Mr. Tom Considine:

I do. I accept ... I accept in one sense, like, I mean if you take VAT, which would be one of those big taxes, you can't easily, you know, sort of, distinguish between what happens in the property sector and other sectors. And as I said to the Chairman earlier, once you get into a position where a property market is overheating, it's very difficult. I mean, the obvious thing to say - and it's not a smart comment - is "You shouldn't have allowed it to overheat in the first place". I mean, that is the criticism, if you like. Once you're in there, it's very difficult because if you cut stamp duty, for example, I mean, there's no doubt what you'll do is just drive the market harder and, equally, if it was possible to cut VAT, it would have the same effect. So, once you're in there, it's very hard to get back out of it. Now ... you know, you could argue ... someone could say "Well, you could have offset that by public expenditure cuts" but I think I'm just after demonstrating that we were doing as much public expenditure cuts as we could in 2003 and 2004 anyway.