Finance Bill

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the chairman of our sub-committee, the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, who again has done an admirable job in chairing our committee and preparing our report. I have nothing to add to all that he said today; I am happy to leave that to him. I want to say a word about simplification, about which the noble Lords, Lord Wakeham and Lord Vallance, spoke. The noble Lord, Lord Vallance, made the very strange point that it is Lib Dem policy to simplify taxation by abolishing capital allowances altogether. I am bound to say that depreciation is a genuine business expense; it is not something exceptional. All companies have depreciation if they have any plant whatever. I thought that we were trying to encourage companies to invest in more new plant.