Budget Resolutions - Income Tax (Charge)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 1:59 pm on 23 November 2017.

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Photo of Michael Fallon Michael Fallon Conservative, Sevenoaks 1:59, 23 November 2017

I echo that tribute. I should like that example of share options to be followed much more widely. Let us incentivise our companies, with a lower tax rate, to offer free shares to all their employees.

Finally, let me say something about exports. Our constituents benefit, of course, from cheap imported goods, but we are now importing far more than we export. We have run deficits of more than £30 billion in goods and services in each of the past five years, and a deficit of more than £43 billion in the last year alone—and this on an island of entrepreneurs, of engineering excellence, of innovation and of ingenuity. It is good that, according to the CBI, a quarter of manufacturers now expect an increasing order book, but the cheaper pound should not obscure the reality that outside the single market we will live or die by what we can sell to the world in goods and services.

It is not just down to this Government. There were serious deficits in the Labour years as well. Too many medium-sized companies do not bother to export at all, but, post-Brexit, we must clearly put exports at the front and centre of our economic policies. Campaigns such as GREAT and Global Britain are important, but they are just campaigns. We now need to hard-wire exporting into every British business: exporting should be a condition of all our major Government support schemes, our grants and our loans. In return, the Chancellor is beefing up our export finance, making it easier for first-time exports to take the plunge, and I fully support that.

A fairer economy, much wider employee share ownership, putting exporting at the heart of every Government industrial programme: those are some of the necessary steps towards our new economic future. Let us agree across the House, Brexiteers and Europhiles alike, that muddling along—mere managerialism—is not going to be enough. Brexit Britain demands a bigger vision: more confident, outward-looking, self-rewarding. Let us build on this successful, sensible Budget to enable Britain to be bolder still.