16:00 - The House divided: - Ayes: 236 / Noes: 322 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Steve Barclay)
There is a shared desire across the House to ensure that the correct amount of tax is paid and that tax is not evaded, not least because the public services on which we all rely in our constituencies depend on that happening. Since 2010, we have introduced over 100 new measures to tackle tax avoidance, evasion and other forms of non- compliance, which, alongside HMRC’s other compliance work, have secured and protected significant revenue that would otherwise have been lost.
In 2018-19, HMRC brought in an additional £34.1 billion that would otherwise have gone unpaid, including £1.8 billion from the wealthiest individuals and £10 billion from the largest businesses. Our tax gap is at 5.6%—lower now than at any point before 2010 and one of the lowest in the world. To put that in context, in 2005, for example, under a Labour Government, the tax gap was as high as 7.2%. Action has been taken, but there is a shared desire across the House to continue to take further measures on this.
We have achieved that progress through a mixture of enforcement action for those seeking to avoid payment of what is due and through reform, because not all the tax gap is due to malicious behaviour. It can also be due to basic errors, whether that means the data that is used to calculate tax or how the calculations have been assessed. HMRC estimates, for example, that £10 billion of the current £35 billion tax gap is due to taxpayer error rather than evasion or avoidance, all of which shows that the Government have an important role in helping more individuals and businesses to get their tax right first time. A further £4 billion stems from firms going bust while owing tax. Likewise, other areas of the £35 billion tax gap are due to long-standing issues on which there will be a shared desire—for example, tackle tobacco smuggling, which is not a new issue under this Government, alcohol smuggling, and the tax lost through the hidden economy. Many of these are long-standing issues, but the crux of the matter is that the tax gap is at a near record low, thanks in large part to the actions taken by my predecessors in the Treasury.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I wonder whether the Minister thinks that there is a strong ethos of enforcement within HMRC, especially on landfill tax fraud, which I will speak about. In a case I was involved in, HMRC was not interested unless there was more than £20 million a year in evasion. Does that not send a signal that some people can get away with evading large amounts of tax, because there is not an ethos in HMRC to properly investigate?
Steve Barclay
As a point of principle, HMRC always seeks to collect the tax that it is due. One of the areas of innovation—I will come on to such areas as Making Tax Digital—is about making that easier for HMRC, but I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman is making a point more about fraud than error. The underlying principle is that HMRC always looks to collect the tax that it is due, but if he has a specific point on a constituency basis, I know that my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury will always be keen to discuss it with him, because he has a zeal for cracking down on any such practice.
The Government have done much to squeeze the tax gap: by ensuring that companies increasingly pay their way; by cracking down on offshore avoidance and evasion; by tackling tax avoidance schemes; by helping people to get their taxes right first time; and by investing in HMRC’s toolbox. If one looks at the actions being taken in terms of large businesses, they will see that there is an exceptional level of scrutiny. At any one time, HMRC is engaged with half the UK’s largest businesses and we have introduced specific measures to shape behaviours. For example, the diverted profits tax was introduced in 2015 to ensure that multinational companies pay UK tax in line with their UK activities. Under our rules, those companies either declare the correct amount of profits in the UK and pay the full amount of corporation tax on them, or they risk being charged a higher amount of diverted profits tax at a rate of 25%. It raises tax directly through encouraging changes in groups’ behaviour that, in turn, leads to increased tax receipts.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
The Chief Secretary quoted a figure of 25% as a potential penalty. Will he tell us how much has been raised from those penalties so far? Has anyone been penalised as a result of failing to fall into line with this new incentive?
Steve Barclay
It is always good, 10 days into the job, to get specific challenging questions on the detail, but to answer that question—and I do not want to tempt hon. Members who usually come with in detailed questions such as that—the tax has raised £5 billion in additional revenue. On this occasion, I can satisfy the House, but I do not want to tempt fate with too many colleagues on this outing.
It is interesting that attitudes in large companies are changing. I am sure that there will be Members who will want them to change further, but since 2013 the proportion of large businesses agreeing that tax avoidance is acceptable has more than halved, moving from 45% to 21%. There is clearly more to do, but that shows a change in attitude within many large companies.
Kevin Hollinrake
One of the measures that the Government introduced in 2017 was a corporate offence of failing to prevent tax evasion, which certainly has had an effect on advisers. Will my right hon. Friend consider expanding that failure to prevent offence to include economic crime and money laundering, which would further narrow the tax gap?
Steve Barclay
As my hon. Friend will know, before coming to the House I worked in the field of trying to prevent money laundering in our financial institutions. As a principle, we are always keen to look at that, but he is right to draw attention to the measures that we have taken, including on the professional responsibilities of advisers, whether that relates to the property business—in businesses linked to his previous senior business experience —or accountants, lawyers and others.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend accept that this ambition is not confined to our domestic policy, but that we have led the world in driving forward the agenda internationally on tax evasion, and what is more, that we have provided the Treasury’s services to many poor countries so that they can collect their own taxes?
Steve Barclay
Not only is my right hon. Friend point absolutely right in the point he makes, but he draws attention to the measures taken in 2014—when he was a key figure in Government—through the UK’s G8 presidency, when we drove the adoption of greater tax transparency through the automatic exchange of information. It is part of the UK’s role at the forefront of a number of international bodies, including the G20 and the OECD, to improve tax transparency at an international level. Across the House, Members recognise that many of the measures that are required to reduce the tax gap, which I think is a common goal across the House, need international action, not just action on a domestic level.
Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)
This is the first time that I have spoken to the Minister in his current job and I welcome him to it. I see him a bit as a poacher turned gamekeeper, because he was certainly an extremely determined interrogator of many of the big corporations that we think are still not paying the right amount of tax. I hope he still accepts from our interrogations of Google, for example, that although it pays a bit of tax, it is a very small percentage of the profits it makes in this jurisdiction. To help us, we could enact a measure that has been passed by this House, which is country-by-country reporting, which would enable us to see the economic activity of companies within this jurisdiction, the profits they make here and so the tax for which they are liable. Why does he not enact that measure?
Steve Barclay
First, I pay tribute to the work the right hon. Lady did, particularly through her chairmanship of the Public Accounts Committee, on a cross-party basis to bring transparency to these issues. A key driver behind measures the Government have taken in recent years has been a desire for more international transparency, which is at the forefront of many of the concerns the House has had in the past.
Thanks to UK leadership, more than 100 jurisdictions, including—[Interruption.] I will come on to that. Within the right hon. Lady’s point, and within many of her questions, which I have sat and listened to many times, was a desire for transparency, so it is germane to her point to draw the House’s attention to the UK’s leadership in securing the commitment of more than 100 jurisdictions, including Switzerland and all the Crown dependencies and overseas territories with financial centres, to automatically exchanging financial account information under the common reporting standard. HMRC now automatically receives the details of offshore financial accounts held by UK taxpayers. As I understand it, when the PAC looked at many of these issues, that information was not available to HMRC.
We have also increased the penalties and consequences for those who devise, enable or use tax avoidance schemes. I draw the House’s attention, for example, to the disclosure of tax avoidance schemes regime, the general anti-abuse rule and the system of follower notices and accelerated payments, the last of which alone has brought in over £8.7 billion[Official Report, 3 March 2020, Vol. 672, c. 6MC.]. Since 2016, HMRC has had a dedicated fraud investigation service to ensure that no taxpayer can get away with tax fraud. I am sure that service will be keen to pick up on points raised by right hon. and hon. Members in this debate.
We are also seeking to ensure that more firms get their tax right first time, because the £35 billion tax gap is not simply one of evasion; as I say, it also includes a significant amount of error. Since last April, businesses have been using the making tax digital service for VAT, which has many benefits: it helps firms to get their tax right first time; it saves businesses time and inconvenience; it cuts the cost of government; and it makes it easier to tackle fraud, error, evasion and avoidance. The impact of Making Tax Digital is forecast to deliver an additional £1.2 billion to 2023-24. Clearly, this plays an important role in reducing that £10 billion element of the £35 billion overall tax gap.
We have also strengthened HMRC with the extra £2 billion invested since 2010 to tackle tax avoidance, evasion and other forms of non-compliance.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
On HMRC’s resources, can the Chief Secretary to the Treasury therefore explain why its wealthy unit currently has 961 members of staff, which is a reduction in 80 posts from its 2018 figure? That would suggest that HMRC could have more resources piled into it to tackle this issue.
Steve Barclay
The hon. Member picks up on a point the shadow Chancellor made in his opening remarks about the total number of staff, but the key issue is how staff are deployed and what technology we are using. I was just referring to Making Tax Digital. If tax is being filed through the Making Tax Digital platform, the number of staff that HMRC uses will change; that profile will change. We now have about 25,000 staff dedicated to tackling tax avoidance, evasion and other forms of non-compliance, and the proof of the staffing levels is reflected in the fact that we have a near record-low tax gap—far lower than for many years under the previous Labour Administration.
Since 2010, our criminal investigations have prevented the loss of more than £15 billion and resulted in more than 5,400 individuals being criminally prosecuted and convicted. In 2018-19, HMRC investigations secured nearly 650 criminal convictions for tax and duty fraud, resulting in numerous custodial sentences. HMRC has used billions of pieces of data, combined with analytics, to identify where tax is most at risk of going unpaid and to make tailored, targeted and proportionate interventions. Technology and capabilities have moved on, therefore, but, as I am sure the Financial Secretary will mention later, what continues is the dedication of staff within HMRC, who share the House’s desire to close the tax gap and ensure that people do not evade their responsibilities.
Mr Kevan Jones
On the analytics, what is HMRC doing to track individuals who set up companies, fold them after two or three years and then open up new companies? A constituent came to me with a case in the cosmetic surgery industry where the same individuals moved from one company to another while owing huge amounts to the Inland Revenue and to local councils in council tax. What is HMRC doing to track these individuals? The three individuals involved in the company my constituent highlighted to me have evaded huge amounts of tax.
Steve Barclay
The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point about the moving target of criminality and the ingenuity of approaches to evade tax or abuse the tax system. That is partly why I referred earlier to the fraud service set up within HMRC in 2016. It is also a key part of how technology is used in a dynamic way within HMRC to tackle that moving target of criminality. As I said in answer to his earlier intervention, if in their surgeries Members are told of case involving firms or local authorities in their constituencies, that intelligence is obviously of relevance to colleagues, and I can commit that the Financial Secretary would take those forward.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
The right hon. Gentleman will be aware of the situation in my constituency, where the HMRC offices are being closed and moved to Edinburgh, at significant cost to the taxpayer. One of the key issues the unions raised with me time and again was the loss of expertise. The services and expertise of the many long-serving staff who cannot move for various reasons—financial reasons, caring responsibilities, and so on—will be lost, so there is a double cost to the Treasury. Does he not consider it a grossly bad decision by this Government?
Steve Barclay
The right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), when she chaired the PAC, looked at whether the Government were managing their estate efficiently. Through the PAC, the House regularly raised the concern that the Government were not properly managing their cost base by rationalising the estate, and often those concerns related to PFI—I do not know if the case the hon. Member has raised relates to PFI.
Hannah Bardell
The Pyramids, in Livingston in West Lothian, where the HMRC offices were based, was one of the most high-tech and best-connected sites in Scotland, yet the Government are moving them to Edinburgh to one of the most expensive sites in Scotland. It makes no sense financially, and the PAC agreed. There is still an opportunity for the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to rethink this decision or create a hub in West Lothian to save those jobs, which were put there as a result of the closure of Motorola.
Steve Barclay
I will not comment on that individual decision, which I have not been involved in, but the House has in the past questioned whether the Government have been moving quickly on the wider principle of using our estate in the most value-for-money manner, by pooling expertise to work more efficiently and offering career progression through the greater flexibility that bigger teams in bigger centres often allow. It is right that we look at what the right estate mix is and at how we can pool expertise to achieve our common goal of closing the tax gap, particularly by using technology.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
Would my right hon. Friend consider setting a target to be met by the end of the current Parliament, to give HMRC greater encouragement to introduce whatever further measures and actions are needed? Perhaps he would commit himself to a relatively gentle target of, perhaps, 5%.
Steve Barclay
The target is a gap that is as narrow as possible, and I do not think HMRC’s commitment to that can be questioned. As I have said, the gap is now at a record low, but I entirely share my hon. Friend’s desire for us continue our efforts to reduce it further, because there is a common purpose: to reinvest that money in levelling up all parts of the United Kingdom and in our public services.
Part of this requires domestic action, but part of the action must be international. That is why in the 2018 Budget we announced 21 measures forecast to raise a further £2.1 billion by 2023-24, including measures to bear down on those using offshore structures to hide their profits and avoid tax; it is why the UK is at the forefront of international action to address global tax avoidance and evasion, including the OECD’s base erosion and profit shifting project, which seeks to align the taxation of profits with the underlying economic activities and value creation; and, indeed, it is why in 2016 we led the world with the first public registry of company beneficial ownership in the G20, to provide for analysis of suspicious patterns of behaviour, and to disclose inconsistencies in supposedly factual information and reveal wrongdoing.
Kevin Hollinrake
This is not just about the money. It is also about a fair and level playing field for everyone in the country. We know that Google turns over about 10 billion quid in the UK, we know that its international profit margin is about 22% and that 19% corporation tax on that should be £418 million, and we know that it pays about £67 million. Will all the additional measures that my right hon. Friend has described, along with those previously implemented, narrow that gap so that everyone pays a fair amount of tax?
Steve Barclay
My hon. Friend has been in the House long enough to know that Treasury Ministers will not comment on individual companies. However, there is a wider principle, which I think was reflected in the shadow Chancellor’s opening remarks and on which there is agreement across the House. We all want the tax gap to be narrowed, and we celebrate the HMRC’s work in achieving a near record low, but we continue to think about what further measures can be taken, and I have described to the House a wide range of measures taken by the Government in recent years.
It is in everyone’s interests that we continue to crack down on evasion and avoidance and continue to narrow the tax gap. Doing so will allow us to invest in services, and to level up and unleash the potential of every corner of the United Kingdom. That is why we have done everything that we have done so far, it is why we will continue to keep searching for improvements, and it is why we will continue to invest in HMRC’s powers following the forthcoming comprehensive spending review.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)
I am delighted to wind up the debate for the Government. It has been a fascinating debate. There has, of course, been extensive discussion of the issues of tax avoidance and evasion, but we have also heard about lemon meringue pie and West Bromwich Albion, and we have heard two sparkling maiden speeches, for which I thank my new hon. Friends. It has been a cornucopia of joy for everyone interested in these issues.
Before I deal with the debate itself, may I dwell for a second on the Tax Justice Network report, which is central to the motion? We are repeatedly enjoined to trust it as an authoritative assessment of the UK’s position, but I suggest that nothing could be further from the truth. Those who look closely at the report will see that it generates absurd outcomes. In its list of 133 jurisdictions, we supposedly come 12th in terms of offensiveness, yet near the bottom we see Brunei, Vanuatu and Liberia. Is anyone seriously suggesting that this country is a less robust and effectively transparent tax jurisdiction than those?
The reason for that mistake is the fact that the findings are based on an entirely flawed methodology which accepts the proposition that the UK is one of the least secret jurisdictions in the world. I believe it is the eighth least secret, according to the report. Because its authors have some fudge factor, or financial multiplier, they have somehow able to deduce this extraordinary further conclusion. In fact, it is bogus. As was pointed out by a partner at Clifford Chance, the excellent Mr Dan Neidle— [Hon. Members: “That is not an answer.”] He is a tax partner at Clifford Chance who was offering his view, but that was a nice try from the Opposition Front Bench. He is quoted as saying that
“Britain still scored badly despite making significant strides ahead of its global peers on fostering greater”
—tax—
“transparency.
This, he said, was because the report calculates its final secrecy score based on the volume of financial activity conducted by non-residents.”
That is, of course, further to the issue of the core secrecy of the regime, and, as I have said, ours is one of the most transparent.
The report is bogus. It is based on a flawed methodology, and one that is itself secret to the point of being hard to scrutinise. However, I will say one more thing about it: although bogus in many respects, it does accurately place much of the blame for the current situation on the very soft-touch regulatory regime initiated under the Labour Government of 1997. That much, at least, is accurate.
Let me now deal with the main topic of the debate. Of course it is right to focus on the size of the tax gap —the gap between tax owed and tax paid—and I am delighted that it has fallen to a near record low of 5.6%. In his excellent speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) asked whether we could introduce a target. It is, of course a retrospective measure. HMRC’s attempt to get close to this point involves the concept of compliance yield, amounting to £34.5 billion this year, which is itself a stretching target. However, the good news is that the 5.6% target is some 0.7% below the average of the last five years of the Labour Administration. That is about £4 billion of tax which we, I am pleased to say, are collecting, and which, had they stayed in office, they would not have collected. It has also rightly been pointed out that at the last Budget the Government announced 21 new measures to tackle avoidance, but of course they were voted down by the Opposition. Last year, these compliance activities brought in some additional £34 billion, and since 2010 compliance activities have secured and protected more than £200 billion of tax revenue. That is a record of which we can all be proud.
It is an interesting fact that, when he came to consider the loan charge, Sir Amyas Morse focused on the earliest date on which he believed the charge could be properly validated in law. That date was December 2010. In other words, we supposedly had 10 years of loan charge non-compliance under the Labour party, which received no legal justification or support. I do not actually believe that that is true. HMRC was correct in chasing those people as it did, and that will be proved, but the fact is that Sir Amyas himself has pointed to the slapdash manner in which the last Government addressed this whole issue.
Let me pick on some of the important comments that have been made in the debate. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) was absolutely right to highlight the importance of the quality of data in our system. He was also right to focus on the diverted profits tax and the digital services tax as examples of activities that we are undertaking in order to improve compliance. The right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) raised a series of important points, and I want to spend time on those. We have discussed them in an Adjournment debate, and it is interesting that she has come back to them today. She is absolutely right to say that the centrality of the tax system should be one of fairness. It should not be one of penalising any particular section of the public—rich or poor, wherever they live, whatever they might be doing.
The right hon. Lady asked about public registers of beneficial ownership. It is important for me to say that the law enforcement agencies need to have access to the information they need to tackle money laundering. That is what really matters at the core of this. The Government have ensured that the recently established register of trusts is specifically designed to capture overseas trusts for that reason. She is right to focus, as did the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), on the progress that has been made on public registers of beneficial information. The right hon. Member for Barking raised the question of beneficial owners of overseas entities. She will know that that register will be the first of its type in the world, and we will go further to increase transparency in the UK property market. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is the lead Department on this, and it has published a draft Bill that has undergone pre-legislative scrutiny.
The right hon. Lady also raised the question of creative sector tax relief. She will understand that in order to qualify for film and high-end tax reliefs, businesses have to incur a proportion of their production costs in the UK and pass a test for cultural content administered by the British Film Institute. I cannot comment on the specific circumstances of individual companies, but she ought to be aware that HMRC carries out a detailed check of each claim for creative sector tax relief, and that large businesses are subjected to an exceptional level of scrutiny. The point is that large businesses, like all other taxpayers, should pay the taxes due under UK law and implement compliance checks where necessary.
The right hon. Lady talked about country-by-country registration. Private country-by-country registration is of course in place. The problem lies in securing the international agreement required to roll out the public registration. It demands a measure of international agreement, and that is something that we continue to focus on. That is a Conservative act of leadership that we are still in the process of taking forward. She is right to pick on some other areas. I would just point out that the disclosure of tax avoidance schemes, the promoters of tax avoidance scheme rules—which can lead to significant penalties—and the enabler penalties that we put in place are all important, and I anticipate that will be strengthening them further over time. Let me pick up a couple of other quick points—
Jesse Norman
I am afraid that there is no time at all to do that, but I will pick up a couple of further points. Colleagues quite rightly had concerns about HMRC resourcing, and they are welcome to write to me if they want to discuss specific topics.
I mentioned the important point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley, and I am pleased that he offered his qualified support for IR35. He is right that it is an important measure, and it will collect something like £1 billion of tax a year by the end of the period. As he will be aware, the Government are preparing to legislate to clarify the status of employment from a business standpoint, which is proper and correct.
I am surprised that the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) was told that he could not be told anything. Of course, HMRC cannot discuss specific issues, but I hope that he will have a more interesting conversation than that.
I thanked my hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Rob Roberts) for his constructive attitude, and he was right to focus on the privilege of paying tax. There is an element of truth in that, and we should properly defend it. With that in mind, let me sit down.
Question put.