Equitable Life

Kemi Badenoch Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman]

Clearly there is a debt of honour, and we need to make sure the people who have been victims are properly compensated.

[Mrs Kemi Badenoch (Saffron Walden) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way one more time?

[Bob Blackman]

Given that my hon. Friend has been sitting beside me, I will give way to her before I move on.

[Mrs Badenoch]

I thank my hon. Friend; he has been exceedingly generous in giving way.

I can only echo the many points that Members on both sides of the House have made about this issue. Many of my constituents have written the most heart-breaking stories about how their lives were destroyed by this scandal. What is my hon. Friend’s view of the fact that no one has been prosecuted or sent to prison for this scandal?

Oral Answers to Questions

Kemi Badenoch Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

Since 2010, we have reduced carbon dioxide emissions across the economy by 26% and across electricity generation by 47%. We are making sure that those technologies are competitive, so that they work well in the market, and so that we deliver lower prices to customers and lower levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

[Mrs Kemi Badenoch (Saffron Walden) (Con)]

18. What steps he is taking to tackle tax avoidance and evasion.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mel Stride)]

The Government have brought in over 100 measures to clamp down on avoidance, evasion and non-compliance since 2010, protecting and yielding over £200 billion in revenue.

[Mrs Badenoch]

Some 19% of all businesses declared deliberate tax defaulters by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs this year were from the restaurant and takeaway business. Does the Minister agree that companies in this industry that do pay their taxes, such as the Chesterford Group in my constituency, do not have a level playing field?

[Mel Stride]

I cannot comment on a specific taxpayer, but I can say that HMRC does publish quarterly the names of those who deliberately default on taxation, as a method of bringing them forward to settle with HMRC. We have brought in a further 21 measures in the Budget to raise a further £2 billion by 2023-24 by clamping down on avoidance and evasion.

Digital Taxation

Kemi Badenoch Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Kemi Badenoch (Saffron Walden) (Con)]

What a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl.

When I heard that there was to be a debate on digital taxation I was really excited, because digital and tax are two of my favourite subjects. I am sure that hon. Members know that I classify myself as a low-tax Tory, but not many people will know that my career to date has been in digital. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien) on securing the debate and wholeheartedly support his comments and suggestions. I shall focus on user-generated content, an important matter that he spoke about.

Many hon. Members have spoken today about property taxes, business rates and the losses that smaller companies have had to endure in competing with large digital companies. Inevitably, the wider discussion when we talk about large tech companies is about tax avoidance and tax evasion. Tax has various purposes, and one is to deal with the negative side-effects of those activities. The Financial Secretary will be familiar with Pigouvian taxes, which are designed specifically to tackle those negative externalities. That is what I propose today.

The main externality for my constituency is to do with crime and policing. Cyber-crime has grown exponentially, and user-generated content is a significant part of that. There are crimes we never saw previously—the creation, sharing and distribution of indecent images, especially of children; harassment on social media; cyber-bullying and other activities designed to cause distress and anxiety; and, of course, online activities related to terrorism, hate crime and all sorts of incitement. All those activities take place on large digital platforms, but it is claimed that the content is not theirs but belongs to the user. How are we going to deal with that? This issue has taken up a significant proportion of the time and priorities of Essex police. The police and crime commissioner and the chief constable have reiterated that dealing with cyber-crime is their No. 1 priority, and a lot of police time is redirected to that area. Who has suffered? The people with whom many of these large digital businesses are competing.

Local businesses in my high street have suffered an unprecedented spate of burglaries. I will not get into arguments about cuts in police numbers or whatever, because I do not think it is about that. This is about the police having to do so much more than they ever did before. Many of the crimes that I have listed did not exist 20 or 30 years ago. This is not just a matter for the Home Office; it is one for the Treasury.

The principle of a Pigouvian tax is a financial matter and has been established in many other areas. For example, the British Transport police are funded by subscriptions paid for by train companies, and local businesses in certain towns invest in business improvement districts that fund police officers. Pubs and clubs have to pay licence fees that contribute to the policing of the negative externalities that come from their activities. Recently, I have seen beauty parlours have to get a licence because they have been used as a cover for money laundering and other illegal working. We should consider taxing this new area. I do not like to propose new taxes, but the cost of these activities is being borne by citizens and businesses across the country, and it is those who make the most money from them who should be paying.

A double dividend comes from these sorts of taxes—we can see the cost of the crimes and direct money to the areas most affected. It is not good enough for companies to say that the issue has nothing to do with them, or not to appreciate the social cost of their activities. My remarks have been brief, but my question to the Minister is this: given the many externalities from online businesses, and particularly from user-generated content, should the large digital companies that create and run those platforms pay a significant amount of the cost?

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Kemi Badenoch Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 21st February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Maclean]

I return to the point that we are already publishing the analysis. The Treasury is working on looking at the impact of the policies across a whole range of levels.

My main argument is that we need to look at what the Government have already delivered. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), more women are in work under this Government. That is real change. Those women have been able to get into work because of the wide variety of policies that we have introduced including childcare, help to get into work and retraining at all times of life.

We have seen a massive change in income inequality, which, under this Government, is at its lowest level for many years. Since 2010, households across all income deciles have seen growth in their disposable income.

[Mrs Kemi Badenoch (Saffron Walden) (Con)]

This Budget increased the national living wage by 4.4%—well above the rate of inflation—which disproportionately assists people like me, from an ethnic minority background, who often find themselves in low-paying work. Does my hon. Friend agree that this a great testament to the Government’s work?

[Rachel Maclean]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. As she says, the national living wage helps people from all sectors of society, including those with protected characteristics. Our record on these policies speaks for itself.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Badenoch]

Does the Minister agree that it would be so impractical to carry out such impact assessments that it would slow down Government business? Perhaps one of the reasons why the Opposition have tabled the new clause is to make it difficult for us to get our policies and the Finance Bill through.

[Mel Stride]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for that intervention, because she touches on the important point that there is an element of proportionality. As I will come on to argue, one of the difficulties with accepting the new clause is that a lot of the information is not available. That is not an argument for not going out and finding the information, but some of it would be extremely difficult to generate. I would not go as far as my hon. Friend in suggesting that this is a Machiavellian plan to gum up the works of Government, but I am sure some Opposition Members might be pleased to see that happen. I take the new clause in the spirit of the wording in front of me.

Trade Bill (Second sitting)

Kemi Badenoch Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

We are grateful for that.

[Mrs Kemi Badenoch (Saffron Walden) (Con)]

Q I have a general question for the panel. Listening to what people have said about agreements and given the need that we have to maintain existing trade relationships with 70-plus partners and, I think, 40-plus agreements in general, do you think the Government need to change their approach fundamentally and, if so, how?

George Peretz: If I might go first, one can see the difficulty. It is a commonplace of the legislation on Brexit generally that there is a lot to do in a very short space of time. There is certainly a case for doing things by statutory instrument that ordinarily one might be very reluctant to see done in that way, simply because of the process of time and the time it takes to get primary legislation through.

We were discussing a few minutes ago general policy in relation to how Parliament should scrutinise future trade negotiations. It is entirely a fair point to say that the Bill is not about that. There may well be a case for the Government to produce a Bill about that, but that is a different question. This Bill is not about that, but about the roll-over.

We have touched on the difficulties. You have a number of difficulties in scope: what an international trade agreement is goes beyond trade and customs agreements. As I think Holger Hestermeyer pointed out, technically the definition includes the EEA agreement and the Turkey customs union agreement. If you think the Government have rather wide powers to implement the EEA agreement—one assumes the Government have no intention of using it that way—it is quite a wide power to give them.

There are questions about scope and about whether negative procedure is right, and there is the question Michael touched on about what is an existing agreement. The cynic in me as a lawyer tends to say from general experience that if you go to the other party to a contract and say, “I need to change this contract,” the normal response of a well-informed and well-advised counterparty is, “Well, yes, but let’s take the opportunity to get some other things in it.” So things are often not that simple. You may have quite wide and important changes being made, but I do not think there is a right legal answer. It is a question for you to think about as to whether this is an appropriate power to give the Government, given the need to do things quickly.

[The Chair]

Kemi, are you content?

[Mrs Badenoch]

Q Yes, unless anyone has anything further to add.

Michael Clancy: We do not have enough time—there are 430-odd days between now and 29 March 2019. Trying to get through primary legislation, if we were to scrap this and go for another Bill, would be problematic to say the least. The intergovernmental conference in October is really the defining factor that we have to aim at. Then there are all these orders, which are going to be put through. If one waits until this Bill gets the Royal Assent before the orders start to be consulted on, there are difficulties about that. I am afraid that I would be for looking to keep this Bill and to move it along and see what improvements can be made to it to make it a much better and more robust piece of legislation.

Professor Winters: May I comment? In principle—I am not a lawyer and cannot really comment on how one can do this—essentially there is the very short-term, immediate problem of all these things that have to be done, but we do not want that to define the long-term by default. I think we need to have a very clear understanding from the body politic in general. The trade policy is an important instrument for a sovereign country to operate. It can be done well or it can be done badly, and we do need to continue to review it and go back to some of these things, so that even if we have to patch something up in the near future, which as near as dammit is the status quo, that should not say it is therefore closed forever. We need to go with our partners and say, “We need to reopen this.”

[The Chair]

Let us be crisp, Bill Esterson.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kemi Badenoch Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Time is against us, but I want to hear a couple more of the Order Paper questions.

[Mrs Kemi Badenoch (Saffron Walden) (Con)]

15. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Education on the effect of Government investment in skills since 2010.

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Stephen Barclay)]

Treasury Ministers have engaged on a regular basis with the Secretary of State for Education. We will double spending on apprenticeships over the decade to 2020, allowing 3 million apprenticeship starts in England by 2020 and giving people the best start in their career.

[Mrs Badenoch]

Since 2010, the substantial increase in apprenticeships has helped many young people into work. Stansted airport in my constituency is a great provider of apprenticeships, and its employment academy placed 700 people into work in the last year alone. Does the Minister agree that apprenticeships have contributed to the record low level of youth unemployment?

[Stephen Barclay]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. In fact, there are 55,000 fewer young people unemployed than there were a year ago, thanks in large part to the investment that this Government are putting into apprenticeships.