Finance Bill

There has been significant movement on the powers that HMRC officials can take up when they believe that there may have been abuse by the taxpayer. Treasury Ministers have accepted the spirit of the Conservative amendment on statutory references to Public Bill Committees. I am sure that that is a significant step forward. We have also held some constructive debates today on issues such as inheritance tax—Ministers are open minded about discussing the principles of that. Sadly, there has been a refusal to give way on some important principles. I have already mentioned the amendment of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead, but another problem is the Government’s failure to acknowledge the difficulty that high fuel costs in rural areas represent, let alone to discuss any action that might be taken to help create a level playing field. Again, Conservative Members are happy to recognise the problem but fail to make any proposals to tackle it. Most important, the Bill shows no genuine willingness to strengthen green provisions. The Government broke cross-party consensus on microgeneration to try to provide stronger incentives and accountability on such issues. There is still no clear sense of what constitutes a zero carbon home or when we will experience a non-linear progression to the number of such homes that will be provided. Retrospective increases in air passenger duty will do nothing except strengthen public cynicism about the Chancellor’s motives. They are clearly an effort to increase taxation rather than change behaviour. If the Treasury and the future Prime Minister, who currently leads the Department, wish to convince the public that they are serious about tackling climate change, dealing with poverty and improving the lot of those on low incomes, they must do much better than the Chancellor’s 11th Budget and the Bill that we have considered. Some changes were intended purely to grab headlines without due care and attention being paid to their impact on behaviour or the effect of personal tax changes on people on low incomes. The impact of the changes in business taxation on small businesses has also not been taken into account. If the Chancellor wishes us to believe that he is a man of substance, he must do more to convince us than we have seen in this year’s Finance Bill. Indeed, he should probably apologise for some of the measures in this year’s Budget. For those reasons, we shall not support Third Reading.