I support my noble friend Lord Flight’s amendments. I declare my interest as before. I understand why my noble friend the Minister is proposing this, although I am not sure that I agree with it. The task is surely to design these rules so that they have the least impact on honest taxpayers. The tax legislation that we have is so enormous, and growing at such a vast rate every year, that I would be amazed if anybody knows of any human being who has actually said they have read all of it. There are not only enormous complexities in our tax legislation but vast powers for HMRC to enforce it. With this legislation, we are in danger of producing a group of citizen tax collectors who believe that it is possible—that it is their right—to
go through the register and come out with an opportunity to accuse a company of paying insufficient tax. The effect of that would be that a newspaper or other media outlet, or an NGO, will pursue the case, and I am afraid that, as a result, the duties on HMRC to look into it will be rather greater than they are at present. Rather than reducing the burden on HMRC, as was mentioned earlier, I have a feeling that this legislation will increase it rather dramatically. This whole area of legislation is rife with unintended consequences.
My noble friend mentioned activists. An animal rights activist, for example, was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison last year, I think, for attacking people connected with Huntingdon Life Sciences—sending incendiary devices, hoax bombs and other such stuff. The anti-fracking demonstrators in Balcombe threatened similar activities. All of this legislation is open to abuse in a most remarkably comprehensive fashion, which is why I believe that this information should only be available to those people listed in my noble friend Lord Flight’s Amendment 44H.