Kew Gardens (Leases) (No. 3) Bill [Lords]

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 24th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

It is a rare opportunity for a Member to be able to speak on legislation that pertains almost exclusively to his or her constituency, but I have that honour today, because the magnificent Kew Gardens is in my constituency—

[Stephen Pound]

And really close to mine.

[Zac Goldsmith]

That is absolutely right.

I am delighted that the Government have taken up this small, uncontroversial but nevertheless important Bill. Members who have visited Kew Gardens will know what an extraordinary place it is. With 2 million visitors a year, including 100,000 schoolchildren, the gardens are one of the great wonders of the world. There are stunning landscapes, extraordinary plants and peaceful walks—except when they are punctuated by the noise of aeroplanes flying over, but that is a debate for another day.

Kew is a great deal more than a beautiful garden or a tourist attraction: in addition to hosting the world’s largest collection of living plants, its herbarium contains a collection of more than 7 million plant species. It is an extraordinarily valuable international resource, which is in the process of being digitised, as we have just heard, and made freely available worldwide. Kew Gardens is at the forefront, the cutting edge, of international plant science, which is crucial in providing a response to the existential threats of climate change, antimicrobial resistance, and diseases such as cancer, diabetes and more. Kew is simply a priceless national asset, and we should be doing everything we can to support it.

That brings me to the Bill. Very briefly, let me say that I first brought it to this House as a ten-minute rule Bill in January of last year, following similar efforts by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger) and by my friend Lord True in the other place. Unfortunately, it was blocked, I think, nine times by a friendly colleague on the Government Benches. I want to repeat my thanks to Ministers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for their decision to bring the Bill forward in Government time, and I welcome the changes that have been made to the Bill in the Lords. Although the intention of the Bill was never to allow Kew to lease out core parts of its estate, it is welcome that that is now clear in the Bill, with explicit protections for its UNESCO status.

Having visited Kew many, many times, including this morning, I can assure hon. Members that the clear intention is to use the powers in this Bill to lease out the residential buildings on the periphery of Kew’s estate. In fact, I saw a number of those buildings this morning, all of which are beautiful and all of which have been empty for more than a decade. The anomaly of Kew Gardens being Crown land means that it has several buildings that can be leased for a maximum of only 31 years, which is not commercially attractive compared with the 150 years that the Bill will now allow.

Like the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew), I want to caution against the suggestion that passing this Bill into law will provide some kind of windfall for Kew. There is no doubt that the potential financial gains are significant, but they must not be seen as a substitute either for visitor income or for Government funding. I hope the Minister agrees that this Bill is an opportunity for Kew to do more. With the spending review on the horizon, I urge him to make sure that Kew continues to receive significant support from Government. I want to reiterate that this Bill must not be used as a pretext to reduce such funding sources.

I thank the Bill team for their support and their willingness to take this Bill off my hands, out of the risk of its being blocked by some on the Back Benches, and on to the statute book. I look forward to it passing its first Commons stage this afternoon.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

What a well balanced debate, as a result of which we go straight into the wind-ups and immediately back to Dr David Drew.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I think I have been perfectly clear and consistent in expressing the view that no deal would be a very bad outcome for this country, and I will do everything I can to make sure that that is not an outcome we face.

A White Paper on the Government’s future migration policy will be published shortly.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

When criticising a Labour Budget in 2005, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said that the taxpayer

“is entitled to be protected from retrospective or retroactive legislation.”—[Official Report, 7 June 2005; Vol. 434, c. 1139.]

but through the 2019 loan charge, that is precisely what HMRC is now doing to thousands of people who acted in good faith and in accordance with the rules at the time. May I urge my right hon. Friend once again not to backdate the charge to before 2017?

[Mel Stride]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question, but I have to fundamentally disagree with him. The arrangements entered into around disguised remuneration, for which the loan charge is being applied, were always defective at the time they were being used. They have been taken through the courts many times over many years by HMRC and been found to be defective. They also went through, in a particular case, the Supreme Court—the highest court in the land—and the scheme was found to be defective. So this is not a retrospective measure, but it is a question of tax fairness, and of course those who are involved can come forward and have discussions with HMRC, who, where there are difficulties around payment, will be sympathetic and enter into time-to-pay arrangements to make sure those people are protected as well as paying the right tax.

2019 Loan Charge

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Peter Aldous]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention—he has a crystal ball, because he has foretold the next item in my speech.

The people affected have become a target. They are vulnerable people. They are not well paid and do not receive many of the benefits and protections that payroll employees do: sick pay, holiday pay and maternity and paternity leave. I would be grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister could advise us when he sums up the debate of whether the impact assessment has looked at the personal circumstances of the individuals who are being pursued, whether they are able to pay and what the impact will be on their lives.

My second point, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) foretold, is that the basis on which the 2019 loan charge has been introduced and many individuals are now being pursued is that it is retrospective. It undermines the cornerstone of taxation, which is that a Government should not seek to impose or increase a tax charge on income earned, gains realised or transactions concluded at a time before the legislation was announced.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Peter Aldous]

I sense that I should plough on, Mr Walker, so as to give others an opportunity to make a speech.

It is vital that any taxation system is equitable and progressive, and that those with the broadest shoulders pay their fair share.

[Peter Aldous]

Then I will allow my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) to intervene before I continue.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and you, Mr Walker, for intervening in such a magnanimous way.

It is not just right hon. and hon. Members in this Chamber who take the view that my hon. Friend has just expressed in relation to retrospective taxation. The current Chancellor of the Exchequer said in 2005:

“A taxpayer…is entitled to be protected from retrospective or retroactive legislation.”—[Official Report, 7 June 2005; Vol. 434, c. 1139.]

And of course he was right. The measure that we are seeing and debating today is retrospective taxation, and it is abhorrent.

[Peter Aldous]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention: he reinforces what is the fundamental, fatal flaw of this injustice. What I and, I believe, all hon. Members in the Chamber are concerned about is that a group of people—often vulnerable people—who have acted in good faith are now being asked to bear an excessive burden, which will have a devastating impact on their lives and their families’ lives. For that reason, it is very important that we air these concerns to the Minister.

Equitable Life

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Fabian Hamilton]

I thank my hon. Friend. There are hundreds of thousands of people like his constituent. We all have constituents who have suffered losses, for whom 22.4p in the pound is a start but, as many Members have said, simply not enough. I will say something about that in my remaining time.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman, like my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), is making a powerful speech. This is an issue of basic justice, but given the parliamentary cycle, it is inevitably also a political issue. I support my hon. Friend’s suggestion that all political parties put on record before the election their position on compensation, so that those caught up in the scandal know what impact their votes might have on this sorry saga.

[Fabian Hamilton]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, and I agree. With the election coming up, we need to put a clear choice to the electors and to the hundreds of thousands of pensioners and policyholders who have suffered through the collapse of Equitable to ensure that they know where we all stand as political parties and as individuals. I am not the only Labour Member who has stood up for the rights of Equitable members—I believe that more than 40 Labour Members are members of EMAG, and many more believe that justice should be served.

The Public Administration Committee’s report of 2008 went on to state:

“Where regulators have been shown to fail so thoroughly, compensation should be a duty, not a matter of choice.”

Unfortunately, despite pleas from many Labour Members, the then Labour Government failed to introduce any ex gratia compensation scheme and refused to follow the parliamentary ombudsman’s recommendations. Reacting to the Government’s lack of response to the ombudsman’s report, the then Conservative Opposition stated their determination to introduce the Equitable Life (Payments) Bill early in the new Parliament following the 2010 general election. That Bill offered 100% compensation to all with-profits annuitants who had taken out their annuities after 1 September 1992, and 22.4% compensation to every other policyholder. Many right hon. and hon. Members of all parties felt that that was inherently unfair, as that date was somewhat arbitrary and, as has been mentioned, the relatively small group of with-profits annuitants from before that date was the oldest and most vulnerable group. Many of them would not even live to enjoy the compensation or the £5,000 ex gratia payment to that group that the Chancellor announced recently.

I tabled an amendment to the Bill, which read:

“Payments authorised by the Treasury under this section to with-profits annuitants shall be made without regard to the date on which such policies were taken out.”

The debate on the amendment took just over two hours and was lost, by 76 votes in favour to 301 against, but it set out strongly the case for the pre-1992 with-profits annuitants.

The Bill received Royal Assent early in 2011, and the compensation scheme was set in motion. At first it was slow, but it began to pick up over subsequent years. As of 31 January this year, more than £1 billion has been paid to 896,367 policyholders, although more than 142,000 policyholders still have to be paid but cannot be traced. Some 37,764 post-1992 with-profits annuitants, or their estates, have been issued payments by the scheme, and those initial and subsequent payments total £271.4 million.

In conclusion, I must give credit to this Government for having introduced a compensation scheme from which the majority of Equitable policyholders have received 22.4p in the pound—a lot better than nothing. However, when we examine the compensation paid to Icesave investors, for example, following the collapse of the Icelandic banks in 2008, for which every investor received up to £50,000 of their losses in full, the Equitable scheme looks rather less generous.

Equitable policyholders have been patient. They understand that the recession meant austerity and that there was a huge shortage of money available for many parts of government and the state. What they cannot understand, however, is why, as the economy grows, they are denied any further payments against their very real losses. I have heard, as have all Members of the House, heartbreaking stories from individuals, some of whom have lost everything including their homes, all because of Equitable’s failure and the company’s “catastrophic” regulation.

As I have said in previous speeches on Equitable Life in the House, this is fundamentally a moral issue. When the Government are supposed to protect the life savings of individuals who have been encouraged to provide for themselves—as was the case with Equitable—they have a duty to ensure that losses incurred, such as those at Equitable, are adequately compensated. In my view that obligation should come above pet projects such as High Speed 2 and Trident renewal, or else the whole fabric of trust in the state will be damaged—I believe that that is exactly that has happened in this case. We have a moral duty and should not be afraid to carry it out.

Financial Conduct Authority Redress Scheme

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Guto Bebb]

I could not agree more. I am concerned that some of the banks involved in the scheme now fear that they have played by the rules, while others have not. If there is no transparency on that issue, banks may go into future schemes with the same attitude as RBS’s attitude to this scheme.

We do not have bank-by-bank details on outcomes, so it is very difficult to measure whether they are appropriate. In the same way, there is real concern that the FCA has not fully shared its legal opinion on excluding businesses with embedded swaps from the whole review process. In the briefing that the FCA provided for this debate, it implies that it has fully shared its information on that with the Treasury Committee, but my understanding is that it was willing only to allow a QC acting on the Treasury Committee’s behalf, not its members, to see the information. I do not consider that to be full accountability to Parliament.

I said that I would call on the FCA to consider an appeal process. In view of the revelations about the possible activities of the KPMG reviewers of RBS, there is merit in a proposal made by the all-party group a year and a half ago. All the independent reviewers have been trained to the FCA’s satisfaction, so if an RBS client is unhappy with its outcome it would surely be appropriate to ask another independent reviewer—for example, Deloitte, which acts in relation to HSBC—to review the case. That would not unduly complicate the situation, because the reviewers have been trained by the FCA and have satisfied it as to their expertise. It would give clients a degree of independence if those unhappy with the redress outcome could have all the case notes reviewed by a third party that is independent of the original bank and of its independent reviewer. Will the Economic Secretary consider that request?

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

Eight or nine of my constituents have asked me to put on record their enormous gratitude to my hon. Friend for his extraordinary work in leading this campaign, and I am very pleased to do so. What arguments has he heard against his proposed appeal system so far, because it is very hard to imagine any deal-breaking arguments against such a logical solution?

[Guto Bebb]

I entirely agree. The argument has been that as the reviewers are independent the FCA can have full trust in them, but in view of the inequitable outcomes reported to us and the information provided by the whistleblower who used to work in the independent review team on RBS, there is clearly much merit in the appeal process that I have identified as a way forward. I cannot think of any arguments against such a simple way forward.

Money Creation and Society

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I want to put on record my gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) for having initiated this debate, and to his supporters from various parties. Having heard his speech—or most of it; I apologise for being late—I am even more satisfied that it was right to cast my vote for him to join the Treasury Committee.

My hon. Friend has introduced an incredibly important debate. As we have heard, this issue has not been debated here for well over a century. We would not be having it were it not for the fact that we are still in the midst of tumultuous times. We had the banking crash and the corresponding crash in confidence in the banking system and in the wider economy, and now, partly as a consequence, we have the problem of under-lending, particularly to small and medium-sized businesses. This subject could not be more important.

The right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher)—I will call him my right hon. Friend because we work together on many issues—pointed out at the beginning of his speech that this issue is not well understood by members of the public. As I think he said later—if not, I will add it—it is also not well understood by Members of Parliament. I would include myself in that. I suspect that most people here would be humble enough to recognise that the banking wizardry we are discussing is such a complex issue that very few people properly understand it.

[Bob Stewart]

I totally associate myself with my hon. Friend’s comments about ignorance and include myself in that. It seems to me that the system is broken. The banks will not lend money because the Government have told them that they have to keep reserves. We do not like quantitative easing because that means that the banks are not lending. There is something very wrong with the system. It is not a case of “if the system isn’t broke, don’t fix it”, but “the system is broke, and someone’s got to fix it”.

[Zac Goldsmith]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point that I will come to later.

If Members of Parliament do not really understand how money is created—I believe that that is the majority position, based on discussions that I have been having—how on earth can we be confident that the reforms that we have brought in over the past few years are going to work in preventing repeated collapses of the sort that we saw before the last election? In my view, we cannot be confident of that. The problem is the impulsive position taken by ignorant Members. I do not intend to be rude; as I said, I include myself in that bracket. For too many people, the impulse has been simply to call for more regulation, as though that is going to magic away these problems. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe said, there are 8,000 pages of guidance in relation to one aspect of banking that he discussed. The problem is not a lack of regulation; it is the fact that the existing regulations miss the goal in so many respects. Banking has become so complex and convoluted that we need an entirely different approach.

When we talk to people outside Parliament about banking, the majority have a fairly simple view—the bank takes deposits and then lends, and that is the way it has always been. Of course, there is an element of truth in that, but it is so far removed from where we are today that it is only a very tiny element.

[Steve Baker]

My hon. Friend mentions the idea of straightforward, carry-through lending. When people talk about shadow banking, they are usually talking about asset managers who are lending and are passing funds straight through—similarly with peer-to-peer lenders. I am encouraged by the fact that when people are freely choosing to get involved with lending, they are not using the expansionary process but lending directly. Whereas the banks are seen simultaneously to fail savers and borrowers, things like peer-to-peer lending are simultaneously serving them both.

[Zac Goldsmith]

That is a really important point. There is a move towards such lending, but unfortunately it is only a fringe move that we see in the credit unions, for example. It is much closer to what original banking—pure banking or traditional banking—might have looked like. We even see it in some of the new start-ups such as Metro bank; I hesitate to call it a start-up because it is appearing on every high street. Those banks have much more conservative policies than the household-name banks that we have been discussing.

Most people understand the concept of fractional reserve banking even if they do not know the term—it is the idea that banks lend more than they can back up with the reserves they hold.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend mentioned Metro, whose founder is setting up a bank—in which I should declare an interest—called Atom in the north-east. It is one of some 22 challenger banks of which Metro was the first. I missed the opening of the debate, so I have not heard everything that has been said, but I do not accept that it is all doom and gloom in banking. Does he agree that these new developments are proof that the banking system is changing and the old big banks are being replaced with the increased competition that we all need?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I certainly agree with the sentiment expressed. I am excited by the challengers, but I do not believe that it is enough. Competition has to be good because it minimises risk. I know that my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary has dwelt on and looked at this issue in great detail.

Even fractional reserve banking is only the start of the story. I will not repeat in detail what we have already heard, but banks themselves create money. They do so by making advances, and with every advance they make a deposit. That is very poorly understood by people outside and inside the House. It has conferred extraordinary power on the banks. Necessarily, naturally and understandably, banks will use and have used that power in their own interests. It has also created extraordinary risk and, unfortunately, because of the size and interconnectedness of the banks, the risk is on us. That is why I am so excited by the challengers that my hon. Friend has just described. As I have said, that is happening on the fringe: it is right on the edge. It is extraordinary to imagine that at the height of the collapse the banks held just £1.25 for every £100 they had lent out. We are in a very precarious situation.

When I was much younger, I listened to a discussion, most of which I did not understand, between my father and people who were asking for his advice. He was a man with a pretty good track record on anticipating turbulence in the world economy. He was asked when the next crash would happen, and he said, “The last person you should ask is an economist or a business man. You need to ask a psychiatrist, because so much of it involves confidence.” The point was proven just a few years ago.

The banking system and the wider economy have become extraordinarily unhinged or detached from reality. I would like to elaborate on the extraordinary situation in which it is possible to imagine economic growth even as the last of the world’s great ecosystems or the last of the great forests are coming down. The economy is no longer linked to the reality of the natural world from which all goods originally derive. That is probably a debate for another time, however, so I will not dwell on it.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman is making a good point that we should remember. It was brought home to me by Icelandic publisher Bjorn Jonasson, who pointed out that we are not in a situation where volcanoes have blown up or there have been huge national disasters, famines or catastrophes brought on by war; as a couple of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues have said, this is about a system failure within the rules, and it is worth keeping that in mind. Although there is much gloom in relation to the banking system, in many ways that should at the same time give us some hope.

[Zac Goldsmith]

The hon. Gentleman is right, but a growing number of commentators and voices are anticipating a much larger crash than anything we have seen in the past few years. I will not add to or detract from the credence of such statements, but it is possible to imagine how such a collapse might happen, certainly in the ecological system. We are talking about the banking system, but the two systems are not entirely separate.

We had a wake-up call before the election just a few years ago. My concern is that we have not actually woken up. It seems to me that we have not introduced any significant or meaningful reforms that go to the heart of the problems we are discussing. We have been tinkering on the edges. I do not believe that Parliament has been as closely involved in the process as it should be, partly because of the ignorance that I described at the beginning of my speech.

I want to put on the record my support for the establishment of a meaningful monetary commission or some equivalent in which we can examine the pros and cons of shifting from a fractional reserve banking system to something closer to a full reserve banking system, as some hon. Members have said. We need to understand the pros and cons of such a move, how possible it is, and who wins and who loses. I do not think that many people fully know the answers.

We need to look at quantitative easing. I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House have accepted that it is not objective. Some believe that it is good and others believe that it is bad, but no one believes that it is objective. If the majority view is that quantitative easing is necessary, we need to ask this question: why not inject those funds into the real economy—into housing and energy projects of the kind that Opposition Members have spoken about—rather than using the mechanism in a way that clearly benefits only very few people within the world of financial and banking wizardry that we are discussing?

The issues need to be explored. The time has come to establish a monetary commission and for Parliament to become much more engaged. This debate is a very small step in that direction, and I am very grateful to its sponsors. I wish more Members were in the Chamber—I had intended to listen, not to speak—but, unfortunately, there have not been many speakers. This is a beginning, however, and I hope that we will have many more such debates.

Stamp Duty (Housing Market)

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Betts, and to follow two superb speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for St Albans (Mrs Main) and for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), both of whom have made points with which I agree completely; I will do my best not to duplicate the message that they have delivered, partly because I will not deliver it as well as they have. I will be interested to hear a thorough response from not only the Minister, but also the Opposition Front-Bench spokeswoman, because many questions have been asked about matters such as the mansion tax and the central issue of stamp duty.

We have a housing crisis in this country. No one argues with that. Home ownership is in historic decline, falling to the lowest levels since 1988. That matters if one cares about social harmony and stability and if one believes it important that people should have a stake in society. It could not be more important. We clearly need more homes, a big issue debated in the House on many occasions, and people need better access to finance, another massive issue that has already taken up a lot of time in the past four years that I have been an MP. I will not dwell on those issues today, however, because we have in front of us a simple but radical tool that, as my hon. Friends have pointed out, could make an immediate difference—the difference between affordability and unaffordability for a whole swathe of people.

The problems that have been highlighted are particularly acute in London, where the average first home price is some £330,000—squarely within the 3% stamp duty band, adding thousands of pounds to the bill. My constituency covers Richmond and north Kingston, but according to the latest figures for Richmond borough, 96% of homes are likely to be in the 3% band by 2017-18. It is worth repeating that of the total £4.7 billion stamp duty yield in England, almost half is paid by those living in Greater London. Stamp duty could therefore fairly be described as a tax on London. Unsurprisingly, young people in London find it almost impossible to get a foot on the property ladder as a result. The surge in property prices means that the number of households paying stamp duty has more than doubled over the past decade. It is particularly punitive for first-time buyers, who are denied access to home ownership.

Rather than repeat all the excellent remarks that have been made, I am going to get straight to the point. I strongly support the campaign to reform stamp duty. We should absolutely abolish stamp duty for first-time buyers. I would set the threshold at £500,000, but there is a debate to be had about where it should be. It is worth remembering that in 2007 the Chancellor pledged to scrap stamp duty for first-time buyers up to a level of £250,000. The stamp-duty holiday was tried for a couple of years and ended in 2012. It is worth reminding the Chancellor that it was an important pledge at the time and is probably more important now than when it was initially made. He ought to revisit it, but more bullishly this time. We could form a consensus, certainly on this side of the House, at a threshold of some £500,000 for first-time buyers.

We should change how stamp duty works and move away from the brutal, nonsensical cliff-edge system that distorts the market, and we could form a consensus around that. We need to move towards a progressive system in which the increased rate from one band to the next applies only to the difference between the two bands. The current system makes absolutely no sense at all.

All that could mean a loss of revenue to the Treasury, but I doubt that. It would stimulate activity and have a positive impact. If it led to a decline in Treasury income, we could adjust rates for foreign buyers of UK properties and apply capital gains tax even to their primary residences, because the evidence suggests that overseas investors in bricks and mortar are having an impact on the housing market, particularly in London.

At the end of the day, we want people to get on the housing ladder, and the current stamp duty regime inhibits that. It inhibits something that every single person in the House would support. With minimal effort, the Chancellor could make the world of difference for countless aspiring home owners. I strongly urge him to do so.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Zac Goldsmith]

Every Government whom I have heard discussing this issue and every party in opposition have promised to build endless new homes, but how will the hon. Lady’s party, if it achieves government, deliver those new homes? What will make her future Government different from previous ones?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. We have made it clear that that is a central commitment of our party. We acknowledge that we simply did not build enough homes when we were in government. No Government for 20-odd years have built enough homes. We recognise that without boosting supply we will simply not have fairness and sense in our housing market. That is why we set up the Lyons commission. We want to ensure that we have a detailed road map. We will unveil it in our manifesto ahead of the general election and it will show exactly how we will realise our ambition in government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Zac Goldsmith]

Is that work being done by the Treasury? Is the Treasury looking at how one might go about removing the slab or cliff-edge system and shifting towards a progressive system?

[Mr Gauke]

The Treasury keeps all taxes under review. If we look at the subject historically, there have always been challenges associated with reforming SDLT, because to do so can result in disruption to the housing market.

I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate, in particular my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans. We will continue to ensure that we take every step necessary to increase the supply of good quality, affordable homes. As hon. Members might expect, we will continue to keep all taxes under review. Any decisions on future changes will be taken as part of the annual Budget process and in the context of the public finances. Having the opportunity to debate these matters has been beneficial to the House.

The Economy and Living Standards

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I am pleased that the debate is about living standards because it gives me an opportunity to make the link between rising living standards and improved democracy. That link has been made many times before, notably by the celebrated Power commission, later by the economist Richard Layard, and later still in a very wide-ranging study by Harvard university. In their different ways, they all established that rising living standards boost the public appetite for democracy, and that boosted and strengthened democracy in turn stimulates an increase in and boosts living standards. The link is unavoidable.

One element of the Queen’s Speech is a commitment to introduce a recall system. In theory, that would certainly improve our democracy and therefore lead to rising living standards. I say “in theory” because the Government’s current proposal falls so short of genuine or meaningful recall as to be meaningless. However, the House will at least have the opportunity to make profound amendments to the Bill, and I very much hope that it does.

Recall was promised by all three parties before the last election. They felt obliged to make that promise on the back of the expenses scandal that rocked the House, and it presented an easy, democratic and simple solution. Effectively, recall means enabling voters to remove underperforming MPs if at any time they lose the confidence of the majority of their constituents. It could not be more straightforward: if enough constituents sign a petition in a given period of time, they earn the right to hold a referendum to ask whether constituents want to recall their MP, and if a majority want to recall their MP, there is a by-election. There is a natural safeguard in that the threshold would, in an average constituency, require 14,000 constituents actively to visit the town hall and sign a petition during an 8-week period. Recall would put people in charge, allowing them to replace their MP if a clear majority want to do so.

The public understood that they had finally been promised a reform that might empower them, but then the election happened. I am afraid to say that the Labour Opposition went quiet on the issue, and the coalition Government began to weave small print through their promise. The current proposal is for a form of recall that can happen only by permission of the Standards Committee, and its criteria are so narrow as to make it entirely meaningless.

People are already angry with politicians—the signs are everywhere—but hon. Members should try to imagine how voters will react when they discover that they have been duped by this pretend recall Bill, this illusion of reform. It is extraordinary that even if the Bill becomes law, an MP could switch parties, fail to turn up once to Parliament or even go on a two or three-year holiday without qualifying for recall. At the very first scandal, voters will learn that they have been tricked. The anger that they feel will dwarf—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman, with some ingenuity, has done well to keep in order and speak to the amendment. I trust that, in the final minute of his speech, he will conclude with reference to the specific matters in the amendment.

[Zac Goldsmith]

I will certainly do my best, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Even if people do not realise it yet, at the very first scandal, they will realise that they have been duped. Even before the Bill has been put to the test, 170,000 people have signed a petition saying that they want the real deal—not this thing that the Government are offering. Unlock Democracy has said that, given a choice between this Bill and no Bill, it would go for no Bill, because it thinks that the Bill represents a step back.

I understand why the Government have done this. The Deputy Prime Minister has talked about kangaroo courts and vexatious campaigns, but he is wrong. Where recall happens around the world, there is not one example of a successful vexatious recall campaign. There could not be one here, because it would require so many people—14,000 people—to be persuaded to join a vexatious campaign. We know that that is simply not possible in our constituencies.

I am going to run out of time. I simply ask Members to consider how the Government’s proposal might work. It is much more worrying than true and genuine recall.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

There is a difference between announcement and delivery: Labour announced no more boom and bust, and delivered the biggest boom and the biggest bust. We know all about the record of the last Labour Government. One of the quite extraordinary things is that, despite spending and borrowing all that money, they did not actually invest in the modern infrastructure that the private sector needs to create sustainable jobs. That is the lesson that the hon. Lady should learn from their last period in office.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

We are told by the Government that we urgently need more airport capacity, so could the Chancellor explain why his only policy on the issue is to commit the Government to doing nothing at all for three years, until after the next election? Surely he appreciates that voters need to know where the Government stand before they vote.

[Mr Osborne]

As my hon. Friend knows better than pretty much anyone else in this House, we made a very firm commitment that we would not proceed with a third runway in this Parliament, but Howard Davies is now looking at all the options for airport capacity in the south-east. This issue has evaded Governments of all political colours for the past 30 years, and it is time that we tried to achieve some cross-party consensus, because I am absolutely clear—[Interruption.] If the Labour party was so good at building airports, where are they? Where are these additional airports that it built? The truth is that the south-east of England needs additional airport capacity. The question is where we place it and I think that Howard Davies is the right man to advise us all.

Green Economy

Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I defer to the previous two speakers on their knowledge of energy matters, but I have some points I wish to make. I was interested in the suggestion from my near neighbour, the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), who seems to be strongly in favour of getting rid of the EU’s restrictions on state aids. I completely agree. I am completely in favour of state aids, where appropriate, and we should not be constrained from applying them by the EU—but then my Eurosceptic views are, I think, fairly well known. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) made a thorough, erudite speech that I will read in detail with interest later.

My concern is about energy conservation. Massive investment in energy conservation has everything to commend itself, while investment in nuclear generation has nothing to commend itself. With energy conservation, every home, office, public building and factory in the country can save enormous amounts of energy, so rather than generating energy, we need to conserve it. It is cheaper, too, particularly for the less-well-off living in constituencies such as mine, where some people still do not have roof insulation—aerial photographs at night show the infrared glow from those homes. These are poor people who cannot afford to invest, so it is something that the Government have to attend to.

Investment in energy efficiency would be enormously cheaper than focusing simply on generation. The Association for the Conservation of Energy has produced a report in the past few months demonstrating that such investment would be as much as £1 trillion cheaper over time than investment in generation and would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. Many of those jobs, in home insulation, would not be high skilled, so a lot of unemployed people, particularly young people, in my constituency who do not have high skills would be ideally suited to working in the sector. We desperately need these sorts of jobs at every level.

Energy conservation would be labour-intensive, rather than capital-intensive, which is what nuclear investment is about. I have been informed this week that officials in the Department of Energy and Climate Change are doing a deal that will be massively beneficial to EDF. All the other energy companies have dropped out of the nuclear programme in Britain, leaving EDF the monopoly supplier. It is effectively owned by the French Government—they own 85%—and our DECC officials are so obsessively pro-nuclear that they are going to strike a deal that will effectively subsidise EDF to the tune of £5 billion. That money will go to EDF, a French company, and will be used to benefit French taxpayers, French consumers and, no doubt, the French nuclear industry as well. It will not benefit us at all. That £5 billion could be spent in many other ways, particularly on energy conservation.

The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden is right that we need a base provision of core generation for peak times, but if we invest heavily in green energy of every kind in order to maximise energy provision in other ways, we could reduce that core requirement to its very lowest level. Germany has already done it. I understand that it has invested gigantic amounts in all sorts of alternative energy, such that, on warm summer weekend days, they can effectively shut down their power stations and tick over on the alternative energy provision.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about energy efficiency and nuclear power. I echo everything he has said. Will he join me in urging the Government to put more emphasis on energy efficiency in the proposed electricity market reforms, the original intention of which was to introduce the concept of “negawatts”, which would put energy saved on a par with energy generated and therefore revolutionise the energy market and fundamentally change the dynamic?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his informed intervention. The problem is that the energy companies have been far too influential in DECC and have been able to bend the arms of even our Secretaries of State, because the central core of government decided years ago that it wanted to keep the companies and nuclear power on side. Those companies make money out of selling energy, not conservation or solar power at a local level; they do not make a profit out of that kind of energy provision. Indeed, we must have strong Government intervention to achieve that. In Germany, they have done it; with their feed-in tariffs being brought in years ago, the Germans are effectively decades ahead of us. In just a decade or two, half of their energy will be provided by alternative means. We are talking about enormous proportions of energy, and we have to go for that.

It has been said so many times, but we have wind on our shores and we are surrounded by sea and tides. We are aware of a positive move towards using the Severn barrage, that will produce enormous amounts of our energy, but there are other forms of generation, too, which could be flexible and provide us with base load, such as generation by burning organic waste, or anaerobic digestion. Unlike with wind and sun, we can turn that on and off. If we invested heavily in anaerobic digestion, so that all the organic waste was used to produce methane, which could be used either directly or to generate electricity, it would provide a massive contribution to the core base load of our electricity and energy provision. We have to go in this direction. We have to resist the power and controls of the energy companies and go for an alternative energy and green energy society.

I congratulate the hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) on securing this important debate. If we do not move in this direction, we will be in serious economic trouble as well as environmental trouble.