Finance Bill

I am bearing in mind the fact that we are in Committee, so I wish to make some more drafting suggestions to my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary. First, with the greatest respect to the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), he is wrong about what is now sub-paragraph (5A) of the schedule, as amended. If he looks at line 22 on page 218 of the Bill, he will see a reference to ““paragraph 5””, which is not bracketed. If he then looks at line 7 of page 219, where sub-paragraph (5A) has been inserted by amendment No. 9, he will see that it follows sub-paragraph (5), and that is in brackets. He has miscounted, but he is right to be wary of the wording of the Bill. I suggest to my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary that the parliamentary drafting should not refer to ““premiums”” but to ““premia””. ““Premiums”” occurs in lines 17, 20, 24, 28, 30, 31 and 39 of page 217 and in lines 2 and 20 of page 218. My hon. Friend said that he would kindly look at the use of the word ““But””, and that anathema and grammatical error also occurs in line 32 on page 217, in line 19 on page 218, and in line 20 on page 219. I urge the Treasury to have a word with its parliamentary draftspeople about the way in which the grammar of our language is used; after all, we are talking about statute.