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Finance (No. 2) Bill

In a minute. Throughout the Bill, we will debate ad nauseam all sorts of anti-avoidance proposals that the Government have introduced in the Bill—some of which are highly complex and technical—to try to prevent what the Treasury determines to be abuse. It would be simple to produce relevant guidelines; they would be less complicated than some of the measures that we will debate on real estate investment trusts and group relief. If the Treasury wanted to maintain the scheme, it could easily produce guidelines. There is a precedent. In Sweden, the Government have for some time operated a scheme similar to the HCI. There were similar concerns there about people seeking to exploit the tax advantages to purchase equipment outside the original spirit of spreading IT skills. However, in 2004, instead of scrapping the scheme, the Swedish Government found a workable solution, by tightening up the rules on qualifying equipment. For example, the rules stipulated that in future only one personal computer would be allowed per employee; some had attempted to order more than one. The monitor size of those PCs was restricted to 30 in. Peripherals and accessories were divided into two categories; those primarily used connected to a PC, such as keyboards and printers, which were allowed, and those whose primary usage did not involve a PC, such as digital cameras and MP3 players, which were specifically not allowed. Such restrictions would be relatively simple to introduce, were HMRC to produce a list of equipment that would continue to qualify, perhaps reinforced by another list of equipment that was specifically excluded from the scheme, such as iPods and MP3 players.