National Insurance Contributions Bill

I will do that with enthusiasm, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am asking hon. Members to judge whether they are content that the Treasury should be able to make regulations without any further mechanisms or consultation, or whether, as I suggest in the amendment, the commissioners should be able to examine the proposals, or at least be consulted about them. Although I have been open with the House about my reservations about the powers and role of the commissioners, I thought that they had sufficient substance, and that we should respect them sufficiently, to allow the Bill to be amended in the way in which I suggest. Let me move on to the second broad theme of the amendments. That revolves around proposed new subsection (2), which states:"““Those regulations may be made so as to have retrospective effect if it appears to the Treasury to be expedient, in consequence of the retrospective tax provision, for the regulations to have that effect.””" Amendment No. 14, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope), would remove the word ““expedient”” and insert the word ““reasonable””. I have resorted to the oldest trick in the parliamentary book because given the words that we are considering, I thought that it would be appropriate to look up the word ““expedient”” in the dictionary. The definition was:"““advantageous; advisable on practical rather than moral grounds . . . suitable, appropriate . . . a means of attaining an end””." I thought that that summed up the word rather well. Straight away, we find that the Treasury is amoral, or even immoral, because according to the dictionary definition, expediency is not moral.