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Finance Bill

I hope that my high praise does not cast a pall over the Financial Secretary’s political prospects. He carries out his role well, but it must be depressing for him always to be asked to display his formidable intellectual powers defending various tax-raising mechanisms. That is what he has done over most of his illustrious political career, but the new clause gives him an opportunity to put his subtlety, inventiveness and powers of persuasion to another use. Our proposal offers a mechanism for which I know the Financial Secretary has been searching. The proposed modulator or smoothing-out mechanism would enable him to use a tiny proportion of the Treasury’s windfall gains to help hard-pressed business and constituents in this country’s rural areas.