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Finance (No. 2) Bill

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s argument. He is right that a judgment can really be made only in retrospect. It is difficult to prejudge the exact outcomes. However, it is my judgment that for relatively little benefit, we are changing a successful scheme. Leaving aside the figures involved, the change sends the unhappy message to the industry as a whole that even when a scheme is successful and producing real benefits, the Government are prepared to tinker with it. For the sake of what I suspect will be a relatively modest saving, we could undermine some of the confidence that has been built up in recent years that the Government are behind the scheme. However, having seen the scheme’s great success, they now seem to want to chop that away and retreat to the pre-2004 position, which would be a retrograde step.