Finance Bill

Of course I shall adhere absolutely to what you have said, Mr. Gale. I did not count the number of times the hon. Lady said ““IR35””, but it must have run into double figures. She seems to be replaying all those arguments, which I did not accept at the time. The reason why I did not accept them is that a number of self-employed constituents came to see me when the IR35 debate was going on, and they were worried about the effect that it would have on them, in advance of its introduction. A furore had been whipped up, no doubt to some extent by the arguments adopted by Conservative Members. Of all those constituents who expressed concern about what the effects of IR35 might be, however, none came back to tell me that their fears had been borne out and that we were now doing this, that or the other to them. I would argue that the fears about IR35 were to a great extent oversold, and I put it to the hon. Lady that the fears that she is now expressing are being oversold in exactly the same way, and for exactly the same reasons. This all goes back to a lack of willingness to support my hon. Friends on the Front Bench in their efforts to sort out tax avoidance. From my short experience of Finance Bills, I have observed that one of the documents that is often referred to in great detail—because it rescues many of us—is the explanatory notes. Neither of the two Front-Bench spokespersons who have spoken in this debate have mentioned them. I find that extremely interesting. The hon. Member for Dundee, East (Stewart Hosie) raised a point earlier about consultation and asked whether there should be a delay. The explanatory notes state that in 2006—by my calculation, that is a year ago—the pre-Budget report announced that the Government would take"““action to tackle managed service company…schemes which enable workers to provide their services through companies and avoid paying employed levels of tax and national insurance””." We have therefore had one year’s notice—