Finance (No. 2) Bill

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Monday 11th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

I was just about to do so, Mr Deputy Speaker, but suffice it to say that Kitchener’s Army became a tragic symbol of a lost generation, pointlessly sacrificed because of the idiocy of those in charge. Perhaps, whether he realises it or not, the Prime Minister was on to something with his choice of exhortation.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way and add my congratulations on her elevation. It will be a great privilege to listen to more of her speeches, I hope often on Kitchener. I fear that she has maligned the late noble Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, the rescuer of what remained of Gordon’s body from Khartoum. Perhaps most relevantly, the death rates in the camps established in South Africa were exactly the same as—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. This would be a fascinating debate at another time and, perhaps, in another place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) on a speech that was excellently delivered and every word of which I agreed with. It was a fine maiden speech and a pleasure to listen to.

I also welcome the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) to his new position. His speeches are in a somewhat different category, in that I always enjoy them but never agree with them. It is nevertheless a pleasure to see him in his place as his contributions in earlier debates were all listened to with bated breath, not least as we waited to intervene on some telling point.

This is a good and worthy Bill that is, perhaps, typical of the workmanlike approach that the coalition Government are taking to the difficult matters at hand to ensure that government is done fairly, justly and properly. In that context, it is interesting to look at the issue that was raised by the shadow Chief Secretary about the morality of taxation and whether it is moral, in one sense or another, to avoid taxation. We should be careful about eliding “avoid” and “evade”. The two are clearly different things, and this Bill exemplifies why that is so.

The Bill will relieve the taxpayer of burdens that Parliament probably never intended to place on them. For example, did we really want to have a special taxation for merchant seamen who are within the European economic area, as against those who are British subjects? Or was it an accidental result of historical legislation that meant that EEA citizens were caught in a way that the British subjects were not? As it happens, it is right and proper that Parliament should legislate to take people out of a tax that is misplaced, and it is equally right and proper that Parliament should legislate when it wants to bring people into a tax that it has not legislated for in the past.

The famous exponent of this was, of course, Lord Tomlin. In 1936, in a case brought by the Inland Revenue commissioners against the Duke of Westminster, Lord Tomlin said:

“Every man is entitled if he can to arrange his affairs so that the tax attaching under the appropriate Acts is less than it otherwise would be. If he succeeds in ordering them so as to secure that result, then, however unappreciative the Commissioners of Inland Revenue or his fellow taxpayers may be of his ingenuity, he cannot be compelled to pay an increased tax”.

That is why it is so important that we have these detailed pieces of legislation coming through, because when we look at the length of a cigarette, which is dealt with in clause 23, and whether it should be 3 inches or 4 inches—the measurements are all in centimetres, but being British, I shall stick to inches—and therefore be taxed differently, is that an issue of great, high morals, that should be referred to the College of Cardinals for debate, to decide which is one and which is the other? Or is it, in fact, a detailed point of law that is quite rightly passed by this House, so that taxpayers will know exactly where they stand? If we take an aircraft that weighs more than 8 tonnes—I shall not convert that into hundredweight, but I am sure that some will want to—should it be specially subject to value added tax, or should it not? Again, it seems quite clear to me that that is an appropriate matter for detailed legislation. The taxpayer who follows the letter of the law is never doing anything either wrong or immoral, and people who seek to try to confuse the two at seaside party conference are making a great error and doing a great unfairness to the British subject who is doing his best in an immensely complex area.

There is one other thing from this Bill that I would like to note, which is that clauses 5, 6, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 and 23 are, in whole or in part, requirements of the European Union. I mention that so that this House notes that we are perhaps not quite as free as we think we are to set our own tax rates, and that there is creeping Europeanisation. I see my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) is in his place. He is, in his port, at the forefront of our protection from creeping Europeanisation coming across our shores—this creeping Europeanisation that makes up almost a third of the Bill.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank my hon. Friend for his generous comments about our desire to buy our port. As far as Europe is concerned, does he not agree that it would be better if we were more masters and captains in the ships of our national destiny?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

That is put in an appropriately Nelsonian way. Of course we should sail the ship of state independently. It is important that so much of our domestic law is, in fact, coming from Europe, including our tax law, because that is the one thing that many people thought was broadly exempt from the interference of—

[Ms Louise Bagshawe (Corby) (Con)]

rose—

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

It would be a great privilege to give way to my hon. Friend.

[Ms Bagshawe]

My hon. Friend is making a typically eloquent and masterful speech. Does he agree that he has done the House a great service in listing those clauses of the Bill that are subject to European regulation? Surely at the very least we owe our electorates such transparency on the issue, so that they should be informed as to which decisions are those of our Government and which are being handed down from Brussels.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend has put it absolutely correctly and wisely: people need to know what is going on. “Truth is great and it will prevail” is, I believe, a motto of some.

Let me draw my remarks to a conclusion. I praise the Government. I think that they are right. They are putting forward serious-minded, proper legislation—detailed, pernickety, perhaps even dull—but it is rightly the duty of this Parliament to pass such laws, albeit with the caveat that we want our laws to be our laws, and not an adjunct to the European Union.