Frank Dobson

No, I want to make progress and other hon. Members wish to speak.

Indeed, we must go further and take this opportunity to try to make our society fairer and more equal. The present situation presents us with a golden opportunity, because the overpaid bankers, currency speculators and tax-haven beneficiaries have never been as unpopular as they are now. Nearly everybody in the country knows that the City slickers have been paying themselves too much and that this should not be allowed to continue. Most believe that we should block the tax loopholes of the rich, and that everyone should pay their fair share. So tackling these inequalities, and the way in which the rich manage to fiddle their way out of paying their fair share of tax, would be swimming with the tide. When the Tory party opposes the necessary changes, as it inevitably would, it would simply confirm what we have always known—that the Tory party is not the party of the poor. It is not even the party of small businesses and real entrepreneurs. In reality, the Tories are, and will remain, the political wing of the finance industries. We should press for a worldwide levy on financial transactions, a Tobin tax, and devise ways to raise—

— from debate entitled “Economic Recovery and Welfare”

The three speeches/headings immediately before

  1. 1 earlier: Brian Binley

    Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

  2. 2 earlier: Frank Dobson

    I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I will get on to that issue later in my speech.

    We now need further exemplary steps. For a start, we must get away from this mad idea which dominates the news media, and dominated the Tory party conference, that the primary function of the Government after the forthcoming general election will be to reduce the deficit. Some even seem to believe that the only function of the Government will be to reduce the deficit. The deficit is large and it will need to be reduced. But the function of the Government is to run the country; to provide safety and security for our people at home and abroad; to provide jobs; to encourage investment; to continue improving schools; further to enhance the care and treatment of NHS patients; to promote research and innovation; to develop a sustainable economy that reduces our contribution to global warming; and generally to promote peace abroad and prosperity at home. Against those functions of the Government, the need to reduce the deficit admittedly represents a problem and a constraint, but it is not by any stretch of the imagination the primary objective of the Government. That is why it is necessary to spell out further what would be different under Labour.

    The answer must begin from a recognition that despite such Labour efforts as the minimum wage and tax credits—opposed by the Tories and the Liberal Democrats—and other initiatives such as Sure Start and nursery places for all, we still live in a society that is scarred by inequality. As Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett have demonstrated in their seminal work "The Spirit Level", inequality is a major cause of practically every ill that afflicts our society. These range from reduced life expectation through ill health, crime, violence, teenage pregnancies and reduced social mobility to general distrust and dissatisfaction, and they harm almost everybody, not just the people at the bottom of the pile.

    Labour's public spending and tax policies must be designed to avoid the increase in inequality that would be caused by the Tory and Liberal Democrat policies—

  3. 3 earlier: John Redwood

    I was merely going to ask the right hon. Gentleman which taxes he thinks should be put up to tackle the deficit.

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