Finance Bill

Perhaps we will learn about that in one of the forthcoming memoirs—who knows? My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) set out the arguments, which I touched on earlier, for looking at expenditure deciles. He also asked perfectly sensible questions about the Government's examining the relationship between changes in the cost of living and uprating measurements. I am sure we will continue to look at these matters closely. The shadow Chief Secretary asked some detailed and technical questions about annex III of the relevant EU directive, and about reliefs for transport. In order to do justice to those highly technical questions, and given the time, it would be better if I wrote to him, rather than attempting to answer them this evening. As a result of the current zero rates, the UK has one of the most generous sets of reliefs in Europe for people with disabilities, worth some £400 million a year to disabled people. In the light of that, and given, as we have heard, that this amendment, like the others in the group, is essentially a probing amendment, I ask the hon. Member for Pontypridd to withdraw it.