Amazon
Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Leigh of Hurley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are planning to take (1) to protect third party sellers from the dominance of Amazon, and (2) to ensure that Amazon does not benefit from passing on the costs of the Digital Services Tax to sellers.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, the Government are committed to ensuring that digital markets work for all—businesses, consumers and society as a whole. Promoting dynamic and competitive digital markets will be key to maintaining a world-leading digital economy in the UK. That is why we accepted the six strategic recommendations of the Furman review and established the digital markets task force to advise on the potential design and implementation of pro-competitive measures in digital platform markets.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con) [V]
My Lords, I appreciate that the DST was always intended as a stopgap while the OECD comes up with a more global solution, possibly imminently. But it was brought in with the background of Amazon paying just £4.6 million in corporation tax in 2017. The DST does not achieve its objective of yielding more revenue from the likes of Amazon, as it is simply passed on to its suppliers in the marketplace, which have to absorb this tax in their margin. Would the Minister be prepared to set up a meeting with me, some interested parties and HM Treasury to consider this much more carefully?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The Government expect the digital services tax to raise about £2 billion over the next five years, which will go some way to addressing the issues that my noble friend raises, but I am delighted to commit to meeting him and other interested parties.
Charitable and Voluntary Sector
Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Addington, on this important debate. As my register of interests discloses, I am a donor and trustee of a number of charities and I was asked by David Cameron to join a task force from which the Fundraising Regulator, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, was formed.
The charity sector statistics are staggering, as the very helpful NCVO report points out. The UK public donate £22 billion a year, across 167,000 voluntary associations. Other Peers have rightly drawn attention to the loss of income and the effect that this crisis will have on some very deserving causes. It might well be that the £4 billion that the NCVO predicts in lost income for the first three months stretches across the year, although personally I am not so sure. However, there will be a substantial drop in revenue. Of course, we would all love the Government to do more to help, in addition to the measures already announced, but if this crisis is costing us £40 billion per month, I cannot see that much more can or will be done, other than perhaps some soft loans.
It will be up to the third sector to take radical and difficult steps. These will include merging some charities where there is clear and significant overlap to reduce costs. The duplication in the sector, with each organisation having its own overheads, is not efficient, nor is the constant competition to raise funds against other charities. Not only do many charities have to think about merging now, but they also have to look hard at their costs. The mean average salary across the top 100 charities was £265,000 for the top CEOs. Of course, many have taken welcome pay cuts, but the lessons of the NCVO’s 2014 report still have not been learned.
No one would have wanted this terrible current situation. Sadly, we have no choice but to accept that the sector needs to be streamlined, more efficient and more focused on its main purpose of helping those in real need. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will agree to help with the streamlining. I really do wish the sector well over this terrible period.
Internet Safety
Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Ashton of Hyde
Yes, the right reverend Prelate makes a good point. That is why the Internet Safety Strategy Green Paper set out the need for the industry to think safety first by designing products and platforms in a way that makes them less likely to cause harm. We need to make that as simple as possible for the industry and we need to be aware of the impact on SMEs and growing companies. The White Paper will address this issue further and will, for example, examine the case for a set of safety-by-design guidelines for the industry. It will also set out the Government’s approach to the use of safety technology.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
Will my noble friend consider instructing the committee to look at the anonymity of social media and in particular whether or not tweeting should be allowed from anonymous people?
Lord Ashton of Hyde
No, it is not part of the Government’s thought process to instruct the committee to do anything. The Government will consider issues such as those raised by my noble friend in the online harms White Paper.