My right honourable friend the Financial Secretary (Jane Kennedy) has made the following Written Statement.

I am pleased to tell the House that Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs will shortly publish a draft of the Tax Law Rewrite Project's fifth Bill, the Corporation Tax Bill, which is the first of two Bills which will rewrite substantially the whole of the primary legislation relating to corporation tax. This Bill will cover the basic provisions relating to the charge to corporation tax and includes the main provisions used by companies in computing their income. It is planned to introduce the Bill in Parliament by the end of 2008. The project's four previous Bills were enacted as the Capital Allowances Act 2001, the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003, the Income Tax (Trading and Other Income) Act 2005 and the Income Tax Act 2007.

The scope of this new Bill and the timing of consultation were agreed with the project's consultative and steering committees which together include the main representative bodies and other users. It benefits from a style and structure that has been developed as a result of consultation over the previous rewrite Bills. Earlier versions of the legislation in this new Bill have been revised in the light of comments and suggestions from tax professionals and others who engaged in the consultation process. There has been extensive dialogue on them between the project team and business interests, tax practitioners, the legal profession and HMRC specialists.