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Occupational Pensions

The hon. Gentleman has been encouraged to perpetuate the myth that the great scheme involved cutting corporation taxes. That was not the aim. I refer him to the book of the hon. Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Robinson), which makes clear on page 86:"““In the first place, if we were simply to get rid of ACT and leave the other existing arrangements for the payment of corporation tax in place, we would face a net loss to the exchequer in cash-flow terms of over £1 billion per year. This was unthinkable. The road to reform should take us in precisely the opposite direction?." He goes on to describe the way in which they ended up producing a system that resulted in a cash flow to the Treasury of more than £20 billion.