Finance (No. 3) Bill

I agree with my hon. Friend, but I will come to that point later. The way in which the banks have continued their profligate distribution of bonuses looks like them cocking a snook at the Government and the level at which the levy has been set. When the Chancellor appeared before the Treasury Committee, he advanced two arguments on how the levy was constructed. First, he argued that the levy was based on the price of the insurance that the Government and the taxpayer now implicitly offer for the wholesale funding of the banks; the levy is therefore a tax on the wholesale funding of banks' operations. However, a calculation of the appropriate insurance for that scale of banking insurance, which could surely be done, would show that that sum is significantly more than the current bank levy proposal would raise. The Chancellor's second argument was that the levy was in the interests of equity: the banking sector, as well as the rest of us, should make a contribution to resolving the economic crisis. However, the amount that the bankers are being asked to provide to help to tackle the crisis that they created is piffling in comparison with the damage caused to our wider society, and minute in comparison with the burden that is being carried by others in terms of job losses and services cuts. Whole communities now face significant suffering and deprivation. The Chancellor himself admitted that the targeted revenue sum was ““relatively small”” because, he argued, it balanced fairness with competitiveness, yet no study has been published and no evidence has been produced on the impact on banking competitiveness of varying the levy. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), I want to know what independent assessments have been made of the balance between fairness and competitiveness and how the calculation was arrived at. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Mr Love), who said that the measure throws the Government's commitment to tax simplicity out the window. The taxation system on this issue is now more complex than any other point of taxation in the tax book, so I endorse the questions about how HMRC, with its current staffing cuts, can cope with the implementation of the levy. I would also welcome the Government publishing the consultation on the assessment of the amount of tax take from the proposed levy, because it looks like consultation was either non-existent or fairly minimal. The amendment would require the report to consider "““the adequacy of the bank levy in the context of other reforms””." Our understanding is that the levy was set to assist the implementation of the Merlin agreement and to ensure that the banks had a lending strategy to help get the economy moving and out of recession. As others have said, the levy must be set so as to ensure a continued influence on banks' behaviour in relation to remuneration and bonuses. While promoting the bank levy, the Prime Minister and Chancellor exhorted bankers to show restraint. Is the levy set at the right level to ensure that the other reforms linked to it are completed and adhered to?