Airports: Heathrow Third Runway

Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Lord Newby

Tuesday 17th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I do not think that it is a good idea for Government to try to micromanage the commercial decisions of individual airlines.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a question that the noble Lord can answer. Will he tell the House, please, how many international flights have migrated from Heathrow to Schiphol, Charles de Gaulle and Düsseldorf in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013? If he cannot answer now, will he do so in writing?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I am happy to ask colleagues at the Department for Transport to write to the noble Lord, but I do not think that the matter is as straightforward as that. Individual airlines have a whole raft of decisions to take into consideration when they decide what they are going to do. To say simply that lack of capacity is always the cause of the kind of decision that the noble Lord talks about is to oversimplify the matter. However, I will suggest to my colleagues in the Department for Transport that they drop him a line.

Taxation: Income Tax

Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Lord Newby

Wednesday 6th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, the Government do not have any plans to raise the threshold for national insurance simply because—as noble Lords will be aware—to do so would be extremely expensive. The Government looked at merging national insurance and income tax but have decided that they will not take that consideration any further forward for the course of this Parliament.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, is it not true that the 5 million people who may have benefited from the changes have in fact had to pay extra VAT since this Government came to power? They are all paying 2.5% extra in VAT. Could we not look for a reduction in the VAT rate, which in turn would then be a great stimulus to the economy?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, the Government do not think that a reduction in the VAT rate makes any sense at this point. A 1% reduction in the VAT rate costs about £12 billion. If we were to reduce the VAT rate, we would have to find that £12 billion from somewhere else—so we do not propose to reduce it.

Taxation: Tax Havens

Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Lord Newby

Wednesday 9th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

As the noble Lord knows, my Lords, any arrangement with any overseas territory or Crown dependency has to be a formal arrangement and agreement. We are not a dictator going into these countries. We are negotiating agreements with them on the FATCA principles and I hope very much that we will conclude those agreements relatively soon.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, although the additional £900 million being allocated to HMRC for tax investigations is to be welcomed, will the Minister confirm that the department is also being required to effect very substantial savings which will in fact lead to several thousand staff leaving over the next three years and that this, in turn, could interfere with its means of operating? Is not the root of the issue really about transparency? We should not simply call on consumer groups to seek to get transparency on tax issues—the Government themselves should give a lead to the whole of society in moving towards greater transparency on tax issues. Although my party may not have done that when it was in power, one hopes that some of us may be able to persuade it to do so in future if the present Government will not.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, on the latter point, we are doing a lot to try to improve the way in which the system operates. As I said, however, much of the required change in law has to be based on international agreement. As for the resources available to HMRC, it is true that there is a reduction in staff at HMRC. One of the principal drivers for this has been that the way in which HMRC does its business has changed fundamentally given electronic communications—for example, large numbers of people now submit tax returns electronically. The resource needed to deal with that, in terms of numbers, is very significantly less. We are trying to make sure that we beef up those parts of HMRC that collect tax and go after those who have been seeking to avoid it. I think that we are achieving considerable success in that.