I thank the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris)—the fruit and veg man, a successful small business man—and I commend him. He is another on the Tory Back Benches like the hon. Member for Amber Valley, whom I specifically itemised in precise praise, as I did in last year’s Bill Committee, encouraging him to press to a vote his sensible and modest proposals to simplify the tax system. He would have had my support in that. In this House, there are times when we need to work across the parties to deal with an incompetent Treasury Front Bench. I would welcome further discussions beyond this Chamber with the hon. Gentlemen and others on the Conservative Benches about how best those of us who fully understand—be it a café in Worksop, or the fruit and veg man in Daventry or the accountant in Amber Valley—the economic inefficiency of this Prime Minister, this Chancellor and this immoral Treasury Front Bench’s failure to deal with tax dodgers, tax avoiders, corporate structures and the opaqueness of the overseas territories.
As a country, through this Government, we are unwilling to give the international lead that our position in providing defence and other support to the Cayman Islands and many others requires. That economic efficiency, that justice and that morality would liberate good British companies who are prepared to do the decent thing and to pay modest, small amounts of taxation rather than avoiding their appropriate duty to do so. That is what competition in the market is about and what those of us on the Opposition Benches are about. It is also what some—I am happy to give them plaudits—on the Conservative and Liberal Back Benches are about, but it is absent from the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and Treasury Front-Benchers, who are devoid of it. They do
not get the real world, have not come from it and will never understand it. They do not get what the public and small businesses are saying. I would suggest that they do not really care about that, because they are interested in their paymasters and in ensuring that the status quo remains. They are failing to challenge vested interests.
9.45 pm