National Insurance Contributions Bill

First, may I apologise to the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth)? I missed the opening part of his speech when he moved his first amendment, but I think that he will accept that I got the flavour from his subsequent remarks. The amendments are an attempt to make mischief, which is arguably what the Opposition should do. The right hon. Gentleman has discussed his disquiet about the concept of consensus. I think that I understand where he is coming from, but the amendments involve ““consultation””, which is meaningless mischief making unless there is hope that consensus, compromise and agreement will be reached, so his position is contradictory. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst on his verbal sleight of hand when we got into definitions. He more or less accused my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General of siding with the forces of immorality and contrasted that with definitions of ““morality”” and ““expediency””, which he got from a dictionary. In this context, however, the converse of the moral position is not immorality but amorality, which is a point that the Opposition do not seem to grasp when they discuss morality and definitions of reasonableness. It is almost impossible to discuss reasonable taxation, which is almost an oxymoron. I shall provide a parallel to illustrate where I am coming from in the moral argument. Most hon. Members accept that it would not be reasonable in criminal law to carry out the death penalty on someone who had shoplifted a bar of confectionary.