Clause 2
Finance (No. 2) Bill
4:30 pm
Philip Dunne (Ludlow, Conservative)
I am grateful for that observation, but my point remains perfectly valid. It will be down to the measures that the Government impose on foreign-based manufacturers to prove that the manufacturers are not likely to be smuggling. That will be a difficult test for the Government to establish in the absence of the greater use of measures such as the memorandums of understanding with those individual manufacturers
In relation to the stand part debate, why are the Government seeking to use such measures to combat smuggling when they are not using the full forceof existing laws to combat smuggling in our constituencies? I accept that this is a Finance Bill, and that I may be referring to an example that strays beyond its confines, but if you will indulge me,Mr. O’Hara, I want to point out that we suffer from a particular problem in my constituency—the blight of the car boot sale. I am sure that the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) will nod his assent that it affects the area between our constituencies. Several operators use the very limit of the law to provide car boot sale facilities for many of his constituents, and mine. On the rare occasions that they are raided by the police, significant quantities of contraband goods—such as tobacco products, CDs and other goods—are found in large numbers. If effort was expended by this Government on cracking down on venues for the sale of illegal goods, they would find that smuggling rates would decline more rapidly than will be the case under this measure.