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National Insurance Contributions Bill

My Lords, I support the principles behind these amendments. This is a very specific scheme and it should be possible to tell whether it has worked. If it does not work—we hope that it will—the Treasury will be in the happy position of not forgoing revenue that it had expected to forgo. There would be an unused pot, as it were. If, as I fear may be the case, the scheme as outlined does not yield the number of new jobs that the Government hope, it would be very useful, after a year, to see how—to the extent that funding is available for job creation in the regions—it might be more effectively deployed. As I mentioned at Second Reading, an obvious extension to the scheme would be to provide a modest ability for existing businesses in the designated regions to employ additional staff and qualify for a holiday. In those circumstances, it would be perfectly possible to say that every small business in the designated areas could employ an additional person and qualify for the holiday, so that the scope of the scheme is extended but keeps within the expenditure envelope already set aside for it. Whether that is possible will depend on whether the scheme works as intended. The only way we will know that is if we have a report as set out in these amendments.