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Finance Bill

I thank the Paymaster General for that clarification, but we hope that the retrospective elements in the Bill will prove less necessary over time, as the Treasury’s new powers come into greater use. It now has far fewer excuses for retrospective measures, and I hope that she will point that out to her officials. These provisions are also typical of the Government’s obsession with complexity—often, it seems, for the sake of it. When it comes to macro-economic policy, the Treasury team has constructed an edifice that is simple and strong, with clear Palladian lines. However, it seems to compensate when it comes to micro-economic matters by indulging in a wild taste for the baroque. There is scarcely a tax provision unadorned in successive Finance Bills, to such an extent that the Government must now surely be the pride and joy of the professional advisers, whose fees grow fatter every year as a result of the expense of interpreting the Treasury’s latest provisions. KPMG has pointed out that, over the past eight years, the annual Finance Bill has grown in length by 35 per cent. compared with the previous eight-year period. It is not obvious, however, that outcomes are so much better for the undoubted increase in inputs. In sum, we support the macro-economic stability that has been a feature of this Government’s record to date, although we note that the international comparisons are not quite as favourable to the Government as those on their Front Bench would have us believe. However, we have serious reservations about the omission from the Bill of measures on tax avoidance, particularly concerning self-invested pensions, that we shall seek to address. We also have reservations about the provisions on asset management, and about the checks and balances necessary to delegate powers to the Treasury in that respect. Finally, in approaching these measures, we shall attempt to ensure that simplicity is the watchword.