Asked by: Lord Christopher (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the Northern Ireland Assembly has given its full agreement to the Corporation Tax (Northern Ireland) Bill; and, if not, on which parts of the Bill its consent has been reserved.
Answered by Baroness Randerson
All five parties in the Northern Ireland Executive have long advocated the devolution of corporation tax rate-setting powers and the Executive was involved in the development of the legislation the Government has now introduced.
Asked by: Lord Christopher (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what changes have been made in the last five years to the rules on the distinctions for income tax purposes between employment and self-employment.
Answered by Lord Deighton
The Government have not made any changes to the rules on the distinctions for income tax purposes between employment and self-employment in the last five years.
However the Government has taken action to address false self-employment both through intermediaries and limited liability partnerships (LLP), making changes that mean that a salaried member of an LLP will be treated as an employee for income tax.
Asked by: Lord Christopher (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many resignations have occurred from 2012 to 2014 among all grades in (1) the Police Service, (2) the Prison Officer Service, and (3) the Probation Service.
Answered by Lord Bates
The available information collected centrally appears in the tables below.
Table 1: Number of voluntary resignations in the Police service1, by officer rank and police worker type, England and Wales, 2011/12 to 2013/142
2011/12 | |
Total Police Officers | 1,158 |
Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) | 2 |
Chief Superintendent | 3 |
Superintendent | 3 |
Chief Inspector | 10 |
Inspector | 22 |
Sergeant | 135 |
Constable | 983 |
Police Staff | 5,829 |
Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) | 1,787 |
Designated officer | 214 |
Traffic Warden | 7 |
Special Constable | 3,872 |
1. Total police officer leavers by rank and gender are published in the Police Workforce, England and Wales, statistical publications.
Breakdown by leaving type (i.e voluntary resignations) are not regularly published, therefore these figures have not been verified by police forces and are provisional.
2. This table contains full-time equivalent figures that have been rounded to the nearest whole number, with the exception of special constables where they are provided on a headcount basis.
Source: Home Office
Table 2: Number of resignations in the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), National Probation Service (NPS) and Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) resignations, England and Wales, 2012 to 2014
2012 | 2013 | 2014(Jan -Sep)3 | |
Prison: | |||
NOMS (Excluding NPS)1 | 1050 | 940 | 800 |
Probation: | |||
NPS1,2 | 170 | ||
CRC2,4,5 | 240 |
All figures are rounded to the nearest 10, with numbers ending in 5 rounded to the nearest multiple of 20 to prevent systematic bias. As with all HR databases, extracts are taken at a fixed point in time, to ensure consistency of reporting. However the database itself is dynamic, and where updates to the database are made late, subsequent to the taking of the extract, these updates will not be reflected in figures produced by the extract. For this reason, HR data are unlikely to be precisely accurate, and to present unrounded figures would be to overstate the accuracy of the figures. Rounding to 10 accurately depicts the level of certainty that is held with these figures.
Totals are formed from unrounded parts prior to rounding. For this reason, rounded totals may not equal the sum of their rounded parts.
1. The National Probation Service (NPS) was formed on 1 June 2014 and its staff became civil servants on that date. The NPS is part of NOMS, however figures have been presented separately for NPS
2. Prior to 1 June 2014, Probation Services were provided by probation trusts that managed staffing locally, and no data on resignations from probation trusts are held centrally.
3. Figures are only available up to 30 September 2014, the date of the latest publication.
4. Information provided by CRCs are only available as FTE; otherwise, figures are provided as head count.
5. The number of CRC resignations provided is complete for all CRCs with the exception of Bristol, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire CRC. They were only able to provide leaver data for the Gloucestershire and Wiltshire elements of their CRC in certain months (September 2014 for Gloucestershire and August and September 2014 for Wiltshire).
Source: NOMS
Asked by: Lord Christopher (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government which bills introduced since May 2010 have included any issues of exclusive concern to England and any of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland; and what were those issues for each bill.
Answered by Lord Wallace of Saltaire - Liberal Democrat Lords Spokesperson (Cabinet Office)
The Leader of the House of Commons will publish an analysis of legislation relating to England in due course.
Asked by: Lord Christopher (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many visits were made to employers in each year from 2010 to 2013 and in the first nine months of 2014 to check that the minimum wage was being properly paid; and what were the results of those checks in each of those years.
Answered by Lord Deighton
The Government takes the enforcement of National Minimum Wage very seriously and has increased the financial penalty percentage from 50% to 100% of the unpaid wages owed to workers, and the maximum penalty from £5,000 to £20,000. These new limits are now in force where arrears are identified in pay reference periods on or after 7 March 2014. The Government will also bring in primary legislation as soon as possible so that the maximum £20,000 penalty can apply to each underpaid worker.
HMRC reviews every complaint that is referred to it, investigating the complaint and, in addition, carrying out targeted enforcement where we identify a high risk of non-payment of NMW.
HMRC record completed investigations but these do not include details of the numbers of visits. Some investigations may require several visits and others may be completed without any. HMRC completed 1455 investigations last year identifying record arrears of over £4.6 million. Full details for 2010 to 2014 are contained in the table below. We do not typically disclose results mid-way through a year; this is because the results have not been internally verified.
Year | 2010-11 | 2011-12 | 2012-13 | 2013-14 |
Arrears | £3,818,396 | £3,582,685 | £3,974,008 | £4,645,547 |
Investigations | 2,904 | 2,534 | 1,693 | 1,455 |
Cases with arrears | 1,140 | 968 | 736 | 680 |
Asked by: Lord Christopher (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to publish impact and risk assessments on the devolution of corporation tax to Northern Ireland.
Answered by Lord Deighton
At Autumn Statement, the Government set out that it recognises the strongly held arguments for devolving corporation tax rate-setting powers to Northern Ireland, including its land border with the very low corporation tax environment in the Republic of Ireland, and the shared goal of the UK Government and the Northern Ireland Executive of rebalancing the Northern Ireland economy and securing the peaceful economic progress made since the Good Friday Agreement. Work by HMRC and HM Treasury has concluded that this proposal could be implemented provided that the Northern Ireland Executive is able to manage the financial implications. If this legislation is introduced, a Tax Information and Impact Note will be published alongside the Bill as part of the usual legislative process.
Asked by: Lord Christopher (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effect of the changes in the rate of the stamp duty on the prices of houses worth less than £1 million.
Answered by Lord Deighton
The reform to Stamp Duty Land Tax on residential properties will have a limited impact on house prices overall and this effect will be small compared to overall fluctuations in house prices.
Asked by: Lord Christopher (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the increases in income tax personal allowance have had an impact on the data on income levels available to them; and if so, what action they intend to take as a result.
Answered by Lord Deighton
Increases to the amount of income tax personal allowance do not affect the amount of income data available to HM Revenue and Customs.
Asked by: Lord Christopher (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Scotland Office:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to publish impact and risk assessments on the Smith Commission's recommendations.
Answered by Lord Wallace of Tankerness
The Government has committed to producing draft clauses by Burns’ Night, 25 January 2015. Individual parties have made commitments to introduce legislation to Parliament following the General Election in May 2015. It is expected that formal introduction of legislation will be accompanied by supporting documents in the usual way, including Impact Assessments.
Asked by: Lord Christopher (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are the latest recorded (1) numbers of self-employed, (2) numbers of self-employed recorded in income tax records, and (3) annual turnover of self-employed in income tax records.
Answered by Lord Deighton
The number of individuals filing a self-employment schedule in their Self Assessment tax returns for the year 2011-12 is estimated at 5.49 million.
The annual turnover of these individuals in 2011-12 is estimated at £296 billion.
These estimates are based on the Survey of Personal Incomes (SPI) for the year 2011-12.
Further information about the self-employed is available in HMRC’s National Statistics Publications[1].
[1] Available at the following internet address: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/personal-income-by-tax-year