I agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, that is why the Financial Secretary to the Treasury set out a number of important areas in the Bill that deal with those issues.
I want to pick up on an issue that, interestingly, has been referred to by a number of colleagues. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) touched on the question of public sector productivity, and the hon. Member for Aberdeen North, who speaks for the SNP, also alluded to productivity. I think the hon. Lady got it a little wrong, however, when she talked about improving productivity by giving people higher pay. It is actually the other way round. We all want our constituents to get a pay rise—I think that that unites everyone in the House—but the only sustainable way to drive up pay in the public and private sectors is to improve productivity in both sectors. I shall set out a few areas in which we could do that.
First, however, I want to make a slightly humorous point to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. I do not want to see an increase in the productivity of the parliamentary draftsmen in Her Majesty’s Treasury. Producing Finance Bills as thick as this one is perhaps not what we ought to be doing. I understand the complexity of these matters—I declare an interest as a non-practising chartered accountant—but I know from talking to colleagues in the business that they do not enormously welcome Finance Bills this thick. Much as this might upset them, I have to say that creating jobs for tax accountants is also perhaps not something that we ought to be doing. Slimmer Finance Bills with simpler, less complex legislation introducing lower tax rates from which we collect more revenue are the way to go. If we were to do that, we would be doing everyone a service, and those in the tax business could perhaps find more productive things to do. This gentle chiding is perhaps directed less towards my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury than towards officials in his Department.