Taxes

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 12th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mel Stride]

It was the Korean war—my right hon. Friend is absolutely right.

It is the Chancellor’s choices that have led to this situation. She was the person who chose to put up taxes on jobs, which has led to growth being anaemic. We know that taxes such as national insurance feed through to lower investment, higher inflation, higher unemployment and lower real wages. We know that the Government talked down the economy with the absurd and fictitious £22 billion black hole. In a sweet irony, when they asked the OBR to come in and opine on that number, it said that it would not legitimise it.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the real downfall of the Government dates from when they did not face down their own Back Benchers and deal with the rocketing benefits bill? Frankly, the country is going broke and the Government must have the courage to deal with millions of people who are not contributing to society.

[Sir Mel Stride]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely valid point. I shall come to those matters shortly, because there are alternatives to what the Government have decided to do.

It was this Government who went on a reckless borrowing spree. This year, we have borrowed £100 billion—the highest borrowing in our history, excluding the pandemic. Why has that happened? Because the Chancellor has fiddled the fiscal rules. She changed the debt definition from public sector net debt, as it was under us, to public sector net financial liabilities, which allows far more borrowing. In fact, under the original definition that we had—which she, incidentally, said she would not change—she would have been underwater in just about every year of the forecast on the debt target. That recklessness has led to the Labour party having plans to borrow half a trillion pounds more over the period of this Parliament than we had in our plans that it inherited.