New Clause 2 — Principles of good practice for retrospective taxation legislation

Part of Orders of the Day – in the House of Commons at 5:00 pm on 25 June 2007.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Christopher Chope Christopher Chope Conservative, Christchurch 5:00, 25 June 2007

I thank my hon. Friend Mr. Goodman for his open and transparent discussion of these issues with me over many weeks. When I first raised the matter in the Budget debate I found myself in a minority of Conservative Members voting against air passenger duty. However, I overheard one of my colleagues saying, "Since when has it been Conservative party policy not to vote against retrospective legislation?" That voice, which seemed at one stage to be unheeded, has now been heeded, and I am grateful to my hon. Friends on the Front Bench for making that clear by moving new clause 2.

My amendments to new clause 2 and my new clause 7 go a little further, but the effect is that my hon. Friend and I have launched a pincer-movement on the Government. If the Minister can come up with some categories that are not consistent with the Dorrell doctrine beyond those set out in subsection (7) (i) and (ii), he will be able to use that argument against supporting my new clause, but if he does not do so, the way will be open for the House to support new clause 7.

I put my amendments and new clause in an alternative form, and I am sorry that my hon. Friend has a little trouble with my amendment (b). I thought that if the word "either" was removed and we could then get rid of the word "or", it would be better English. However, I take my hon. Friend's point that by removing the word "of" as well from line three, that would have the effect of suggesting that both the relevant principles would have to be satisfied rather than just one.

The only point that I can make to counter that is to say that if at some stage in the future the Government came up with extra relevant principles of good practice, it would be possible to amend subsection (7) by adding extra relevant principles, but it would not be so easy to do that if we had the words "either of", because that suggests that there can only ever be two principles. However, I do not want to go to the wall on that, and I am happy to accept what my hon. Friend says on amendments (a) and (c) and on new clause 7.

This episode has caused an enormous amount of angst among the travelling public and among well-established and successful businesses. For the sake of just over £100 million, the Government were prepared to tear up the conventions relating to retrospective taxation and to introduce a retrospective increase in air passenger duty that has caused an administrative nightmare and that was wrong in principle. Many passengers felt aggrieved that, although they had paid their fees to the airline, when they got to the airport, or perhaps before that, they had to pay an extra tax, because the tax had been increased between their making their booking and taking their flight.