John Redwood

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FINANCE BILL [WAYS AND MEANS] 25 June 2007

Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): I am a company director and have listed my interests in the Register of Members’ Interests.

For my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope), the debate arose out of the extraordinary decisions on air passenger duty, on which retrospection was clear, flagrant and undesirable. The new clause, however, relates more widely to the whole gamut of the Government’s tax activities. Among my constituents, especially those who are in businesses, who run their own businesses or who have some savings and investment income, there is a growing feeling that things are no longer fair and sensibly run, as they were a few years ago. I am not making a party political point—people felt that things were fairly administered during the first five years of this Government, as they did under the previous Government. I therefore welcome the new clause of my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman), and the amendments to it from my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, as they could go a little way to reassuring my constituents.

The problem is now considerable. My many law-abiding constituents with business interests or savings activities know that they should make an honest declaration of what they are earning or of their savings in the required form, and they accept that they should pay tax. They also believe that they have every right to make intelligent use of fiscal incentives from tax breaks, and some of those offered by the Government in previous Finance Acts have been very attractive, such as the decision to allow more favourable tax status to small business incorporation. Having made intelligent use of those things, they fear that the Government will come down on them like a ton of bricks, saying, “We didn’t really mean it. Oh, goodness me, the fiscal incentive was too successful,” and will find a way of clawing it back and blaming them for having responded rationally to the signals sent out in tax legislation a few weeks, months or years previously.

The Minister must agree that the Government are happy for people to take advantage of tax breaks and fiscal incentives. A series of radio advertisements are currently running on various channels about National Savings and Investments. The whole point of the adverts is that people can be protected from the rather high rate of inflation now prevailing under this Government, and from their tax demands, by buying index-linked National Savings bonds, which, miraculously, are protected from both the ravages of inflation and the depredations of the taxman. That is a perfectly good selling point. I am not here to advertise those bonds today, but it shows that the Government recognise the importance of fiscal incentive in selling savings products and are happy to use it. Having taken advantage of some other fiscal incentive, my constituents therefore feel that it is unfair of the Government to turn round, decide that it is a loophole that is allowing too much revenue to be lost, and try to change things retrospectively.

It was right to mention trusts, because last year’s Finance Act contained a good deal of retrospection in relation to people who had taken good accountancy and legal advice, set up trusts and then discovered that the Government were no longer prepared to live with that, and effectively wanted to unpick it retrospectively. In support of my hon. Friends the Members for Wycombe and for Christchurch, anything that can be done to make the tax system a little fairer and predictable for the many law-abiding, decent citizens trying to live under it would be welcome.

If I have a worry, it is that there are still big loopholes for the Government in the generous drafting that the Conservative Front Bench has come up with, but I am happy to support the new clause because the statement of intent is clear and it is a move in the right direction. However, I hope that this group of Ministers, or their soon-to-be-announced successors, will understand that there is a growing feeling of displeasure about the unreasonable behaviour of the Revenue. People who honestly want to pay their taxes, but who want to take advantage of sensible fiscal incentives, no longer feel that they will be able to do that, or they feel that they will be penalised retrospectively.

John Bercow (Buckingham) (Con): May I put the proposition to my right hon. Friend that it is not only true that there is considerable and widespread misgiving on this score, but that that misgiving is especially acute in the small business sector, which tends to be characterised, by definition, by having a much smaller resource available to fight the matter through the courts or through the consultation of expensive lawyers?

Mr. Redwood: My hon. Friend is right and makes an important part of my case. The people I have in mind cannot hire expensive accountants or lawyers for either their personal or their small business affairs. It gives them a greater feeling of injustice because they think that there is law and justice for the very large companies. Those can take the best legal and accountancy advice, and may succeed in winning the case or may have enough cases going forward so that, on the law of averages, they come out of it all right. Law-abiding decent people who run small businesses or who try to put together their savings for retirement do not have that option. Only one case may matter to them, and they will probably lose it. There is the feeling that the Revenue is out to grab as much money as it can from any law-abiding person who advises it that he has a bit of money, rather than the Revenue sensibly following the rules laid down by Ministers and not going in for retrospective changes.