by Jon Ashworth
Tory MPs regularly receive briefings from their parliamentary resource unit (PRU) giving them lines to take, suggested responses to letters on policy, attack lines for use in the chamber and that sort of thing. Until last week the PRU will have had standard response scripts on the stocks about the importance of the pasty tax, caravan tax, church renovation tax and charity tax. No doubt these scripts would include a line reminding their constituents that backing down on these new revenue raisers would be deeply irresponsible given the size of the deficit. Loyal Tory MPs will have emailed out these responses whenever a constituent got in touch complaining about the new tax hikes. They will have used the lines in their weekly MP’s column in the local paper and in interviews on local radio.
Behind the scenes some poor staffer in the PRU will have been relieved and grateful that the briefing was available for their Tory MPs. No doubt she or he had been getting a barrage of calls and emails from MPs’ pesky researchers asking for a line.
The poor staffer will have called the junior special adviser in the Treasury who would actually rather focus on important matters like making sure his name is on the list for the Spectator summer party. The special adviser will have no doubt grumpily despaired “why can’t they use the budget PRU briefing, don’t they realise how busy we are?!” Our heroic PRU staffer persists ”but we’re getting lots of calls, didn’t you see the finance bill debate? No one spoke up to support the policy apart from that chap desperate for promotion who founded YouGov.”
Eventually the Treasury special adviser relents and signs off an agreed brief while remaining irritated that his more important special advisor colleague Rupert Harrison gets the Spectator summer party invite not him.
But at least the tenacious staffer is happy and finally emails the pasty tax brief out to a grateful parliamentary party and now turns attention to the “Hunt hasn’t really broken the ministerial Code” brief that the Number 10 Political Office are demanding goes out.
But an updated PRU brief wasn’t enough to satisfy MPs or more importantly public opinion.
The Government’s majority had already been reduced to just 25 on the votes on the pasty and caravan tax. They should be winning votes in the Commons by 83. Overall 31 Tory MPs – around 10 per cent of the Conservative Parliamentary Party – voted against one or more of George Osborne’s budget measures.
And if Osborne thought winning the votes was enough to put this issue to bed, he was wrong.
Lib Dem MPs were handing out pasties in Parliament, 4 Tory MPs brought petitions to the Commons on the caravan tax even though they voted for it, Labour’s frontbench Treasury team were constantly up and at them. MPs were calling adjournment debates forcing ministers back to the Commons to defend the policy. Just two weeks ago poor David Gauke, Exchequer Secretary was sent out to defend the pasty tax in a Westminster hall debate and confirmed that samosas cooked and sold in sweet shops, many of which we have in Leicester, will have VAT as well.
And then in the week that Tony Blair, Vince Cable and Jeremy Hunt were all at Leveson we witnessed what appeared like a dizzying u-turn a day from Osborne. In total he makes £200 million of u-turns with no explanation of how these latest unfunded commitments will be paid for. That’s a lot of cash for Osborne to spend to try to save his draining credibility.