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Finance (No. 2) Bill

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Plugging loopholes may lead to lengthier Finance Bills, but it also leads to more certainty and—on occasion—to more simplicity, because then there is no way round the tax: one engages in a series of transactions, and one pays the tax. Surprisingly, given her past as an MEP, the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet extolled the virtues of Ireland’s economy, as other Members have done, including the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood). In doing so, they somehow overlook the massive transfer of funds through the European Union—some of those who have argued how wonderful Ireland is do not actually agree with our being in the EU—and do not mention the huge capital flows into Ireland, which have brought about success. Such success is a wonderful thing. I support the UK’s membership of the EU and a 25-state EU that includes the Republic of Ireland. Ireland has benefited greatly from the EU and it has dealt wisely with the structural funds transferred to it, but to describe it as a low-tax economy that is so successful that it now has a higher gross domestic product per capita than the UK is to overlook the factor to which I refer. Moreover, its GDP per capita is in fact still lower than the UK’s. The second point made by the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet, on which I intervened, concerned the home computing initiative. That seems to have become a big deal, and I am happy for the Government to look at it again. To judge by the tenor of her remarks, she, like most people, seems not to regard it as a point of principle—the initiative is worth some £150 million, which is a relatively small amount of money—yet it is a quarter of her critique, as shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, of the Government’s Finance Bill. I can understand why: there is not a lot else that she can have a go at the Government about. The third leg of the hon. Lady’s argument involved having a go at the Government on self-invested personal pensions. The Government got wrong their ““second home”” provision, and I and other Members—some of whom are here today—said so. Many of us in this life like to have things both ways, myself included. We and the Opposition said to the Government, ““We think you’ve got it wrong””. So the Government did quite a lot of research and talked to a number of people and said, ““You may have a point: perhaps the provision does need some fine tuning.”” Then, the Opposition weighed in and gave the Government a kicking for listening. That is having it both ways. That is politics.