National Insurance Contributions Bill

Of course I agree with my hon. Friend. The Government would probably say, ““Well, it does not matter really, does it?”” because those folk are far away and do not have a direct voice in what is going on here. We are talking about the Government saying that it does not matter how, when or whether they raise money, but I suspect that that would apply equally to their attitude to whether they disburse money. Proposed new subsection (5) says:"““But nothing in subsection (2) authorises regulations to be made which have effect in relation to any time before 2nd December 2004.””" My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) has tabled an amendment by which he seeks to alter that date. I would prefer to remove it altogether. The Paymaster General attempted to justify that date in summing up the previous debate. She said something along the lines of , ““If a Minister says on a certain date we may legislate in the future to do something that you may do in the future but we are not sure and we really don’t care very much, that is all right.”” We are now into the era of blanket provision, forecasting or attempting to forecast what might be and giving the Government what amounts to a blank legislative cheque to do whatever they like. That may be all right in the minds of Ministers whose attitude, frankly, to government and Parliament over the past seven or eight years has been consistently contemptuous—we have almost come to accept that—but to have it spelled out in a Bill is going way too far. It is one thing to alter the procedures of the House, to reduce, curtail or deny debate or to cut down almost to nothing the time available to scrutinise legislation in Committee, but when phrases such as ““it does not matter”” or ““any time before”” this or that date are included in a Bill, we are getting into extremely dangerous territory.