Orders of the Day — Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:22 pm on 20 March 1991.

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Photo of Mr John Smith Mr John Smith , Monklands East 4:22, 20 March 1991

The right hon. Gentleman should know perfectly well that, since that proposal was introduced by the present Government, the Labour party has said that it would be one of our ambitions to withdraw it. We are merely proposing once again that that bribe should not be continued.

The right hon. Gentleman's other shot at this subject was to try to say that we had dropped our commitment to uprate old-age pensions according to prices or earnings, whichever was the higher. We do not have to repeat that commitment on every occasion because it is so clearly understood by the public and the House as one of the Labour party's major commitments.

The right hon. Gentleman asked why we included proposals for child benefit. That was because they are highly relevant to Budgets in which child tax allowance used to be a feature. It looks as though we did some good by putting it into the shadow Budget because the Chancellor appeared to listen to what we said in our proposals.

I must move on to the other proposals——