National Insurance Contributions Bill

At this early stage, I am loth to break the spirit of consensus that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst accused the Government Front Bench of creating. However, while the Paymaster General believes that those comments were clear, they were not as clear or explicit to others as she would like to think. I understand why my right hon. Friend has tabled these amendments requiring consultation with the commissioners to appear in the Bill, but, for some of the reasons that he elaborated earlier, I question whether the Commissioners of Revenue and Customs are the right people to consult. He identified their remit and scope from the Act that was passed earlier this year. I put it to him that the short list in amendment No. 2—which was not selected for debate—might have made a better list of parties to be consulted than those referred to in these amendments. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch tabled amendments Nos. 14 and 15 to tackle the question of whether the Treasury should act in an ““expedient”” or a ““reasonable”” manner. He has done the House a great service by offering an alternative approach to discussing these matters and to determining who should be the judge in such cases. I shall not trade dictionary definitions with hon. Members, but my hon. Friend and others have flushed out some interesting issues about expediency and reasonableness. I am sure that those whose job it is to implement and follow this legislation will be interested in what the Paymaster General has to say about this. One issue on which we might want to touch for a moment is the suggestion of the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West that morality does not necessarily play a role in taxation. His strictures on the City of London and avoidance schemes, however, suggest that he applies his view of morality when he chooses.