Mr Redwood’s intervention during the Statement on the Government Referendum Leaflet, 11 April

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): Does the Minister accept that this leaflet is not so much “Project Fear” as “Project Slightly Worrying”, because it has been dumbed down, but is it not an abuse of public money and an insult to the electors, and does he not realise that it will drive many more people to vote to leave?

The Europe Minister (Mr David Lidington): I return to what I said earlier: there is clear evidence from the independent polling research— its methodology has been published by the company concerned on its website—that more information is wanted by the British public. That research finding bears out what I and, I suspect, many other hon. Members on both sides of the House are finding anecdotally in conversations with constituents. I now spend time virtually every day signing replies to Members of Parliament, who have enclosed letters from constituents saying they feel they do not yet have enough information on which to make an informed decision and would like to have some more.

I hope that people will look carefully at what the Government are arguing, that they will look at the arguments put forward by the two campaign groups, once they have been designated, and that they will come to a decision about what they believe to be in the best interests of the United Kingdom as a whole. That is how the Government are approaching this matter.

Mr Redwood’s intervention during the Statement on the UK Steel Industry, 11 April

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): Will the Secretary of State look at finding a long-term, cheap energy solution for Port Talbot, which is crucial? What constraints is the European Union placing on aid to the steel industry?

The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) (Mr Sajid Javid): I can give that commitment to my right hon. Friend, who speaks with a great deal of experience both of Wales and of business. He is right to identify energy as an issue. I do not believe that the constraints are coming from the EU, and we have demonstrated that there is action that we can take, but there is more that we can do. My right hon. Friend has good ideas and I look forward to discussing them with him further.

Mr Redwood’s intervention during the Prime Minister’s Statement on the Panama Papers, 11 April

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): According to the official Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts, we are likely to lose ÂŁ7.3 billion of tax revenue to multinational companies over the ensuing five years because they will sue us in court and get the European Court of Justice to overturn the taxes we wish to impose, and there is another ÂŁ35 billion at risk. What can we do here to make sure those companies pay their fair amounts, which this Parliament wants but the ECJ does not?

The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron): We took a whole series of actions in the Budget, and of course we have the diverted profits tax, which is a tremendous weapon for making sure these companies pay their tax in the jurisdictions where they are rightly earning the money. This tool of being able to exchange tax information and having a common reporting standard, which is what we set in train in 2013, will make the biggest difference.

Mr Redwood’s Urgent Question on the EU-Turkey Agreement, 9 March 2016

12.37 pm

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con) (Urgent Question): To ask the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on what new financial and other obligations apply to the UK in the EU-Turkey agreement.

The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington): Agreements reached in principle at the EU-Turkey summit on Monday represent a basis on which in future all migrants who arrive in Greece could be returned to Turkey. That would, if implemented, break the business model of the people smugglers, and end the link between getting in a boat and getting settlement in Europe. That is something for which the Prime Minister and the Government have been arguing for nearly a year.

The agreement would not impose any new obligations on the United Kingdom in respect of either resettlement or relocation. As we are not members of the Schengen area, we are able to maintain our own border controls and make our own decisions on asylum. Nor would the United Kingdom be obliged to resettle any additional refugees. We are already resettling 20,000 of the most vulnerable Syrians directly from the region through our own national scheme. We will not be part of the process of liberalising visas—that is a matter for Schengen countries—and we will still require visas for Turkish citizens to visit Britain.

The European Union also agreed on Monday to consider in due course extending the current financial support to help Turkey. There are currently no formal proposals for further funding on returns, and we will wait to see any proposals before commenting. We have already agreed to pay our £250 million share of the existing €3 billion Turkey refugee facility, and I made a written ministerial statement about that earlier this week. This builds on our existing £1.1 billion bilateral support for the Syria crisis and the additional bilateral commitment that we made at the recent London conference on Syria. The Turkey refugee facility is designed to provide immediate humanitarian support and also to fund the schools, hospitals and housing required over the longer term to support refugees and the communities that host them.

The agreement at the EU-Turkey summit on Monday will ensure that the €3 billion commitment agreed at last November’s EU-Turkey summit is properly and expeditiously disbursed. Intensive work will take place over the coming week with the aim of reaching final agreement at the next European Council on 17 and 18 March, after which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will make a statement to the House as usual.

John Redwood: One of the reasons why I asked for this urgent question was that the statement from the EU Heads of State or Government issued yesterday makes it very clear that the visa liberalisation applies to all member states of the European Union, not just the Schengen area. I quote from the official document, which says that the EU Heads of State or Government agreed

“to accelerate the implementation of the visa liberalization roadmap with all Member States with a view to lifting the visa requirements for Turkish citizens at the latest by the end of June 2016”.
Will the Minister therefore be seeking clarification and amendment to this statement, given that he told us that these visa requirement waivers will not apply to all member states, or will he negotiate some kind of opt-out to make it very clear that those waivers will not do so? It will obviously be a matter of concern if the text issued from the Heads of State or Government meeting is at variance with the clear statements that we have been getting from Ministers here and through the media in the past few hours.

Secondly, I am surprised that the Minister has not mentioned that there was an agreement to an accelerated process to get Turkey to join the European Union as a full member, so will he comment on the United Kingdom’s position on the pace of the proceedings to get Turkey into the European Union, on what arrangements, if any, he thinks will need to be made when Turkey joins over freedom of movement, on whether there would need to be transitional arrangements, and on whether Britain would wish to be part of the freedom of movement area without proper transitional arrangements and protections?

Thirdly, I find it curious that we still do not know what we might be paying. If our share of the €3 billion is £250 million, plus the contribution that we have made through the EU budget, presumably we are looking at more than £250 million on top of that if the sum is doubled from €3 billion to €6 billion, because I presume that that will also be a levy on the member states. This should be properly reported to the House of Commons because it is an additional contribution to the EU, on top of the normal budget.

Mr Lidington: Let me respond to my right hon. Friend’s three questions. We already have an opt-out from Schengen; that is written into the treaties. Similar arrangements apply to Ireland and Denmark in slightly different respects. The legal measure that would be used for any liberalisation of visa arrangements for Turkey would be a Schengen measure that would be brought forward under the appropriate treaty base, so it would not apply to the United Kingdom, Denmark or Ireland. I made it clear in my initial response to my right hon. Friend that the Government do not intend to liberalise our visa arrangements with Turkey.

On my right hon. Friend’s second point, it has of course been the policy of successive British Governments, including the one in which he served with such distinction, to support the eventual accession of Turkey to EU membership. That is not going to happen in the near future. The statement of the Heads of State or Government said on Monday that they would prepare for the decision on the opening of new chapters in the accession negotiations as soon as possible. To open a chapter such as chapter 23, which deals with the rule of law, might well be very helpful to strengthen the dialogue that we shall be having with Turkey about the rule of law, human rights and the standards that are expected of candidate members of the European Union but, again, no agreement has yet been reached on any aspect of opening new chapters, and many member states will have their views about that.

On my right hon. Friend’s point about Turkish accession—or any new member’s accession—and freedom of movement, the Government have said repeatedly that we will not agree to any further EU enlargement
unless we first have in place new arrangements for transitional controls on freedom of movement so that we do not take on the risk, as we did in 2004, of very large movements of people in the aftermath of a new accession. Every decision to do with EU membership requires unanimity, so every country has a veto on every such step.

Thirdly, my right hon. Friend asked about finance. As I said, there are no formal proposals on the table. There is an ongoing negotiation at EU level in which there are many different moving parts. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will make a statement after the European Council next week, but the refugee facility agreed last year is budgeted for and is causing the Commission to reprioritise its various spending programmes, which seems a sensible thing for it to do.

Mr Redwood’s interventions during the debate on the UK Steel Industry, 29 February

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): I agree with the hon. Lady; we need a streel industry and there needs to be cross-party working to try to find the way forward. What does she think the Government could do to try to get more steel orders? The main problem is that there just is not enough British steel being bought.

Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab): One of the first things we have to do is stop the tsunami of unfairly traded and dumped Chinese steel, which is preventing fair trade and competition in the market at the moment.

The Opposition have had to drag this Government kicking and screaming to the House on no fewer than 12 occasions since 2014 to try to force them to turn their warm, sympathetic words on steel, which we all recognise they use, into effective action. Today, here we are doing so once again. The Opposition motion calls on the Government to stop using the European Union as an excuse for their own inaction. It asks them to support a more effective response to the dumping of Chinese steel, which threatens to decimate UK steel production. It calls on the Government to take tougher action to secure a level playing field for our industry.

…

John Redwood: Will the Secretary of State tell us what he and his colleagues in Government can do to ensure that in big public sector procurement programmes in defence, railway engineering or construction, we get the maximum British content for the steel industry?

The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and President of the Board of Trade (Sajid Javid):
That is an excellent question, and that was the second ask from the industry. Let me address the first ask, and I will come right back to that point.

The first ask was for lower energy bills. We will shortly be paying compensation on renewable energy costs, and we are in the process of securing agreement to exempt energy-intensive industries from such costs. The second ask was for more British steel to be used in public building projects. We have issued updated procurement guidance to all Departments to make it clear that they can now take into account wider socioeconomic considerations, as well as cost, when making purchasing decisions. We are the first member of the European Union to be able to use those new rules. We have also mapped rough estimates of steel that could be used for major projects including High Speed 2, new nuclear and offshore wind. We have shared those estimates with industry and will continue to keep them updated.

Mr Redwood’s intervention during the Prime Minister’s statement on the European Council, 22 February 2016

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): Do not the common agricultural, fishing and energy policies do damage to domestic producers and add to the colossal deficit we always run with the rest of the EU while running a trade surplus with the rest of the world? What can we do about those unfairnesses if we stay in the European Union?

The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron): We have made a lot of progress in recent years. The wine lakes and butter mountains are a thing of the past. We have made big reforms to the common fisheries policy. I know that my right hon. Friend studies these things very closely, but although we have a deficit with the EU on goods, we have a substantial surplus when it comes to services. We have to think about the future and how we safeguard the services industries as well as making sure that our position in the single market is open.

Mr Redwood’s intervention during the Statement on the EU Renegotiation, 11 November 2015

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): Do we not have to control our own borders in order to fulfil the popular Conservative promise to cut net migration by more than two thirds during this Parliament? Should not we decide what the rules are, and apply them fairly to the whole world, rather than distinguishing between Europe and non-Europe?

The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington): My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has been completely consistent in saying that he accepts the basic principle of freedom of movement for workers, but that that should not become a freedom to choose the most attractive welfare system in the European Union. On our estimate, something like 40% of the people who are here from elsewhere in the EU are receiving benefits or tax credits of some kind, and action on that front will have a significant effect on the pull factor that our welfare system exercises at the moment.

Mr Redwood’s speech during the debate on English Votes, 22 October 2015

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): I speak for England. For some 18 years English MPs in this United Kingdom Parliament have proposed, encouraged, or come to accept with good grace major transfers of power to Scotland, substantial transfers of power to Wales, and the transfer of other powers to Northern Ireland. Now it is England’s turn.

Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP): The right hon. Gentleman says that he speaks for England. We all recall that, in a former existence, he once tried to sing for Wales.

John Redwood: In those glorious days of great singing, we had a unitary country, which meant that anyone could do anything from this great House of Commons in the Government across the whole United Kingdom. We have this problem today because, in our collective wisdoms, we are transferring massive powers to devolved Governments and to all parts of the United Kingdom, but not to England. Now it is England’s turn to have a voice, and England’s turn to have some votes.

I welcome today’s proposals, but I must tell my hon. Friends that they do only half the job. What England is being offered today is the opportunity to have a voice and a vote to stop the rest of the United Kingdom imposing things on England which England does not wish to have and has not voted for. That is very welcome, but we still do not have what the Scots have. We do not have the power to propose something for our country which we wish to have and which may well be backed by a large majority of English voters and by English Members of Parliament, because it could still be voted down by the United Kingdom Parliament. So this is but half the job for England. Nevertheless, I welcome half the job, and I will of course warmly support it.

We are given but two pathetic arguments against the proposal by the massive and angry forces that we see ranged against it today. First, we are told that it will not be possible to define an England issue. Those Members never once thought there was a problem with defining a Scottish issue, and, as we know, issue after issue is defined as a Scottish issue and passes through the Scottish Parliament with very few conflicts and problems.

In your wisdom, Mr Speaker, you will be well guided in this respect, because every piece of legislation that is presented to us will state very clearly whether it applies to the whole of the United Kingdom or just to some parts of the United Kingdom. The decisions on who can vote on the matter under the double-vote system will therefore become very clear, because they will be on the face of the law. How can this House produce a law that does not state whether it is England-only or United Kingdom-wide? The law must make that statement, so it will not be any great problem for the Chair to sort that out.

Then there is the ridiculous argument that this measure will create two different types of MP. The problem, which some of us identified in the late 1990s when devolution was first proposed and implemented, was that it created four different types of MP, and we are living with the results of that today. English MPs have always been at the bottom of the heap. I have to accept that Scottish MPs come here and vote on English health and English schools in my constituency, but I have no right to debate, or vote on, health and education in Scotland. That problem needs to be addressed, and we are suggesting a very mild and moderate way of starting to address it. I hope that the House will give England a hearing.

I find it extraordinary that so few English Labour MPs are present today, and that not one of them is standing up and speaking for England, saying “Let us make some small progress in redressing the balance.”

Several hon. Members rose—

John Redwood: I do not have time to give way, and others wish to speak.

Today is the chance to start to put right some of that injustice to England. Today is the chance to start to rebalance our precious United Kingdom. Today is the chance to deal with lopsided devolution, and to give England something sensible to do. In the week of Trafalgar day, let me end by saying, “England expects every England MP to do his or her duty.”

Mr Redwood’s contribution to the debate on the Charter for Budget Responsibility, 14 October 2015

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): I welcome the spirit of the shadow Chancellor’s remarks and the fact that he wants a serious debate. Government Members do not favour austerity; we favour prosperity. We believe that the way to create prosperity is to have sound money and sound state finances that we can afford so we have decent public services and money and so that credit is also available to expand the private sector, create the extra jobs we need to get people into work and create the higher paid jobs we need so that they can be more prosperous in work. I hope the shadow Chancellor will understand that.

I am afraid the shadow Chancellor did make a couple of mistakes in his remarks. First, he wrongly said that Conservative Members were calling for less banking regulation in the run-up to the crisis. I chaired the economic policy review for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and there was strong advice that tougher regulation was needed on bank cash and capital. We expressly warned that the banks were over-borrowed and over-geared and that the whole system was very shaky, and I remember the Opposition constantly warning about excess debts in the system. The shadow Chancellor would be well advised to read what we wrote because the warnings were there although Labour and its regulators were not listening.

The shadow Chancellor should reread the Red Book, which set out a few weeks ago the five year spending and borrowing plans for this Parliament. It makes it very clear that there are going to be substantial cash increases in total public spending over the five years of this Parliament as all goes to plan, as we trust it will. As inflation is currently around 0%, that will mean real increases are possible, just as in the last Parliament when, despite all the noise from the Labour party, cash spending went up every year and real spending went up every year. It went up much more modestly than it did during the excesses of the pre-2007-08 period that helped to bring about the crash, but there was room for small real increases in public spending. That is because Government Members care about ensuring that disabled people are properly looked after, that schools have enough money and that there are real increases for the health service every year because there is greater demand and more treatments.

I welcome the charter, and I hope that this Government—which I hope will be re-elected—and any future Government will take it very seriously. The evidence is clear that during the first five years of the previous Labour Government, the economy worked pretty well. I give them credit for that. In three of those five years, they generated a public surplus. They inherited our prudent public finances and for the first few years they ran with them, which worked very well. I therefore refer Labour Members to their own excellent example from those early years. It was only when their Government let rip on spending, credit and borrowing for the state and the private sector that things got out of control and they showed that they could put the boom into the boom and the bust into the bust. They then took us through the biggest and deepest cycle of the post-war period, with awful consequences for the poor and for those who lost their jobs and businesses.

We need responsible finances. We want growth. We want prosperity, not austerity, and this charter will allow us to achieve that. Let us hope that future Governments stick to it. The debt was only £380 billion for the whole state at the point at which the Labour Government ceased to generate a surplus. It went up by almost £700 billion before they left office, and a lot of the increase occurred before the crash. It now stands at £1,600 billion, because getting it down is proving extremely difficult. I urge Labour Members to understand that they jeopardised the public finances, trashed the economy and destroyed jobs and businesses. We don’t want to go there.

Mr Redwood’s contribution to the Finance Bill, 8 September 2015

John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): I remind the House that I advise an industrial and an investment company and the details are set out in the register.

I found it interesting to listen to the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) speak from the Opposition Front Bench on this important matter. As someone who thinks that taxes are best kept low and that we need to do all we can to maximise the spending power of those we represent, I had a lot of sympathy with much of what she was saying. Of course, there will be people who do not want to pay an increased insurance tax—who does? In particular, some people will find it difficult because it is quite a high tax. I would have found the hon. Lady more convincing had she been able to answer the question in my intervention: if not this, what?

We have just had a passionate debate in this House in which the Opposition, understandably, wanted us to do more for Syrian refugees. That takes money. We are already being very generous with our overseas aid budget, and although we understand their motivation they are not proposing lots of reductions in spending.

Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab): Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman has forgotten that in July we voted against the cut in inheritance tax in the Budget, which would bring in another ÂŁ1 billion in the final year.

John Redwood: That is interesting, because one of the difficulties with capital taxes is that they are sensitive to the rate and details of the scheme. The first rule of any tax must be that if it is raised, more revenue must be got from it. One thing that is certainly true of this insurance tax is that although we would rather it was at a lower rate, it is still at a low enough rate that if we raised it we would collect more revenue. I am not sure that that is true of the inheritance tax system, and the hon. Lady must understand that quite a lot of her constituents are not very happy about the current regime and are looking for changes.

Helen Goodman: The right hon. Gentleman is talking through his hat. In my constituency last year, not one property sold for ÂŁ650,000 and the Government is raising the threshold to ÂŁ1 million. It certainly will not affect any of my constituents.

John Redwood: The hon. Lady might well find that some of her constituents have aspirations and could be successful; I am surprised that she is so negative about them. Many people in all parts of the country welcome the idea. In 10 or 20 years’ time, if there is a death in the family and assets pass, they would be grateful not to have that limit. It was a good effort and I accept that the hon. Lady came up with the least bad of the Labour attitudes. Everything else that Labour wants to do involves either spending more money or increasing tax rates, which will reduce the revenue.

Barbara Keeley: The right hon. Gentleman should be directing his question to the Chancellor, because, as I said, it was the Chancellor who said that

“tax increases are not required to achieve further consolidation, as “this can be achieved with spending reductions”
The right hon. Gentleman ought to be asking the Government and his right hon. Friend the Chancellor his question rather than the Opposition, because the promise to the electorate—this is the important thing—was that there would be no tax increases, yet here we are soon after the Budget with a tax increase that will hit many millions of households and bring in £8 billion.

John Redwood: But I support the Government on that. I think that they are right to want to make more progress in bringing down the deficit—I am not sure whether the hon. Lady agrees. I also think that they are absolutely right to honour the very important promise they and I made to our electors not to increase income tax or VAT. Better still, we must honour our pledge to get income tax down, particularly for people on lower incomes, by raising the threshold. I also wish to see reductions in income tax at the 40% level, which affects many of my constituents and those who aspire to better jobs and pay, which we hope our economic recovery will deliver to many more people. We are honouring our pledge not to increase income tax rates, but to make the cuts we specified over the five-year period, and we are honouring our pledge on VAT.

Barbara Keeley: There seems to be a very selective honouring of pledges going on. The pledge not to increase taxes is not being met, because £8 billion is being taken. The other thing that I am very concerned about is the Government’s decision to ditch the pledge to cap social care costs. It is one thing to allow people with properties worth £1 million not to pay inheritance tax, but it is quite another when people up and down the country will be hit by the dropping of the pledge to cap care costs. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would like to comment on that, because I am sure that it affects his constituents just as it affects mine.

John Redwood: I think that we are now going rather wide of the amendment and the clause that we are meant to be debating. I wish to see a generous care system that is properly controlled and disciplined. If the hon. Lady has individual cases where people will be adversely affected unreasonably, I am sure that Ministers will be willing to look at them. The last thing I wish to see is unreasonable cuts affecting people who really need the money, but I also wish to see more work done—this is what the Government are doing—to promote the abilities of many people, including those she suggests are disabled, because many people have many abilities. This Government are about encouraging those abilities, helping people to do more for themselves and, where possible, to get into work so that they can lead more rewarding lives, and so that they can receive pay in addition to the benefit assistance for which they currently qualify. There is a complete policy there to promote better lives for everyone in society, and cutting income taxes is an important part of that, and promoting abilities and opportunities is another.

George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP): Does the right hon. Gentleman not recognise that there is a moral hazard to a degree in taxing insurance? There is a moral hazard that we recognise through the fact that 80% of activity in the insurance business is not taxed. Therefore, if we are increasing the tax burden on that 20% simply to raise revenue, it might be worth coming back and looking at the consequences.

John Redwood: That is very good advice, and that is exactly what this Committee is trying to do by highlighting the issue in a short but thorough debate.

I will now make some progress on the specific matters relating to insurance tax. It passes my first test, which is that if we have to increase a tax rate we must ensure that we get more revenue from it. It passes that test because the starting rate is sufficiently low, and the forecasts indicate that we will see a substantial increase in revenue as a result of the change.

The second question is what is its distributional effect. The hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) understandably made much of the cases that are the hardest, but overall I would imagine—the Minister may have some figures—that people who are better off will pay more of this tax than people who are not so well off, because a lot of it is insuring property and asset and businesses, and it will be the people with the most substantial assets and businesses who will pay rather more of that tax. It therefore meets a general test of fairness in the sense that it is progressive.

My one nervousness about that—I look forward to the Minister’s response on this—is over the issue of the young driver, which the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South raised. I think that we need to ensure that we have a very supportive package for young people generally, because they are finding it difficult to price themselves into housing, and they do not always get the rates of pay at the beginning of their careers that we would like to see them enjoy. It is very important that we keep cutting the income taxes at the lower end of income, especially for them, because they really need to keep everything they earn if their starting pay is not very good.

The biggest problem for the young driver, particularly the young male driver, is that the starting prices for insurance can be exceptionally high. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult for the very young male driver to get insured at all. We have to ask ourselves why that is. The main reason, of course, is that the young driver is perceived to be a bad risk by the insurance company. There is some evidence that the younger driver may, on average, have a worse record than the older driver, and that is why the premiums can be particularly high on younger people.

Perhaps the Government can help rather more, through and with the industry, to tackle the main problem, which is not the tax on the premium but the initial height of the premium. Some good work has been done in the industry to provide methods of reassurance that the young person will drive well and safely by means of technology in the car that monitors them, at their own request and with their agreement. That may be the price of their getting the lower premium. We need to look at how technology and support for good driving can be reinforced so that a young person is more readily insurable at a realistic price. Of course, if the young person behaved recklessly, that would become obvious and the arrangements would have to be changed, but there are ways in which this can be done.

Barbara Keeley: It is not a question of technology changes. This £50 increase, at least, in the duty paid on the very high premiums that the right hon. Gentleman is talking about will prevent young people—presumably young men, more than young women—from getting to the point where they can start to gain experience. The age at which people will be able to be insured will advance and advance so that they will be unable to get started. That is the issue. It is not a question of technology but of making insurance affordable, and this makes it worse.

John Redwood: I am trying to deal with the underlying reason why it can be very difficult for young men, in particular, to afford insurance. The big problem is not the increment on top of the current insurance tax or the bigger increment resulting from this Bill; it is the starting level of the premium. People are working on ways in which we may be able to address that.

If the young person can accept a system that will reassure the insurer that they are going to drive sedately, prudently and safely, then the reason for charging them more disappears. By accepting the constraints of the technology, they can demonstrate that they are driving safely. That reinforces their cheaper premium and they can start to earn the bonuses that the rest of us enjoy if we have driven safely for a long period and then get discounts on the insurance costs. It is getting started that is so difficult for young males, in particular, when they are all judged by the average standards of high claims that the industry experiences. I hope that the Minister and her colleagues in Departments more directly related to the insurance industry will look at this problem. It is not caused primarily by the tax system but by assessment of risk and perceptions of driving behaviour. It can be very unfair on individuals, and the more that can be done to smooth that out, the better.

I do not like tax rises. Part of the reason I am in Parliament is that I want to be a voice to try to keep taxes down and have a more prosperous society as a result. I cannot say that I welcome this part of the Finance Bill, but as someone who believes that there are important public items that we cannot cut, and faced as we are with Opposition parties that very rarely come forward with any proposals to save public money, we have to raise a reasonable amount of money. We have been borrowing too much, and this is part of a series of measures to try to get our borrowing under some kind of control. With regret, I conclude with the Government that this is one of the least bad options for trying to do that. I hope that they will take on board the need to work away at some solutions to the underlying problem of individual categories such as young drivers who may find this to be another increment on top of a difficult situation.