Amendment of the Law

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 6:15 pm on 27 April 2009.

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Photo of Stephen Byers Stephen Byers Labour, North Tyneside 6:15, 27 April 2009

The hon. Gentleman will be delighted to hear that I will focus most of my contribution on the 50p tax rate. However, before I come on to that, I express my regret that not enough was done to address child poverty. I know that this has been a difficult Budget, with limited room for manoeuvre, but we had a clear target of reducing child poverty by half by 2010. We could have done an awful lot more in the Budget to achieve that objective. It is clear that the target will be missed, which is a matter of great regret.

There is much to talk about in the Budget, but in the 12 minutes that I have, I want to address specifically the 50p income tax rate which, rightly, has been the subject of a lot of comment and debate since its announcement by the Chancellor last Wednesday. I am told that when the proposal was put to the various focus groups that political parties use nowadays, it received broad support as a popular measure— [ Interruption. ] My hon. Friend Kelvin Hopkins is applauding the use of focus groups; this must be the first time that he has supported them.