Business of the House

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and James Murray

Thursday 25th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

And I expect the hon. Gentleman wanted to ask for a debate on the matter.

[James Murray]

That would be lovely; a debate would be great as well.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Thank you, we shall take that as read on this particular occasion.

Points of Order

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and James Murray

Tuesday 19th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. We will now calm down. [Interruption.] I do not need the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) at the back to tell other Members to sit down. If the hon. Member for Rother Valley has to sit down, I will tell him to sit down.

Let us just clear up this matter in its various aspects. First of all, it is understandable that the hon. Member for Rother Valley is angry about his family being brought into it. I am quite sure that the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne, on the Opposition Front Bench, will wish to withdraw that part of his remarks and allow the House to concentrate on the fact that he does enter privately the hon. Gentleman’s constituency frequently. [Interruption.] Will the hon. Member for Rother Valley please be quiet and allow me to answer the question that he raised? Now, will the right hon. Gentleman remove from his remarks the mention of the hon. Gentleman’s family? [Interruption.]

I think we are getting a little confused here, largely because there is noise and when people shout I cannot hear what other people are saying. I think there has been some confusion, so let us just sort it out. The right hon. Gentleman did not say anything about your family, Mr Stafford. He said something about his own family and where they live. It is up to him—[Interruption.] Will you stop talking while I am answering the question? The right hon. Gentleman did not say anything about Mr Stafford’s family. If he had done that, that would be quite wrong and I would be the first to defend Mr Stafford. What we are talking about is a situation where Mr Stafford is quite rightly annoyed that the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne and the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley have, on several occasions, gone into his constituency not on private business, but on party business or otherwise. Where that occurs, it should not.

For the guidance of Members—although I know that the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne does not need it, because he is a long-standing Member of this House and one who normally behaves with absolute honour in all that he does—we have the “Rules of behaviour and courtesies in the House of Commons”. This little booklet was recently sent, in its newly amended version, to all Members of the House. Quite often, when Mr Speaker and those of us who occupy the Chair have to deal with points of order here in the Chamber, it is because Members have not read it, or they might have read it or looked at the cover but not taken in its contents. I would be most grateful if everybody would look at it. It was sent very recently. This is a new version, published in November 2023. It is one of my few published books! I joke that it is mine, but it is not mine. It was put together by the House, but Mr Speaker and the Deputy Speakers had very considerable input into it. It would be helpful if Members were to take on board what it says.

The hon. Gentleman, Mr Stafford, has made a perfectly reasonable point of order. It has been responded to by the right hon. Gentleman, Mr Healey. I think we can leave it at that. Thank you.

[James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. On 22 November, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) said in this Chamber that

“taxes for the average worker have gone down by £1,000.”—[Official Report, 22 November 2023; Vol. 741, c. 360.]

On 30 November, she said:

“Taxes for the average worker will have gone down by £1,000 since 2010.”—[Official Report, 30 November 2023; Vol. 741, c. 1084.]

In a subsequent letter to me, on 15 December, she effectively admitted that taxes had not actually gone down as she earlier claimed. She now claimed instead that taxes for the average worker are £1,000 lower than they would have been. However, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has refused to correct the record so far. I would be grateful for your advice, Madam Deputy Speaker, on whether there is any guidance available to Ministers on the circumstances in which they should seek to make such a correction.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice of his point of order. As Mr Speaker has said many times from this Chair and I have repeated, the accuracy of Ministers’ statements in the House is not a matter for the Chair. The interpretation of statistics is a matter of interpretation and it is very often the case that one Member views a statistic from one angle and another Member views the same statistic from a completely different angle. The hon. Gentleman has made his point very clearly and I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench will have heard it.

Autumn Statement Resolutions

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and James Murray

Wednesday 22nd November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

That is a perfectly reasonable point of order and I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising it. I was listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s speech and had begun to think to myself, “That’s strange. The hon. Gentleman is addressing a point that was not in the Chancellor’s statement.” However, I have not stopped him, because—[Interruption.] I do not need any help, thank you very much. I have not stopped the hon. Gentleman because this is a very wide-ranging debate, and I have made the assumption that he was using an example of something that the Government decided not to do. Possibly he was about to state his agreement with the Government, or something along those lines. I was waiting to hear what he had to say.

[James Murray]

Thank you very much for your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker. In fact, I was about to say that we welcome the fact that the Government appear to have finally realised that it would have been the wrong tax cut at the wrong time. I am sorry that it makes the hon. Lady so uncomfortable to talk about this, because, frankly, it speaks volumes about this Government’s instincts that they entertained that plan for so long.

My central point is that Government should not be wasting time daydreaming about an inheritance tax cut. With inflation still double the Bank of England’s target, they should be resolutely focused on what they can do now to tackle the cost of living crisis. The truth is that anything they offer now is far too little, far too late. The Conservatives simply cannot tackle the cost of living crisis that their fingerprints are all over.

Ten years ago, the Conservatives slashed energy efficiency programmes, after which insulation rates plummeted by 92%. As a result, millions of households across the country have had to pay energy bills £500 a year greater than they should be.

Last year, the Conservatives’ utterly reckless approach to the economy set off market chaos and interest rate rises. The Bank of England has said that those re-mortgaging will see their monthly payments rise by £220, and 1.5 million families will be hit by this Tory mortgage penalty next year.

Finance Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and James Murray

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 24th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 6—Review of impact on corporation tax revenues of global minimum rate of corporation tax—

‘The Chancellor of the Exchequer must within six months of Royal Assent lay before the House of Commons an assessment of the effect on corporation tax revenues in 2022 and 2023 of a global minimum corporation tax rate set at 21%.’

This new clause would require the Government to publish an assessment of the revenue effect of a global minimum corporation tax rate of 21%.

New clause 12—Review of impact of Act on investment—

‘(1) The Chancellor of the Exchequer must review the impact on investment in parts of the United Kingdom and regions of England of the changes made by this Act and lay a report of that review before the House of Commons within six months of the passing of this Act.

(2) A review under this section must consider the effects of the changes on—

(a) business investment,

(b) employment,

(c) productivity,

(d) GDP growth, and

(e) poverty.

(3) A review under this section must consider the following scenarios—

(a) the United Kingdom reaches an agreement with OECD countries on a minimum international level of corporation tax, and

(b) the United Kingdom does not reach an agreement with OECD countries on a minimum international level of corporation tax.

(4) In this section—

“parts of the United Kingdom” means—

(a) England,

(b) Scotland,

(c) Wales, and

(d) Northern Ireland;

and “regions of England” has the same meaning as that used by the Office for National Statistics.’

This new clause would require a report on the effect of the changes in the Act on investment, comparing scenarios in which (a) the United Kingdom reaches an agreement with OECD countries on a minimum international level of corporation tax and (b) the United Kingdom does not reach an agreement with OECD countries on a minimum international level of corporation tax on various economic indicators.

New clause 22—Eligibility for tax reliefs—

‘(1) For the purposes of Clauses 9 to 14 and 109 to 111 no tax reliefs shall apply to companies registered or with subsidiary companies registered in countries or jurisdictions listed in the EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes.

(2) The Secretary of State shall also have the power to list additional jurisdictions or countries as non-cooperative jurisdictions for the purposes of subsection (1) that he/she perceives to be non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes.’

This new clause would stop companies registered, or with subsidiary companies registered, in tax havens from benefiting from the UK Government tax reliefs in this Bill.

Amendment 1, in clause 9, page 4, line 2, at end insert

“provided that any such company which has more than £1 million in qualifying expenditure must also make a climate-related financial disclosure in line with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures within the 2021/22 tax year.”

This amendment would, in respect of companies with qualifying expenditure of over £1 million, add a condition relating to climate-related financial disclosure to the conditions that must be met in order for expenditure to qualify for super-deductions.

Amendment 29, page 4, line 2, at end insert

“provided that any such company must also not be liable to the digital services tax”.

Amendment 30, page 4, line 2, at end insert

“provided that any such company which has more than £1 million in qualifying expenditure must also—

(i) adhere to International Labour Organisation convention 98 on the right to organise and collective bargaining, and

(ii) be certified or be in the process of being certified by the Living Wage Foundation as a living wage employer.”

Government amendment 2.

Amendment 31, page 5, line 15, at end insert—

“(11) Expenditure shall not be qualifying expenditure under this section if it is incurred by a company which has at any time been involved in arrangements giving rise to a liability for diverted profits tax, or which would give rise to such a liability but for the effect of section 83 of Finance Act 2015.

(12) For the purposes of subsection (11), involvement in arrangements shall include being connected within the meaning of section 1122 Corporation Tax Act 2010 to any company involved in such arrangements.”

This amendment would bar multinationals with a history of corporate tax avoidance from accessing super-deductions.

[James Murray]

The vaccine has given us all hope, but we know that the health crisis from covid is far from over, and the impact on jobs, businesses and the economy resulting from the pandemic will be with us for a long time to come. People across our country and British businesses that have been struggling want to be able to get back on their feet. This Bill should have offered them the support they need to do so, but instead the Government chose to make half of all people in the UK pay more income tax, and its headline measure for businesses, quickly and with good reason, earned the nickname, “the Amazon tax cut”. This Amazon tax cut was proudly announced by the Chancellor as the new super deduction—a £25 billion tax cut that he has said represents the biggest two-year business tax cut in modern British history. What he was less keen to make clear is that this tax cut is not targeted at British businesses that have been struggling in the outbreak, but stands to benefit some of the biggest multinational tech firms that have done very well indeed over the past year or so.

As we have heard during previous debates on the Bill, small and medium-sized businesses can already benefit from the annual investment allowance. That allowance, extended by clause 15, offers a 100% tax break on investment up to £1 million, and we know that it will benefit almost all businesses already. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury has said exactly that. He stated very clearly in a written ministerial statement on 12 November last year that the annual investment allowance:

“Simplifies taxes for the 99% of businesses investing up to £1 million on plant and machinery assets each year.”

We pushed the Government on this matter in Committee of the Whole House, when the Financial Secretary claimed:

“The super deduction benefits all businesses that are in a position to take advantage of the eligible deduction it provides”.—[Official Report, 19 April 2021; Vol. 692, c. 764.]

He will know, however, that the 99% of businesses already benefiting from the annual investment allowance will benefit only marginally from the new super deduction.

The real winners of the super deduction were identified in Committee of the Whole House by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), who made the powerful argument that it will most benefit

“the companies with oven-ready capital investment plans, benefiting from the increased demand that they have enjoyed over the last torrid year—companies such as…the notorious tax avoider Amazon.”—[Official Report, 19 April 2021; Vol. 692, c. 751.]

As that phrase reminds us, Amazon already avoids paying much corporation tax in the UK at all by shifting profits to low-tax countries overseas—I will return to that point shortly—but it is depressing that, through his super deduction, the Chancellor is finishing the job Amazon started and wiping out the last little bit of tax it pays in this country.

As the House may remember, we asked the Government to look again at this matter in Committee of the whole House. Our amendment at that stage would have explicitly prevented the biggest tech firms from taking advantage of the Chancellor’s tax break, as well as other big firms that do not support workers’ rights and the living wage. At the time, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury objected to our amendment on the basis that it sought to

“restrict the relief only to certain companies”—[Official Report, 19 April 2021; Vol. 692, c. 742]

and that it imposed “burdensome conditions” on companies that want to benefit from it. That latter phrase told us plenty about the Government’s views on people’s rights at work. The conditions the Minister saw as “burdensome” are the rights to organise and to be paid a living wage. When even basic rights at work and a living wage are seen as burdensome, it is perhaps no wonder that this Government broke their promise to include an employment Bill in the Queen’s Speech earlier this month.

It is clear that we will need to push Ministers over workers’ rights on future days—from banning the shameful practice of fire and rehire to ending exploitation by rogue umbrella companies—as cross-party amendments tabled to this Bill by right hon. and right hon. Members seek to achieve. Today, we have made it very straightforward for the Government, through amendment 29, to focus specifically on preventing the very biggest tech firms—those companies liable to pay the digital services tax—from benefiting from the super deduction. This should be easy. Only a very small number of very large multinational firms that have done very well over the past year are liable for the digital services tax. The detail of that tax means that businesses are liable only when a group’s worldwide revenues from digital activities—such as providing social media platforms, search engines or online marketplaces—are more than £500 million, and when more than £25 million of these revenues are derived from UK users.

The vote on this amendment will come down to the very simple question of how Members of this House believe public money should be spent. As the Bill stands, the Government’s biggest business tax cut in modern British history will finish the job Amazon started, wiping out the last bit of tax it had to pay on the few parts of its business the profits of which it has been unable to shift overseas. A vote in favour of our amendment 29 would stop Amazon and a small number of similar firms benefiting from a giveaway of public money—public money that could be better spent for so many purposes, including to support British businesses that have been struggling throughout the past year. I urge Conservative Members to consider how they vote on amendment 29.

Before we come to that vote, I will turn to our new clause 23, through which we seek to push the Government finally to back President Biden’s plans for a global minimum corporation tax rate. I have explained how the Government’s super deduction will wipe out Amazon’s remaining tax bill in the UK, and how the amount it was due to pay in the first place was paltry compared with what it should be paying. Despite its business success in the UK, profit shifting to Luxembourg meant Amazon’s corporation tax contribution in the UK in 2019 was less than 0.1% of its turnover. People are fed up with large multinational companies avoiding their tax. It goes against the fairness that must be at the heart of our tax system, and in this year of all years, when so many British businesses are struggling to get back on their feet while Amazon’s business booms, it is clearer than ever that change is long overdue.

We have heard brazen claims from the Government about their work to combat international tax avoidance. In the debate in Committee of the whole House on this Bill, the Minister went so far as to claim that the Government have “led the international charge” in a number of ways, yet since the Biden Administration announced their proposals for a global minimum corporate tax rate, we have seen that, not for the first time, actions from the Government fail to match their words, with the UK now the only G7 country not to back the US plan. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to grasp the international agreement on the global taxation of large multinationals that has evaded our country and others for so long, yet rather than stepping up, our Government are stepping away.

Equitable Life

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and James Murray

Thursday 21st January 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

As we have heard today, it has been more than 20 years since the House of Lords ruling rendered the Equitable Life Assurance Society financially unviable, and it has been over a decade since the then Chancellor announced the Equitable Life payment scheme to compensate policyholders who had lost out as a result of the scandal at that company, yet even after so many years, thousands of Equitable Life policyholders do not feel they have been treated fairly.

The Equitable Members Action Group continues to campaign tirelessly on their behalf, and during this afternoon’s debate—I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on securing it—we have heard Members from all sides passionately setting out the injustice that so many policyholders feel. My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) powerfully set out the upsetting case of the 84-year-old pharmacist she represents as an example of how the scandal has affected people living in constituencies across the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) spoke of the human impact on her constituent, an 89-year-old living with dementia, whose life has been hit by this scandal, alongside nurses, teachers, shop workers and so many others over many years.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) emphasised how long the scandal has been going on, and spoke about the crucial importance of transparency, which I will return to. The importance of transparency was also underscored by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson), who spoke about the costs of the scandal on the plans and dreams of those affected, and the ongoing impact of current cases such as London Capital & Finance. My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) spoke about a 91-year-old in her constituency and others who invested in good faith but have gone for decades without a satisfactory conclusion.

It is crucial that we learn lessons from what happened at Equitable Life, including about the wider importance of having a well-regulated financial services sector, as the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) said. In recent months, the cases we have seen at London Capital & Finance and Brewin Dolphin underline the importance of the Government’s doing more to ensure that people are well protected in the first place.

On Equitable Life itself, the issue at the heart of the disagreement over the past decade has been how the payments to the vast majority of its policyholders have been determined. As we know, that has generated intense disagreement with the Government over their approach, and as today’s motion makes clear, there is a further issue of transparency and trust. Many policyholders lack confidence that those payments have been calculated fairly.

In October 2020, my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), the shadow Chancellor, wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, asking for the Treasury to set out clearly the basis on which it had calculated the payments that had been made to policyholders and to ask what assessment his officials had made of the overall accuracy of the scheme. In his reply, the Chancellor claimed that when the Equitable Life payment scheme was operational, it was fully transparent, and that its calculations methodology was published in full. He claimed that the Treasury had worked with the Equitable Members Action Group and others to produce a simplified explanation for policyholders.

Unfortunately for the Chancellor, the Equitable Members Action Group does not share his assessment. It contends that the Treasury refused full disclosure and hid behind commercial confidentiality. The group had to attempt to reverse-engineer the calculations, and it remains unsatisfied that payments can be shown to be accurate. It has presented cases of policyholders who received an amount substantially less than they were due. In one of the most extreme examples, which the hon. Member for Harrow East drew attention to, it quotes a case where the Treasury calculated a policyholder’s loss at £17, only for that to be revised to £8,661 when challenged. More widely, the group cites a freedom of information request that revealed that, where compensation had been recalculated following complaints, it resulted in an increased payment to the policyholder in every case—on average, by a factor of three.

A report of the Public Accounts Committee, under its former Chair, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge), concluded:

“Policyholders have struggled to understand how their payments have been calculated and cannot, therefore, check that the amount that they receive is correct.”

In a letter to the Committee’s current Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), the permanent secretary to the Treasury restated the Government position. He said:

“no errors in the actual methodology have been found, including when the Equitable Members Action Group’s own actuary examined the methodology.”

Again, the group does not share the Treasury’s assessment. It contends that the actuary acting on its behalf was denied the information he needed to validate the methodology used, and he could not verify the calculations for one third of the sample policies studied.

It is the Government’s responsibility not only to do the right thing but to earn people’s trust that they will do so. It is clear from the continuing challenge presented by Members of Parliament on behalf of Equitable Life policyholders today that that is not yet the case. I find it hard to disagree with the Equitable Members Action Group’s view that the Treasury’s refusal to be fully transparent only increases suspicion that something is wrong.

After such a long-running disagreement, we believe that a transparent approach is the best way forward, and that it is the only way to find a way forward that is widely trusted and accepted. We therefore look forward to the response from the Public Accounts Committee and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee on this important call to establish a joint inquiry into the accuracy of payments made to victims of the Equitable Life scandal.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and apologise to him that the timer has been put on. Can the timer please be taken off by whoever is controlling it? It is very distracting and it was not fair to Mr Murray to have those numbers apparently telling him he had to stop when he did not have to stop. I am sorry for that, but these technical hitches sometimes just happen.