---

Finance Bill

Thank you, Mr. Hood. I shall try to do that. That complexity, though, is very much part of the balance that needs to be struck in deciding what reduction in corporation tax is required and how it can be adjusted. A lot of hon. Members have spoken about competitiveness in reducing the rate, and I endorse the many comments that have been made about the role of a lower rate of corporation tax in encouraging foreign investment into this country. For a number of years, it was very much the UK that set the agenda in encouraging newly developing countries in how they should approach their financial systems and set their own rates. I remember being involved in discussions how the countries of central and eastern Europe, as they emerged, could get the right balance between the rate of corporation tax and the need to bring in foreign investment through other means. That was always a difficult discussion, because countries always want to encourage companies to come in initially through means other than reducing corporation tax. It takes quite a lot of maturity for a country to get to the point of reducing it, as the amendment proposes.