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National Insurance Contributions Bill

I have always taken the view that self-employment is a very important vehicle for helping people not in work to get into work. That is why the new deal for self-employment, as an element of the new deal in the past, was so valuable, and I welcome other initiatives to achieve the same thing. The Prime Minister went on to say that Imperial Innovations"““is going to advise on making sure this accelerator space is attractive to spinout companies from academia and beyond. Indeed, they will be encouraging some of their own brilliant companies to be based here.””" I very much welcome that. I look forward to those start-up companies being established. What is the Exchequer Secretary doing about that? With the Bill, he is encouraging those companies to go elsewhere. Why is he not getting behind the Prime Minister's vision? The Prime Minister made it clear that it is not just Imperial college that is supporting it: McKinsey & Company is supporting it, and British Telecom has agreed to bring forward the roll-out of super-fast broadband so that we have the fastest internet speeds, as was rightly raised by the hon. Member for High Peak. The Prime Minister talked about Qualcomm providing expert advice, Vodafone's commitment to bring the Vodafone Ventures investment fund to the capital, and so on. My question to the Exchequer Secretary is why the Treasury was not on that list of partners that support the initiative. Why is everyone getting behind the Prime Minister's vision, except him and his Department? The Prime Minister said:"““I want to thank each and every one of the companies and investors that has come together to do this. It's like nothing that has happened in our country before. It is a genuine innovation network—bringing together high growth start-ups, universities, investors and global companies.""And thanks to these efforts, we can help make East London one of the world's great technology centres””." The Prime Minister explained the contribution that the Government would make, including what UK Trade & Investment would do to support the vision. It is striking that in that speech he was not able to identify any help that the Treasury would provide for the initiative. The Prime Minister made another excellent point in the speech:"““Of course, we will change laws where necessary so we break down the barriers to innovation.””" Well, let us change this law. This is the opportunity to do so.