Finance Bill

I am not addressing technical reasons why one could not move the amendment. I am talking about having a proper debate on a matter of substance, and I am questioning whether this is a genuine debate to have at this point. Although I do not agree that there should be any pause or delay, the reason I say that amendment No. 14 is slightly better than amendment No. 1 is that it at least has the merit of being time-specific, in proposing a six-month delay. As well as not grasping the details of schedule 3—we have had a discussion about that—amendment No. 1 is designed to make implementation almost impossible. Proposed new subsections (4)(a) to (4)(d) in amendment No. 1 list the things that the report should deal with, but it is wholly unrealistic that the House would want to see those matters dealt with in such a report. The amendment is set out in such a way as to make the report so complex and compiling it take so long that the delay in getting to schedule 3 would almost last for ever.