Finance Bill

I am not going to respond to that point, because I do not particularly know the answer and it would be wrong of me to stand in front of the Committee and make it up as I go along. I am not going to do that. The amendments are fine—I can see the logic in some of them—but they create a mass bureaucracy. As the Chancellor made clear in the Budget statement, he ruled out some approaches because the money saved would be taken up by bureaucracy. To apply VAT at different rates to different aspects would create bureaucracy in enabling it to be understood and that will not do the economy any good in the long run. Earlier, during Treasury questions, someone mentioned that the percentage GDP debt of a bunch of European countries was more than the percentage debt of this country. If we listened to Opposition Members, we could think that this country was going way out on a limb, above everywhere else. However, the VAT rise takes us to the fifth lowest out of 14 European countries. VAT in Austria is 20%, and in Belgium it is 21%, in Denmark 25%, in Ireland 21%, in Finland 23%, in Greece 23%, in Italy 20%, in Norway 25% and in Sweden 25%. All those countries have much higher rates of VAT.