I beg to move amendment 1, page 64, line 30, after “by”, insert—
“(a) an insurance company (within the meaning given by section 65 of FA 2012),
(b) a building society as defined by the Building Societies Act 1986, or
(c) a credit union registered under the Credit Unions (Northern Ireland) Order 1985 or the Industrial and Provident Societies Act (Northern Ireland) 1969.”
It will not be lost on hon. Members when they see an amendment to clause 1 at page 64, line 30 just how long a clause 1 we are dealing with, as we found in Committee. The Bill is essentially all in clause 1 and the other clauses provide the trimmings.
In Committee, I and other hon. Members raised a number of issues through probing amendments and in clause stand part discussions. One issue that I raised was the position of credit unions in Northern Ireland. As we heard on Second Reading and as the Financial Secretary to the Treasury stressed in Committee, the Government, with the agreement of the parties in Northern Ireland, have been at pains to make sure that any move to devolve to the Assembly powers in respect of corporation tax would not invite any large artificial or contrived shifts by large parts of the financial services sector. Nobody has been in the market for making sure that banks and other major financial services businesses could in any way benefit from surfing on to the devolved corporation tax rate that would be available to Northern Ireland under the Bill. Everybody is ad idem on that.
There is, however, a concern that the exclusion of the financial services sector at large could lead to inadvertent discrimination against credit unions or mutual building societies that are wholly and solely based in Northern Ireland.