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Finance Bill

It would clearly be a false economy to cut back on the number of staff needed to tackle serious cases of tax evasion; I do not think anybody wants to do that, and I certainly would not recommend it to Front Benchers. It would also be wrong, however, to exempt Revenue and Customs from pressure to improve efficiency and to do more with less at a time of enormous strictures on public spending. I hope that there will be ways to accommodate the hon. Gentleman's wish for us still to have Revenue and Customs pursuing tax evasion and our coming back to legislate on tax avoidance that it thinks is going too far, as we have under past Conservative and Labour Governments, and that that will be done efficiently and effectively in the way that we wish to see.