstanding what the Minister had to say earlier, vast amounts of money are spent, too—about half a trillion pounds more than was the case under the plans that Labour inherited—that also stokes inflation. Those on the Government Front Bench may trumpet the fact that interest rates have come down five times, but if they had not mismanaged the economy, rates would have come down an awful lot faster. Interest rates are higher, and for longer, because we have sticky inflation, which is due to the choices made by this Government.