I begin by thanking the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) for his interesting and informative contribution. Alas, I am going to have to disappoint him and say that I will urge the House to reject new clause 1, but I thank him most sincerely for the generosity with which he gave way to the wave upon wave of Government Members who wanted to challenge him—it was a veritable intervention-fest. My hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (James Cleverly) mentioned the “The Morecambe & Wise Show” but in the hon. Gentleman’s case, I was reminded more of the 1980s show “Game for a Laugh”—[Interruption.] Perhaps that was unkind, but we had some fun along the way.
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Before replying to the hon. Gentleman’s opening remarks, I will speak briefly about some of the fine contributions made by Members on both side of the House, who took the matter in hand with due seriousness, as you exhorted us to do, Madam Deputy Speaker. The arguments were put extremely powerfully by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), who talked about the importance of recognising that many of the tax activities of individuals in this company are not driven by evasion or a desire to cheat the system or bend the rules, but by sensible tax planning and using the rules precisely as they were designed to be used. He also rightly pointed out the importance of not driving away the individuals who bring great wealth and business investment to our country—we heard about the record £9 billion a year from non-domiciled individuals. The hon. Member for Bootle will recall our lengthy debates about business investment relief.
We must not drive away the additional moneys that will come to our country to fund our doctors, nurses, paramedics, the Army, police and all the other wonderful public services that we expect to be supported. An extra £1.6 billion will come as a consequence of the changes proposed in the Bill. My right hon. Friend also spoke well about the importance of our tax system being competitive, and we briefly touched on an important point that was raised by many other Members: how do we term these individuals?