Social Security, Occupational Pension Schemes and Statutory Payments (Consequential Provisions) Regulations 2007

In the debate in the House on the Income Tax Bill yesterday evening, both the noble Baroness and I took offence when the noble Lord, Lord Newton of Braintree, described us as ““docile””. Having just listened to the debate on the statutory instruments relating to Northern Ireland, I suspect that the noble Lord must have been listening to Northern Ireland exchanges to colour his judgment of the way in which we approach these matters. While I am not sure that I will take any lessons from the debate we heard in Grand Committee earlier this afternoon, certainly the level of emotion which was evident is rarely exhibited by myself on statutory instruments or, indeed, on virtually any other matter that arises in your Lordships’ House on the Treasury brief. We discussed the substantive Bill behind these regulations last year. At that point the issue of retrospective legislation was considered: we do not like it, is the best way of summing up our attitude. However, we accepted that we had to put up with it in this case, and these statutory instruments flow from that primary legislation. There are no further matters of principle arising here. I agree absolutely with the comments of the noble Baroness regarding the consultation timetable because the sooner you can put through regulations that are retrospective, the less retrospective they will be. That must be a good thing. We often hear complaints about the timetable on consultation in other areas. People claim that they can be very tight. In this case the timetable appears to have been unduly relaxed and to have gone on for a long time. Given the nature of the legislation and the fact that the number of people who would be likely to comment is clearly small because these issues are highly technical, the consultation could have been completed six months sooner. I have only one question. In his introductory remarks the noble Lord mentioned that the purpose of the powers under which these regulations are being proposed is to deal with any arrangements which have emerged that have led to the avoidance of tax. What evidence is there that these regulations are necessary? Are they theoretically necessary or have specific cases been brought to the attention of HMRC which have proved that these regulations are needed? To the extent that they are necessary, is it possible to say, even broadly, whether these are major problems that have been dealt with here? Is there a lot of avoidance going on, or is it very narrow? I said yesterday evening that I thought it would be helpful in explaining the benefit of what was happening if we knew how many pages of legislation were being repealed. Here it would be useful to know how effective these regulations will be, simply because they are needed and there is a substantial problem. It would be helpful as a general rule when regulations of this sort come forward if the Government could give some assessment of the scale of the problem being addressed because it helps justify the regulations. With those caveats we support the regulations.