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National Insurance Contributions Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her amendments and congratulate her on the ingenious formulation of an issue which we discussed in Committee. As I will explain, however, we do not believe it does the trick. I shall start by making a few general comments to pick up on some of the points. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, talked about the current UK tax burden, but in every year since 1997 and throughout the forecast period of the previous Budget the tax-to-GDP ratio has been well below the peaks reached in the mid-1980s. The noble Baroness said that this was represented as being part of a simplification package. Indeed, that is exactly what it is; it was not a tax-raising measure.