National Insurance Contributions Bill

I see the hon. Gentleman nodding. In the case of this legislation, we have precision, consultation—albeit before the statement—and now the equivalent of a Finance Bill to deal with national insurance. So those principles seem broadly to have been met. The right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight) and the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark) talked about predictability and certainty. The right hon. Member for East Yorkshire referred to a 1979 legal case, and with his usual generosity, he included a quote to give the House a rounded picture. It contained the words ““with appropriate advice””. That is at the heart of the amendments, of the issue of retrospectivity, and of the practical sense of where we are at in regard to this possible legislation. I said earlier—and I will say it again because it is absolutely right to point this out—that the people who engaged in the kind of manoeuvres that might be caught, were the Bill to become an Act of Parliament, as I hope it will, were people who would almost invariably have sought professional advice, unless they were themselves accountants, in which case they would advise themselves. We are not talking about the average person in the street who has been caught unawares. We are talking about those who, almost invariably, took advice—whether the advice was appropriate or not, we do not know, because it depends on what the accountant told them. There would have been some predictability and certainty from what they were told by their accountant. It is somewhat dodgy of the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire to pray in aid statements made by accountants to the Select Committee about legal matters.