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Finance (No. 2) Bill

The Opposition new clauses would completely negate the Government’s legislation, so everything scored in the Red Book would be lost. The right hon. Member for Wokingham understands—I was going to say ““needs to appreciate””, but that would be totally unfair, as I know that he does—that tax law is about making sure that a situation holds now and does not continue, as well as making sure that no other person is encouraged, and that large numbers of people are not encouraged, to use tax avoidance in that way. Surely, if inheritance tax is raised under certain circumstances with those exemptions—whether a gift and the seven-year rule or the spouse exemption on transfer—the Committee should expect the regime to operate in such a way. There is always a consequence, and if a tax regime is used in a way that it should not be and left unchallenged, the problem will get greater and greater—a point that hon. Members often make to me, saying, ““Why are you acting now? Why didn’t you act last year? How do you work the balance?”” That is the clear answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s point. The right hon. Gentleman also spoke about retrospection, but I completely reject the idea that there is any retrospection. The Government have provided for a two-year transition. If the provision is not enforced until 2008, how can there be retrospection? Everyone will have the opportunity to make the necessary changes. The hon. Member for Chipping Barnet then adopted the ““Let’s make it up, because it must be true if we say it,”” approach. She said that pension and death-in-service payments will be caught by the Bill. That is absolutely not the case. Let us have some rational debate, and hear what the Opposition say about why their new clauses are better. When we discuss that in Standing Committee—the Opposition chose to discuss it in Committee and not on the Floor of the House—we can go through all those issues. It is utterly ridiculous, however, to table a new clause and then say, ““Because I say so, it must be true.””