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Finance Bill

I appeal to the House to support new clause 4 for common-sense reasons. We have an excellent Law Commission, but there is no rational explanation for having a commission that examines all laws except tax law. Why is tax law so different that the Law Commission’s excellent record should not be applied to it? Can the Government explain what is so distinctive about tax as to justify that gap, when the rest of the law is covered by the process of review, rationalisation and simplification undertaken extremely well by the Law Commission? As we have heard, one of the main advantages of setting up a tax law commission is that it could assist in the simplification of our tax law. The increasing complexity of tax is one of the major weaknesses in the Government’s economic policy. I admit that it is not an issue that people are talking about on Barnet high street, but the complexity of our tax system is now doing significant damage to our economy. The Chancellor has tended to use the tax system far too much for micro-management, to try to pick winners in terms of economic growth, and for social engineering. This has increased the complexity of the system exponentially since his stewardship of the economy began in 1997. That complexity has been compounded by the need to correct previous legislation, and by the Chancellor’s attempts to hide the number of tax increases that he has chosen to inflict on the British public.