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Finance (No. 2) Bill

I thank my hon. Friend for reiterating that point. I will not respond in more detail for fear of straying beyond the bounds of order. Nevertheless, I commend my hon. Friends the Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) and for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) for their ingenuity. Suffice it to say that we shall want to explore the issue in more detail when we move upstairs. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hertfordshire for his assiduous research on how REITs work in other jurisdictions around the world. He said—this is important in relation to AIM—that one day the United Kingdom might become the REIT capital of Europe. Were that to happen, I am sure that we would all welcome it. However, it will require a regime that is flexible and encourages investment. I want to make a couple of points about that. There are already several offshore property vehicles, which have mushroomed in the past few years while everyone was waiting for REITs, but they did not turn up. Jersey has been mentioned in that context. One of the tests of the REITs regime will be whether it succeeds in bringing that money, or at least a fair proportion of it, back onshore. The Government need to take that on board. Sophisticated institutional investors will carry out a cost-benefit analysis of the advantages or otherwise of different jurisdictions. They will look very carefully at the UK REITs regime, and I am sure that the ability to have several REITs companies invested on a fairly broad basis will have an impact on their decisions on whether to bring their money back onshore.