(Except clauses 11, 18, 40, 43, 44 and 69 and schedule 8)
Finance Bill
10:30 am
Philip Hammond (Shadow Chief Secretary To the Treasury, Treasury; Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
I echo your words of welcome, Sir Nicholas. I am sure that members of the Committee will have an enjoyable and worthwhile time scrutinising what are, in fact, some complicated measures. I congratulate the Paymaster General: I served as a Back Bencher on a Standing Committee that discussed Finance Bill in 1998 and the right hon. Lady was the Paymaster General at that time, so I think that I can say without fear of contradiction that she is by far the most experienced member of the Committee, having been involved in nine Finance Bills since the Labour party came into office.
I am sure that our Committee proceedings will be good and I, too, welcome all new Members. It is good to see so many new Members on a Committee considering a Finance Bill. Finance Bills are traditionally regarded by the Whips as a great proving ground. Sadly, this Finance Bill—the second of 2005—is stripped of some of the sex appeal that usually accompanies such Bills; we are left with the hard work, but I do not see anyone in the Room who will be at all daunted by that.
On the sittings motion, the Opposition are a little dismayed, not only on our own behalf but on behalf of all Committee members, by the way in which the Thursday sittings are to pan out. I fully accept that that is a consequence of the change to the sitting hours of the House, but sitting for just over an hour on Thursday mornings seems a rather strange way to manage a Committee. Also, sitting for four hours on a Thursday afternoon—a necessary consequence if we are to get our five hours of deliberation—especially on a hot day in June, is probably not conducive to the best possible scrutiny of the Bill. I wonder whether you could feed back those concerns through the Liaison Committee, Sir Nicholas.
I do not know whether these matters were considered when the 10.30 am start on Thursday was discussed, but clearly the logical thing to do would be to start the Committee proceedings much earlier, so that the Committee can rise at 10.25 am having considered the Bill for a sensible period on Thursday morning. That said, we accept that the sittings motion is probably as good as we can achieve, although we would have preferred an 8.55 start on Thursday mornings. That would have given us a little more time to consider matters before we adjourned for lunch.