Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Graham Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

While recognising the points made by the hon. Members for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) and for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) on the Concentrix contract, which will be covered in the Select Committee’s report, I would like to congratulate Treasury Ministers on responding very fast when these issues really came to a climax in August and on being extremely prompt in looking after constituents who contacted their MPs about this matter.

[Jane Ellison]

I thank my hon. Friend for those words. Having looked carefully at the profile of complaints from Members over the period of the contract, it is clear that there was sharp increase in their number right at the end of the contract, when it became apparent that a number of Members were contacting us on behalf of their constituents. As I have said, it was the sharp decline in service that led to the actions that we took. It is also worth noting that all the 181,000 cases that were taken back have now been resolved and that, where appropriate, compensation has been paid. Most importantly, when claims have needed to be renewed and reinstated, this has been done.

Concentrix

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Today’s debate is primarily about the HMRC contractor, Concentrix, the delivery of its contract, its customer service and the impact of its work on those receiving tax credits who were wrongly suspected of fraud or error. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) made some valid points about her constituents who have been affected, and other hon. Members have spoken equally movingly about some of theirs. The debate is about more than that, however. It is about the relative value, efficiency and service of third-party contracts as against the direct delivery of services by the Government or by Government agencies. It is also about how the Government—in this case, HMRC—reacted to the unexpected crisis when mandatory reconsideration appeals rose by 95% in August while the “success” in handling calls dropped off a cliff. It is about how quickly contingency plans were put in place, and what those plans were. It is also about whether the structure of the incentives and the contractor’s commission were appropriate for this type of public service delivery.

It is too early to offer definitive answers today, while the internal investigation is still going on. However, the inquiry by our Work and Pensions Committee and the measured comments from the Financial Secretary to the Treasury today offer some clues. To this, I add my own experience as an MP dealing with constituents who have been affected, and the observations that we made in the Select Committee.

The first point has to be that the goal of reducing HMRC’s estimates of fraud and error was the right goal for the Government to have. The 2014-15 estimates, which are the most recent ones, suggest a net £1.2 billion of fraud and error on tax credits, potentially involving 500,000 people. The Government cannot spend billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on welfare without ensuring that it is spent properly, just as we expect the Department for International Development to ensure that its accounts are correct and its money is spent in the right way. We also expect the European Union to account correctly for the money it receives from its taxpayers, including our own.

The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) is absolutely right to say that rich people, and every company, should pay the right amount of tax. I would add that this is not a case of either/or. It is a case of both. The Government were absolutely right to increase HMRC’s resources for collecting the right amount of tax from those who have tax to pay and to ensure that the right amounts of welfare benefits are received by the right people. It is worth noting that the £270 million recovered through this programme will make a decent contribution to reducing fraud and we must ensure that it is made available to the people who need it most.

Secondly, there has been a cost during this process to our hard-working, not-well-off constituents. In each of the dozen or so cases that I or my office staff have replied to, there has been a degree of hardship and, in some cases, considerable hardship. HMRC’s response to such cases is therefore important. My sense, from our Select Committee inquiry, is that HMRC’s chief executive, Jon Thompson, is looking at how quickly HMRC has responded. It is true, however, that the moment HMRC took a grip, beefed up resources and put extra staff on to the MPs’ hotline, my office—and, I suspect, those of other MPs—was able to resolve these tax credits cases very fast. I am unsure whether all the cases were resolved within 48 hours, but all were done within three or four days, and some within a few hours. Indeed, the Work and Pensions Committee Chairman, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), said that he could not

“recall an experience where, thank goodness, the Executive, whether Government or delegated, has acted so quickly when they have seen a crisis.”

That should be on the record. It is credit to how HMRC responded. In the evidence we took from affected people, there was one particularly gracious “thank you” to HMRC for resolving one individual’s crisis so quickly.

My third point relates to contracts to third parties and the incentive system within them. The National Audit Office recognised this as a complex area, and the jury is still out on how successful the system has been over the past few years. HMRC’s chief executive responded to my question on that with an interesting remark about

“the balance of incentives on third parties in these kinds of contracts”

which

“is essentially based on commission earned.”

He asked:

“Is that the right kind of incentive mechanism for this kind of public service delivery?”

It is a valid question, and other Members have mentioned it. The HMRC chief executive reflected on it. I also have no doubt that the NAO investigation will discuss whether bringing this sort of contract in-house would ensure better quality control, more experience of handling citizens who are on tax credits, and possibly even a reduced cost. From the evidence to the Committee, it broadly looked like Concentrix will have been paid about £27 million by the time its contract comes to an end on £270 million of fraud or error identified, implying a 10% commission. That feels high, but the figures are probably hypothetical at this stage and will need to be confirmed in due course by the investigation.

In all of this, the Government, HMRC and Concentrix have been absolutely right to start with an apology to those who have suffered. When mistakes are made, it is important that they are recognised immediately. HMRC and Concentrix started the Select Committee sessions by making their apologies—the Minister has added hers on more than one occasion—and that was important. There is the issue of compensation for those most affected, and the fact that, as the amendment states, the Government should “ensure that those people”—people on tax credits—

“are treated by HMRC in future with dignity and respect.”

That should happen all the time for everyone with whom the Government deal, particularly where monopolies such as HMRC exist. We all have a duty to treat our constituents with dignity and respect. That is what happens most of the time. My experience is that HMRC is helpful on every occasion with constituent issues.

In conclusion, today’s debate has been measured and the tone has been reflective and thoughtful across the House. Clearly, there are lessons to be learned. It is correct that tax collection is done, that welfare benefits are spent in the right way on the right people, that mistakes are responded to rapidly and that agencies such as HMRC should hold contingency plans. Poor service should be treated and amended as quickly as possible. I therefore welcome this opportunity to discuss some preliminary thoughts on the lessons that can be learned and I look forward to the NAO report in due course.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Although the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) spoke for precisely eight minutes, the previous speakers did not, so I must now impose a formal time limit of seven minutes.

Savings (Government Contributions) Bill

Richard Graham Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 17th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) on his comments, particularly those about the Help to Save product the Government are introducing. He talked about the Government looking at the role of credit unions and whether it would be possible to use payroll. It would be helpful if the Ministers, whom I welcome to the Chamber, commented on those matters, as well as some of the IFS criticisms and the very helpful Library briefing.

I want to focus on the Government’s lifetime ISA. We should not question its intentions. Its simple aim is to increase savings among the young and to help more people on to the housing ladder, and surely none of us can have any objection to that in principle. The difficulty is that we do not, of course, start with a blank sheet of paper, and adding yet more products to the already complicated savings landscape risks bringing unintended consequences. I want to focus on that risk.

As the Library briefing rather coyly puts it, over the past 25 years, a string of largely tax-based savings incentive schemes has been brought in under different Governments. Some Members will remember the stakeholder scheme, yet not many will perhaps now remember personal equity plans, tax-exempt special savings accounts, child trust funds—they ceased not that long ago—or indeed the saving gateway, which was never rolled out nationally. When we consider the lifetime ISA and what it is proposed that it will achieve, we must also bear in mind what other savings products exist.

Under the general heading of “savings” I include pensions; they are simply a particular form of savings designed primarily to provide people with adequate income in retirement. Of course as we live ever longer, the value of having those savings, lasting well beyond an age to which people were expected to live not long ago, becomes more important. The Government have a crucial role to play as the body that will prop up all or any of us when we run out of savings. I want to focus on a couple of things within the product range of savings and the potential unintended consequences of this Bill.

The LISA was introduced in this year’s Budget after the Chancellor said that it was clear there was no consensus on the future development of pensions. But in a sense he revealed his own hand by increasing the ISA limit and proposing the introduction of the lifetime ISA. This showed the Treasury’s direction of travel very clearly. It is no surprise that the Centre for Policy Studies has welcomed this ISA since, it says, it is similar to a proposal made in the past. Indeed, Michael Johnson at the CPS has been advocating the end of pensions for a long time. I have described him as the Guy Fawkes of the pensions industry—he would love to blow the whole thing up tomorrow if he could. The lifetime ISA was just one of his steps towards that goal, with a workplace ISA coming in next.

That is where some of the problems start. The Chancellor’s main underlying argument for introducing the LISA was that younger people did not understand pensions—that they were far too complicated and were not popular and therefore we needed to use the well-known brand of the ISA. I have clashed many times with the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford)—mostly happily—on pensions issues. His contributions are normally way over the top, as, unsurprisingly, they were again this evening. However, he was right to use the quotation in the Association of British Insurers briefing, demonstrating that, interestingly, the opt-out rates in auto-enrolment among the under-30s have been the lowest of all age groups. That arguably suggests that younger people do not necessarily find pensions complicated when they are provided with a solution in the workplace into which they, their employer and the Government can all contribute and the paperwork is easy. So pensions do not have to be any more complex than any other form of savings, but what makes the whole sector more complicated is the constant temptation of successive Chancellors to act as product designer for the industry and introduce yet more different products.

[Kit Malthouse]

I am a little puzzled by my hon. Friend’s use of the statistic that the under-30s have the lowest opt-out rate. The under-30s will of course become the over-30s and the over-40s, and they might well opt out at that point. Their continuing to opt in at this early stage, when they might not have quite so much pressure on their wage packet, is not necessarily indicative of what they will do in the future.

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend makes a perfectly reasonable point, but he should bear in mind the fact that opt-out rates were expected to be 25% and are averaging 9% so far. The Government’s expectations about opt-out rates have therefore, happily, been proved wrong. He is right to say that the under-30s will become the over-30s, but we should all be trying to encourage those people to stay in and build up their savings through the pensions scheme, rather than introducing a competitive product that could, for various marketing reasons, seem more attractive and therefore divert people of all ages from the good and noble cause, which I think he supports, of building up more savings for their retirement.

[Ian Blackford]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that auto-enrolment has been an enormous success, and that one reason for that success has been the relatively low opt-out rates? Does he also agree, however, that there is more to be done to ensure that we include low-paid workers, particularly women and the self-employed? That should be the focus, but the tragedy of the Bill is that it deflects attention from what we should be doing—namely, incentivising pension saving.

[Richard Graham]

That is an interesting point. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that auto-enrolment is not good for the self-employed, and there are other aspects of it, including women’s savings, that could be improved. Yes, there has been success, but my “yes” is a cautious one. After all, auto-enrolment has not been going for very long. The real test will be over the next couple of years when up to 4 million people could come into the scheme, taking it from roughly 6.9 million savers at the moment to more than 10 million fairly soon. We will have to see whether they come in with the same enthusiasm as did those who work for larger employers. My point is that introducing the lifetime ISA at this stage, before we know how smaller employers and their employees are going to react, risks undermining the success of auto-enrolment so far.

In 2005, the Pensions Commission described pensions, and the tax relief on pensions, as

“poorly understood, unevenly distributed, and the cost is significant.”

It was absolutely right. The cost to the Treasury is £34 billion a year, and it receives back some £13 billion in tax on pensions, so there is a huge cost involved. I am pretty sure that that is why the Treasury is rightly trying to shape a savings policy that is both good for individuals and not so expensive for taxpayers or for the Treasury as the intermediary. I would like to see a much more co-ordinated effort by the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions to look closely at the existing range of savings offerings, pensions included, to see how they can be rationalised in order to come up with a simpler, less expensive method of encouraging people to save.

It is interesting that the online information sheet on the lifetime ISA does not mention the fact that contributions come from someone’s salary after they have paid tax. It also strongly urges people to

“use it to save for retirement”.

That is exactly what we would expect people to do with a pensions product, so the concept that the lifetime ISA is not competitive with auto-enrolment and other pensions offerings is slightly disingenuous. Others have made the point that it is competitive with auto-enrolment and therefore offers significant potential for many of our constituents. Let me quote briefly from one or two of those who have highlighted this issue.

The Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association, which used to be called the National Association of Pension Funds, illustrates my point that all pensions are now, rightly, considered to be savings products. It comments:

“We look forward to working with the Government to help make sure that the Lifetime ISA does help younger people build up their savings.”

It goes on to say that it is important to ensure that

“the regulation on charges and governance of the Lifetime ISA are comparable to those for pensions, which have been reviewed to make sure they offer savers good value”.

That refers to the cap on charges and the increased governance. The association is implicitly recognising that this product will be considered by consumers as an alternative to saving. Indeed, former pensions Minister Steve Webb says:

“There is a real danger that the new product will mean that many young people will not start saving for their retirement until their thirties”

because that option is available to them through the lifetime ISA.

It is also interesting that the Association of British Insurers, Zurich and Hargreaves Lansdown have all expressed concern. One of the points raised by the Institute for Fiscal Studies is exactly the same point that I made in an article earlier today in which I referred to the lack of clarity over the extent to which there will be new savings, as against the shifting of existing funds by people who have already saved in ISAs. We must recognise the fact that 21 million people have invested in ISAs. That is not a small body of people. It is not a narrow cohort consisting exclusively of the very rich, for example. If savings are recycled and 80% of the people who put money into a cash ISA in 2014-15 recycle their money into a lifetime ISA to get the 25% Government bonus, that would not necessarily demonstrate a success for the Government in terms of bringing in new savers and people who would not otherwise have the chance of getting on to the housing ladder. Rather, it would demonstrate that people who already have savings are being given an opportunity to increase the return on those savings, and that higher-rate earners will have an opportunity to provide lifetime ISAs for their children or grandchildren.

It would help if the Minister clarified what impact assessment the Treasury has carried out. How much money does it expect to come in from new savers? How much does it expect to be recycled from existing ISA-holders? Who will be the beneficiaries of the lifetime ISA? My concern is that the main beneficiaries of the vast weight of the £850 million that this will cost the Treasury and therefore the taxpayer will be people who already earn quite a lot, or their children, and that the benefits will not reach the many, even though that is the intention behind the Bill.

I have tried to address some of the issues and unintended consequences that could arise from the Bill. Hargreaves Lansdown has written a useful paper on simplifying ISAs and pensions, in which it proposes a number of changes to ISAs. It is worth flagging them up today. It proposes: consolidating six different types of ISA into one; limiting the cost to the Exchequer of the Government top-up to the lifetime ISA; simplifying ISA decision making for investors; reducing the administrative burden for the industry; retaining the help-to-buy element of the lifetime ISA in one simple ISA product; and eliminating the risk that the ISA will undermine pension saving. It goes on to make a similar number of recommendations on pensions as well. The last point about eliminating the risk that the LISA will undermine pension saving is the one to which I keep returning because it is possible to do these things in a different way.

The Pensions Policy Institute found that Canada, Australia, New Zealand, US and Singapore—all countries that broadly follow Anglo-Saxon approaches to finance and investment—allow early access from the same product used for pension saving. That is critical because it means that people do not have to choose between a LISA or auto-enrolment and that they can decide whether they want to save to get on to the housing ladder or to save for their retirement through the same product. It would be a major achievement of this Government and Treasury and DWP Ministers if they could work together to rationalise the structure of pensions and savings so that individual consumers can access the same product for different reasons without having to subscribe separately. That would eliminate the main concern of many about the unintended consequence of the LISA directly and negatively impacting auto-enrolment. That is why I will certainly not be voting against the Government but will abstain from voting on the Bill this evening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

We have had a number of contributions. The hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) told us about his grandparents getting to Blackpool courtesy of a jam-jar savings policy, which I thought was novel. The hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) summed up the Government’s proposals as a missed opportunity, as undermining pension savings and as not tackling the real issue. The hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), who does not appear to be here, spoke of the diminution in the number of people with an asset base and said that, in his modest opinion, we should try to push on and get people to have a bigger asset base.

In an excellent contribution, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) underlined the need for the Government to look afresh at the timescales in the Help to Save scheme and asked the Government to be more imaginative and reinforce the need to permit credit unions to participate in the scheme and the statutory right of payroll deductions of savings. The hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) gave us an enlightening exposition of his concerns that the proposal might be moving towards the death of the pension as we know it. I am not quite sure whether that was what he said, but that was the impression I got.

[Richard Graham]

Just to clarify, I said that the proposal risks undermining saving through a pension scheme and we do not want to do that.

[Peter Dowd]

I understand that clarification and I will touch on that topic in my speech.

Finally, the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris), who supports the Government’s proposals, spoke about his experiences as a self-employed person and said that the proposal is not a supplementary pension but a means of saving.

Labour welcomes the sentiments expressed today on both sides of the House about the need to address savings overall. In general, anything that allows more people to save for the future is to be welcomed. Helping younger people and those on low incomes to save is a particularly legitimate and worthy objective, and the Government are right to consider policies to incentivise it. The majority of people on low incomes or in precarious work—categories sadly growing in Conservative Britain—are far from being in a position to save. Six years of Tory failures and austerity has led to many not knowing from where the next pound will come week in, week out. The Government’s clueless approach to exiting Europe simply compounds the problem on a macroeconomic level.

How is it possible for people to save when it is hardly possible for many to live properly on a weekly basis? How can a person save for the future when they can barely get through the day? The scandal of low retirement savings for the less well-off is an indictment on any notion of a cohesive society. One in seven pensioners lives in poverty and a further 1.2 million have incomes just above the poverty line. Distributional analysis by the Women’s Budget Group shows that single female pensioners will experience a whopping 20% drop in their living standards. It is unconscionable that people who have worked hard and contributed to society are forced to spend their final years in hardship and insecurity. We agree that there are problems that need to be solved urgently but the TUC states:

“Products such as… the forthcoming Lifetime ISA are disconnected from the world of work and prioritise goals other than retirement saving.”

As for the lifetime ISA, it is hard to see how its introduction even begins to tackle the problems to which I have just referred; not only does it represent a missed opportunity to build on the success of automatic enrolment, as those on the SNP Front Bench have said, but its introduction could serve as a distraction to tackling the real issues at hand. It misdirects valuable resources, as the money the Government are spending on this scheme is likely to benefit mostly those on higher incomes, as has been mentioned on a number of occasions. It also needlessly complicates the pensions and savings landscape—an arena already fraught with complexity. Perhaps most dangerously, it has the potential to undermine the emerging consensus that a pension ISA approach would be detrimental in the round. Indeed, it has the potential to introduce just such an approach through the back door. That is a concern and we are seeking assurances from the Government that it is not doing that.

In the months leading up to the Budget, the concept of replacing the existing systems of pensions tax relief with an ISA-style approach was widely debated and almost universally rejected as damaging to people’s retirement prospects. I wonder, as do many others, whether, after enduring an embarrassing rebuff, the Tories are back again with the same intent under the guise of this Bill. Many in the pensions industry have described the LISA as a “stealth” move towards pension ISAs. The Work and Pensions Committee has said that the Government are marketing the LISA as a pension product and there is a high risk that people will opt out of their workplace pension as a result. Let me be perfectly clear: people will not be better off saving into an ISA as opposed to a workplace pension. The Committee found that

“For most employees the decision to save in a LISA instead of through a workplace pension would be detrimental to their retirement savings.”

Small Charitable Donations and Childcare Payments Bill

Richard Graham Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 11th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Duddridge]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that some charities are struggling and that there is a constant shift in funding. I remind Southend charities not to believe all the doom and gloom that was talked pre-Brexit. We are still growing strongly; we are the strongest-growing economy in the G7. Rather than squirreling away money for the rainy day that might come, we should encourage people to spend, enjoy and donate some of that money to charities. The Bill’s measures should allow more of such money to come back to charities.

In common with previous speakers, I should like to mention a charity with which I was involved, although I did not start it up. I was appointed by a charity known as the Bulldog Trust, which is based just down the road from here. Its website said that it was a philanthropy organisation. I thought that it was no good for me because I do not have any significant cash to give to it—it would certainly be a £20 donation from me rather than a £20 million donation—but what this charity does is to link up people who have a skill and want to use it within a charitable organisation. That sent me to the Grow Movement, which at that time was a charity operating in Uganda, Rwanda and Malawi.

I mention that example because I am a little unclear about what happens when a charity such as the Grow Movement is UK based but international. Of the trustees, I think I was the only one domiciled in the UK; it has an international virtual board. We need to make sure that small sums, wherever they might come from, can go to such organisations. At one time it was inconceivable that someone would send a few quid from France or the United States, but now, because of the way the internet is set up, when we purchase something we are quite often asked to “click here” to enable an extra £2 to go to a charity. I urge the Minister to review the position and ensure that charities like the Grow Movement can benefit from this and future legislation.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a series of good points about the impact that the Bill could have on small charities. He has mentioned several in Southend, and I suspect that all of us could mention others in our own constituencies. Is he aware that the inability to reclaim through texts is a possible issue for some of those charities, and does he think that the Minister should reflect on that when winding up the debate? May I also ask what he thinks might be the impact on charities such as scouts groups that sometimes, for example, raise funds using buckets outside supermarkets. Under the new provisions, I think that they will be able to—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I know that the hon. Gentleman is doing a Whip’s job, and I do not mind that, but what we cannot have is the making of speeches rather than interventions. I want to try to help everyone, but I cannot allow myself and the Chamber to be tested by a speech rather than an intervention.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Graham]

Contrary to what has been suggested, Mr Deputy Speaker, this is not a bob-a-job contribution. Does my hon. Friend agree that this could also be incredibly helpful to armed forces cadets and other charities? I am thinking particularly of those who help people to pack items that they have bought in shops. Small amounts of money will often be collected in buckets to go to small causes, and the Minister has just confirmed that that will be covered.

[James Duddridge]

Another point is that charitable giving then begins to be inculcated in young people in particular. Their small donations, to both small and big charities, bring them into the system. Certainly, when I see someone under the age of 16 collecting for poppies or Help for Heroes, I feel that the future of the country is in safe hands.

I intervened on the Minister to ask about deeming all donations tax-free. I am sympathetic to Her Majesty’s Opposition’s points about complexity. The points have been made well today, just as they were three years ago, as Opposition Front-Bench Members pointed out. The sooner we can get through all this complexity and decide that the basic rate of tax should come back from all moneys en bloc that are given to charities in small amounts, the better. I will say more about how we define “small amounts” later.

I shall turn now to the specifics of the Bill. Clause 2 deals with the meaning of the term “small donation”, and subsection (3) refers to the United Kingdom. However, clause 6, which deals with the extent of the Bill, refers to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Forgive me if I am being stupid, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I think that they amount to the same thing. I would be grateful if that provision could be amended, if only as a tidying-up exercise, or if the difference could be explained.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rebecca Pow]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I will come on to a bit in my speech about that because I want to mention a number of these issues. My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

[Richard Graham]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Rebecca Pow]

Would my hon. Friend mind if I ploughed on just for a minute? I will lose my train of thought. Would he intervene in a minute?

Whenever I visit charities in my constituency, which I do as often as I can, I ask what I can do in Westminster to help them. So often they say that they want access to gift aid. One of their biggest issues is raising funds and then being able to get the right benefits and aids. Another colleague said that often small charities do not even know what they can or cannot claim. So anything that can be done to ease that will help, and I think the Bill will do so.

Whatever we can do to help small charities retain the money that they have worked so hard to collect would be beneficial. If it could be increased with top-ups and things, that would be welcome. While the current system has many good points, it has been criticised for being complex and inaccessible especially for small and newer charities. That is why I am pleased that the Government are listening. I was pleased to hear the Minister speaking earlier, and I am sure that the Bill will help to make life simpler in terms of funds collected and the submissions that small charities are required to make for gift aid.

I welcome the proposed simplifications through this gift aid small donations scheme. I was also pleased that so many stakeholders took part in the consultation and so many charities fed in, and that the Government are listening and taking on board lots of their views. The scheme will definitely help those charities for which it is not practical to obtain an individual gift aid declaration for every small donation made. That is where we come back to bucket collections, the bob-a-job collections that my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) referred to, and even sponsored events. I am sure that Mr Deputy Speaker has done some himself, such as a sponsored bike ride. I did a mini-triathlon to raise money for charity. People give their support, but only with small amounts, and gathering all the intimate details that charities are required to input is often too much for them, so they do not go to the effort of claiming back what they could claim and get the benefit. We would definitely like to help all those charities, and the Bill will do so.

I welcome the reforms that will allow charities to benefit from the top-up system that has been worked into the Bill, so I will now come on to community amateur sports clubs. I am pleased that the Minister particularly addressed areas for them, especially the point that they had to be in one building to raise their money. I am pleased that that slightly ludicrous little piece of the legislation will be relaxed.

I am an ardent advocate of the benefit of sport in our communities, cricket included. We have marvellous cricket facilities in Somerset, many of which operate from the county town, Taunton, working from entry level at school right the way up to the county ground, where my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) often goes. I particularly work with a number of sporting charities. I have helped to bring forward a water sports centre, which is being completed on the river in Taunton, with the charity, COACH—the Centre for Outdoor Activity and Community Hub. My hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) mentioned bowling. I have helped to attract funds for the bowling club in Wellington, and it is now winning major trophies right across the region. It was in the Wellington Weekly News only this week. Amateur sporting charities, such as Taunton football club, all need to raise funds, and the small change that we will make in relation to the venues where money is raised will really help them to retain more of their own money and make more of it. I welcome all that.

I will make a small nod to the eminently sensible provisions on childcare payments. A simple extension of the timescale for parents to input their children’s details to claim the correct tax free childcare bonus will make life much easier for many families, particularly those families whose circumstances have changed. For example, when two families join together, which happens quite frequently now, and people end up with their own children and some stepchildren, opening and expanding the window for people to input all the data will help all the children under one roof. I very much welcome that and hope that it will all make progress.

All the things in the Bill are really helpful. They will help individual families with childcare payments, and very many charities, particularly smaller and newer ones, will be helped by the new provisions on donations. The Bill certainly shows that the Government are listening. They have listened to all those stakeholders and charities. That is what we should be doing in government—it is absolutely right—as well as working towards making life run much more smoothly, particularly for those who really need it.

Summer Adjournment

Richard Graham Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate and to have an opportunity to welcome my colleagues on the Front Bench, who are serving—I think for the first time—as Deputy Leader of the House and duty Whip. I congratulate them on their new responsibilities.

In a summer when a decade seems to have passed in the last month—indeed, so much has happened since the ghastly murder of Jo Cox that it seems a long while ago, although in reality it was a very recent tragedy—and at a time when Brexit and the how, when and in what way we leave the European Union seem to be the dominant theme of so much media focus, I want to concentrate on issues over which we have always had complete control in this country. At this time, the emphasis is on the need for us—Government, Members of Parliament, local government and other agencies—to come up with answers and deliver them, so that life in our country and our constituencies, in my case the ancient city of Gloucester, gets better from year to year.

Let me begin with transport, because that is how we Gloucester residents travel to and from our city, how visitors arrive, and how our investors gain their first impressions. Two improvements could be made at Gloucester railway station—in the frequency of the trains and in the infrastructure. It still seems extraordinary to me that Arriva CrossCountry’s inter-city service between Birmingham and Bristol, which runs 63 trains a day, stops only three times at the city of Gloucester. My hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) worked on that problem diligently when she was the trains Minister. I hope that the new Minister will pursue with the same enthusiasm the business of enabling more CrossCountry trains to stop at Gloucester as the Department for Transport completes its programme for a new franchise in the west of England.

As for the infrastructure, Great Western Railway is making good progress with a new station car park, which will open up the southern side of the station for the first time in its 150-odd years of existence. However, there is more work to be done. I hope that the new Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government will look favourably on the bid from the Gloucestershire local enterprise partnership, which includes a significant amount of money for a general station infrastructure project that will undoubtedly be one of the drivers of growth in our city in the future.

Of course, it is also important for our bus, road and cycle infrastructure to be in as good a state as possible. Our new bus station is well under way, and I know that the city and county councils will ensure that it is delivered on time and within budget, but the road situation is more complicated. The so-called missing link on the A417 between the M4 and the M5 is a major blockage to growth, not just in Gloucestershire and in the city of Gloucester but more widely, between the south and the north of the country. I hope that my right hon. Friend the new Secretary of State for Transport will take the same interest as his predecessor in ensuring that the first spade goes into the ground for that important new project before April 2020.

As a keen cyclist—only marginally put off by a promising black eye, which those with keener vision will spot, resulting from an incident this morning—I hope very much that the county council’s £3.5 million project for a new cycle lane between Gloucester and Cheltenham will receive approval from Highways England in due course. I am also separately pursuing longer-term improvements on the towpath between the city centre and Quedgeley. I can tell colleagues who have never had a chance to visit Gloucester that that is a wonderful cycle journey. They would be excused for not realising at any stage, even before visiting the Pilot Inn at the end of their journey, that they were cycling in the middle of a city rather than in a particularly glorious bit of the English countryside, because that is, in fact, what they would be doing.

Finally, I want to refer to two education projects which, in the longer term, will make a huge difference. First, there is the bid that we are preparing for a new Gloucestershire health university technical college, which will serve the people of our county and, possibly, people from wider afield who could travel by train from Swindon or even from Worcester. It will give 14 to 18-year-olds great opportunities to gain BTEC qualifications in either health or care, and also to gain significant work experience with the three NHS trusts in the county, as well as in the private sector. It is to me quite wrong that we should need 400 new nurses a year and that we are only training about 120 and are having to import them from as far afield as the Philippines. Excellent though our nurses from Portugal, Spain, the Philippines and elsewhere are, we should be training them at home; we should be giving them those opportunities to take up the 12,000 jobs in the health sector in Gloucestershire and training them in our own county. I hope very much that that bid goes ahead and is successful.

The other education bid we are making is for a new RAISE academy, which will be for excluded pupils from our secondary schools. This is also important. Everybody deserves a second chance and the opportunity to get back into learning and get the qualifications and skills they need to get good jobs later on, and I hope very much the Department for Education will look favourably at that.

[Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)]

I note what my hon. Friend says about the great training going on. Does he agree that with over 300 different careers in the NHS, that new training establishment for excluded pupils might do well to see if there is a place for each one of them in our great NHS?

[Richard Graham]

Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right to stress that. She has experience of the NHS herself as a doctor, and it is right to point out that there are huge opportunities both on the technical level and the care side and on the course she took through university.

I should finish my contribution today by drawing attention to two exciting things happening in Gloucester during this great summer period. The first is our summer of music, art and culture, which is already well under way. The world’s longest running and I think longest festival of all, the Three Choirs festival of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester, starts on Saturday. There will be spectacular concerts for the next couple of weeks around that. We will then come to the Gloucester history festival, which I created with many other friends and partners some six years ago, and this year is looking to be even bigger and better than usual. That will be in the first two weeks of September, immediately after Gloucester day, when we celebrate the moment when the city of Gloucester refused to open its gates and surrender to King Charles I, thereby preventing the King from succeeding in his mission in the civil war and ensuring the supremacy of Parliament, which I am sure we all celebrate, as I wish all colleagues a very happy summer recess.

Centenary of the Battle of the Somme

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) and the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) for organising this centenary debate. Its subject matter is far enough away in time for many to feel as though it is ancient history, but it is close enough for some of us to have known veterans of that battle.

Let me pay a brief tribute to those in my family, my city and my county who were at the Battle of the Somme. My grandfather, Ogilvie Graham, was 22 at the beginning of the war and an acting Lieutenant Colonel in the Rifle Brigade at 25, with responsibility for others far beyond his years, as was the way in that and many wars. In the Battle of the Somme, he was badly wounded and awarded the DSO.

Like so many of his generation, my grandfather never spoke about the war afterwards. However, there was one great, good thing that came from the Somme, for it was there that he met a young unit administrator in Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps. She refused to allow him to take over a farmhouse where her team of nurses, cooks and secretaries was based. Winifred Maud Harford did, however, allow my grandfather to marry her, so the Battle of the Somme is indirectly responsible for who I, my brother and my sisters are. I am just as proud of my grandmother’s military MBE from that war as I am of my grandfather’s medals.

My city of Gloucester, and the county of Gloucestershire, made an immense contribution to the Battle of the Somme. There were 13 battalions of the Gloucestershire Regiment—the Glosters—in that battle. Some 1,813 members of the regiment died, and about 6,000 were wounded. Carton de Wiart, who himself won a VC commanding the 8th Glosters, noted at one point that he had

“eight new officers arrive in the morning, and all were lost by the evening”.

Among the many grisly statistics of death from the Battle of the Somme, I find those among the saddest, alongside the story of the Soul family, from Great Rissington, in Gloucestershire. Mrs Soul had five sons who fought in world war one in different regiments, and all were killed.

On Friday, we will hold a commemoration in Gloucester cathedral, close to the stained glass windows that celebrate Ivor Gurney—Gloucester man and poet of the Severn and the Somme. In his poem “On Somme”, he started with these lines:

“Suddenly into the still air burst thudding

And thudding, and cold fear possessed me all,

On the grey slopes there, where winter in sullen brooding

Hung between height and depth of the ugly fall

Of Heaven to earth; and the thudding was illness’ own.”

The thudding is over, but Ivor Gurney never really recovered; he spent years in a mental hospital.

This Friday, in the cathedral, we will commemorate Ivor Gurney and all those from our city and county who fought at the Battle of the Somme. Nearby, in the parish of Hempsted, there will be on display all the research done by Hempsted primary school on those from the village who fought and died. That will be supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund’s special world war one fund.

In our cathedral and in the Lysons memorial hall, we will all be moved again, as Members have been here, by the tragedy of waste, whichever army it was in, and even by the story of the mules from Shandong province that my wife’s grandfather shipped to the front for a muddy death.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission

Richard Graham Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Keith Simpson (Broadland) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter, and to see the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr Evennett) in his place, replacing my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), who is away on maternity leave.

The aim of this short debate is to draw to the attention of colleagues and the public the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Apart from the maintenance of war cemeteries and memorials of two world wars, the commission is crucial to all the commemorative ceremonies for the first world war. I should declare an interest at the outset: I am one of two parliamentary commissioners represented on the commission. The other is the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who is in the Chamber and hopes to catch your eye, Mr Streeter.

In many respects, we are enclosed by history. Today, for example, at this very moment 76 years ago, the Labour party, meeting in conference, was deciding whether or not to support Winston Churchill as the leader of a coalition Government. One can imagine the atmosphere among parliamentary colleagues on 10 May 1940, with Nazi armies invading the low countries and France. We are here to look at another anniversary. Almost 99 years ago, on 21 May 1917, the Imperial War Graves Commission, as it was called then, received its royal charter, which established its remit and gave it sole responsibility for graves and memorials to the then dead of the imperial British forces in the first world war.

Nothing was preordained about the establishment of what became the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Its creation was largely the work of a formidable, motivated man called Fabian Ware—a man who had been working with Lord Milner in South Africa, who was an intellectual, who became editor of The Morning Post and who had a wide range of friends and contacts in the British establishment. In 1914, too old to serve, Ware commanded an ambulance unit in France and became aware of the sheer numbers of casualties, on a scale that Britain had never faced before. The British armed forces lost approximately 3,500 men at the battle of Waterloo —one of our biggest losses. We had suffered about 80,000 casualties by Christmas 1914.

Ware was concerned about what was going to happen to the dead, and he persuaded the general headquarters of the British armed forces in 1915 to establish the Graves Registration Commission, which he was to run. He made certain that the dead were buried or commemorated as near as possible to the battlefields where they fell and, most significantly, not repatriated. There was enormous pressure, particularly from the parents or families of reasonably wealthy people, to bring—where they could be found—the bodies of their sons, husbands or cousins back home. That was going to be impossible on such a scale. He was only too aware that many of the dead, when they could be found, had no means of identity whatsoever.

During the course of the first world war, and in the establishment of the royal charter, Ware negotiated with allied and enemy countries for land where the dead were to be buried. Most significantly of all, he established that there was going to be no distinction by rank. Crudely speaking, pre-Victorian army officers got individual burials; other ranks were dumped in a great big pit. The only distinction was going to be by religion—Christian, Jewish or Islamic. That would be marked on the headstone. Of course, those of the Islamic faith would have their own cemeteries carefully laid out.

There was a lot of opposition to that, mainly from the families, and there were heated debates here in Parliament at the end of the first world war. Ware outmanoeuvred them all. In the establishment of what we all know now as the cemeteries and memorials that are so distinguishable for the British and Commonwealth experience, he used a whole series of distinguished experts: Edward Lutyens; Herbert Baker; Reginald Blomfield; Rudyard Kipling, who had lost a son, Jack, and was deeply traumatised, and who established much of the terminology of the commemoration; and Gertrude Jekyll, who advised on the landscaping and the gardens.

The final thing I will say about Ware is that he placed a great deal of emphasis on the fact that it was the Imperial—we would now say Commonwealth—War Graves Commission. It was not just about the British; it was about the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Canadians, the South Africans and, above all, the Indians, who made the biggest commitment to our cause in two world wars. I am part of the commission, and our work today is supported by member Governments of Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and, above all, the United Kingdom. Each of those countries contributes a sum in proportion to the number of graves it has. The United Kingdom contributes 78%, which comes from the budget of the Ministry of Defence. The annual budget is approximately £70 million, which works out at roughly £40 per commemoration per annum.

I pay tribute to the dedication and commitment of the commission’s approximately 1,300 staff—most of them gardeners and masons, and most of them locally employed—who care for this vast range of memorials and gardens. Many of them are the second or third generation who have worked for the commission. Many of them continued to maintain those sites under the most appalling difficulties in the second world war, and more recently in war zones. I will come to that in a minute.

The work of the commission is vast. We commemorate 1.7 million individuals and maintain their graves and memorials at more than 23,000 locations in 154 countries across the globe. That is a vast scale. We also have to pay tribute to the host countries. Some, such as Belgium and France, willingly gave land. Others are the inheritors of the old British and French empires. We have to imagine, at times, how we would feel if we had vast cemeteries within our constituencies of Egyptian, Iraqi or Nigerian graves from a war that had been fought over our territory. There is an important sensitivity here.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend rightly references the symbolism and sensitivity of some of those cemeteries. There is also the extraordinary Commonwealth war graves cemetery in Gaza, which I think I am right in saying has been tended by the same Palestinian family since it was put up, now presumably almost 80 years ago. It contains Christian, Muslim, Jewish and even Hindu memorials. It occupies a large amount of land in a tiny place that is very short of space. During Operation Cast Lead, an Israeli tank broke through the walls and damaged some grave stones. Eventually, construction materials were allowed back there, and the first thing they were used for was the reparation of those grave stones. It is a great testament to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which he serves so well.

[Mr Simpson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, which leads on to the fact that, even as we speak, the commission is working in Iraq—it used to be able to work in Syria—rebuilding cemeteries that have been destroyed by either war or ISIL/Daesh extremists, who see them merely as symbols of Christian occupation.

Indeed—if I may use what the Army used to call a visual aid—I have two photographs taken in Beirut. The first, from the 1980s, is of the cemetery almost completely destroyed; the second is of the cemetery lovingly rebuilt to the previous standard. We should remember, as I am sure all colleagues do, that at the end of the day we are dealing with individuals, either with a known grave or with their names on a giant memorial like those at Ypres or Thiepval. The memorials are for the families and also, now, for people who merely have an interest—I know that many colleagues are fascinated by the people behind the names.

We should also remember—in the words of Michael Caine, not a lot of people know this—that more than 300,000 Commonwealth servicemen and women who died in the two world wars are commemorated here in the United Kingdom. Their 170,000 graves are to be found at over 13,000 locations. In addition, some 130,000 missing Navy, Merchant Navy and Air Force casualties are commemorated on the great memorials at Chatham, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Tower Hill and Runnymede. A forgotten element is that nearly 30,000 men and women of the Merchant Navy, unsung heroes and heroines, were killed. Most naval people, of course, have no known grave.

Budget Changes

Richard Graham Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

One of the important challenges that we face is improving productivity in this country. If we want to improve productivity, we want more investment. If we want more investment, we do not want high rates of tax that discourage investment. May I point out that in terms of capital gains tax, the rate is still higher than the one we inherited in 2010?

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Last week, I met two constituents. One of them, Mark, was unemployed for five years from 2007. He has now got a job in security through DWP funding for a Security Industry Authority course. Another, Luke, who has significant disabilities, has been helped by a specialist agency called Pluss to get a good job with B&M. Both those constituents of mine have benefited hugely from the compassionate conservatism that has driven our financial policy. Will my hon. Friend confirm that that will continue and that people such as Mark and Luke will continue to be helped?

[Mr Gauke]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting those examples. He puts the point well. There is something compassionate about having a society where there are plenty of jobs, and I am pleased that we as a Government are delivering that type of economy.

Draft Public Service Pensions Revaluation (Prices) Order 2016

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 General Committees

[Greg Hands]

Let me answer the first question. The hon. Gentleman will have a longer memory than I have, but RPI has also gone negative in the past. It is not impossible that exactly same phenomenon could happen with RPI, his preferred measure of inflation.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I think I am right in saying that RPI was negative in 2008, during the great recession. It is a constant hazard of recessions that there will be those negative indicators. Am I not also right in thinking that the main reason why CPI was chosen over RPI was precisely that the vast majority of pensioners are not still paying off their mortgages, whereas those people who are have predominantly not retired?

[Greg Hands]

My hon. Friend is right. For all kinds of good reasons the Government made the decision to move this whole sector of public pensions and benefits from RPI to CPI. I think he is right that at that time RPI had gone negative.

If I could answer the final couple of points from the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston—

HMRC and Google (Settlement)

Richard Graham Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

We always look to try to find ways to simplify the tax system. I would make the point that if a company operates in many jurisdictions, its tax affairs are inherently more complex than if it existed in just one country, but the Government are determined to ensure that where the economic activity occurs in the United Kingdom, we tax it in the United Kingdom.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Everyone wants business to pay its fair share of tax, and most people will welcome the additional £130 million of tax revenue to fund important services, but many will wonder, given that the period of the settlement covers 2005 to 2011, what other multinational tax bills are out there that have still not been settled and what, if anything, the Labour party did in government to highlight those questions?

[Mr Gauke]

On the latter question, it may be the case that astronomers have located the ninth planet, but I am not sure that they have found any evidence of the Labour party doing very much on tax avoidance in government.