National Insurance Contributions Bill

It certainly has been a revealing debate and the Paymaster General’s petulance gives the lie to some interesting aspects of the Government’s attitude—not least the fact that she has reduced the commissioners to a mere cipher of the Treasury. I do not know what the commissioners think about that or whether the Government would want to view their role in those terms. We now have it on the record that the Paymaster General is asking why we should bother consulting the commissioners because they are one and the same with the Treasury and there would be no point in doing so. We can leave that matter hanging for future study and reference, but it has been a remarkable revelation from a senior Minister about the diminished role of those commissioners. The Paymaster General’s defence of the word ““expedient”” and her rejection of our attempt to introduce the word ““reasonable”” were equally revealing. She seems to be saying that any measures designed to counter tax avoidance must be expedient, or they would not work, and that any suggestion of reasonableness is unacceptable. Well, that is very revealing of the Government’s attitude both generally and specifically. So from that point of view, this debate, through the vehicle of the amendments, has shone a searchlight not just on the Bill’s wording but on the attitude of Ministers and Departments—in this case, the Treasury. Having listened carefully to the debate and to the—