Finance (No.2) Bill
10:30 am
Dawn Primarolo (Paymaster General, HM Treasury; Bristol South, Labour)
I beg to move,
That during proceedings on the Finance (No. 2) Bill (except Clauses 13 to 15, 26, 61, 91 and 106, Schedule 14, and new Clauses relating to the effect of provisions of the Bill on section 18 of the Inheritance Tax Act 1984), the Committee do meet at half-past Ten o'clock and half-past Four o'clock on Tuesdays, and five minutes past Nine o'clock and half-past Four o'clock on Tuesdays, and five minutes past Nine o'clock and a quarter to Two o'clock on Thursdays, when the House is sitting.
On behalf of the Committee, Mr. O’Hara, I warmly welcome you and your co-Chairmen, Sir John andMr. Benton. You are all experienced and knowledgeable, and I am sure that you will keep us in order. We look forward to your expertise and are confident that our deliberations will be both thorough and relevant. I extend a warm welcome to the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) who will lead for the Opposition in Committee and to the members of her team, the hon. Members for Rayleigh (Mr. Francois) and for Fareham (Mr. Hoban), and those who support them.
I welcome Mr. Cranmer, the Clerk to the Committee. I am pleased that we shall benefit again from his significant experience of Finance Bills. I also welcome the Hansard staff, as I do the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) and her Liberal Democrat colleagues. I am pleased to see the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Stewart Hosie). He has been assiduous on the Floor of the House. No doubt he will welcome his happy and long stint in Committee, but perhaps he can tell me about that at the end of our proceedings.
I will be supported in Committee by the Financial Secretary and the newly appointed Economic Secretary, who is truly looking forward to being here every Tuesday and Thursday—morning and afternoon. That will come as news to him. Given that my hon. Friends will follow our proceedings in great detail, I hope that they will not be disappointed. The good news is that we have only one Finance Bill this year, not two—or three Bills, as we had last year. I look forward to our debates in the coming weeks. I hope that we can conduct ourselves in an appropriate manner, being pressing in debate, but always remaining civil. We shall need to behave in such a way to get through the proceedings and for the sake of our sanity.