National Insurance Contributions Bill

My right hon. Friend is right. That is an important point for the Minister to address when she responds to our arguments. Although we probably will not be able to have more than one vote on this group of amendments, it is open to the Minister to say that she is prepared to accept any number of our amendments, or that she will propose a collective amendment in the other place. My understanding is that as the measure is not a money Bill it will be considered in another place. I hope that the right hon. Lady will look carefully at our proposals. Although we know that she is a reasonable lady and a reasonable Minister, that is not in itself sufficient. We need safeguards in the statute book against a future Government or Ministers who may not be quite so reasonable. That is why we should include the reasonableness test. I shall not go through all the other legal precedents and definitions for expedient. The definition can be extremely wide, and if the Treasury is to decide whether something is expedient, it is hard to think of wider terminology. We would be legislating to say that the Treasury could do whatever it wanted if it thought it was expedient, and no one else would have the chance to challenge that. It is almost trite to refer to draconian laws, but even Draco would have been unable to achieve anything as all-embracing as the provisions that we want to amend. By contrast with the word ““expediency””, the word ““reasonableness”” has been tested in the courts on many occasions and is much better understood in our ordinary language. The Government should be prepared to accept that any of their measures should pass that test before they introduce retrospective regulation.