It has, but there is a distinction between different elements of carried interest, and we are trying to get to the bottom of that. To be brutally honest, in the longer term I would be much happier to have a regime in which we treated capital gains and income identically. There would not then be any sense in trying to arbitrage one way or the other. In many ways, perhaps inadvertently, the coalition began to move in that direction.
I am sorry that I was not in the Chamber to hear the whole speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), but he is absolutely right. Private equity has had a bad rap because of certain high-profile concerns—partly because of the misuse of tax to allow huge amounts of debt on to balance sheets—but a large number of businesses in each and every one of our 650 constituencies in the UK benefit from having private equity investors. Many jobs now exist because of the private equity investment that has come into play, particularly in growing businesses that will make a real difference in the future. The Government have broadly got this right, although I am sure we will have to come back and look at it again.
I would make one point to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman). It is not about inheritance tax—we have had our joust on that—but on a more fundamental point, on which I think she is absolutely right: the more complicated a tax code, the more the door is open to tax avoidance of all descriptions. We very urgently need to begin to simplify our tax code. We will add yet more pages to it today. A lot of them are to apply Elastoplast in ways that we can all support for individual reasons, but we need to get back to the principles of a much simpler tax system.
I believe that one of the impacts of leaving the European Union will be not a race to the bottom in lowering tax, but a much simpler tax system. This is a wake-up call for all of us in the House—obviously, particularly for those in the Treasury—to have a much simpler tax code. Such a code will be readily understandable and supported by all our constituents, which is one of the issues we face. It will also say to those bringing in much of the inward investment that will come to the UK from across the globe that we have a simple tax code, which will not be tinkered with in successive Finance Bills because it is very straightforward, and they will be able to work on that basis. I know that may be wishful thinking—going back many years, most Chancellors have talked about having a simpler tax code—but this now needs to be looked at urgently. Urgent attention must be paid on getting simplicity. If we do not do so, we will all very much pay the price.