I hope that my noble friend will be very careful in his response to this because underneath there are two falsities. The first is the schizophrenia on the side of the Opposition. On the one hand, they say that no one will be taking it up, and on the other hand they say that it might be very expensive. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, should get away with that argument.
I also do not want him to take too seriously the comments about exempting people from capital gains tax. I declare an interest as the chairman of a number of small companies, which are, I hope, growing. I have the feeling that there is a kind of nastiness abroad on this issue, because capital gains tax is very much a destroyer of value and of enterprise. One problem in this country is that many people do not like other people being wealthy as a result of hard work and employment. I dislike that kind of attitude very much. If that is part of the coalition agreement, it is a bad part, because we need a society in which people are encouraged to put their lives into businesses and to gain some of the benefits of that. One reason the United States is so much more successful than other countries is that it has been more sensible about that bit of its taxation. It is very stupid about a lot of other taxation, but on that bit at least it has said that there is a real reason for encouraging people to create businesses. One way of encouraging them is by giving them a lower rate of tax on capital gains and dividends than they would have elsewhere. That seems perfectly right, and one problem that we have is that we have not taken that seriously.
I am not worried about this proposal because I do not think that anyone is going to take it up and so they are not going to lose any money. However, I hope that my noble friend will be kind enough to suggest that the Government will do a great deal more to enable people, through employment, to create wealth and to take some of that wealth in a way that we do not allow them to do at the moment.
It really is sad that we have a society in which it is perfectly proper to say, “We’ve really got to stop people possibly gaining from the creation of jobs”. That is what we mean when we say that we want to make sure that nobody benefits. That is not what I want to happen—and it will not happen—but I hope that in his answers my noble friend will make sure that he does not commit the Government to not taking some pretty radical steps to remove and reduce taxation in a number of areas that will encourage job creation.