Growth and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Baroness Brinton

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

I hope that my noble friend will be very careful in his response to this because underneath there are two falsities. The first is the schizophrenia on the side of the Opposition. On the one hand, they say that no one will be taking it up, and on the other hand they say that it might be very expensive. I do not think that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, should get away with that argument.

I also do not want him to take too seriously the comments about exempting people from capital gains tax. I declare an interest as the chairman of a number of small companies, which are, I hope, growing. I have the feeling that there is a kind of nastiness abroad on this issue, because capital gains tax is very much a destroyer of value and of enterprise. One problem in this country is that many people do not like other people being wealthy as a result of hard work and employment. I dislike that kind of attitude very much. If that is part of the coalition agreement, it is a bad part, because we need a society in which people are encouraged to put their lives into businesses and to gain some of the benefits of that. One reason the United States is so much more successful than other countries is that it has been more sensible about that bit of its taxation. It is very stupid about a lot of other taxation, but on that bit at least it has said that there is a real reason for encouraging people to create businesses. One way of encouraging them is by giving them a lower rate of tax on capital gains and dividends than they would have elsewhere. That seems perfectly right, and one problem that we have is that we have not taken that seriously.

I am not worried about this proposal because I do not think that anyone is going to take it up and so they are not going to lose any money. However, I hope that my noble friend will be kind enough to suggest that the Government will do a great deal more to enable people, through employment, to create wealth and to take some of that wealth in a way that we do not allow them to do at the moment.

It really is sad that we have a society in which it is perfectly proper to say, “We’ve really got to stop people possibly gaining from the creation of jobs”. That is what we mean when we say that we want to make sure that nobody benefits. That is not what I want to happen—and it will not happen—but I hope that in his answers my noble friend will make sure that he does not commit the Government to not taking some pretty radical steps to remove and reduce taxation in a number of areas that will encourage job creation.

[Baroness Brinton]

I should like to clarify the point that I was trying to make about finding a tax loophole that provides a source of employment for many industry experts. We need a capital gains tax system which is fair and which certainly encourages growth. I do not think that we would suggest anything other than that from these Benches. The concern arises when, on the one hand, the Government say that they want to make a clear, open and transparent level playing field but then, on the other, they create a category that appears to have a built-in loophole.

[Lord Deben]

I am sorry if I misunderstood my noble friend, and of course I accept what she has just said. I find it very hard when the guns are turned on this issue because of the loose use of the words “tax loophole”. This is not a tax loophole; it is a decision—a mistaken decision, I think—to encourage people to do something through a tax concession. I repeat: it is not a tax loophole. I shall tell noble Lords what a tax loophole is. It is Amazon organising itself so that it runs people out of the high streets of Britain by ensuring that it does not pay proper taxes. A tax loophole—I declare an interest as being concerned with the business of packaging recovery—is when Amazon can put packaging on the marketplace and not pay the proper price of so doing. That is what a loophole is. It is not a loophole if the Government specifically say that in particular circumstances people will pay a lower rate of tax. That is a proper use of the taxation system. For goodness’ sake, do not let us use the term “loophole” in this instance. There are some very big loopholes which we ought to be stopping and, for me, Amazon is the biggest example of a company that does not pay proper tax wherever it operates.

[Baroness Brinton]

I apologise for intervening again and I thank the noble Lord for his contribution. There is absolutely no doubt that we agree about Amazon. Perhaps I may give an illustration from the early 1990s of the sort of loophole that I was alluding to. The Conservative Government of the day created generous tax facilities for investors in the business expansion scheme. When the scheme was originally devised, it was intended for small high-growth companies—where have I heard that before in this debate? Investors would get those tax benefits because they were investing in something that carried a slightly higher risk. I confess, as the bursar of a Cambridge college, that within two or three years every Oxbridge college, and subsequently every university in the country, used the business expansion scheme, and that tax benefit was quickly closed down by the Government, who described it as a tax loophole.

It is exactly that sort of loophole that I want to avoid. I absolutely understand the Government saying that it is supposed to be a niche group of companies that will apply for this, although I still wait to hear which ones they are. However, I would not want to see some sort of tax provision that suddenly made this proposal attractive to the majority of companies in this country. That was not the intention and it certainly has not been the tenor of the debate.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Baroness Brinton

Monday 13th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I find this a fascinating amendment because those of us who are opposed to referenda in any case are now presented with somebody who is in favour of a referendum but does not want to have it when it is inconvenient. This is a most peculiar amendment. I think that referenda are always wrong in a parliamentary democracy and I have always stood by that. I have never changed my view from that and I am not changing it now, but if we are to have a referendum, the concept that we must not have one except in three years’ time, irrespective of what the public think, seems a most peculiar argument. To complain about the fact that in a second referendum people made a different choice seems an odd thing. After all, that was the choice the people made. I think that this is proof of why referenda are not an acceptable way forward, because the truth is that a referendum analyses what people think at a particular moment.

I became opposed to referenda at my father’s knee. I remember just after the war he was explaining to his infant son about politics. He said that he remembered the peace pledge. Eleven million people signed the peace pledge and two years later one could not find any of them. Once we got near to the war, they all disappeared. That is the problem with a referendum, because it is an irresponsible act—one is not responsible for the vote that one makes because it is secret and private. Surprisingly enough, I found a number of my constituents who voted one way in the referendum we had about remaining in the European Union and who within two or three years decided they had really voted the other way. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and felt that they had mistaken themselves, but if one is going to have a referendum, one has to have it without strings.

The noble Lord is presenting something that gives the lie to the whole referendum argument. People who want referenda want referenda because they want a particular response. That is why they want them. They want it because they think it will produce a particular answer of which they approve. When they find that there is a possibility that it might not produce that, they want rules to make sure that the public cannot have another go. I beg your Lordships’ House to accept that if we are going to have referenda, we had better have them on a fair deal and not on the basis that we restrict them in case the public possibly take a different view the second time.

[Baroness Brinton]

My Lords, I cannot really follow the points of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, on referenda. I disagree with his initial argument, but I support the principle about the people having their say, whether one agrees with it or not. I find it understandable that the noble Lord, Lord Willoughby de Broke, proposed the amendment, given the frustrations that he and his colleagues clearly feel about both the Irish and Danish referendums on treaties in the past, but it seems to me that there are two reasons to oppose the amendment.

In Committee, the Minister made the valid point that it would be very unlikely that two successive referendums would be called, not least for the important political reason that it would be likely to cost the Government of the day dear—assuming that it were the same Government—with a cynical public punishing them for so doing. Secondly, the Bill is not a crystal ball attempting to predict the future, no matter how much the noble Lord would wish it so. The Bill must allow for flexibility for a future Government and this amendment would tie their hands.

There are checks and balances within the Bill: a second referendum would require a second Act of Parliament with the detailed and appropriate scrutiny that comes with that—and that is before the Government of the day would have to start convincing the public of the need for that second referendum. There might be rare circumstances in which a second referendum were relevant—the checks and balances that I have outlined will force politicians and the public to think carefully about returning down the road of another referendum. To ban it completely for three years, or even five, as we looked at in Committee, removes that option for those circumstances which, though rare, are not impossible. There might be changes to the treaty that significantly benefited our country and other member states, which it might therefore be appropriate to consider. Or there might be a financial crisis in the eurozone—as there has been recently—in which the circumstances have so substantially changed that it might be appropriate to go back for a second referendum.

To conclude, the amendment seeks to remove the flexibility and the voice of Parliament and the people should there be a rare but necessary need to consider a second referendum.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I very much sympathise with my noble friend Lady Brinton because it is unlikely that any Government would be brave enough to hold another referendum on the same subject when the country had made it quite clear that it did not want the measure put forward originally. However, to turn to the distaste of referenda generally expressed by my noble friend Lord Deben, presumably that distaste is slightly tempered by the referendum confirming our membership of the European Union. Let us face it, this referendum was put forward by Harold Wilson to solve a problem that he had within his own Labour party and settle the issue for good. Many people—I am one of them—voted in favour of our remaining in the European Union and it seemed to settle the issue for some time after that.

European Union Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Baroness Brinton

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, Article 170 says:

“To help achieve the objectives referred to in Articles 26 and 174”,

et cetera,

“the Union shall contribute to the establishment and development of trans-European networks in the areas of transport, telecommunications and energy infrastructures”.

That seems to me very much to give the competences needed.

[Baroness Brinton]

I am grateful for that intervention from my noble friend Lord Wallace, which was much more informed than I could possibly have given.

[Lord Deben]

It was a perfectly right intervention but that does not actually give powers to compel. It says that the countries shall do it but there is no mechanism at the moment to insist that they do it. That is the issue.

[Baroness Brinton]

My Lords, I fundamentally disagree with that point. The key point here, which we have come back to day after day on this Bill, is that this is about the process not the policy. The process has been absolutely clear and I still wait to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, on where these are not covered by existing treaties.