When the current Prime Minister, then Chancellor, initially froze the tax thresholds in the Budget earlier this year, he was very transparent; he said upfront that the Government were freezing the thresholds. He wanted to make sure that no one could accuse him of introducing a stealth tax rise. Previously when thresholds were frozen, Chancellors tended not to mention it during the Budget speech. They just let it pass through and it really was a stealth tax rise.
I want to make one general comment about the different amendments. They all call on the Government to publish documents and reviews of one form or another. I know that amendments are not allowed to commit the Government to new expenditure, or to change their tax take, but there are, literally, no new policies here whatever. As far as I am aware, the Opposition agree with basically all the measures in the Bill, which makes it quite difficult to suggest amendments that change any of them or to make a speech about changing them. However, fundamentally, I have a problem with legislation that urges Government to publish documents and tries to tell Ministers what to do in their jobs, because that is not the role of legislation normally. There is one easy way to get the Government to do what the Opposition want, which is to win an election; that is a little suggestion for them. If they want to get the Government to publish documents, become the Government. I do not particularly want them to, but that is the easier way to do it than trying to pass amendments.
New clause 3, which the hon. Member for Ealing North mentioned, calls for a review of the effectiveness of the research and development tax credits. I have a lot of sympathy with the broad thrust of that. I talked about that on Second Reading. Clearly, it is a big issue for my constituency. I have many life science companies that depend heavily on that tax credit. Their whole cash flow depends on it. They do research for 10 or 15 years before they earn any revenue—before they have any chance of getting money in through the door. They are funded by investors and part of their funding model is getting that tax credit. It has been alarming for them to see it being cut off in April.
Clearly, the Government are, rightly, worried about fraud in tax credits. There is a lot of fraud in that area, and a whole industry effectively encourages it, so the Government are right to tackle it. I know that the Government are committed to promoting research and development and championing the life sciences. The Minister has been generous with her time and we talked about it this morning. What the chief executives and leaders of all these life science companies want is reassurance from the Government that they are really committed to making sure that research and development in small and medium-sized enterprises is not adversely affected by this measure. I also urge her to meet the industry urgently to get to the bottom of this and to work out a regime to help them.