On Wednesday the 2008 finance bill went through its final parliamentary stages. As a former chancellor, I am unsurprised by the accompanying chorus critical of government tax policy. But in the past year we have seen a quite exceptional sequence of provocative policymaking. A series of rushed and ill-considered tax proposals has resulted in a cumbersome bill that will add yet more complexity to our creaking tax system. As employees, employers or investors, we will suffer the consequences in higher costs, greater uncertainty and lower economic growth. And as citizens, we will all suffer from the cumulative damage to the UK’s reputation as a stable environment in which to do business.

My interest in tax simplification goes back many years. As chancellor, I liked to think that the abolition of capital transfer tax, development land tax, national insurance supplement and multi-rate value added tax made some contribution to the cause of simplicity. More recently, I have been intimately involved in the work of the Tax Law Rewrite Project. In spite of the undoubted success of that project, it has by necessity left the substance of tax law untouched, and as a result has not been able to stem the rapid increase in complexity that we have witnessed in recent years.