TAX LAW REWRITE CONSULTATIVE COMMITTEE
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MINUTES OF THE THIRTIETH CONSULTATIVE COMMITTEE MEETING
Note by the Secretary
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I attach the minutes of the thirtieth meeting of the Consultative Committee,
held on 24 April 2001.
DAVID MUTTON
Secretary to the Consultative Committee
MINUTES OF THE THIRTIETH CONSULTATIVE COMMITTEE HELD ON TUESDAY 24 APRIL 2001 IN ROOM 327, 22 KINGSWAY, LONDON
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Present: Neil Munro (Chairman) Secretary: David Mutton |
Helen Caldwell Peter Knowles Patrick Linford John Morris Cheryl Scott Robin Willis |
Apologies and welcome
1. Apologies had been received from Colin Campbell, Russell Chaplin, Simon Mackintosh, Matt McGrath, Simon McKie, Mavis Sargent, Jane Vass and David Williams.
2. The Chairman welcomed the members of the Project team and introduced Peter Knowles. Peter Knowles would be taking over from Helen Caldwell as Head of the Drafting Team on 14 May 2001. The Committee expressed its warm thanks to Helen Caldwell for her two years of hard work on the Project and in particular for her achievement in successfully producing the Capital Allowances Bill. Helen is going to take up a new post in the Law Commission where Mark Hudson, who is also leaving the Drafting Team, will join her.
3. Mark Hudson will be succeeded by two drafters on loan from the Office of Parliamentary Counsel - Jackie Crawford and Nigel Rendell. A further drafter, Cathryn Balfour Swain, a former member of the Office of Parliamentary Counsel will start working for the Project from home on 1 May 2001.
4. The final change in personnel that the Chairman announced was that
he himself would be leaving the Project within the next two weeks or so.
His place would be taken by Peter Michael, currently Director, European
Union Co-ordination and Strategy. The Committee expressed its thanks to
the Chairman and wished him well in his new post.
Item 1: Minutes of the meeting held on 5 December 2000 and matters
arising
5. The minutes of the meeting held on 5 December 2000 were agreed.
6. There were no matters arising.
Item 2: Paper CC(01)01: Plans for 2001/2002
7. The Chairman said that the Project normally aims to publish its annual report at the end of March. This year it was decided to defer publication until early May so that lessons learned from the Capital Allowances Act could be incorporated. The main conclusion was that the present system of consultation could be improved to the benefit of everyone involved in the process. The existing system of regular publication of Exposure Drafts had served the Project well in many respects but had also lead to "Exposure Draft fatigue", particularly during the consultation process on the Capital Allowances work. Some people had commented that a lot of time and effort was expended unprofitably because clauses published in Exposure Drafts had subsequently been amended quite substantially. They would prefer to concentrate on legislation which was nearer to its final form. Others however had said that they would welcome the opportunity to be more closely involved at a much earlier stage. The proposed new approach seeks to address both these issues.
8. The new approach still envisages rewrite Bills being ready for introduction in Parliament at or near the beginning of a new Parliamentary session in November, with a view to having the Bill enacted by the end of March. And it would still involve the publication of a draft Bill, for final consultations, around the end of June. But before that stage, instead of a series of full blown Exposure Drafts published from time to time for written consultation - there would be a number of less formal consultation documents, published whenever the draft clauses were ready for wider consideration, accompanied by whatever explanatory material might be appropriate.
9. By increasing the scope for informal consultation at an early stage
in the rewrite process, there would be better opportunities for technical
experts to become more closely involved in the detailed work. A further
benefit would be the reduction in the considerable overhead involved in
preparing, vetting and commenting on a series of lengthy Exposure Drafts,
many of which contained material that had already been published.
10. In general discussion the following points were made.
i. Some members liked the Exposure Draft approach while recognising the disadvantages. It was suggested that a maximum of two Exposure Drafts for each topic was probably enough. Some would also like to see a final draft Bill shortly before the finished article was ready for introduction in Parliament. The Project Team sympathised with this point but felt that it would not be practicable.
ii. There was some concern that anything less than an Exposure Draft would not focus reviewers' attention on the matters they needed to consider. The Project Team said that whatever processes were devised would have to ensure that consultees focused on the main questions for consideration.
iii. Some members expressed concern that they would not see the near final article until so late in the rewrite process and asked if it would be possible to have a draft Bill before June. The Project Team said that the June date had been chosen because that would allow time to incorporate any Finance Bill amendments. Moreover, the earlier a draft Bill was published, the less complete it would be.
iv. There was some concern that, if informal consultation involved looking at small pieces at a time, it might be difficult for consultees to gain a clear understanding of the overall structure of the rewritten legislation. The Project Team said that, in developing the new approach, they would consider carefully how to address this point.
v. The Committee agreed that whatever form the informal consultation took, explanatory material in some form or another would be an essential accompaniment. The Explanatory Notes which had accompanied the Capital Allowances Bill had been crucial to an understanding of the Bill.
vi. One member suggested that another vital aid were the Tables of Origins and Destinations, which the Committee would like to see accompany any consultation documents.Helen Caldwell said that the Drafting Team had found that maintenance of the Tables of Origins and Destinations was labour intensive. So the team had put a proposal for partial automation of the production of the tables to software developers. The aim would be to revert to the approach in earlier exposure drafts of showing the origins within the clause text. The origins would be left on display while the work was in progress, but it would be possible for this information to be suppressed, and separate tables generated, in order to comply with the parliamentary formats when a Bill was introduced. But there were a number of issues to resolve about how this could be achieved. The Committee agreed that, if this proved to be possible, it would be a useful development and would probably simplify the task of writing explanatory notes.
vii. The Project Team confirmed that the overall objective was to enhance the consultation process by cutting out unnecessary work and by establishing what was going to work best for the Committee and the Project. It would also be important to ensure that reviewers were not bombarded with a stream of bite-sized pieces with no idea when the next one was likely to turn up.
11. In the light of this discussion, the Committee were content for 'Plans for 2001/2002' to be published.
Item 3: Other business
12. The Chairman said that Helen Caldwell had bought along copies of the material that is likely to be included in the second and third Rewrite Bills. The intention was to give some idea of the likely length of these Bills, but because the material was likely to change dramatically as work progresses, it would serve no useful purpose to circulate the documents for detailed consideration. The Chairman invited Helen Caldwell to introduce discussion on this topic.
13. Helen Caldwell explained that the Capital Allowances Bill had been introduced in Parliament using prototype software, not the standard government software that has just been developed in order to produce the new official Parliamentary formats. But for the Royal Assent version the text had had to be converted so that it could be dealt with under the standard government software. The drafting team had also carry out a similar conversion exercise on other clauses on the stocks so that they could be dealt with under this new standard government software. As a result of this conversion work the team now had early prints of Bills 2 and 3..
14. For reasons to do with allocation of drafting team resources, the clauses destined for Bill 3 had been tackled first. The first print was produced in March and the team had just produced a second print. This Bill currently contains 545 clauses.
15. The drafting team had then turned to the conversion of the clauses
destined for Bill 2. The first print, which had only just been produced
contained 614 clauses, largely from Exposure Drafts 6 and 11 but also
some clauses on share ownership schemes that had not yet been published.
The number of clauses in these two Bills suggested that the decision to
tackle employment etc income in a separate Bill from other clauses on
trading income, savings and investment income and so on had been sound.
The total number of clauses in the two Bills as they stood would be difficult
to handle as a single Bill.
Keith Daniels
16. Keith Daniels would be stepping down from the Chartered Institute of Taxation Committee on 14 May and his place will be taken on the Consultative Committee by Wreford Voge. On behalf of all members of the Committee, the Chairman expressed thanks to Keith for his contributions to the discussions and wished him well for the future.
Next meeting
17. The next meeting of the Consultative Committee was likely to be on Tuesday 29 May when the Project hopes to have ready for discussion a work in progress paper on the Pay as You Earn Regulations.
18. As there was no further business the meeting closed.
DAVID MUTTON
Secretary to the Consultative Committee
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