The Act gave the Government the power to do it. It did not compel them to do it. If they wanted to do it by way of an Act of Parliament it
could have been done that way. They could have added it to the Finance Bill and it would have come up here and in the normal way financial privilege would have applied and none of this nonsense would have been created. Perhaps the reason the Government chose to legislate in this way was because it was bound to create political controversy. Perhaps that was the object of the exercise.
I want to say a word about the debate in 2008. It was when this House limited the power of a Labour Government to raise the national insurance upper threshold so that it could be done only through primary legislation. The two cases are almost identical. In each case, the Government were trying to alter tax provisions by a statutory regulation. In each case, this House was standing in their way. The only real difference is that in 2008—