I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman no longer has any school friends. Those who have abandoned the communities from which they came have proposed legislation to punish the poorest and reward the richest, which is a great shame. It is not too late for the Minister to think again about what is fair and right in distributive economics.
The reality is that the marginal impact of this change on the competitiveness of the City of London is very small indeed; it is not a serious argument. I can imagine the greed-fuelled lobbyists who come here on behalf of the City to demand an extra £145 million being the sort of people who say, “Oh, well, we have got to give these people more money, because otherwise they will leave the country.” We have heard all that before. In any case, many of those individuals have all sorts of tax havens, about which the Government pay lip service to investigating.
At the same time as we hear alleged concerns about those rich people avoiding tax, the Government say to them, “I’ll tell you what; here’s another 5p off the income
tax.” People sometimes ask why there has been a 64% increase in bonuses this year. Could it be because the Government have provoked it, as people move their income from a tax year where they pay 50p to a tax year where they pay 45p? It was completely predictable, and it was even factored into the Treasury figures in the form of behavioural changes. The perverse thing was to hear the argument, “Oh, well, we are going to move to 45p instead of 50p because more money can be raised that way. Look, we are going to encourage our mates to move all their money to save tax”—[Interruption.] That proves that it is an absolute farce.