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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

That makes the point that nobody wants to pay tax so that billionaires can avoid paying it. I hope that almost everybody would agree with that. My hon. Friend the Member for Pendle made a number of points, and I am glad for his contribution to the debate. He made an important point about retrospectivity, on which he has done a lot of work. As he says, there is no absolute prohibition on it, and it does happen from time to time. He mentioned one such situation. Nevertheless, it is a bad principle and axiomatically an affront to natural justice. There must be an overwhelmingly compelling case for it, and I am not sure that he made it. Our new provisions will deliver everything for which he has campaigned for a long time. He has been a diligent campaigner on the matter, and the Government have always accepted the principle behind the campaign. We have had problems finding a way to make the system effective so that it works in the way that most people want it to work. I am not sure that he has made a compelling case for breaching the fundamental principle against retrospectivity, because everything that he wants to achieve will be achieved in the Bill. I shall sit down shortly, so I suspect that there will be time for my hon. Friend to make the case for his amendment, and then we will have a further discussion on it. I hope that he will reflect further on my fundamental point about retrospectivity.