Orders of the Day — Finance Bill — 23 Apr 2007 at 21:40

The majority of MPs voted against an amendment that would have prevented the Finance Bill 2007 from being read a second time.

The reasons given in the the amendment for denying the Bill a Second Reading were that the Finance Bill:

"fails to equip the UK to compete in the globalised world economy in the face of ever increasing competition from countries such as China and India, penalises small companies with higher tax rates and a more complicated tax system, hits freelance workers with more tax bureaucracy and uncertainty, involves yet further instability and U-turns on pensions policy and does nothing to tackle the UK's worsening pensions crisis, gives HM Revenue and Customs intrusive and disproportionate new powers of investigation, misses the opportunity to provide effective mechanisms for tackling climate change, fails to reform the UK tax law after years of erosion of its competitiveness, and fails to reverse the massive increase in complexity and instability which the Chancellor has inflicted on the tax system of the UK."

The abolition of the 10p rate for the lowest earners had been announced in the 2007 budget, along with a surprise 2p cut in the basic rate of income tax to 20p in the pound but there was concern that this would severely effect those on the lowest incomes. (See here for more detail).

Debate in Parliament | Source |