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Finance Bill

The general principle that I would adopt is that politicians should not seek to apply to themselves rules that do not apply to the population as a whole. I add the small caveat that every job and type of occupation has different requirements and contains different contractual elements, and that the circumstances in which politicians find themselves redundant are different, in some ways, from those that sometimes face other people. I appreciate that lots of people in other walks of life can also make such a claim, but people across the country will recognise that it is helpful not to have the Revenue breathing down their neck just when they are trying to get themselves back on their feet again—some people will be in that situation. Obviously there must be a point where such people are eligible to attract tax, and this situation should not be used as a device to try to circumvent the normal taxation rules. That is why our amendment No. 15 seeks to ask the Treasury to re-examine whether the rules can be more evenly and fairly applied, and to provide that HMRC falls within a tighter set of restrictions than those under which it appears to feel it operates at present.