My hon. Friend makes a clear point. I do not know which wag in the Treasury came up with the nickname Merlin for this project. Having dealt with the Treasury and Treasury Ministers I have never thought of them as having a sense of humour, but whoever came up with that name clearly had one. Again, my hon. Friend makes a good point. There is no explanation for the figure of £20 billion other than the yield that it is intended to produce. The Minister needs to provide the evidential basis for the £2.6 billion yield. If we levy, for example, £2.7 billion, £2.8 billion or £2.93 billion, at what point do the Barclays bankers pack their bags and move to Zurich? Would the entire system of bankers' bonuses fall apart if the figure were more than £2.6 billion?
I have raised the issue already, and I accept that international finance is a global business and can move, but in terms of bonuses, bankers are clearly not bothered about the £2.6 billion figure. May we see the evidential basis on which the figure was arrived at? What would be the effect if it were a little higher or lower than £2.6 billion? It is important that we know that.
Finance (No. 3) Bill
Proceeding contribution from
Lord Beamish
(Labour)
in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 3 May 2011.
It occurred during Debate on bills
and
Committee of the Whole House (HC) on Finance (No. 3) Bill.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
527 c538 
Session
2010-12
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
Subjects
Librarians' tools
Timestamp
2023-12-15 15:59:42 +0000
URI
http://data.parliament.uk/pimsdata/hansard/CONTRIBUTION_739429
In Indexing
http://indexing.parliament.uk/Content/Edit/1?uri=http://data.parliament.uk/pimsdata/hansard/CONTRIBUTION_739429
In Solr
https://search.parliament.uk/claw/solr/?id=http://data.parliament.uk/pimsdata/hansard/CONTRIBUTION_739429