Finance Bill

No. I am sure that the report will be published; the issue is whether it will be published as a serial or in one glorious complete whole. Who knows? There may be so much demand that we need to publish it chapter by chapter, which might delight the audience and allow Ministers more time to read each piece and deal with it as they see fit. They could go through it and decide, ““Those two ideas we will adopt; those three are rubbish.? I might recommend to my right hon. Friends that to make the Government’s life a bit easier we should give them more time by publishing it in bits and pieces. We have already published one or two things, which I am sure Ministers have already read and are deciding what to do about. Having dealt with global competition, the Opposition’s reasoned amendment goes on to talk about our dislike for penalising small companies with higher tax rates and a more complicated tax system—an issue that Liberal Democrat Members tried to draw me into a little prematurely. My hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) has already made a powerful speech about how unfortunate it is for small businesses that under this Chancellor there have been so many changes in rates and so many different signals over whether small businesses are welcome. In the middle phase of the Chancellor’s period in office we felt that he was keen to raise the rate of small business formation, which is a very good thing to do. He sent strong signals by offering the zero rate—one cannot send a clearer fiscal signal than that—and it clearly started to work. It was miserable of him then to start saying, ““Gosh, we didn’t expect that people would actually incorporate,? or, ““Look at this—so many people are incorporating that here’s a wonderful source of revenue.? Step by step, including in this Bill, he has gradually upped the rate until it is no longer attractive as an incentive, as was originally intended. That is a great pity. It is incumbent on us, as tax legislators, to send strong and consistent signals, and if the Chancellor wishes them to work and get companies and individuals to respond as he chooses, they must be applied over a period of years. It is no good putting in an incentive in one year and then ditching it in the following year—[Interruption.] Do Ministers wish to intervene again, or are they just having a private conversation?