Finance Bill

My right hon. Friend, who has a great deal of experience in the City, makes an important point that we did not touch on in Committee: what is the value of the losses forgone, and how will they be valued in the market? That is a point to bear in mind for the future. As I said, my concern is not so much about RBS as about the breadth of the scheme. My amendment would narrow its breadth by tying it back to the Banking Act 2009, which the Economic Secretary and I spent many happy hours debating in Committee. I sought to link my amendment back to the part of the Act that relates to the provision of financial assistance. That would narrow the range of events in which a company could forgo tax losses to those that relate to any banking bail-outs. That would cover RBS in the context of the APS, but it would not cover, for example, guarantees from the Government for loans made to the automotive sector from the EIB. That is the rationale behind my amendment. When we debated this in Committee with the first of the three Exchequer Secretaries that we had to deal with during the course of our proceedings, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Angela Eagle) said:""This is a narrow provision and must be agreed between the company that is asking for support and HMT. Although it is potentially wide, paradoxically it is also narrow at the same time."––[Official Report, Finance Public Bill Committee, 2 June 2009; c. 210.]" My amendment would make it narrow from the outset and limit the range of transactions that could be entered into that could lead to a firm giving up its tax losses. That would make it much clearer what the clause is meant to do, and potentially protect companies from undue pressure being placed on them by the Treasury and other Departments to forgo their tax losses in return for a particular scheme or set of arrangements that the Treasury or other Department might wish to encourage them to enter into.