Oral Answers to Questions
Marco Longhi Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Jeremy Hunt
We are already working on proposals in that very area. Broadly speaking, we have one of the most robust and resilient pension fund sectors in the world, but we are doing a lot of work to remove the barriers to investing back into the UK. Things such as affordable housing, infrastructure and our growth businesses are areas of great potential.
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Laura Trott)
My hon. Friend is rightly very focused on making sure that every single pound of taxpayers’ money is spent wisely, and I can assure him that the Government share that goal. In June, the previous Chief Secretary to the Treasury launched the public sector productivity programme, and we will provide an update at the autumn statement.
Marco Longhi
Estimates show that the public sector today is 7.5% less productive than in the environment just before covid. Does the Minister agree that this could possibly be down to a continued more liberal working from home ethic? How much is this costing the taxpayer?
Laura Trott
My hon. Friend is right that public sector productivity must be improved. That is exactly what the review is looking at and what we will address. I look forward to talking to him more about it in due course.
Gareth Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the benefits and importance of life sciences to the country. We are genuinely a world leader: I was out in Boston in the United States seeing the other world-leading area for life sciences, and it is not a patch on ours. That is why, as an example, we are looking to support life sciences through the investment zone programme, but, as I said, they are a key priority for the Chancellor as part of his growth agenda.
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
As we have a debate this afternoon, I will limit my comments to welcoming my outstanding new colleagues. The new Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott), will brilliantly solve the problem of how we stop the state expanding, building on the work of her wonderful predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen). The new Economic Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), will single-handedly ensure that the City and stock market remain competitive, building on the superb foundations laid by his predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith). The job of the new Financial Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston), will be to work out how to bring taxes down, following in the footsteps of his excellent predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who as Health Secretary will no doubt be trying to push them up.
Marco Longhi
There is widespread consensus that growth is essential to the economy. With 800,000 fewer self-employed in the economy post covid and post IR35, does the Chancellor agree that increasing the VAT threshold to £250,000 for new registrations would boost growth and be a net gain in revenue terms in the long run?
Jeremy Hunt
I thank my hon. Friend for raising the support we give to small businesses. As he will know, supporting small businesses, particularly by rolling over the retail, hospitality and leisure business rates discount of 75%, was a major feature of the autumn statement. We will continue to keep under review anything that we can do to help our small businesses.
Oral Answers to Questions
Marco Longhi Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Jeremy Hunt
I enjoyed meeting the hon. Gentleman when we opened that investment zone. Let me reassure him that I am a big supporter of nuclear and I am very excited about the potential of SMRs. There is a competition going on this year, which we hope will be completed by the end of the year, to assess the viability of the various SMR manufacturers, and we want to get going as quickly as we can.
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Andrew Griffith)
The Government have been clear that debanking customers on the basis of political views is unacceptable. During recess I met banking executives to discuss debanking and lawful freedom of expression, and they have committed to comply with the changes I published on 21 July. In parallel, the Financial Conduct Authority is conducting an urgent review of debanking practices, which will report back to the Chancellor in the next couple of weeks.
Marco Longhi
Last week the Met Police chief finally seemed to confirm that the job of the police should be to police and not to seek to align themselves with entities or ideologies. Does the Minister agree with me that banks and the corporate world should follow that example and focus their efforts on their core business, rather than play the sinister cancelling agenda of the woke brigade that saw Nigel Farage have his account wrongfully closed?
Andrew Griffith
My hon. Friend represents the views of his constituents in this place clearly. He is quite right; although they are private entities, banks benefit from a privileged place in society and they should focus on doing their core functions brilliantly, treating customers fairly and making a sustainable return for shareholders, rather than taking sides on politically contentious matters.
Draft Double Taxation Relief and International Tax Enforcement (Brazil) Order 2023
Draft Double Taxation Relief and International Tax Enforcement (San Marino) Order 2023
Marco Longhi Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
It is a pleasure and an honour to be able to speak in this Committee, so I thank the Minister and colleagues for indulging me. The Brazil double taxation agreement was in fact signed by the UK and Brazil last year, following years of negotiations between HMRC and its Brazilian counterparts to iron out, as the Committee may imagine, many a detail. It is a fact that trade flows between countries improve GDPs and the health and wellbeing of populations, who benefit through extra jobs and job security.
The process now requires ratification by our own Parliament, which is why we are here, and the Brazilian Senate. I am personally assured by the President of the Brazilian Congress that, once he receives submission from the Federal Revenue of Brazil, he will progress it through their chamber expeditiously.
The absence of a double taxation agreement is the single biggest market access barrier preventing businesses from investing in both our countries, as we have heard. Brazil, as we have also heard, is the only G20 country with which we do not have a double taxation agreement, and we have well over 100 such agreements in place. I ask the Committee to please support the Brazil order and, indeed, the San Marino order.
Oral Answers to Questions
Marco Longhi Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Jeremy Hunt)
Mr Speaker, I did check that my Department still exists before coming along today, and you will be pleased to know that the great ship of state that is the Treasury sails serenely on.
In December, I announced the Edinburgh reforms, which take forward the Government’s ambition for the UK to be the world’s most innovative and competitive global financial centre.
Marco Longhi
Can the Chancellor please describe any relationships, or plans for them, to deliver the United Kingdom as a global financial hub, especially given the lack of equivalence with the EU?
Jeremy Hunt
I am very happy to do that for my hon. Friend. The flexibilities that we have since leaving the EU mean that we are able to do the Solvency II reforms, which mean that potentially £100 billion of extra investment will go into UK companies. Indeed, the whole of the Edinburgh reforms give us the opportunity to rethink our regulatory structures so that we do not just remain the world’s second largest exporter of financial services, but go from strength to strength.
Economic Situation
Marco Longhi Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Chris Philp
The reason that, on the second day of the new Government’s term in office, we brought forward the energy price guarantee was to protect consumers and in effect lower inflation by 5% compared with where it would otherwise be. We legislated at pace yesterday to alleviate the burden of the national insurance increase, which Opposition Members enthusiastically voted for. In terms of markets, as I said, we are in regular contact with the Bank of England and have complete confidence in its ability to manage systemic financial stability.
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
The funds made available by the Bank of England to purchase gilts were described by the shadow Chancellor as taxpayers’ money. I find that confusing. My understanding—I am not an economist—is that those funds are not taxpayers’ money and that, in fact, the Bank of England may even make a profit from the actions that it takes on the markets. Different people will have different views about whether the Bank of England’s intervention is appropriate action, but does the Chief Secretary agree that it is completely wrong for the shadow Chancellor to describe those funds as taxpayers’ money?
Chris Philp
It is not taxpayers’ money in the sense that the phrase suggests. There is a fiscal indemnity so that any profit or loss will end up flowing back to the Exchequer, but, as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), whether that is crystallised depends on market prices. I point out that the volume of gilts so far purchased is considerably less than the limits that were set out.
Oral Answers to Questions
Marco Longhi Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Lucy Frazer)
The Chancellor has brought forward a number of measures to encourage business investment, and I shall mention just two. Under the super deduction, from April 2021 until the end of March 2023, companies can claim a 130% capital allowance on qualifying plant and machinery investments. That is the biggest two-year business tax cut in modern British history. We have also extended the temporary £1 million annual investment allowance level until the end of March 2023.
Lucy Frazer
Cytronex sounds like a fantastic company, and it is great to see it in Winchester. It is precisely the type of company that we want to support. As I mentioned, it could benefit from the super deduction that we have brought in. Under the super deduction, for every £1 a company invests, its taxes are cut by up to 25p. That type of investment will help manufacturing and the manufacturing sector.
Marco Longhi
Jobs and job security clearly depend on economic growth. The International Monetary Fund’s forecast putting the UK at the top of the G7 is an endorsement of this Chancellor’s and this Prime Minister’s approach to economic policy throughout covid. Will the Minister assure me and my Dudley constituents that we will increasingly return to revenue from growth as soon as possible, and continue investing in skills for jobs for the future, building on, for example, the successful delivery of Dudley’s institute of technology?
Lucy Frazer
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to focus on skills, and that is exactly what the Chancellor did in the spending review, with an investment, over the Parliament, of £3.8 billion. My hon. Friend mentions the Marches institute of technology, and we are investing in a total of 21 of those innovative institutions across England. Employer-led training is key to growth, and that is why we are quadrupling the scale of skills boot camps in England, including digital skills boot camps, which are available in Dudley and funded by the Government.
Conduct of the Right Hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip
Marco Longhi Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
I must say that I find it utterly bizarre that we find ourselves here this afternoon, once again wasting valuable parliamentary time, all because SNP Members are so desperate to deflect from their own insecurities and failures. It is laughable that they want to accuse our Prime Minister of ignoring advice when the policy of ignoring is precisely what their party stands for. The good Scottish people voted to remain a part of the United Kingdom, but SNP Members will not take the final word of their own constituents as exactly what it is; instead, they seek to overturn it. Theirs is a policy of division.
The SNP nationalists consistently let down Scottish people on healthcare, with accident and emergency waiting times near the worst level on record. Their First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, stumbled and floundered over her devolved nationalist Government’s record on the NHS, covid recovery and the economy in a recent TV interview: all she appeared to do was blame the pandemic. In her time as First Minister, the number of people waiting more than 12 weeks for treatment increased by 427% for out-patients and 1,590% for in-patients.
Who supported the Scottish people, Scottish businesses and the Scottish Government through the pandemic? It was the UK Government, led by our Prime Minister. It was the UK Government who implemented the furlough scheme supporting more than 900,000 individuals. It was the UK Government who supported 175,000 self-employed workers in Scotland, with a total claim on the UK taxpayer of nearly £1.7 billion. It was this UK Government who secured access to the covid-19 vaccine for Scotland, saving lives and stopping the spread of the virus. It is this UK Government who have secured the booster jabs to protect and save lives as we face uncertainties over the omicron variant.
But I do not think that SNP Members care about any of that. They do not care about what really benefits their residents; they care only about holding on to their seats. For them, it is about division. To fuel their own separatist fires, they want English Members in this place to come out berating Scotland and its people. I have news for them: all the colleagues I know love Scotland and the Scottish people. Even Labour MPs, although they are absent today, love Scotland—why, they even had a Prime Minister and a Chancellor who were Scottish.
This personal attack on the Prime Minister is nothing more than an act of political desperation by a party that is covering up its failings. Soon we will have not just painted windows on ferries that it cannot build, but painted images on the Opposition Benches for a party of Christmas past. The SNP is running out of ideas and running out of time.
Better Jobs and a Fair Deal at Work
Marco Longhi Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
“Your name isn’t English, why don’t you go back to where you came from?” That is a recent Facebook comment from an articulate but clearly limited left-wing activist, so I took some pleasure in replying in Italian “Che in realtà sono nato da un minatore di carbone del black country”—that I was in fact born to a Black Country coalminer.
More condescending left-wingers recently said this:
“You’d think Marco would understand why Brexit is bad. He’s lived in Italy and EVEN his Dad is Italian. Why is he such a strong Brexiteer? He must be stupid.”
Well, brownie points for working out that my dad is Italian. I did explain at length why Brexit is vital, but it became clear to me that there was a limit to their thinking, too—I mean Marco, Italian, therefore remainer, otherwise stupid is a bit of a “micro-aggression”, and is rather limited thinking isn’t it, Mr Deputy Speaker?
Here is my suggestion for the Labour party: set up an internal limited-thinking focus group to eradicate it from among their ranks, because how can they represent people who are clearly not limited? They may want to start in Amber Valley where the Labour leader blamed voters for their election results; it might prove more useful than rearranging the deckchairs on their Front Bench.
So, yes, my name is Marco, and, yes, my father is Italian, but here I am. How did I get here? Two words: opportunità e lavoro—opportunity and graft. My grandfather’s story is one of rags to riches and my parents are examples of blue-collar workers who for years lived hand to mouth. They bent over backwards to give me opportunities, and I put in the work.
Opportunity and work are two pillars of Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech. People out there do not want handouts; they want a hand getting back on their feet. More than anything, they want opportunities to do well. The lifetime skills guarantee is a massive investment in education and apprenticeships, readying people for the jobs coming their way. We may remember the Prime Minister—or “our Boris” as they say back home—visiting Dudley and going to the site of our new Institute of Technology, where he delivered his “jobs, jobs, jobs” vision. The pandemic has shown that fish can be necessary, but fishing rods are what people really need, and that institute will provide the rods.
The Queen’s Speech contained a vast array of steps that will take us out of the clutches of the pandemic, freeing us to be even stronger than when we entered it. The commitment to our NHS and continuing with our investment in the vaccination programme and in private sector life sciences are huge bonuses that this country will benefit from.
The roaring ’20s are upon us. Dio salvi la Regina—God save the Queen.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
The Annunciator screens in the Chamber say there is a four-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches after No. 20; can we change that to three minutes now please?
Oral Answers to Questions
Marco Longhi Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Dr Jamie Wallis (Bridgend) (Con)
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rishi Sunak)
Our plan for jobs supports retraining and upskilling by tripling the number of traineeships, expanding sector-based work academies, incentivising apprenticeship hiring and providing funding for new, free, advanced technical courses and digital skills bootcamps under the lifetime skills guarantee.
Rishi Sunak
My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of our focus on young people. More than half the jobs that have been lost since the start of the pandemic have been of those under the age of 25 and their rates of furlough are much higher than others. That is why, acting very early last year, we created the kickstart programme, which is creating hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country, including in my hon. Friend’s constituency. I urge all Members to talk to their local businesses to get them excited and joined up to the kickstart scheme, and to provide young people with the chance of a brighter future.
Marco Longhi
Small and medium-sized enterprises are often referenced as the beating heart of the UK economy, employing the largest number of people. That is certainly the case in my Dudley North constituency and across the west midlands, so will my right hon. Friend commit to working with colleagues in the Department for Education, the Department for Work and Pensions and with business to ensure that we improve engagement with small businesses, in particular in the design and funding of apprenticeship schemes, as they need providers to deliver much more at foundation level 2, which the current funding framework is less able to deliver? This would help to bring about the retraining revolution that our brilliant Mayor Andy Street talks about.
Leaving the EU: Impact on the UK
Marco Longhi Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con) [V]
Despite being born in this country, I found myself living the first two decades of my life in Italy. When I returned to this country in my late teens, I questioned where I belonged, where I identified myself with. The fact that the UK was a Union of four nations that embraced all its identities, ideals and values, which were diverse even within each nation, gave me a sense of belonging among our differences. I love Scotland. The Scottish people are some of the friendliest, most unassuming and loyal people I have ever met, and the theatre too often played out in this Chamber is not representative of people from Dudley or Dunblane.
Brexit means that all four of our nations, when united, will benefit from our renewed position in the world, leading the way in science, innovation, renewable technologies, defence and cyber. Record investment in all those areas and the ingenuity of our scientists, proven by the development of the Oxford vaccine, coupled with the freedoms unleashed by Brexit, mean that a bright, exciting future lies ahead for us all. The SNP has frequently claimed that the case for Scotland’s separation from the rest of the UK is made stronger by Brexit, but if the SNP really wanted a truly independent Scotland, why did it campaign to remain in the EU? The truth, as every SNP Member knows, is that with each passing day the case for separation is made not stronger by Brexit, but weaker.
I am sorry to say that the SNP approach is also somewhat arrogant. It is wrong for the SNP to assume that the EU would agree to Scotland’s membership. Why would the EU rush into accepting the membership of a country that spends much more than it earns, while also setting a precedent for other separatist movements? I do not think Spain would be that quick to agree Scotland’s membership. If the EU did agree, the terms would be extremely punitive financially, as any Greek would attest.
Wherever they live within this United Kingdom, all that any of our constituents want is leadership, stability, humility and fairness. For SNP MPs to interpret selective narrow facts to support a dangerous separatist agenda, rather than supporting what is right for Scotland, the Scottish people and our democracy, shows failure on each of those tests. People in Yorkshire, Cornwall and the Black Country, and across Scotland, have their own unique identities, but we know that together we are stronger and more prosperous.