Schedule 16 - Venture capital
Finance Bill
4:30 pm
Miss Melanie Johnson (Economic Secretary, HM Treasury; Welwyn Hatfield, Labour)
The schedule keeps the VCT and CVS schemes in line with the enterprise investment scheme, following the changes made to it by schedule 15. All those schemes provide generous tax incentives for investment in the same sorts of small higher-risk companies. Paragraph 6 of the schedule amends the rules of the CVS that apply where an investor receives value from the company. A receipt of value would normally cause some or all of the investor's tax relief to be withdrawn, but that will not happen if it is returned without delay.
Unfortunately, a minor drafting error in paragraph 6 removes some words in the existing legislation. We are grateful to the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales for alerting us to that unintended omission and are taking this opportunity to set things right. Amendment No. 6 merely reinstates the missing words, and I commend it to the Committee. Amendment No. 26 seeks to achieve the same result and would therefore result in a change that has already been made. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for ensuring this did not escape our intention and for the sake of expediency I ask him not press the amendment.