National Insurance Contributions (Termination Awards and Sporting Testimonials) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Mike Wood and Peter Dowd

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

It is a delight to see you in the Chair, Sir Henry. I thank the people who gave evidence today to the Committee; it was very helpful. I had something like 50 questions to ask. I was unable to ask them all, but I will relieve Members by saying that I will not ask them all now—possibly 45, but not the 50 that I had planned to ask.

Contrary to what the Minister says, we do not, through new clause 1, want to “force” the Government to do this, that or the other; we do, however, want them to come to Parliament and accept parliamentary scrutiny. There have been no amendments to any of the Finance Bill Committees that I have sat on; I think it is four in total. In the mother of Parliaments, we were unable to scrutinise those Bills properly and appropriately—my colleagues will remember several of them—because the Government have tried, and continue to try, to close down any scrutiny. It is very important to get that on the record.

As for the implication that if we do not agree to the proposals, it will somehow have an impact on job creation—that old chestnut—as I said recently on the radio and in other media, the same was said about giving the minimum wage to miners in 1913, and to agricultural workers in 1924. It was said when people started to get holiday pay in 1938. People said that equal pay for women and members of ethnic minorities would cause the economy to crash, and the same things are being said about the minimum wage. It is the old claptrap—I should not say that, in case it is unparliamentary, but that is what it amounts to—about this impacting on jobs.

Yes, we have the highest number of jobs since 1975, or since records began, as the Government keep telling us, but the context is that this is the most precariously placed workforce in decades. Zero-hours contracts abound, and regional imbalances—[Interruption.] Government Members mutter, but facts are a stubborn thing; facts remain facts. [Interruption.] They are facts; the Minister mutters that they are not. The reality is that a huge number of people are on zero-hours contracts, and huge numbers of people are working two or three hours a week. That is classed as employment. I am sorry, but it is not “employment” to that person, who is not getting any money, or to their family, who perhaps have to send their children to school without breakfast or lunch. Let us get that into context.

The hon. Member for Dudley South effectively said that we will now tax redundancy payments above a certain level. Only the Tories could make a virtue of taxing the redundancy payments of people who have lost their job. The Minister mentioned that the £30,000 figure had been the same since 1998, and said that it was the most generous such amount in—I don’t know—the known world. We do not want to make simple comparisons with other countries, because other countries have far more generous reliefs in other areas, so making a direct comparison with other redundancy figures, out of the totality of employment reliefs, is not appropriate.

The hon. Member for Walsall North mentioned the affirmative procedure. If the Government want to reduce the £30,000 limit—as they no doubt will want to, given that that is far too generous for people who have been made redundant and have lost their job—we will be able to vote on that. Perhaps that would, at least, give us a proper opportunity to debate the issue on the Floor of the House, which we have not been able to do. I mentioned our inability to amend the law in the last four, or possibly even five, Finance Bills. That is unprecedented in parliamentary history.

[Mike Wood]

rose—

[Peter Dowd]

I am happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman, if he wishes to peddle some more Tory twaddle.

[Mike Wood]

I thank the shadow Minister for giving way. His point is entirely bogus, because as the Minister made clear, and as he knows, the Bill concerns purely employers’, and not employees’, contributions, so it does not tax anybody’s redundancy payment.

[Peter Dowd]

I will tell the hon. Gentleman what was admitted today: that still reduces people’s wages; that is what this comes down to. It could also give companies an incentive not to pay redundancy. I know that he wants to sweep those points aside as though they were irrelevant, but they are not irrelevant to a person who has worked for a company for 25 years and gets a redundancy payment that is taxed more greatly than they expected. That is the context in which I am raising these issues.

[Mike Wood]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the maximum statutory redundancy pay, even for an employee who has worked for 25 years, is barely half of the threshold amount in the Bill, so they would not be affected, even indirectly?

[Peter Dowd]

There we go again. It is the race to the bottom, isn’t it? We are always talking about a statutory minimum. That is what the Tories talk about all the time: the minimum. We do not want people living on the minimum; we want people to have a healthy, full-quality life. This is about the cumulative effect of the Government’s fiscal policies, not one isolated issue; it is about the totality. A person might have a job, but it might be a poor, insecure job. It is not just about having a job; it is about the quality and context of that job.