---

Corporation Tax Bill

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute briefly to the debate. So far everyone who has spoken also contributed to Second Reading, so I shall not detain the House for longer than necessary by going over too much ground that has already been covered. I, too, place on the record my congratulations and appreciation to Lord Newton of Braintree and others, including outside experts, who contributed to the process and gave a great deal of their time and expertise to assist British business directly by seeking to simplify the corporation tax code. Like the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) and no doubt everyone who participates in the debate, I welcome all attempts to consolidate our corporation taxes, to make the system easier to digest and to simplify the structures. I accept, as was pointed out on Second Reading, that we are unlikely ever to reach a situation where the corporation tax code, the rules and regulations, are easily understandable for the man and woman in the street. One could argue that if they were easily understood by the layman, they would probably be insufficiently detailed to serve their function. Nevertheless, it is helpful to have a system that is as simple as possible. That must be good for business at a time when it is seeking to minimise overheads. In legislative terms, it must be good that we do not have to employ, at great expense, huge numbers of people with great expertise, in both the public and private sector, to try to understand what the law means and how it applies to the companies affected. That is not productive endeavour. It is not a wealth-creating process, but all businesses and Government have to participate in that exercise. To the extent that it can be minimised consistent with keeping the law fair in its application, we would all welcome that. There is still a long way to go. The United Kingdom has the longest tax code in the world. There are five volumes of the Bill and four volumes of explanatory notes. There are 1,330 clauses divided into 21 parts. Following the intervention from the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), I calculated that if there are 21 days between the law coming into effect and possibly being overtaken by events when the Chancellor delivers his Budget in the House, there would be one part to digest every day over the sadly brief three-week lifetime of the Bill—roughly 60 clauses a day with which tax lawyers and accountants had to familiarise themselves before the law potentially became redundant. Even in its consolidated form, the Bill is an enormous piece of legislation. There are four schedules divided into 25 parts, the contents list alone is 63 pages long, and at least 33 Acts of Parliament and 16 statutory instruments are affected by the legislation. The table of origins, which details the origin of all the provisions, is 174 pages long, and the table of destinations, which details whether a provision has been rewritten or repealed, is 196 pages long. It is a huge work, which shows what an achievement it was that those experts managed to get to grips with it at all. The idea that as a result we have a tax code that is simple is far from the truth. I finish with an observation from the CBI tax task force, which I quoted on Second Reading. It stated:""It is ironic that what has followed"—" since the first Budget of the former Chancellor, now the Prime Minister—""has been a decade characterised by unprecedented legislative change in the UK corporate tax system, much of it characterised by a high degree of complexity and inadequate consultation."" Inasmuch as the work under discussion today is designed to address that problem, it is welcome, but I fear that I share the instincts and observations of many hon. Members when I say that there is much work still to be done.