Clause 17 - Requirement of evidence or security
Finance Bill
3:15 pm
Mr Stephen O'Brien (Eddisbury, Conservative)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He has put his finger on a fundamental issue, not least because knowledge of evasion or attempted evasion is fundamental to whether a citizen is likely to attract a penalty and difficulty. The hon. Gentleman's helpful and pithy contribution demonstrated the problem better than I could, having compared the different parts of the clause, taking it as a whole and examining the intended mischief that the Government seek to address. It is not a matter of dispute in the Committee that the Government must tackle tax evasion wherever and whenever it arises. We would support clauses that were designed and targeted to achieve that.
The clause is extraordinarily widely drafted. There is disparity in the application of a knowledge test, and there could be a significant financial penalty and a major impact on a person's reputation, even though he has not taken the action or had the knowledge that is causing the problem. Therefore, the Government must reconsider the matter. I recognise that a great deal of work goes into these Bills and that there must be pride of authorship—I do not accuse the Minister of that.
I hope that the Government will accept the amendments, because the provision could create a mischief that can easily be spotted now that it is on the record, given what I have said. I hope that we will not find this debate quoted in courts around the land when it comes to costs assessments and whether it was right for Customs and Excise to be able to recover costs when it had to take somebody through the courts who had not done anything wrong and may not have had knowledge of the mischief that it was trying to prevent. Those are the issues at stake.