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Finance Bill

Well, those arguments have been made both to the Paymaster General and to senior Revenue officials. If she is not able to say something more specific about the relief that we seek for that group of people, I have to believe that the relief that she is thinking of may be very much narrower that the one that I have been seeking. I am pleased to hear that HMRC is discussing these matters with advisers—I assume that that means with practitioners and those in the wider world outside—but the Paymaster General’s commitment to addressing the full extent of the problem that I have outlined seems to be a bit less than 100 per cent. Indeed, if I have not misinterpreted her too much, she has tried to blame the whole thing on the tax advisers by suggesting that they did not identify the problems that would arise in unravelling such arrangements, so that the measures that the Government have put in place for elections have not addressed the situation in which all those people find themselves. Although I understand very well the Paymaster General’s view on tax planning—I have had four weeks in which to study her view on people who engage in tax planning—I do not think it helpful to adopt the tone that she adopted about the tax advisory industry and people who engage in what is, when they engage in it, perfectly legal tax planning, thereby taking advantage of the taxpayer’s age-old right to arrange his affairs within the law to minimise his tax until such time as the Government change the law. That is the game of cat and mouse in which Paymasters General since time immemorial have been engaged. I do not believe from the information that I have received that it is at all fair to characterise the approach that is being made—principally by lawyers, who are being consulted on ways to unwind such arrangements and get people out of the mess that they are in—as stimulated by having spotted an opportunity to undertake some alternative planning. If I may say so, perhaps seven years in post has made the Paymaster General a tad too cynical about those in the world outside.