Schedule 14 - Vans
Finance Bill
9:45 am
Mr Quentin Davies (Grantham and Stamford, Conservative)
I fear that I cannot go along with the hon. Gentleman on either of those points. There has been some inflation, but not of 600 per cent., which is the difference between the £500 and the £3,000 that van drivers may have to pay if we accept the schedule. I am not an expert on the changes in the types of vehicles available, so I shall leave him to enlighten the Committee if he feels that that is relevant to our deliberations.
The sad thing is that, despite this extraordinarily heavy apparatus for attacking poor van drivers, the result is imprecise and slovenly drafting which leaves open all sorts of ambiguities. I refer the Committee to paragraph 5 of the schedule, which inserts new section
155 into the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003. New subsection (4) states that the restricted private use condition is met if
''the commuter use requirement is satisfied throughout the year . . . or the extent to which it is not satisfied during that period is insignificant''.
What does ''insignificant'' mean? If you use a van once a month or once every three months, is that significant? That is extremely unhelpful and will be difficult not just for the van driver but for the employer to get right.