Ways and Means

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her election as the Chair of the Treasury Committee. Does she think it would be sensible for the Government—notwithstanding the fact that they are not planning at the moment to include income tax for sole traders in Making Tax Digital—to make provision for voluntary participation, so that they would see the popularity of the scheme if people did volunteer in numbers, as they did with the introduction of online self-assessment? The Government might find that 60% or 70% of businesses participate anyway within the timeframe they are proposing, so making participation mandatory would become relatively painless.