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Finance Bill

Of course I will give way to the hon. Lady in a moment if she will be kind enough to let me respond to her colleague. This is a matter of justice. It is also a matter of economic risks. The great question is whether we have a country—a free country, I hope, in our case—and an economy in which people can conclude transactions knowing what the tax regime is at the time that they do so. It is enormously important for the economy, and for justice, that that should be the case. If there is any retrospectivity, neither of those conditions applies. When the transaction takes place, the parties involved need to know what are the costs, risks and benefits to all concerned. If the Government subsequently, in a way that those parties could not have anticipated, change the rules of the game—the costs, risks or benefits emerging from the transaction—they have acted retrospectively. That is unjustified morally and extremely dangerous economically.