Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Lord Stunell and Nigel Mills

Wednesday 17th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stunell]

I strongly support the general anti-avoidance rule and its introduction. Some would say that it is long overdue. Bearing in mind what the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) has just said, how important and urgent it is and how long-standing the problem has been, one has to say that it was overdue in 2010, so it is good that it is in place now. I commend Ministers on the Front Bench for including it in the proposals coming to the Committee now.

I shall spend a minute or two commenting on what my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) said in his speech a little while ago, making it clear that there are some risks and some dangers, particularly of retrospection. The Minister will know that we have been in correspondence about one particular series of events which has left constituents of mine at a severe disadvantage, as they see it, because of the retrospective application of an HMRC ruling to them.

What I want to say to my hon. Friend is that one thing that the general anti-avoidance rule will do is put everybody in this country on notice about their tax affairs so that they cannot be caught by surprise, or perhaps even subterfuge or a recycling of policy, in the way that my constituents have been. I will continue to write to the Minister about the case facing my constituents, but a general anti-avoidance rule puts everybody on notice and makes any possibility of an excuse disappear. We should welcome that.

[Nigel Mills]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is preferable that only people who engage in aggressive tax abuse should be put on notice, and that people innocently going about trying to structure their affairs normally within the law should not be scared of the provision at all?

[Andrew Stunell]

I was very attracted to one point that my hon. Friend made in his speech, which was that he thought there was a tendency not to go for the biggest fish with the sharpest teeth and the most expensive lawyers, but to go for the little people or at least the middle-sized people. That is a powerful point and I hope those on the Front Bench are listening carefully. A general anti-avoidance rule needs to be general—that is to say, applicable to even the biggest fish with the sharpest teeth and the most expensive lawyers.

In amendment 6 and several others, some of which were debated earlier today and some more of which will be debated tomorrow, the Labour Front-Bench team has given us a very pretty set of trinkets. They all start with the phraseology

“The Chancellor shall review the possibility of”

doing this, that and the other. They have all obviously been produced by Labour’s amnesia factory, which has forgotten entirely that, on general election day in 2010, the country, the public purse, borrowed £428 million. The day before it borrowed £428 million, and the day after it borrowed £428 million. I commend Government Front Benchers again for reducing that figure by a quarter—a substantial amount. It is surprising that the range of amendments and the speeches made by Labour Members in the Budget debate, including today, have all said that the right solution to the problem is to borrow more. That is not the right solution, and, as I say, the amnesia factory is churning them out.

Planning (Opencast Mining Separation Zones) Bill

Debate between Lord Stunell and Nigel Mills

Friday 11th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Andrew Stunell)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) on his success in the ballot, on presenting his case so cogently and on attracting a lot of cross-party support for his Bill. I must stress at the outset that I cannot discuss the merits of any live planning application because the Secretary of State’s role in the planning system means that I would be prejudicing it to do so. A lot of sites were mentioned by hon. Members who were, quite reasonably, advancing the case for the Bill and, in some cases, discussing applications, prospective or otherwise. I am sorry to disappoint hon. Members, but I am not able to respond to those points.

I have a little history on this matter myself. When I was a prospective candidate, as the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire was before he was successful at the most recent election, I appeared at a public inquiry on the application for open-cast coal mining at Towers Farm, near the village of Poynton, on the edge of what is now my constituency. [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) is telling the House that he was born there. I am happy to report to the House, as I was happy to report to my electors at the time, that the public inquiry came out in favour of no open-cast coal mining. Although most people see my constituency as a leafy suburban area adjacent to a national park, it has the same coal beneath it as is under the constituencies of the hon. Members for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) and for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), so I fully understand the high level of public concern about these applications. The concerns about the environmental protection lost as a result of the intrusion of these developments and about the dust are often well justified.

[Nigel Mills]

I think that we all fully appreciate that the Minister cannot comment on individual applications, but may I press him to comment a little on the annoyance that people feel when county councils turn down applications on valid planning grounds and they see Secretaries of State completely override local opinion? Is that approach appropriate? Does he think it might change a little under his Government?

[Andrew Stunell]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman made that point because during his earlier remarks he stated as a fact that a Secretary of State automatically approves applications that come before him—or her, as was the case in previous Administrations. As a matter of fact, the Secretary of State refused the most recent appeal put before him relating to a site in Yorkshire, so it is not right to say that he takes an arbitrary view that every application should be approved and I would not want the record to suggest that he does. When an application comes before him, he has to adopt a quasi-judicial approach that takes account of the different factors in play, and I shall say something about what those factors are in a few moments. It would clearly be wrong for him to have an arbitrary pre-disposition, either for or against every application. So despite what the hon. Gentleman might wish or fear to be the case about the Secretary of State’s approach, it has to be objective and balanced. The Secretary of State’s approach must take account of all the factors that he ought to take into account and exclude all the factors that he ought not to take into account. I believe that that is the legal phraseology, although I am not a lawyer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Mills]

I struggle with the point that the Minister is making. Does he really think that all the councils that have consistently tried to defeat such planning applications have somehow missed the idea of putting a 500-metre separation zone in their planning policy, and that saying, “Change your policy and put that in,” will stand up to scrutiny when applications are made and subsequently go to appeal? We need national protection to support planning authorities that are trying to implement that policy, which they are struggling to do at this point.

[Andrew Stunell]

The Scottish and Welsh situations have quite often been prayed in aid during the debate. However, in both places the buffer zone is a matter of planning policy rather than of statutory requirement. We believe that councils are best placed to make those planning decisions, just as we are content for the Assembly in Wales and the Scottish Parliament to make those decisions for their respective countries.

[Nigel Mills]

The Bill asks the Minister to issue that planning policy guidance for England. If the planning policy sets out the 500 metre mark—in some situations, that could be wider or narrower—we will at least have a decent, robust starting point. We understand that that may be varied in local circumstances, but the problem at the moment is that councils struggle to justify 50 metres versus 400, 300, 200 or 150 metres, ending up with open-cast mines that are 30, 50 or 70-odd metres from people’s houses, such as the proposal at Lodge House in my constituency. That is just not acceptable.

[Andrew Stunell]

Although it is very tempting, I cannot talk about specific cases. The hon. Gentleman has highlighted that a minimum zone ought to be left in any given circumstance, and the appropriate body to take that decision is the local planning authority.