European Union Migration: National Insurance
Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Lea of Crondall
Lord Ashton of Hyde
Of course, the Government have taken measures to prevent EU migrants as well having full access to benefits for four years: child benefit, for example, will no longer be sent home at UK rates. As to the NHS, it is true that some people contribute. The important thing from the NHS point of view is that, regardless of where you come from, if you are in desperate need of medical help you will get it in this country.
Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)
Does not the number of British people going backwards and forwards to Spain, for example—2 million plus people are in that sort of situation—also counterbalance the discrepancies that we have?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, obviously it is a two-way street but we are talking about net figures.
VAT: Evasion
Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Lea of Crondall
Lord Ashton of Hyde
My Lords, on whether online platforms should be made liable for VAT and duty, HMRC is looking at all possible solutions now and cannot rule anything in or anything out.
Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)
My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that some years ago—10 years ago, I think—one of the sub-committees of the European Union Committee looked at e-commerce, and we were astonished to find that there were almost no data within Europe? I know the issue goes wider than Europe, but that is one area where transfer pricing is a big issue. One cannot be surprised, therefore, that multinationals run rings around HMRC. Will the noble Lord look into this question of data collection so that the Inland Revenue data match the Board of Trade data on how much e-commerce there is, which is not the case now, rather than it being treated as insignificant in numerical terms?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
The noble Lord is absolutely right to identify data as one of the crucial enforcement tools. The task force has been set up, first, to enable cross-government co-operation with other government agencies and, secondly, to look at issues such as data.
Greece
Debate between Lord Ashton of Hyde and Lord Lea of Crondall
Lord Ashton of Hyde
As regards the arrears, I was merely repeating the official nomenclature of the IMF. I would not comment on the precise meaning of the IMF vocabulary, but it is true that it refers to being in arrears. If that was the case, Greece would join Zimabwe, Somalia and the Sudan. On the referendum, the negotiations are coming to an end because, despite what the German Finance Minister said, if you are to have a sensible negotiation, you need to have willingness on both sides to compromise. Walking out instead of taking the decisions that are needed, and turning around without any warning and instituting a referendum, is not the way to get proper negotiations and to achieve success.
Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)
My Lords, is not one of the difficulties of the analysis that people assume that something follows on from having a referendum, which of course must be nonsense? It is not a logically connected piece of analysis. There can be all sorts of scenarios from where we are now, but Angela Merkel has said that the referendum question is simply, “Do you want the euro? If so, vote yes. If you want the drachma, vote no”. Can it be as simple as that? Are there not a number of scenarios that could follow, and should we not be thinking through a number of them, otherwise the schizophrenia in this debate about whether a referendum is a bright idea has not been followed up by thinking through the policy scenarios?
Montenegro is just up the road from Greece. It is a member of the United Nations and a singing and dancing country. It uses the euro without permission from Frankfurt. It is not obvious to me exactly what the connection is between the way the referendum is posed and the scenarios that follow.
Lord Ashton of Hyde
I can see the noble Lord’s problem, but I do not think that it is a problem for the UK Government. The referendum was instituted by Greece and it is up to them what the question should be, what they are trying to address and why they are trying to have one. I completely agree with the noble Lord that there are many scenarios resulting from that. The Treasury, the Government, the Bank of England and the Foreign Office are looking at this and working out contingency plans on a daily basis.