Asked by: Tristan Osborne (Labour - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of simplifying tax-compliant investment structures for cryptoassets in innovative finance ISAs to include all cryptoassets; and if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of doing so on levels of involuntary non-compliance among retail investors.
Answered by Lucy Rigby - Economic Secretary (HM Treasury)
The government recognises the transformative potential for digital assets and blockchain technologies to drive economic growth in the UK and increase efficiencies across financial markets. That is why the government is bringing in legislation to establish a new financial services regulatory regime for cryptoassets. This will support growth in the UK by giving cryptoasset firms the regulatory certainty needed to invest here, and to help drive innovation in our financial services sector.
A draft consultation on legislation that enables the inclusion of cETNs in the IFISA is out now and will come int force in April 2026. While there are currently no plans to include all cryptoassets in IFISAs, any future consideration would take account of market maturity, stability, and the suitability of providing targeted tax reliefs alongside the new regulatory regime.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government, with regard to the report by the Office for Budget Responsibility, Economic and fiscal outlook, published on 26 November, what assessment they have made of the risks of elevated global equity valuations driven in part by AI technology stocks to the economy.
Answered by Lord Livermore - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The government does not comment on individual market moves.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is the government's official forecaster responsible for assessing the UK economic and fiscal outlook, including the macroeconomic impacts of policy and the risks to the UK outlook. In its November 2025 Economic and Fiscal Outlook, the OBR assessed the potential impacts of a shock to global equity prices. The OBR presented two scenarios with a potential peak impact on UK real GDP of 0.5%-0.6% relative to its central forecast.
HM Treasury maintains a comprehensive framework for assessing and managing risks to the economic and fiscal outlook. This includes systematic monitoring through internal risk processes and risk governance forums, and collaboration with other government departments. HM Treasury also works closely with the UK financial regulators to assess risks relating to financial markets.
Asked by: Martin Rhodes (Labour - Glasgow North)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps her Department is taking to ensure (i) people can access Disabled Person’s Trust accounts from high street banks and (ii) public bodies are using powers to ensure access for families of disabled people to those accounts.
Answered by Lucy Rigby - Economic Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone can access appropriate financial services and products, which is vital for financial resilience and wellbeing and ensuring that individuals are able to fully participate in the economy.
The provision of services such as trust accounts is a commercial decision for individual banks and building societies, and the Government does not intervene in these decisions.
Under the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) Consumer Duty, firms must consider the impact of withdrawing a product and take steps to mitigate harm. However, the FCA cannot compel firms to offer specific products.
The FCA is currently engaging with industry and stakeholders to explore issues around the provision of trust accounts for disabled people, and the Government supports this work.
Asked by: Tristan Osborne (Labour - Chatham and Aylesford)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether she has made an assessment of the potential impact of introducing clearer regulatory and tax frameworks for cryptoasset investment on a) high-skilled job creation and b) assets under management.
Answered by Lucy Rigby - Economic Secretary (HM Treasury)
The government recognises the transformative potential for digital assets and blockchain technologies to drive economic growth in the UK and increase efficiencies across financial markets.
That is why the government is bringing in legislation to establish a new financial services regulatory regime for cryptoassets. This will support growth in the UK by giving cryptoasset firms the regulatory certainty needed to invest here, and to help drive innovation in our financial services sector.
The government also keeps the tax framework for cryptoassets under review.
Asked by: Lord Kempsell (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether relief for pensioners will be considered as part of the consultation on the high value council tax surcharge.
Answered by Lord Livermore - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government will consult on options for support for those who may struggle to pay the High Value Council Tax Surcharge early in 2026. This will consider a range of options, to make sure any scheme is targeted and easy to access.
Asked by: Rebecca Paul (Conservative - Reigate)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate she has made of the time taken by UK firms to complete export documentation compared with firms in other OECD countries.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
Estimates of the administrative burden of import and export declarations for trade between Great Britain and the European Union are published at the following link: Estimating the customs administrative burden of 2022 declarations - GOV.UK.
No direct comparisons are available with other OECD countries due to the limited amount of information published.
HMRC is committed to making customs processes as simple as possible while ensuring effective checks are in place at the border, and we continue to work closely with the border industry to streamline processes and support the flow of legitimate goods.
Asked by: Neil Duncan-Jordan (Labour - Poole)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether she plans to remove the VAT exemption for vehicles adapted for use by disabled people.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The government has no plans to remove the VAT relief for vehicles designed for, or substantially and permanently adapted for, wheelchair or stretcher users.
At Budget 2025 the government announced tax changes to the Motability scheme. These changes will only impact new leases, and VAT reliefs within the scheme for weekly lease costs and vehicle resale will remain in place.
Asked by: David Chadwick (Liberal Democrat - Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps her department is taking to harmonise customs processes between the UK and EU.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government and HMRC continue to speak to the European Commission, including on topics such as customs processes to ensure that those processes are operating smoothly and to identify opportunities for future collaboration.
Asked by: Neil Duncan-Jordan (Labour - Poole)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether she is taking steps to ensure that people affected by interest rate hedging products are compensated.
Answered by Lucy Rigby - Economic Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government recognises the impact that the historic mis‑selling of interest rate hedging products (IRHPs) has had on many SMEs, and we acknowledge the distress this caused.
Responsibility for regulating the sale of these products, and for ensuring appropriate redress, rests with the independent Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The FCA required the major banks to carry out a comprehensive review of past IRHP sales. This led to around 14,000 businesses receiving a total of £2.2 billion in redress.
The Government believes this industry‑wide redress scheme broadly met its objectives in delivering compensation to businesses that were mis‑sold these products. The Government has always been clear that mis‑selling of financial products is completely unacceptable. That is why we supported both the FCA’s redress scheme and its decision to commission an independent ‘lessons‑learned’ review of its supervisory interventions in relation to IRHPs. The FCA accepted the majority of the recommendations from that review, and, in light of the review’s findings, it also carefully considered whether further steps should be taken to facilitate access to redress for customers who had initially been excluded.
More generally, the Government continues to keep the financial services regulatory framework under review, working closely with the FCA to help ensure that consumers and businesses are protected and have clear, effective routes to compensation where misconduct occurs.
Asked by: Helen Whately (Conservative - Faversham and Mid Kent)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much insurance premium tax was collected from each type of insurance product in the latest year for which data is available.
Answered by Lucy Rigby - Economic Secretary (HM Treasury)
HMRC publishes annual statistics on IPT receipts and liabilities within the publication titled “Insurance Premium Tax (IPT) Bulletin” which can be found at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/insurance-premium-tax-ipt-bulletin
However HMRC does not hold the information requested as to how much insurance premium tax was collected from each type of insurance product.
This is because Insurance Premium Tax returns do not include a breakdown of the tax due on different types of products, as this may impose an excessive administrative burden on customers.
HMRC does however include the split between the standard rate and higher rate of insurance premium tax as part of our published annual statistics on IPT receipts and liabilities.