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Finance (No. 2) Bill

I thank my hon. Friend for making that important point. He had considerable experience as a commercial lawyer before coming to this place. Indeed, I understand that his wife has ongoing experience as a commercial lawyer, so no doubt they discussed the matter before our debate. Mrs. Gauke cropped up regularly in the Standing Committee and I am pleased to be making sure that she does so again today before we conclude our debates on the Bill. Wherever the advice came from, my hon. Friend makes a good point. Given that a key condition—the first condition—of clause 106 is that a REIT company must be UK resident, it is likely in practice that in most cases it would register in the UK if it wanted to register on an alternative market rather than on a full listing. But even if it did not—even if it wanted to register on one of the other EU exchanges—will the Economic Secretary tell us why that should be an absolute showstopper? Why should such a company not have REIT status? We know from the Standing Committee proceedings that the Economic Secretary sees himself as something of a philosopher, so we would like a clear philosophical response on that point—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban) says that a clear response of any kind would be good. We shall see. I respectfully remind the Economic Secretary of the British Property Federation’s comments about clause 106, which highlight the listing requirements as the major problem in its provisions. The BPF briefing note argued:"““In summary therefore, our main concern with Clause 106 as it is written is that while it is likely that a number of existing listed property companies will convert to the new REIT regime, the provisions do not cater for the growth and enhancement of this market which will in turn bring forward investment benefits and opportunities to improve the quantity and quality of property investment in under-invested markets. In short, by so restricting the REIT regime to only ‘recognised stock exchange’ listed vehicles the government may inadvertently smother the ability of the market to develop.””"