House of Lords (Members’ Taxation Status) Bill [HL]

That last point highlights how unsatisfactory—indeed I could probably go further than that if I was not feeling so good-natured today—and unfortunate has been the way in which the Conservative Benches have used the first 10 minutes of this debate. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that that point is in the next group of amendments and when we get on to that we can discuss exactly that. It would have been helpful if we had not had such extensive excursions around the wider shores of the British Empire, particularly from the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, as we could have made some serious progress in dealing with just that point. We discussed the point before, and we have tabled substantive amendments on it. On the amendment put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon—I must say that I believe the House has rather lost its way on this amendment, whether by accident or design—we are not talking about asking people to change their citizenship. There is no reference to citizenship in my Bill. It is a very simple Bill: the key provision asks Members of this House to make a very simple choice as to whether they wish to be fully resident and domiciled and pay full British tax in this country. If they choose not to do so, they are free not to do so, but then they leave the House. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, that the case for non-doms in particular is whether they would be taking advantage of the £30,000 by which very rich non-domiciled people do not then have to pay tax on the rest of their worldwide income. That is a critical question, which, again, we will come to. I must disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. The Bill is in no way slamming the door permanently on some of the noble Lords whose names he mentioned. All they would have to do would be to decide whether they were prepared to pay full British tax on their worldwide income or not. It is only right that I should clarify the question of the report in the Daily Telegraph by its political correspondent Rosa Prince on 23 February. As I understood it, the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, accused me of saying that he had said that Peers should not pay tax. To clarify, I shall read out the relevant section of my article, which I stand by. The point of the article was to draw attention to what the Conservative leader David Cameron had said at his press conference. When asked about my Bill on the record, he said that it was "not a bad idea" and "deserved to make progress". Well, my heart leapt at that prospect, but the Bill is not making much progress tonight. In contrast to that, I said that I thought that the noble Viscount had tabled amendments as a form of filibuster: ""If discussion of the amendments takes too long, then under House of Lords rules the entirety of the proposed legislation would fall"." We have had a good example tonight of why I said that and why I say it again now. I in no way said that the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, said that people should not pay tax. I said a very specific thing, pointing out the contrast between what the Conservative leader was saying and what the noble Viscount was doing.