National Insurance Contributions Bill

This is going to come back to whether we are talking about only artificially contrived avoidance, which has to be stopped by the Treasury, or the Treasury changing its mind about the way in which arrangements can be entered into now perfectly ordinarily—if it regards them as beyond the pale in a few years. That will come up several times between us. The Minister always talks in terms of artificial avoidance schemes; I always talk about the Treasury changing its mind and seeing the use of perfectly ordinary arrangements in today’s terms in a different light later. That is why I regard some of the provisions as far more draconian than the Minister does.