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Finance Bill

May I congratulate the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) on his maiden speech. To have so fluently managed to combine poetry, darts and the Finance Bill is a rare feat. We are not really surprised by his abilities, but we were very much impressed. May I also congratulate all the other maiden speakers today. I must say, however, that the new hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) intimidated me greatly by suggesting that the Prime Minister might try to emulate Henry V. May I suggest that that is not an example that we wish to put forward to this or any other Prime Minister. I hesitated to speak in this debate today, on the grounds that just about everything had been said, if not yet by everybody, but there are two issues on which I want to touch briefly. First, I want to return to the issue of the new capacity under the Bill, presuming that it becomes law, to hold in self-invested personal pensions residential real estate—with various safeguards, I understand. The issue for me is not so much tax avoidance, although that, and the possible impact on tax revenue, worries me, but the potential for pension mis-selling. When we consider pension mis-selling, we tend to focus very much on single instruments and on whether the risk associated with a particular instrument has been declared to people. We are all aware, however, that risk refers to the whole portfolio of assets that people hold. One only needs to look in today’s newspapers, and yesterday’s newspapers, to see that many of those who will try to sell those new pension products are gearing up to take advantage of the preference of many people in the UK for holding real estate, especially residential real estate, and to buy into property as the safest and most secure type of investment. Many of those people will already be exposed to the real estate market through their mortgages, and their families in turn will be exposed through their mortgages, and they will now be encouraged strongly, because of such opportunities, to expose themselves through their pension funds to the mortgage and housing market, without necessarily being given the appropriate kinds of advice. Can we have some assurance from the Government that real care will be exercised to make sure that we do not enter into another round of significant pension mis-selling as a result of those expanded opportunities? Secondly, on an entirely separate and broader issue, I was very disappointed that neither the first part of the Finance Bill prior to the election nor the second one after the election addressed one of the key financing issues in this country today—funding for major infrastructure projects. There has been a lack of success in terms of delivering major infrastructure projects—I speak with a London hat on as well as with my constituency hat on. It seems to me that the Government have missed the opportunity in the Bill to bring forward mechanisms that would allow public authorities to finance new and vital forms of infrastructure through taxes on the windfall increases in land values and rental that occur near new public works. Everybody in the House will be aware of the history of developers obtaining about £13 billion as a consequence of public investment in the Jubilee line—the initial investment was about £3.5 billion. That was a huge gain to the private sector, to which it contributed relatively only a few pennies—£180 million would be the exact figure. Raising finance for Crossrail, a much-needed project in London, is now proving exceedingly difficult—an experience repeated for projects all over the country. I am sad that the Bill has failed to seize the opportunity to take advantage of the potential gains that I have identified. I hope that those issues can be addressed when the Minister winds up the debate or on another occasion.