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National Insurance Contributions Bill

The hon. Gentleman adds to my point. Indeed, I believe that the cost to HMRC will be £12 million, and the cost imposed on business is estimated at £75 million. I accept that that is a large amount of money in the context of a scheme that is effectively injecting £940 million. It is therefore most important that we keep complexity and red tape to an absolute minimum. It is important to ensure that this incentive is well advertised, given that it is permissive in allowing companies to apply for it but is not necessarily automatically granted. The HMRC material refers to advertising it on Business Link websites, and so on. If we are to get up to 400,000 businesses involved—1,000 are involved at the moment—we will have to advertise this nationally with a push to ensure that it is taken up. In particular, we need to ensure that we lower the proportion of so-called dead-weight businesses that are taking it up—in other words, those that would have employed additional people even in the absence of the scheme. It is really important that we give this a wholehearted push. I welcome the national insurance holiday provisions in the Bill. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) that it is important to consider other aspects such as encouraging lending and getting the Bank of England issuing credit condition surveys in which it talks about the banks lending again. We also need to cut back on red tape. This is a big opportunity to get back to a culture that is positive about new business. I should like us to have the kind of culture that we had in the 1980s, when we were open for business and companies were being set up. That is when I went out there and set up my business and created wealth and employment for people. That is the aspect of the Bill that I wholeheartedly welcome.