Finance Bill

The hon. Gentleman's intervention speaks for itself; he makes his point extremely well. The Government are being evasive, to say the least, on the figures, and I am afraid that the Exchequer Secretary's letter to the Committee on 1 July did nothing to clear the matter up. I would be grateful at last to receive an explanation of where the figures come from. In the letter, the Minister reiterated that the estimates for VAT revenue in the Red Book were rounded to the nearest £5 million. Unfortunately, that leaves some confusion about whether the figures revealed in written answers subsequent to the publication of the Red Book, but before the debate in the Public Bill Committee, were rounded to the nearest £5 million. I think that the implication is that they were. The Minister said:""I do not know the exact details of everything".––[Official Report, Finance Public Bill Committee, 25 June 2009; c. 618.]" That was certainly the impression that she gave, and her letter has served only to confuse the situation still further. The industry has raised yet another concern about the Treasury's methodology. We heard in previous debates that the Government's revenue figures are based on their interpretation of the law, and not on the actual sums that they have been receiving. However, bingo operators are now suggesting—this was the point raised by the hon. Member for Barnsley, Central—that the Government failed to account for irrevocable VAT when producing the estimates. One industry estimate—we have probably seen the same estimate—put the total incremental irrevocable VAT at £21.7 million a year, assuming that it returns to a level of 17.5 per cent. next January. It is possible for the Exchequer Secretary to be precise—we have seen it, and she wants to be precise. Therefore, I invite her to answer right now whether the Treasury accounted for the irrevocable VAT and, if it did, what was the figure—preferably not rounded to the nearest £5 million—that applied in that case? The Government are extremely unwilling to provide meaningful figures on the costs of changes in gaming duty and VAT on bingo, yet they have asked us to consider the totality of measures in clauses 20 and 112. That makes it difficult, if not impossible, for us to judge the fiscal effects of any of the five amendments before us. Meanwhile, we have only just this week learned that the court action that Conservative Members, and the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Stewart Hosie), referred to in our deliberations on clause 20 and 112 is still ongoing. The Minister was thus wrong to tell us that the Government had until 30 June to make a decision on the appeal. That was wrong: she had longer and she used the longer period to make the decision. As it turned out, the Government had until this week and they have now appealed, despite the Minister's assertion about the expiry date. We understand that the case will now go to the Court of Appeal. We tabled an amendment in the Committee of the whole House to the effect that no changes should be made until the court case was resolved. The fact that the proceedings are ongoing is important information for our deliberations today. Given the level of uncertainty on both the legal and the revenue fronts, it is very difficult to assess the likely impact of any of the five amendments. Furthermore, we have already voted through the ending of VAT on bingo in clause 112, so we need to be careful to maintain a balance in the tax consideration of bingo while being mindful of the appalling position of the public finances that the Government have brought on us all. The Government are holding their cards close to their chest on the amount of revenue, but if they were to support one or more of the amendments and show us that they could be afforded in terms of the Red Book, we would look favourably on that. Let me clarify the Conservative position. The Government seem to think that bingo duty should by its very nature be higher than other gaming duties, but we do not see it that way. We view the 22 per cent. bingo duty as an anomaly. We thus await the Government's moves with eager anticipation. We would welcome moves that were properly costed, affordable and transparent, to bring bingo duty back into line with other gambling duties.