Yes, as I was saying, I accept there are always reasons for drawing the line where we do, and trying to stop tax avoidance within a territory is a powerful reason. However, that has left us here with a
convoluted tax system where we seem to be devolving part of it, and that is not a sensible approach. It would be better to have a federal income tax which everyone in the UK paid at a lower rate than they pay now and which covered all passive income, and then have a devolved income tax like the one in the United States. It has a state income tax that can be credited against the federal one. That may be a better, more sustainable system than the one we have.
7.30 pm
I cannot therefore vote for the amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), because it is only half-fixing the problem. It is fixing the issue of the starting point, not the whole tax base. I sense it would be a bit of a rush to devolve the whole thing now in one amendment, so I am not sure I can vote for either of the two amendments, even though I think I agree with them, because we are starting from the wrong position. We need to look at what sort of federal tax system we could have.