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National Insurance Contributions Bill

I thank noble Lords who have spoken to this amendment, which gives us a chance to catch up on where we are on this issue. I also am grateful to both noble Lords because they clearly do not want to spend lots of time going back over the arguments about simplification and a tax-raising opportunity. However, I would place on the record, as I did at Second Reading, that it is absolutely unfair to pick out this component of a compendium of measures and say that it is all about raising tax, when the package of measures had a cost to the Exchequer of the order of £2.5 billion. We can spend a lot of time going over all that.