§ Mr. TrotterTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what considerations he has given to the codification of the United Kingdom tax system, along the lines of that in the United States of America; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. Norman Lamont[holding answer 2 March 1989]: Any such change to the present system would need to be considered in the wider context of statute law as a whole. I refer my hon. Friend to the report of the Renton committee (Cmnd. 6053, presented to Parliament on 7 May 1975) for the arguments which led ito recommend against continuous codification of statutue law. It also looked specifically at fiscal legislation but was not persuaded that it deserved special treatment and I see no reason to depart from that view. When drafting legislation, parliamentary counsel do use the textual amendment approach where practicable. This is a convenient and well-understood drafting technique which helps to reduce difficulties for practitioners. In particular it allows related tax legislation in different Finance Acts to be brought together in the Taxes Acts which the Inland Revenue updates and publishes annually.