National Insurance Contributions Bill

It is important to understand that such regulations can come forward only in consequences of retrospective tax provisions. Those provisions would have to go through the process of a Finance Bill and be debated in the normal way. That is the first safeguard; a full parliamentary process is attached to that part. Secondly, as we will discuss later, the Government have made a commitment to have consultation on the regulations, and we will reiterate that this afternoon. That will be an opportunity for full discussion about the import of the regulations. The key issue is the tying of these regulations to the tax provisions and of the tax provisions to a Finance Bill process.