Finance Bill

The Opposition will vote against the Bill tonight, because it is flawed in a number of fundamental respects. In particular, we will vote against it because it implements a Budget that was a tax con and not a tax cut. It provides a significant landmark, in that we will overtake India and have the longest national tax code in the world. Thanks to this Chancellor’s tendency to micro-manage, tax law has mushroomed, which has increased costs for business and severely damaged our competitiveness in the globalised world economy. We remain opposed to the increase in tax rates for small businesses in clause 3. That increase comes on top of interest rate rises and falling living standards. It is an increase that many hard-pressed small businesses can ill afford. And many small enterprises will be hit with a double whammy, with the loss of industrial buildings and agricultural buildings allowance. That change was made without warning or consultation, and investment decisions taken as long as 24 years ago could be affected by that retroactive legislation. The MSC legislation inflicts another blow on many small businesses. In an era when we need to get better and better at high-tech, high-value industries, why does the Chancellor insist on kicking the contractor community yet again, when their work is pivotal in the IT sector? We welcome a number of the environmentally related provisions in the Bill, but we fail to see why Ministers cannot answer the basic question of how many zero carbon homes there are in this country. They have given us about four different answers, but still they cannot give us a conclusive one. We welcome the clauses on microgeneration, but it is a matter of regret that once again the Government rejected the request that they account to Parliament on the critical issue of microgeneration after we re-tabled the amendments to last year’s Finance Bill tabled by the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson). We have severe concerns about the drastic restrictions on sideways relief in schedule 4, which could have a hugely damaging impact on scientific research and the innovation that we need to fight climate change. Those restrictions will catch a huge number of innocent transactions. The Minister has said that he can solve the problems with guidance. For the reasons that we set out throughout the debate, one cannot draft excessively wide legislation and allow HMRC discretion to cut down its scope with guidance. [Interruption.] Frankly, that contravenes the spirit underlying the 1688 Bill of Rights and the fundamental constitutional principle that it is for Parliament to determine taxation and not the Executive. [Interruption.] The Bill’s provisions on pensions continue to demonstrate the Chancellor’s mismanagement of the tax system—