VAT: Building Repairs and Maintenance
Debate between Baroness Penn and Viscount Brookeborough(1 year ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I would not want to interfere with an ongoing police investigation. My answer was not quite as the noble Lord termed it, but it may have reflected that his question goes slightly beyond the scope of this Question.
Viscount Brookeborough (CB)
My Lords, this is not a devolved issue, and it therefore affects Northern Ireland as well. Does the Minister not agree that conservation of the countryside and the built environment is a very high priority? The effect of continued government policy along this line, especially in Northern Ireland, is that a lot of older houses—nice heritage houses—are ignored, and people simply build new houses beside them. When visitors come to Northern Ireland, they say, “What is this? It is bungalow blight”. There are new houses everywhere, and no wonder, because of successive government policies. Will the Minister please assure us that the Government will look at this anew?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, the Government keep all taxes under review, but there are no plans to change the VAT treatment of repair and maintenance. The noble Viscount made the important point that we need to ensure that the maintenance of heritage and other older buildings in particular is supported, and we do that through a number of ways other than VAT relief. For example, approximately £206 million of the £2 billion culture recovery fund supported heritage sites and organisations through the pandemic, and several other sources of funding from government arm’s-length bodies are available for historic buildings in need.
Ambulance Services and National Heatwave Emergency
Debate between Baroness Penn and Viscount Brookeborough
Baroness Penn (Con)
The noble Baroness is right that, as well as additional training and recruitment, retention will be a really important part of the picture. The Government have put in place additional support save-line3for ambulance staff to ensure that retention continues. My understanding is that the target to train 3,000 paramedic graduates a year nationally between 2021 and 2024 will help the domestic paramedic workforce meet the future demands on the service. I also reassure the noble Baroness that ambulance staff and support staff have increased by almost 40% since February 2010.
Viscount Brookeborough (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest in that I am a member of the Order of St John in Northern Ireland—and therefore St John Ambulance—and we do not have a heatwave. Can I ask the Minister: what consultations have gone on with volunteer ambulance services in England, of which there are several, what has been the result of those and how many ambulances are they prepared to put on standby in order to support the ambulance service?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I know that both the Department for Health and Social Care and NHS England have a strong working relationship with the organisations that the noble Viscount has mentioned. On the detail of that work in terms of the heat health alert, I will have to write to him.