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Finance (No. 2) Bill

In a minute. The Government cannot hide behind excuses, such as the difficulty of defining qualifying equipment, because we have just provided them with an empirical example showing how another nation tackled the problem. Moreover, the Government’s own regulatory impact assessment concedes that continuing the scheme with tighter guidelines on qualifying equipment, which is characterised in the RIA as option 2, would virtually halve the estimated cost of the scheme to the taxpayer, as projected by the Treasury out to 2010–11, thus allowing the scheme to survive, retaining its key benefits at a reduced cost to the taxpayer on a more tightly defined basis. That should constitute a win-win all round. I urge the Government to take the opportunity while there is still time.