Schedule 15
Finance Bill
12:30 pm
Mark Hoban (Shadow Minister, Treasury; Fareham, Conservative)
I am not sure that I would go so far as to call it excitement, but the Opposition have raised in relation to previous Bills the problem about relying on guidance to articulate the meaning of legislation. In this case, the guidance softened or provided exemptions to the status quo—as the Minister mentioned earlier—that are based upon the Sharkey v. Wernher case. If that guidance does not form part of HMRC’s body of guidance, those exemptions are swept away. The schedule provides no exemptions to permit the existing relaxation of those rules to continue to apply, and that is the problem.