Finance Bill

I do not often disagree with the right hon. Gentleman, but here I take a rather different line. Of course there must be transparency, as the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) said, and of course we do not hold people guilty until proved innocent. What I am recommending—the hon. Member for Dundee, East said the same—is that there should be a general principle which makes it clear that if the purpose of the device is solely to evade or avoid tax and it has no sensible, practical, obvious economic purpose, it should be ruled out in terms of what the mechanism is designed to do. I would add that there should be some penalty to discourage such action in future. That is not unfair. It is a way of avoiding an artificial, deliberate and proliferating attempt to avoid tax, which means that the rest of us who are not super-rich and not big corporations have to pay. I do not think that is a very good idea.