'So what': Tories claim Children's Secretary Ed Balls DID dismiss tax burden during Budget
Last updated at 14:39pm on 13th March 2008

The Tories today suggested Ed Balls could have tried to doctor the official record of Parliament after he was accused of shouting out "so what" as David Cameron told MPs that Britons were paying record levels of tax.

Tory MP Andrew Robathan raised a point of order in the Commons, claiming people sitting on his party's benches and in the gallery above the chamber had heard the Children's Secretary's apparent jibe.

He even suggested that Mr Balls, who is Gordon Brown's closest Cabinet ally, could have asked for the official record of the House to be doctored to erase the comment.

The MP said: "In column 299 of yesterday's Hansard, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families made a sedentary intervention allegedly saying 'So weak'.

"A large number of people on this side, in the Gallery, journalists, heard him say 'So what?'

"There is a site called YouTube on the net and you can listen to the video. "I reckon I can hear 'what' being said."

He added: "Could you arrange for the editor of Hansard to come and tell the House, or make a statement, as to whether the Secretary of State or anybody on his behalf approached Hansard to have it doctored."


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The Minister had interrupted just after the Conservative leader had warned Britain was woefully ill-prepared for the troubled economic times ahead and now had the highest tax burden in our history.

Hearing Mr Balls interject, Mr Cameron replied "'So what', says the minister for children. I know he wants to be Chancellor so badly it hurts.

"I have to tell him - another Budget like the one we have just heard and he won't have to wait very long."

Later, as Mr Balls continued to shout excitably, the Tory leader added: "I know he is the minister for children, but he doesn't have to behave like one."

Mr Balls claimed last night that he had only said "so weak" as David Cameron was outlining the tax burden in what had escalated into an embarrassing row.

His aides also revealed that Hansard, the official record of Parliament, had agreed not to include the remark.

"He said 'so weak' as a general criticism of David Cameron's response. It's tradition to heckle the leader of the Opposition during his Budget response," one claimed.

Speaker Michael Martin, in response to the renewed accusation today, said Commons officials were satisfied Mr Balls had not tried to "doctor" the Hansard record.

He also told MPs that the editor of Hansard - the official record of Parliament - was also content the heckle had been correctly recorded.

"They tell me they are satisfied and the editor of Hansard, more important still, is satisfied that there is a correct record," the speaker told the House.

Mr Balls, who has been widely tipped as a Chancellor in the making, has already raised eyebrows during his ministerial career by leading a series of old-fashioned "class war" attacks on the Conservatives.

Last year, he mounted an attack on Mr Cameron's "privileged elite", prompting dismay among even some of his own MPs.

And he has also branded the Tory candidate for London Mayor Boris Johnson a "Bullingdon Club throwback to a bygone age".

Mr Balls left himself wide open to charges of double standards - as the product of a high-achieving middle-class family and a pupil of Nottingham High School.

The school is one of England's leading independent schools with fees of nearly £9,000 a year.

And it has also emerged that he and his wife, housing minister Yvette Cooper, who are dubbed Labour's "golden couple", receive more than £580,000 a year.

Cabinet ministers each earn £137,579 each, rising to £138,724 when MPs get their pay rise.

They also have access to Westminster's gold-plated pension scheme and the use of official government cars, as well as subsidised travel perks available to all MPs.

Expenses and allowances come in on top of that.

The most recent figures show the couple claimed £307,734 in allowances for 2006-7

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