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National Insurance Contributions Bill

No, my Lords, I am not saying that. I am saying that the starting point in all this is to simplify the tax and national insurance system. The noble Baroness's party called for that and I thought in principle supported it. She referred to that earlier. Other commentators have supported it. The IFS has supported that alignment as a simplification of the system. If you are going to simplify the system, that is done by having various components at its point of introduction. It is absolutely right to do that. But it is entirely spurious to take out one component and say, ““This is a tax increase. That is what this is all about””. That is absolutely not so. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, knows that full well because she can read the numbers as well as I can.