Gambling-Related Harm

Richard Graham Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am grateful for that intervention. I fully understand that gambling is enjoyed by numbers of people who enjoy it every now and again and do not get caught up in that spiral. They might go to the races or bet on the odd football match or something like that. I am a genuine believer in free choice—people make those decisions themselves—but we have to look at whether the way the industry goes about its purposes perverts that process so that individuals end up caught in that spiral. That was a helpful intervention, because I want to talk about the industry and what it is up to.

We had some fascinating work done to look at some of the behaviour, and I was astonished by what is going on. First and foremost, anyone watching the plethora of adverts that flood every sporting event on television will see that they are all aimed at one particular type of person: young men. The adverts say, “You have to be smart, savvy, intelligent and clever. You are that kind of person because you beat the odds every time. You know what is going on. We give you special opportunities to do it, but you are so smart, you have to do it.” If someone is not gambling, the corollary is that they are not very smart and therefore incapable of doing it. The whole pattern of advertising is to drive people to gambling.

We then discovered that the way this works behind the scenes is quite scandalous. For example, bet365 has recently revealed that players who rack up huge losses are rewarded with weekly cash returns of up to 10% so that they can carry on playing. In training sessions for new staff, a bet365 worker gave an example to a reporter. They said:

“If they’ve lost, say, £15,000 in that week, then we’ll give them a weekly rebate, normally on a Tuesday, and we’ll give them maybe 10% of that back.”

That is quite sinister. We can see exactly what they are after: those who habitually gamble and lose. They are not really interested in those who win. In fact, they do not like it very much—I can understand the reason—if people actually win, so they do everything they can to discourage people who ever manage to win.

There are all sorts of delayed payments and other mechanisms. Sometimes people will not even be allowed to gamble again with a particular organisation. We are taking evidence on that in the all-party parliamentary group. It is clear that the gambling companies quickly pull away those who habitually gamble. They gamble almost by impulse, and thus they become incredibly profitable for the companies. They are induced to gamble even more, because they have this habit. The idea of targeting someone who has the habit is key.

The work done by the Centre for Social Justice, which I set up, shows that such targeting not only destroys the lives of those locked into the downward spiral of misery, but drags whole families into despair. We have already heard examples of people who have committed suicide and people who have lost all their family connections. Some have lost loads of money belonging to their families and are unable to carry on a normal life.

The hon. Member for Swansea East made much of the PwC report for the Gambling Commission, which found that 59% of the profits for a remote gaming company come from those with a gambling addiction or problematic behaviour. The model is based not on any long-term relationship with loyal customers, as would be common for most business models, but on sifting out those who gamble from those who fundamentally lose. When we watch the advertising process, we can begin to realise that the companies are going to that very selective targeting. My general view is that they are completely out of control. What has been going on for some time is a front. They are trying to pretend somehow that they are reasonable and are behaving well, but they are behaving appallingly. They have set out fundamentally in the pursuit of money, and they do not care if they destroy lives.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making a characteristically powerful speech on a subject dear to his heart. Here we are: another week, another debate on online gambling, which only goes to show how important the issue is to us all. Does he agree that a powerful start to righting some of the problems that the gambling companies have created would be a mandatory 1% levy on gross profits to fund decent research and help set up more gambling clinics?

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I agree with my right hon. Friend—[Interruption.] No? He is right hon. in my book. I agree with him, because what has happened so far is too much about the voluntary. I am not one for constantly regulating—far from it—but we see the level of harm and the lack of knowledge about how deep the harms go, and it is time for the Government to do something.

I want to pick up on loot boxes, which the hon. Member for Inverclyde talked about in his very good speech. Almost the most sinister thing going on at the moment is the inducement of young people—kids, really—to get into the habit early. They are locked into their rooms—often their bedrooms—often until quite late at night. Sometimes parents do not realise what is going on, but they get into this process where they are often gambling money, but not money as we might term it; it is an alternative form. Sometimes they are gambling for clothing, which eventually becomes a monetary derivative.

Interestingly, I saw a report by Macey and Hamari for the University of Tampere on participation in skins and loot boxes. Worryingly, the report concludes that almost 75% of those participating in gambling related to e-sports were aged 25 or under. What is going on is clear: it is highly addictive and very fast. People build up a box of prizes. They get used to a process of inducement when they go on to bigger gambling. They hear about a 10% gift or going to a fancy party somewhere and it becomes a part of their lives, because they understand it from the gambling process that they were engaged in in the gaming.

My apologies, Mr McCabe, if I have gone slightly over my time. I will conclude by saying to the Minister, for whom I have huge respect—no one is more pleased than I am that she is on the Front Bench—that the Government need to right a wrong. The wrong was that we opened the whole of the regulatory process to gambling. It does not matter which Government did it; it was done. Now we need to bring the beast back under control. I simply say to her that there are recommendations—I will not read them all out—from the all-party group, and I hope that she will give them full consideration. It is time now to demand more of an organisation of companies that derive profits and in too many cases cause harm. There are good people who gamble occasionally, but others are locked into a spiral of harm. We look to the Government to change their circumstances.

Spring Statement

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I believe—[Interruption.] I am aware of what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. My understanding is that the funding figure is for England. [Interruption.] Sorry; my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) is telling me it is for England and Wales. I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman if the statement misled him, but I am told that the funding is for England and Wales.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I welcome the continued improvement in the public finances, which is due in no small part to the continued resilience and innovation of our businesses, some of which the Chancellor met when he recently opened the University of Gloucestershire’s new business school. What a symbol of change that is, because only nine years ago we lost 6,000 business jobs in Gloucester, thanks to the disastrous policies of the Labour party, and youth unemployment was four times higher than it is today. My right hon. Friend knows the extraordinary enthusiasm on both sides of the House for continued funding for schools and, from my letter with 165 colleagues from four different parties, for improved funding for further education colleges. Will he therefore look at those priorities very closely in the spending review?

[Mr Hammond]

I very much enjoyed my visit to the University of Gloucestershire and was interested to see the innovative work going on there. The improvement in the public finances, to which my hon. Friend referred, is being driven by increased business tax receipts, partly as a result of the Government’s relentless clampdown on opportunities for tax avoidance and evasion and partly as a result of the very significant increase in employment. Some 3.5 million more people in work is very good news not just for 3.5 million households, but for the Exchequer, the public finances and, ultimately, our public services.

Online Gambling Protection

Richard Graham Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered online gambling protection.

I am very conscious that today there are distractions elsewhere in the House. This debate on online gambling was never going to pull hundreds of Members away from the business of how, when and indeed if we are to leave the European Union. However, that was never the point of it. Today is a chance to update the record on where we are on online gambling, to recognise the damage being done in some very sad cases, where lives have been ruined, and to offer thoughts and float ideas on what is ahead, as well as behind us, and on the trends and direction of what is happening.

Given that the statistics show that 430,000 adults have a serious gambling issue, with 2 million more in danger of addiction and 55,000 children between the age of 11 and 14 already addicted, and with all those figures rising fast, it must be clear to us all that, yes, Houston, we absolutely have a problem. At a time when many in the country believe that Parliament and the Government are all-consumed by Brexit, it is even more important to show that that is not so. We can, and must, address an issue that will become one of the great challenges of our generation: how do we deal with online gambling?

There was a time when I thought that online gambling was a modest offshoot of the traditional bookies on the side of Cheltenham race course and Gloucestershire point-to-points. I thought they were flutters by computer for the technically savvy, but it is not so. In fact, online gambling has a higher percentage of problem and at-risk gamblers than any other type. When people log on to online gambling, they meet a plethora of sporting opportunities on which to gamble. How many throw-ins will there be in the first 15 minutes of an under-15 Azerbaijani football game? Nothing is too obscure to have odds attached to it. Not a single sport—I did not check Mongolian archery, but I am sure that someone, somewhere can offer odds—is without a gambling moment. With some 3,000 websites competing, there are plenty of options.

The size of the sector and its business is enormous, with annual industry gross profits of some £14 billion and tax receipts of £3 billion, 100,000 employees and some £200 million of advertising revenues. Is it, therefore, a huge UK success story? Yes, but even more no, because the dark side is horrific and growing. When some of those brave enough to talk about what has happened in their family do so, we really have to wonder whether we are doing enough to prevent addiction and disaster. I will give just one example: Martin Jones in Swindon, who talked to me this morning, explaining the story of his son, Josh, who eventually committed suicide in 2015 after years of fighting addiction. It is a truly tragic story, and there can be no doubt that the system is failing individuals and therefore us all.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a strong point. Is it not the case that online gambling has a predominant effect on the young, and it is the young that we need to protect in this situation?

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Graham]

I do not think it is exclusively an issue for the young, as the figures show, but what is true is that the figures for young gamblers are rising faster than for any others. If we are to address the problem, my hon. Friend is right that we need to tackle the youth issue.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a very fine line between online gambling and online gaming? Some games require a degree of gambling. I draw his attention to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s present investigation into the problems of addiction caused by online gaming, and the negative, in some cases devastating, effect that it can have on families.

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is right. I welcome the report that the Committee is working on; it may show higher correlations between addiction to gaming and gambling than we previously knew, which would be extremely valuable.

What we are hearing is that Josh’s case is not a one-off; hundreds commit suicide every year as a result of gambling. We do not know exactly how many—it is somewhere between 250 and 650 a year. That is a margin of error about life and death that would be completely unacceptable in any other sector. The implication that we just do not know whether 400 people committed suicide as a result of a gambling addiction or for other reasons is truly shocking. Were it, say, the construction sector or the armed forces, there would be a public inquiry about dereliction of duty.

The first thing that we have to do is radically to improve our knowledge of the facts, and to improve the research and data that is collected. The Gambling Commission, the regulator, is working on a series of partnerships with the police, the NHS, GPs and so on to improve the situation. I am sure that the Minister, who I know is very concerned about this matter, will show support for all that work. However, serious money is needed to do it effectively, and the current £8 million a year or so given by the industry as a percentage of turnover is, given their £14 billion of profit, frankly peanuts. No wonder we know so little.

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Two or three really important facts are only just becoming known. One is that the big gambling companies give inducements to those who have the highest level of losses because those people make them their profits. I understand that they also do their level best eventually to get rid of those who are not in debt, and do not lose so much. They do not want them on their sites; they want those who lose, whom they can condition to it.

On the all-party parliamentary group, we have also discovered that gagging orders are being put in place to stop employees talking about what is going on. Companies are not supposed to give inducements to people who are already addicted, but it happens. Does my hon. Friend accept that that is a real problem?

[Richard Graham]

My right hon. Friend, who has done a lot of work on this subject, not least through the Centre for Social Justice, is right to highlight some shocking practices that have undoubtedly happened. In my own constituency, a friend of mine who is a taxi driver ran up £650,000 of debt with one gambling firm. I hope that all taxi drivers in Gloucester are well remunerated, but frankly none of them can afford such vast amounts of money. Part of it came from inducements—indeed, there was a lot of wining and dining of such a profitable customer. That is one of the intrinsic slight conflicts of interest within the sector. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for mentioning that.

My first call today is for a serious contribution by the industry to fund vastly improved and independent research. Campaigners have been calling for it, the gambling review supported it and the industry expects it; William Hill has even called for it. I therefore ask the Minister when we can expect to see legislation in the shape of a statutory instrument to implement a levy of 1% of company gross profits as soon as possible.

It is not just research that will help us to prevent the rapid growth of what is fast becoming a social epidemic. As my hon. Friends have said, action is needed to protect the young. That means action on the astonishing amount of online gambling advertising on sports programmes. It is rampant. Fathers watching football or rugby at home and having a flutter with an accumulator on Raheem Sterling scoring a hat trick for Man City are unwittingly starting their children off with the idea that gambling is normal. We need to keep gambling adverts off TV sports programmes.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

The difference between gambling and gaming has already been mentioned. Gambling companies seem to be using loot boxes as a pernicious practice to target children who are gaming and get them into the habit of gambling. It normalises the process, effectively grooming children as their next market. We could legislate to close that practice down, as Belgium, the Isle of Man and other places have done.

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Gentleman makes good points. I believe that he is working closely on the issue with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) in the all-party group. As he points out, such practices are rampant all over the country.

Three big companies—bet365, William Hill and Ladbrokes—have already agreed in principle to a whistle-to-whistle ban during live sports before the watershed, and after it for games that start before 9 pm. That is encouraging, but I believe that we must go further. My second proposal is therefore to ban all gambling advertising during live sport as soon as possible. Perhaps the Minister will confirm the point, but I do not believe that such a ban would need legislation, so I make it an ask of the regulator. I hope that the Gambling Commission’s report, which is due at the end of the month, will include a clear recommendation for such a ban. It could then be implemented by the Advertising Standards Authority, perhaps with some encouragement from the Department.

I would like to go further still. I remember watching many John Player Sunday league games and Benson and Hedges knockout matches when I was a boy cricketer. It never occurred to me at the time that there was something odd about tobacco companies sponsoring sports games while encouraging spectators to smoke, but we later learned the high risk of smokers severely damaging their lives through lung cancer and creating a huge burden for the NHS. Gradually, we all came to understand that tobacco sponsorship of sports was odd and—more importantly—unacceptable, and it was banned in 2002.

The analogy is never identical, but it is relevant. Gambling is no more suitable a partner to sport than smoking, so my question to the House is how long the same journey will take us with gambling. How long will it be before we ban gambling advertising in sports altogether? If the research on the levy shows what I hope it will show, we have a real opportunity to do something about the problem. Thousands of lives are at risk, and we should move fast. I would like to see real consideration given, depending on the evidence, to banning gambling companies from sponsoring sports altogether.

That brings me to other measures to protect vulnerable gamblers—those who are most prone to addiction and least likely to be able to afford it. Like users of fixed-odds betting terminals, many online gamblers simply cannot afford their losses, as colleagues have said. Can we not build on Monzo and Barclaycard’s encouraging start of allowing gamblers to put blocks on their debit cards against payments to gambling companies? The regulator is working well on the issue with financial industry bodies and financial services, and the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute is also playing a part. I encourage those organisations and the Minister to take the policy forward and get all banks to offer it as soon as possible.

Gamblers know that self-exclusion can be got round easily enough—in many cases, a slightly different name will suffice, as one constituent showed me—and once a company has someone’s mobile number or email address, it pumps special offers at them day and night. My next ask is therefore that the Government endorse the Gambling Commission’s initiative to persuade banks and other credit card issuers to disallow gamblers from using their credit cards altogether. It has been put to me that banks would never directly loan money to a gambler, so why do they do so indirectly?

Using blocking technologies such as Gamban can also help. It could be made mandatory for all gambling companies to have such systems, approved by the commission and paid for by the companies themselves. Ultimately, however, I sense that it will be artificial intelligence that provides the real breakthrough in technology—through facial recognition, for example—that enables the sector and companies to block most efficiently and the regulator to do its protection work even more effectively.

That work needs to be part of a strategy that includes the NHS implementing as soon as possible the five pages on gambling in its 10-year review—an important start—and creating more gambling clinics. London and soon Leeds is a start, but it will not be enough on its own.

I hope that all hon. Members agree that there is much to do. I believe that the Gambling Commission’s report will be important; I encourage the Minister to give an oral statement as soon as the report is released, to highlight its recommendations and give the House a chance to debate the issues in more detail. In the meantime, I know that the Government are concerned about the issue and the Minister is committed to it, so I urge them to start the ball rolling as soon as possible with a statutory instrument to introduce a new 1% levy to fund research to give us the facts that we need to make the difficult decisions. I also urge them to move fast on the review’s recommendations, which I hope will include much of what I have suggested today.

Ultimately, online gambling protection is about saving lives. If we can do things that achieve that, our time in this House will have been well spent.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Mims Davies)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on securing this important debate.

We have to look at this in the round. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise his concerns, on behalf of his constituents and more broadly. We have to balance that with the fact that millions of people enjoy gambling responsibly. A day at the races—Cheltenham is on at the moment, as we know—an evening at the bingo or a regular bet on the football each week can be enjoyable, but we must balance that against the need to protect the most vulnerable people from gambling-related harm, wherever they gamble.

Hon. Members will be aware that online gambling is an area that I care deeply about and that I have already discussed with my hon. Friend. We have also met the all-party parliamentary group for gambling-related harm, alongside the Secretary of State; my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) brings to the debate his expertise on the group’s work and ongoing concerns.

It is absolutely right that we focus on ensuring that the regulatory framework for online gambling is robust. I am aware of concerns about the need to keep pace with technological advances, so I was particularly interested in the facial recognition idea that my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester mentioned. I assure hon. Members that the Department will act where there is evidence of harm and will always keep the issues under review.

The Gambling Act 2005 provides the Gambling Commission with strong powers to ensure that all forms of gambling, including online gambling, are crime-free, fair and open and that they focus on protecting children and vulnerable people. Any operator that sells to customers in Great Britain must be licensed by the Gambling Commission and must comply with strict regulatory requirements. The commission has shown, rightly, that it will act where those rules are broken. For example, action against online casino operators resulted in penalty packages of almost £14 million last year.

The data held by online operators allows them to identify vulnerable customers and those at risk of harm. I note with caution the concerns raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green about companies looking for losers and focusing on gambling losses. I will absolutely take those concerns away and look at them.

My right hon. Friend also mentioned gagging orders. The Gambling Commission’s rules state that businesses should work with it to ensure that they are operating appropriately and should

“disclose anything which the Commission would reasonably expect to know.”

We want to help the regulator to take robust action to guard against any breaches of the rules, so if the all-party group’s work suggests that something is not being disclosed, or if hon. Members have anything to raise, I am keen to hear more. We want to see only responsible businesses in this sector. We want to ensure that people can have an open conversation about what responsible gambling looks like.

I was struck by Josh’s story, which was told by my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester. There is real concern about suicides related to gambling. As my hon. Friend points out, the number of suicides cannot be ignored. The Responsible Gambling Strategy Board has published a report on measuring gambling-related harms to focus on the need to commission more research on the risk of suicide, so that we can identify harmful behaviours and so that people who enjoy a flutter or a bet can start to recognise such behaviours in those around them.

We need to remove the stigma around addiction to gambling. If someone feels like it is controlling them, the potential risk, the awareness of people around them and the opportunity to get support are really important. We need to take the stigma away and be able to work with partners. I must thank the Gambling with Lives charity, which has helped to identify the role of education in preventing harm. The Government’s review on gaming machines and social responsibility measures, which was published last May, set out a comprehensive package of measures to focus on safer and fairer gambling, and to ensure that this is paramount and at the heart of advertising and online operations.

We have heard about technological solutions. In December, Ministers at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and I brought together the technology and gambling industries to explore the use of further technology in preventing harm and stress the importance of learning together. More recently, the Secretary of State and I met major banks that are working on interventions this summer and into the autumn, in order to discuss how they can react in a way that challenger banks have been able to, by allowing customers to block gambling facilities. I want to emphasise that technological solutions to help to protect vulnerable people from gambling-related harm are absolutely vital, and we should seek every opportunity that we can.

An example of a technological solution is the online multi-operator self-exclusion scheme, GamStop, which ensures that people who take the difficult step to self-exclude are fully supported. For the first time, people who self-exclude online can sign up once to be excluded from all operators in the scheme. It currently extends to over 90% of the market, and over 60,000 people have used the service so far.

Last week I met gamban, which is based in Southampton—I will be popping down to its offices. Its new blocking software is freely available via GamCare and prevents devices from being able to access gambling websites. This is where innovation and direct experience is helping to drive player protections, which is vital. To support such initiatives, the Gambling Commission is consulting on stronger customer interaction requirements. I met GamCare yesterday and was delighted to hear about its initiatives with operators, including providing training to industry staff on player protection and the “safer gambling standard” quality mark. Let us get this moving—it is new and something that GamCare is moving towards.

For over 20 years, GamCare has been on the frontline of service provision, and it has reflected on the change over that time. It has a helpline, which is open between 8 am and midnight, seven days a week. It is a freephone number—if anyone is watching or reads this in Hansard, the number is 0808 8020 133. When I met GamCare yesterday, I was struck by its results on getting people out of crisis and to a place where gambling is not controlling them and they are able to sort matters out. Once people have contacted the charity—it does not appear on itemised bills—the first step is to talk things through and get some help.

GamCare is running programmes for schools that are aimed at 11 to 18-year-olds, and is looking to develop new packages for 18 to 24-year-olds. I urge all operators to work with GamCare on this, so that we can educate people on the risks, what is healthy, and when and how to find help when it is needed. I intend to use the opportunities across Departments to ensure that we give advice to parents, so that protecting children is co-ordinated—that work is going on with GambleAware, which brings me to advertising and the charity’s work.

A responsible message must now appear on all TV advertising for gambling companies for the duration of adverts. The Gambling Commission has introduced tougher sanctions for operators that break advertising rules. In addition, I am delighted to have worked with GambleAware to launch the industry-funded, multimillion-pound “Bet Regret” advertising campaign, which aims to help to start a conversation around risky betting behaviours and how to reduce them. In response to public concerns, the industry has announced the “whistle-to-whistle” ban on all TV betting adverts during pre-watershed live sport.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester on the relationship between sport and gambling—both particular sports and as a whole. I have already challenged gambling companies on this. Everything is on the table with regards to responsible businesses coming forward and doing the right thing; otherwise, it is absolutely right that we should act. There are positive signs that the industry is stepping up to the challenge that we have set, but there is scope to go further. I want to see the industry meet GambleAware’s donation target of £10 million by April this year. As I have said before, we want the voluntary system to work. If it does not, I do not rule out other ways of funding support, which could include a mandatory levy.

I am working closely with colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care on the recently announced problem gambling clinic in Leeds. As we heard, the NHS long-term plan has a commitment to extend access to treatment. Public Health England has developed guidance for local authorities on gambling and is undertaking an evidence review. I have even spoken locally to my GP clusters about how, through social prescribing and local conversations, we can direct people to help. I have met the Minister for suicide prevention, who is clear that she will be working on gambling as a priority. Let me be clear on my position on the policy in this area: any life lost due to gambling is a tragedy, and we will work in every way that we need to in order to keep vulnerable people protected.

From May, the Gambling Commission will bring in further changes to operators in order to include age and identity verification to allow consumers to ensure that they do not partake if they get free-to-play demo games. These changes will also include further protections for children and vulnerable consumers and will help GamStop to be more effective. The Gambling Commission recently launched a call for evidence on gambling online with credit. The Secretary of State and I are very keen to look at this, and we have already raised it with banks. It will help to develop a comprehensive picture, including the prevalence of using credit cards for gambling, and the associated risks.

We are aware of immersive gaming, an issue that was raised with regards to “skins gambling” and loot boxes. The Gambling Commission has made it clear that unlicensed gambling with in-game items known as skins is illegal, and it will take tough action. It prosecuted operators in 2017, making it the first regulator in the world to take such action. Loot boxes currently do not fall under gambling law where in-game items are acquired and confined to use within the game and cannot be cashed out, but we will continue to look at that. I am aware that the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee is also looking at this area.

I thank hon. and right hon. Members for taking part in this debate and ensuring that the Government hears very loudly that gambling online should be fair and safe. It is something that we all take seriously. We have delivered some important changes to online gambling regulation and will continue to review the protections and take action where it is needed. My hon. Friends have spoken passionately on this issue, and it is clear that that is our aim. The Government intend to work with the industry to bring it to the table, and to work with colleagues to ensure that vulnerable players are protected.

[Richard Graham]

rose—

[Sir Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

You do not get a comeback on a 30-minute debate, I am afraid.

Question put and agreed to.

Communities: Charities and Volunteers

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Everybody here has interests to declare, so I shall rattle quickly through mine. I may mention some of these organisations: I am a recently retired trustee of the Gloucestershire Community Foundation; the current chair of the Gloucester History Trust; a joint patron of the charity HaVinG a Voice in Gloucester, which helps the homeless on to pathways; and a joint patron of the Discover DeCrypt project at St Mary de Crypt church and school. Every year, I volunteer with Gloucestershire Royal Hospital.

Today is a very good time for this debate and I congratulate the Minister on her introduction to it. She is quite right to focus on what is such a big part of such a big society. She is quite right to say that volunteers and charities are at the heart of every community in all our constituencies, and she is inspired to highlight some of the new awards that have been given to projects about deprivation and community. I would have loved to have seen at least one of those come the way of Gloucester, but there may be opportunities for that shortly. The more she is able to do on this front, with the help of the Chancellor, the more difference it will make to local pride, local people and local potential. Let me share some thoughts from almost 12 years of focus on community and its role in the regeneration of Gloucester.

The first point is that pride matters hugely. England and Britain’s characteristics include an attractive self-deprecation and a not always so attractive approach to not appreciating ourselves, our cities, our towns and villages enough. How do we measure pride and what does it mean? There is no index, but there are various indicators we can use. I often use Centre for Cities’ research as a snapshot of how our city is doing relative to others. The employment rate immediately tells me that Gloucester is working. We have the fourth-best employment rate of any city in the nation. Then there are the less tangible things, such as the amount of volunteering.

Can any of us truly say that we know how many people are volunteering and how many hours they give to our city or our county? It is very hard to tell, but when we look at the different ingredients it is there for us to see. For example, Gloucestershire Royal Hospital has over 400 volunteers, not including the 30-plus in the chaplain’s office. The Gloucester Civic Trust has hundreds of volunteers who play a crucial role on Gloucester Day and on heritage open days, which are one of those wonderful things that have grown and grown.

We then have the community groups themselves. The Redwell Centre in Matson is a fantastic success, with programmes, projects and activities for everybody from the very young to the very old, including the cross-faith and denomination Together in Matson. There are community groups, such as Chit Chat within St James’s church in Quedgeley, which involve the community. There are the festivals, which all our communities have. I would like to talk about the Gloucester History Festival, which I started eight years ago and which now has 24,000 visitors.

We have groups who help the homeless and rough sleepers. The George Whitefield Centre incorporates Gloucestershire care services, the Gloucester City Mission and the food bank, which has lots of volunteers. It is not just Christian charities either. Islamic groups in Gloucester are raising funds for good causes. There are immigrants who are giving back to the society that has looked after them since they left their own country. I want to single out Babu Odedra and Ash Chavda. They own the Olympus Theatre, where there is a great project to regenerate culture and drama in the heart of Barton in Gloucester. There are the Rotary Clubs. We now get all the Rotary Clubs in Gloucester together and we have our community awards every year, with some £10,000 going to about 20 different groups. These little things matter and it is a way for charities to highlight what they are doing to a group of people who are very charitably minded. The Barnwood Trust nearby, a mental health-focused charity, now interprets mental health in a much wider way. There are lots of things that help. The Gloucester Pride festival every year attracts many times the numbers it had when it started, as does the Lantern festival, which ends up at the cathedral.

What works? What transforms communities and cities? I think often, as my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) mentioned, out of sadness can come determination to change. Charities are formed from disasters in families, such as: the Hollie Gazzard Trust which is about to celebrate its fifth anniversary; Charlie’s Cancer Support group; and the Nelson Trust, which does great things for women in trouble. All of these things boost pride. Success breeds confidence and success. Buildings help. As Churchill said, we shape buildings and then they shape us. Above all, it is about the potential in our societies and things that are good for mental health. The role of volunteering and charities is absolutely critical.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Richard Graham Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

Let me press on.

A variety of commentators have criticised the Prime Minister’s proposals, none more scathing than Mervyn King, the former Governor of the Bank of England. Leaving aside his description of the Government’s handling of this issue as

“incompetence of a high order”,

overall he says:

“It simply beggars belief that a government could be hell-bent on a deal that hands over £39 billion, while giving the EU both the right to impose laws on the U.K. indefinitely and a veto on ending this state of fiefdom.”

Many will share the view expressed by Nicole Sykes, the CBI’s head of EU negotiations, which were revealed in an email where she said that there is

“no need to give credit to negotiators I think, because it’s not a good deal.”

Let me move on to my third point, which is Labour’s alternative. I believe that the majority of hon. Members in this House agree that the Prime Minister’s deal is not a good deal. So over the next few days, and possibly—as was hinted at this morning—for even longer, Members will be searching for a way forward. I believe that Labour’s proposals for a new approach to our European relationship offer that way forward. Our European partners will have seen that the Prime Minister’s deal that they reluctantly endorsed has not proved to secure the support it requires in this House or in the country. I believe that they will see the need, now, for a constructive renegotiation if both their and our own economic interests are to be protected in the long term. Indeed, that is what has happened in the past.

Labour’s new deal will secure the economic interests both of ourselves and our European partners. It rests on three posts. Labour would prioritise a permanent and comprehensive customs union—yes, with a British say in future trade deals. We would deliver a strong, collaborative relationship with the single market—and yes, we would guarantee that the UK does not fall behind in rights for workers, consumers and the environment. Labour has always been clear: we respect the referendum result, but we have always said that we want a Brexit that puts jobs and the economy first—and that is exactly what Labour’s approach will do.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman said that Labour is looking for a comprehensive customs union agreement in which Britain will have a say in future trade agreements, but if we were in a customs union with the European Union, we would not have a say on future trade agreements. Can he clarify that?

[John McDonnell]

We will have a say in the future of those trade deals in our relationship with the European Union, and it will reflect the size of our economy and its contribution to the European Union overall.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stewart Hosie]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am not going to do it today, but certainly in previous debates we have gone through quote after quote after quote from Brexiteers who said that we would not be leaving the customs union, we would not be leaving the single market and we would still have the right to travel freely throughout Europe. Not everybody voted for a Brexit that was based on any single assessment damaging the economy, living standards and opportunities for their children and grandchildren.

The last of the assessments is the most recent, the Government’s assessment, which again shows a central forecast in all circumstances broadly in the minus 2% to minus 9% range. I find it extraordinary that the Government in essence have ignored every single serious assessment of the economic damage Brexit will do. What we see now with this proposal on the withdrawal agreement are rabbits caught in headlights, walking the economy towards danger, rather than pausing, thinking and changing course.

[Richard Graham]

I want to pick up on an earlier comment. The hon. Gentleman said that bringing to an end free movement would be very damaging. What would he say to my constituent, a young Gloucester girl, eight months’ pregnant and badly beaten up by her European boyfriend, who is terrified that when he comes out of prison he will return to haunt her and her family, because this country cannot deport European nationals unless they have served a sentence of longer than two years? Does he agree that there are some elements where actually it would be protective, not damaging?

[Stewart Hosie]

I am reluctant to get into an individual case. Suffice it to say we all have constituents. The same young lady may have been assaulted by a man from the same town who lives two streets away. Nationality and the ability to travel in that circumstance, however difficult, is actually irrelevant.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Davis]

People have to read more than one line of a speech. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman’s iPad is too small to carry more than one sentence. I also said that the critical part of the negotiation would not be the first two years, but the last three months, when France and Germany would determine the outcome. If the hon. Gentleman wants to quote me again, he should get it right next time.

[Richard Graham]

May I make one small point? My right hon. Friend has focused on the backstop on the Northern Irish border, and he has quoted the Attorney General as saying that we could be in that indefinitely, but surely the “if” is if we decide to go into the backstop in the first place. The other option is to extend the transition. Does he not agree?

[Mr Davis]

That is what is laid out in the proposal, but the transition will then come to an end, and at the end of that, we will still have to make a decision on where we are going, backstop or no. I am afraid that we are always in, and the point is that it is at the behest of the European Union, not at our behest. I have nothing against the European Union, but it is the negotiating partner that may gain an advantage from delay.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I want to argue for the inevitability of imperfection, the lack of credible alternatives, the value of compromise and, above all, the benefits of safeguarding the interests of our constituents.

Let me start with the deal and its imperfections, many of which have been listed by colleagues around the House. Above all, there are concerns that the backstop arrangement to prevent a hard border on Northern Ireland could lead us into an indefinite purgatory of neither in nor out, with rules from the EU governing aspects of trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. If the Government can give further reassurance on that point, many colleagues on both sides of the House will clearly be relieved.

But the deal does something else: it balances honouring the result of the referendum, looking after citizens and their rights and not damaging business, jobs or the security of our nation. For those of us who voted to remain—because, as I wrote at the time, the short-term risks outweighed the potential longer-term benefits—and those who voted to leave, to bring back control, the deal mitigates the risks, gives certainty to people, trade and security, and allows us the chance to shape opportunities that may come forward in the next stage of the negotiations on detailed trade and customs arrangements.

For my constituency of Gloucester, with our engineering and manufacturing heritage, aerospace and nuclear interests, our growing cyber sector and the contribution made by our academics and health specialists from the European Union, this compromise may not look heroic, but it is practical.

Let me make three other key points. The first is that flaws in negotiations are as inevitable as the weathered stonework on Gloucester cathedral. As Churchill said,

“democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.—[Official Report, 11 November 1947; Vol. 444, c. 207.]

So it is with this deal. Those who criticise the deal because it does not satisfy them, either because it does not have a close enough relationship with the EU or is not distant enough from the EU, are effectively offering one of three alternatives: no deal plus WTO, a Labour renegotiation, Norway-plus, or a second referendum. Let me brush aside, I am afraid, the concept of a Labour renegotiation, as this comes from the party whose only position has been not to have a position—resolute only to be irresolute. On a second referendum, this would be the only genuine betrayal of the promise made to every household before the referendum: “What you decide, we will implement.” On Norway-plus, however defined, which could become a place of refuge if this deal were rejected, the House should be in no doubt—it is not a good deal. We would pay a lot to be a rule taker and never have an independent trade policy.

For those of my colleagues representing seats from Uxbridge to North East Derbyshire who rail against the deal, the challenge is this: show me your better deal, and do not risk what you wanted—Brexit—by now demanding everything from a negotiation that will never be achievable.

Our constituents want to see this deal done. They want us to move on and get back to what they want to focus on: better care, less knife crime, easier transport, good broadband and excellent public services. In the civil war—

[Mr Speaker]

Order.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

I rise to speak as someone who lived and worked in Brussels, in the EU bubble; whose wife and, by virtue, nieces are EU nationals; who voted remain in June 2016; and who represents a constituency that voted convincingly to remain in the European Union.

For quite a long time post the referendum, I wrestled with my conscience over whether supporting the Government’s decision to pursue Brexit was the right one and true to what I believed. Let me be clear: I never for one moment doubted that this country could survive and thrive outwith the European club. This is the fifth largest economy in the world. We are an enterprising, dynamic, inventive and confident nation—a Union of nations of near unparalleled continuing strength and influence, with interests and allies far beyond this continent. The point I wrestled with was why it should have to choose between being prosperous within or outwith the certainly imperfect European Union.

The simple fact that I came to realise pretty early on, which must be remembered by those who argue for another referendum or for Brexit to be halted in some way, is that the decision was taken in a people’s vote—the biggest democratic exercise in the history of this country. The decision of the British people, whom we are all elected to serve, was to leave the European Union.

I understand how many of my colleagues feel, especially on the Government Benches, and I know that many of my closest friends and colleagues are struggling to come to a decision on how to vote next Tuesday. They are wrestling with their consciences, as I did, and I know they are doing so to come to a decision that they believe will be in the national interest.

It was John F. Kennedy who said:

“a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

The people judged—the people voted—and now we must honour the result of that judgment and leave the European Union. It is up to us to implement that decision, and our duty is to do so in a way that is supportive of business and will cause as little upset to the economy as possible.

As the Member of Parliament for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine—as a Scottish MP—I back the agreement brokered between Her Majesty’s Government and the European Commission. I do not do so lightly. I do so because I believe that it is the best outcome for business, for my constituents and for Scotland. I do so not because it is an easy choice, but because I believe it is the right one and in the national interest.

This deal is supported by the National Farmers Union of Scotland, the Scotch Whisky Association, the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, CBI Scotland, the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation—which knows a little bit more about fishing than some Opposition Members —and Sir Ian Wood, who said:

“I frankly think we do need to move ahead—it’s what you hear most business people saying… I think the proposal that’s on the table…is workable. I think it is better than we have—we’re out of Common Market membership, but we’re maintaining some of the advantages.”

It would be a great dereliction of duty on my part if I did not listen to those voices.

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Does he agree that representatives of different sectors in Northern Ireland—whether the retail industry, manufacturing or services—have also been very supportive of this deal, and that should be taken into account?

[Andrew Bowie]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I recognise that point. However, I do not think it is incumbent on me to speak on behalf of Northern Ireland; I will leave that up to Members elected to this place from Northern Ireland. I am speaking on behalf of my constituents and what I think is in Scotland’s best interests.

Scottish MPs have a duty to do what is in the best interests of the Scottish people and the Scottish economy. I say to my colleagues from Scotland on both sides of the House that it is now time to stand up and be counted. For the sake of our economy and this country, we have to back this deal, back the Government and move on together as we continue to build a Britain that is united, stronger and genuinely fit for the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Fox]

I will not give way again.

The Government have made it clear that we want to take a balanced approach to the question of our future trading prospects. We acknowledge the need to maximise our access to the EU market, but without damaging our potential to benefit from the emerging trade opportunities in other parts of the world. I remind the House that the International Monetary Fund has said that 90% of global growth in the next five years, bringing its forecast forward, will occur outside continental Europe.

Ambitious arrangements have been made in the political declaration for services and investment—crucial to this country—arrangements that go well beyond WTO commitments and build on the most ambitious of the EU’s recent FTAs. But we have also been clear that our future relationship with the EU would recognise the development of an independent UK trade policy and not tie our hands when it comes to global opportunities. The 27 nations of the EU constitute some of our largest trading partners. As a whole, some 44% of this country’s exports of goods and services still go to the EU, although that proportion has diminished somewhat over the past decade or so. We have set out an approach that means the UK would be able to set its own trade policy with the rest of the world, including—let me be very clear—setting our own tariffs, implementing our own trade remedies and taking up our own independent seat at the World Trade Organisation. It is at the WTO and like bodies that proper global liberalisation is likely to take place. In an economy that is 80% services-orientated, the liberalisation globally of services will have a far greater impact on the future prosperity of the United Kingdom than anything that is likely to be done on a bilateral agreement in goods, which has largely been liberalised over the past 20 or so years.

Britain is well prepared for a global future. No other country has the same combination of fundamental strengths, which will allow us to thrive in an age where knowledge and expertise are the instigators of success. The inward investment into this country in recent months is testament to that. Not only have we maintained our place in global FDI—we have improved it. According to the UN, in the first six months of 2018, Britain was second only to China and ahead of the United States in terms of inward investment because of the strong economic fundamentals of this country that have been set down since 2010 by the Conservative Government. Our export and investment performance shows that the sceptics have been wrong and that Britain is flourishing. The divisions of the referendum now need to be consigned to the past. It is time to set aside our differences and lead our country to a future of freedom, success and prosperity.

Let us be clear about one thing. There are those who claim, and it has been claimed today, that Parliament can override the result of the referendum because Parliament is sovereign. I say this to them: on this particular issue Parliament subcontracted its sovereignty to the British people when it said, “We cannot or will not make a decision on this particular matter. We want the people to take this decision and issue an instruction to Parliament.” The people of this country made that decision and issued that instruction. If we want to retain the public’s faith in our democratic institutions, it is time for Parliament to live up to our side of the bargain. In politics, we cannot always have the luxury of doing what we want for ourselves, but we always have an abiding duty to do what is right for our country. I commend this motion to the House.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Gareth Johnson.)

Debate to be resumed on Monday 10 December (Order, 4 December).

[Richard Graham]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Earlier, I intervened on the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) to make a point about the difference in sentencing by courts of EU nationals and those from other countries. I want to make it clear that I intended no disrespect to European nationals, but I made the point clumsily—I illustrated it clumsily. I therefore want to apologise to anyone who took offence. I promise the House that that was absolutely not intended.

[Mr Speaker]

I fully understand the purport of what the hon. Gentleman has had to say. I think that he has set the record straight. It is not for me to act as arbiter of the merit or demerit of what a particular hon. Member says. Each Member takes responsibility for his or her own observations. However, in the circumstances which the hon. Gentleman described to me briefly some little while ago at the Chair, I quite understand why he wanted to say what he has just said. I thank him for doing so, and I think it will be noted and appreciated by colleagues.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Richard Graham Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 19th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kirsty Blackman]

I am not surprised that that has happened, because any Government who believe that a 16-year-old can live on less than an over 25-year-old are not going to make rational decisions in relation to pay for those at the younger end of the age spectrum. It would be a very good move if the UK Government were to change their policy and move to a situation where 16 and 17-year-olds, and those all the way up to 25, and in fact those over 25, were paid an amount they could actually live on, rather than an amount that does not enable them to buy the day-to-day essentials.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

This is a small, but I think important, point: does the hon. Lady accept that that minimum level is exactly what it says—a minimum level? Many people, including my apprentice, earn far more than that, but if we set the level much higher, we are likely to reduce the number of opportunities available to 16 and 17-year-olds.

[Kirsty Blackman]

I do not believe that that is true. I know somebody who went for a job interview, and at the end of it they were offered the job. The person offering them the job actually said, “How old are you, because I want to see how little I can pay you?” Those decisions are being taken because of the discriminatory nature of the way the minimum wage is set. What we should have—and this is an argument I have made to the Government on a huge number of occasions on a number of different things—is a situation where those on the bottom of the pile are protected first, and then we should get rid of discriminatory practices where people might discriminate against 16 and 17-year-olds. I would raise the bar, rather than lower it; that is generally an argument I have made to the UK Government.

New clause 19, which we hope to push to a vote today, proposes that the Chancellor brings forward a report that analyses the distributional and other effects of a rise in the personal allowance to £12,750 in 2019-20. It is Scottish National party policy that the personal allowance be raised to £12,750. Given the increasing, and staggering, levels of in-work poverty, given the UN report criticising the UK Government’s implementation of austerity, and given the fact that millions of families across the UK have savings of less than £100, increasing the personal allowance even by a small amount will have an impact on the individuals and families who are struggling the most.

It is no incentive to work if we know that when we work we will still not be able to get out of all-consuming poverty. We need a UK Government who recognise that those who earn the least are suffering the most. In Scotland, the SNP has recognised that and we have made progressive changes to the tax system.

I do not want to live in a country where children are going hungry. The UK Government have got their head firmly in the sand on this issue. I do not understand how they can continue along this track when we are having people come into our surgeries in tears because they have not eaten in days.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Dowd]

My hon. Friend is right, and for the Tories that choice comes first, second and third, and it always will.

On one hand the Government are lengthening the qualifying time for investors from one year to two, but on the other hand they are ensuring that shareholders will be protected from falling below the 5% threshold needed to claim the relief when a company is sold. It is hard to see how this confused measure will tackle the growing cost of the relief.

Naturally, the Opposition, the Resolution Foundation and the IFS are not the only ones who have found this measure perplexing to say the least. The Chartered Institute of Taxation has raised deep concerns about its retroactive nature, its lack of clarity and the likelihood that the reforms will hit small businesses the hardest—the businesses that the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) no doubt had in mind in her intervention. Far from making the relief more equitable, this measure will instead insulate wealthier claimants who can rely on expensive tax advisers to navigate red tape, ensuring that the cost of the relief will continue to bloom.

The cost of corporate welfare has risen steadily under this Conservative Government. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is the one form of welfare that Government Members support. In contrast, the Labour party is committed to undertaking a full and comprehensive review of corporate tax reliefs when—not if—we reach government. That is why we have tabled new clause 3, which would require the Government to undertake a full review of entrepreneurs’ relief. The review would consider the overall number of entrepreneurs in the United Kingdom, the annual cost of the relief, the cost per claim and the impact of the relief on productivity in the UK—productivity that is 15% below our comparators in the G7 and 35% below the Germans. The Government should be getting to grips with that fact, not fiddling around with entrepreneurs’ relief.

Government Members should ask themselves how they can justify the amount of money going to 52,000 people while our public services are falling into disrepair. This relief is clearly in need of urgent review to ensure that the taxpayer is not being ripped off. They should be clear that if they choose to vote against new clause 3, they are voting against the interests of taxpayers across the country. Again, this is £2.7 billion for 52,000 people.

I hope that Government Members will support our new clauses 1, 2 and 3, for the reasons that I have outlined. This authoritarian Government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich have lost all credibility to manage the affairs of this country. They no longer know what they stand for, nor do they have the courage to find out. This Bill of broken promises takes us no further forward in meeting this country’s mounting challenges, so I call on Members throughout the House to support Labour’s proposals to create a fairer society and a fairer tax system. If we are unable to change the Government’s course, we will challenge the Bill at every step of the way, notwithstanding the authoritarian shackles put on us by this authoritarian Government, and we will use it to put an end to this aimless and divided Government.

[Richard Graham]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd), although there were moments during his speech when I found myself wondering whether history was being rewritten in a remarkably creative way.

The changes that the Government have proposed come against a background of remarkable achievement in cutting the deficit by four fifths, reducing the unemployment rate to its lowest since the 1970s, giving 32 million people tax cuts and taking 1.7 million out of income tax altogether. Some of those things were denied by the hon. Gentleman, who claimed at one point that the rich were only getting richer. I think it therefore falls to me to offer a few statistics to put his comments into context.

The first comes from the Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis of what went on under the previous Labour Government. The hon. Gentleman, who is chuntering with his colleague the shadow Chancellor, should focus on that IFS analysis. The independent analysis from the IFS shows very clearly that on most measures income inequality during the 13 years of the previous Labour Government went up. Part of the reason for that was explained, helpfully, by the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) in an interesting interview with The Guardian the other day. He pointed out that the attitude of the previous Labour Government was, to quote the former deputy Prime Minister, Lord Mandelson, “intensely relaxed” about the filthy rich. The hon. Member for Norwich South rightly went on to say that during the 13 years of the Labour Government:

“The huge fortunes of those at the very top…were left almost untouched.”

That is why the work done by this Government, which for example includes scrapping child benefit in 2013 for those earning over £50,000, has led to the lowest tax gap for a very long time. The percentage of income tax paid by the top 1% has doubled under the Conservative Government. The hon. Member for Bootle therefore needs to think hard about that IFS analysis. Income inequality went up under the 13 years of the Labour Government and it has gone down in eight years under the Conservatives.

There are other points worth highlighting. For example, people on lower and middle incomes actually have more money in their pockets now than at the start of the financial crisis under the previous Labour Government. The gap, as I pointed out, between those on the lowest and highest incomes is lower than it was when the Labour Government left power in 2010. In fact, income inequality is now close to its lowest point since 1986. That is a remarkable achievement. Over the past 30 years, which include 13 of a Labour Government, income inequality narrowed sharply under this Conservative Government.

Labour Members have made a lot of points about employment, so it is worth highlighting that the growth in employment benefits most the poorest 20% of households. The employment rate is now up by more than seven percentage points on where it was before the financial crisis under Labour in 2007. Thanks to the national living wage, the income of the lowest earners has actually grown by almost 5% since 2015, higher than at any other point across the earnings distribution. The actual situation today in our economy for those working is therefore very different from that painted by those on the Opposition Benches and by the hon. Gentleman.

A crucial and major difference between the Labour party and the Government is on taxing business. The uncomfortable truth for Opposition Members who would like to tax business more is that since the Government cut corporation tax in 2010 receipts have gone up by 50%, generating an extra £20 billion in 2016 over what was generated in 2010. The extra £20 billion we found for the NHS above inflation for this five-year period does not come from nowhere; it comes from increased receipts and growth in the economy. That extra £20 billion raised from corporation tax, as a result of cutting corporation tax, is one of the critical economic differences between those on the Government side of the House and those on the Opposition side. The Opposition still believe that if they tax businesses more they will get more tax. The truth, however, is that if we tax businesses less we incentivise business and entrepreneurs, generating more tax receipts to put into our vital public services.

[Julian Knight]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that £20 billion happens to be exactly the same amount of extra money that the Government have pledged to put into our national health service?

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Graham]

Exactly. The figures are a coincidence, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight that we are putting the same amount of extra money into the NHS—the largest ever amount invested into our national health service.

[Leo Docherty]

My hon. Friend is painting a very lucid picture of how the Government differ from the Opposition with regard to tax, but does he agree that that also applies to our approach to private property? The discussion that the Labour party is having about the wholesale renationalisation of major parts of our economy is deeply alarming, and it should come clean to the public about how much that would actually cost.

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The remark made by the shadow Chancellor earlier that the public—all our constituents—would have to pay zero extra to fund the widespread nationalisation of all the utility companies, the train companies and anything else was really quite extraordinary. To be honest, I would be surprised if somebody did not raise that on a point of order in terms of misleading the House and the nation, because clearly those figures are a mile away from what independent analysts have calculated.

[Rachel Maclean]

Has the shadow Chancellor not been on record stating that it does not matter if his sums do not add up, and that it is largely irrelevant, which demonstrates my hon. Friend’s point?

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As she knows well, the truth of the last Labour Government—during their 13 years—was that although they promised no more boom and bust, they gave us the biggest bust in peacetime history as a result of wildly overspending. I am afraid the net result of that is, as always, that the poorest feel the effects worst. In my constituency of Gloucester, 6,000 people lost their jobs during the great recession under Labour. Only since the Conservative Government came back have we seen employment rise sharply and youth unemployment and unemployment fall sharply.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I will not repeat the debate that we always have about a global financial crisis not being solely contained in the UK, but on the earlier intervention that the hon. Gentleman took, the shadow Chancellor is not on the record as saying that his sums do not add up and that that does not matter. Let us remind the Committee that the only party that published costings of its policies at the election was Labour. It is genuinely misleading the Committee to claim that the shadow Chancellor said anything other than that.

[Richard Graham]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but will he confirm to the Committee what I heard the shadow Chancellor say earlier in answer to a question from one of my colleagues? He said that there would be zero additional cost to the taxpayer from the enormous, widespread renationalisation policy of Labour; will the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) confirm that there will not be a single penny of additional cost?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

The shadow Chancellor did not speak from the Dispatch Box. I think the hon. Gentleman is thinking of the shadow Chief Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd)—the two should not be confused. On nationalisation, I think the point that my hon. Friend was trying to make is that we can simply look at British history to see how this works. If we take an asset into public ownership and the return from that asset is greater than the cost of the borrowing to take it on, there is no net cost to the taxpayer, and certainly, income tax will not have to rise to cover that.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We are not having a debate on party policy. We have amendments and clauses before us and we are straying from them—I know you wanted to get through your speech very quickly, Mr Graham.

[Richard Graham]

You are entirely right as always, Sir Lindsay. It was helpful to have it exposed that there is clearly a significant difference of opinion between the shadow Chief Secretary and the shadow Chancellor on whether there will be any additional costs from the policies of the Opposition—[Interruption.] I have taken a lot of interventions, so I will cease from taking them so that I can come, as you suggested Sir Lindsay, to a rapid closure, which I am sure will be welcomed by Opposition Members.

Having made the crucial point on our approach to investment in business, let me finish on the annual investment allowance, which is a crucial part of the Budget and the clauses under discussion. This is important because it encourages businesses to invest in expensive technology that, over time, will allow them to grow and employ more people. I could give a dozen examples from my constituency of where this has been true. To give it some flavour, I will highlight just one area. The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde will know, having visited China with me last week, how far we have gone in increasing our exports to China. From Gloucester alone, we are exporting a huge number of manufactured goods, including the landing gear on all Airbus aircraft.

[Peter Dowd]

If the hon. Gentleman is so sure of his position, what is wrong with providing for a review of the effectiveness of entrepreneurs’ relief, as new clause 3 would do?

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Gentleman is kind to mention that, but the fact is that we on the Government side of the House believe strongly in incentivising the entrepreneurs. They are the ones producing the technologies of the future—Fintech, Edtech, every sort of tech—and the reason why this country has seen more investment in technology in London alone in the last year than Germany, Spain, Ireland, the Netherlands and France put together. These incentives to businesses are what generate the additional tax revenue I highlighted earlier.

The changes to gambling tax are among the most significant measures proposed. These are fundamentally about what is morally right, and I am delighted that the Government have found a way to do the right thing, not just by reducing the maximum stake for fixed odds betting terminals from £100 to £2, but by introducing it rapidly and by raising the remote gambling duty from 15% to 21%. If I could make one request of the excellent Minister, it would be that he consider other ways to reduce the amount of online gambling advertising and to raise more tax revenue from it.

This is an important discussion. Some of the facts offered earlier by the Opposition were completely astray from reality, and I strongly support what the Government are doing to incentive business, encourage more people into work and, above all, benefit the lowest earners. It is worth finishing with one last statistic from the OECD: the proportion of jobs that are low-paid is at its lowest level in this country for at least 20 years. That is a significant achievement on which we can hope to build yet further in the future.

[Sir Vince Cable (Twickenham) (LD)]

I wish to say a few words about amendment 18, which would remove clause 5. I spoke on this at length on Second Reading, so I do not need to say a great deal.

The difficulty with clause 5 is that it combines two very different measures, the first being to lift the low earners threshold. As the hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) reminded us a few minutes ago, this was a policy that I and my colleagues pursued in government, and it is not something I at all disagree with. The second, however, is a much more substantial measure to lift the tax threshold for middle earners. I do not pretend for a moment that people at the higher rate threshold are rich people—at the bottom end, they are paid less than Members of Parliament—but we need to get beyond the headlines and look at the actual numbers.

The lower threshold is to be lifted by £650, and 20% of that is £130, so the people solely on standard rate tax will get £130 in their pocket as a result of this measure. Of course, that is welcome. It is about a 2% increase, which is roughly in line with inflation, and is unquestionably a good thing. For the high earners threshold, however, we are talking about much bigger sums of money—a £3,650 increase in the threshold. Multiplied by 20%, and we are talking about £730, but of course high earners also benefit from the standard rate threshold increase. Add the two together and we have got £860. This measure, which is badged as a measure to help low earners, helps low earners to take home £130 a year and high earners £860 a year. On no conceivable measure could that be described as some enlightened policy for helping the low paid.

Having said that, I should add that there are things that the Government could have done as part of the policy of reducing fiscal drag. I fully understand the need at the margin to stop people being dragged into higher tax rates, and something could have been done to offset that. The Chancellor himself has acknowledged that there are extremely expensive and lavish tax reliefs on pension contributions for upper earners, which cost the country about £25 billion a year. I think that if he had chosen to offset the upper-rate threshold measure by some reduction in pension tax relief for the high paid, such that it neutralised it, many of us would have thought that that was quite a reasonable way of making progress, but he did not, despite the urgent need for revenue.

In an ideal world we would be looking at tax cuts for everyone, but we are not in an ideal world. There are issues of priorities. As several Conservative Members have reminded us—former Chancellors, among others—we are living in a world of severe fiscal restrictions, despite the proclamation of the end of austerity. There are other purposes for which the money could have been better used. We are talking about £2.8 billion in the first year, tapering to about £1.7 billion a year, of which roughly half is for the upper rate threshold. We can all think of many, many ways of spending that money, but for me the priority would have been fully restoring the cuts in universal credit that were made two years ago. The Government have partly done that, but with the additional sum of £1.3 billion, the Chancellor could have returned universal credit to the levels at which it was placed two years ago, in the Osborne Budget. The money could also have been used to end the benefits freeze a year early. The continuation of that freeze means that the poorest 30% in the population are being dragged down as a result of the Budget, but ending the freeze a year early could have offset that. Obviously there are many other purposes for which the money could have been used, but those would have been my priorities.

This measure, politically, was obviously intended to enable the Chancellor to proclaim that the end of austerity is not just about public spending, but about cutting taxes. There is nothing wrong with that general proposition, but the problem is that it is dishonest: that is not what is actually happening. The revenue line in the Red Book shows clearly that as a result of revenue measures, council tax will rise by £6 billion over the next five years—that it will rise by considerably more than income tax is being cut. What, essentially, is happening is that as a result of the reduction, or the freezing, of spending on support for local councils, the councils are making up their revenue through council tax increases to the maximum extent allowed. The Government, according to their own numbers, believe that council tax revenue will rise by £6 billion to about £40 billion. That, as I have said, more than cancels out the income tax cuts, most of which in any case accrue to higher-rate earners. So this is not a tax-cutting Budget at all. It is, indirectly, a tax-raising Budget, and I hope that that will be pointed out to members of the Government when they use such rhetoric in future.

I simply wish to move my amendment, and we will seek to oppose clause 5 stand part.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Richard Graham Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 12th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kirsty Blackman]

I agree with the hon. Lady. There is a clear health impact to lowering the stakes. Making the changes in April, rather than next October, will have a genuine impact on the health of a huge number of individuals.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I am very clearly on the record as having supported changing the tariff that people can spend on fixed odds betting terminals from £100 to £2; it is absolutely the right thing to do. Let me be clear that it is quite extraordinary for a Labour Member to stand up and start lecturing the Government on having made an incredibly important and valuable change to legislation that rights the wrong of this fixed odds betting terminals—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Mr Graham, you have been here long enough to know that we have short interventions; you do not need me to tell you that. If you want to speak, I will put you on the list, but we must have short interventions.

Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill

Richard Graham Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 8th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

The issues that my hon. Friend raises are probably slightly beyond the scope of the Bill, but they are none the less important. If he would care to write to me, I should be happy to consider them, and, indeed, to meet him if he so wishes.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is being very generous. It would help us all if he could confirm that this is really an enabling Bill, and that it therefore should not alarm either those who wish to see the continuity of existing trading arrangements, or those who want significant differences. It paves the way for either scenario, depending on the negotiations in Europe.

[Mel Stride]

As usual, my hon. Friend is eloquent and to the point. He makes an important point because, as he says, the Bill is intended to ensure that wherever the deal with the European Union lands, we will be in a position to be ready on day one to ensure that we keep trade flowing across our frontiers, to the benefit of our economy, our businesses and our consumers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add:

“That this House recognises that the UK will need considered and effective arrangements to ensure a customs and tariff regime, including the potential of a customs union with the European Union, is in place before the UK’s exit, in order to guarantee frictionless movement of goods at UK ports and the ability to levy customs duty and VAT and to protect manufacturing and other key industries through the power to enact protective tariffs, but declines to give a Second Reading to the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Bill because the Government has failed to provide a coherent plan for the operation of the customs and tariff regime after the UK’s exit from the European Union or for the maintenance of frictionless movement of goods at UK ports, because the Bill is not accompanied by proposals to ensure that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs are properly resourced and organised to implement a new customs and VAT regime, because the needs of UK manufacturers and producers have not been properly reflected in the design of the proposals and because the Bill proposes to give excessive powers to Ministers without appropriate procedures for parliamentary consultation and scrutiny.”

Here we are at the start of another year, and it feels much the same as the last one—the same old empty Bills, long on rhetoric and short on detail. Yet always the Government’s default position is a fresh set of powers for Ministers, which is the one fixed point in a changing world. This Government seem to be taking back more control from Parliament as each day passes.

The Bill ostensibly sets out to create a functioning customs framework for the United Kingdom once we leave the European Union—hope springs eternal. We accept that such an arrangement is necessary, regardless of the UK’s future relationship with the EU or, indeed, the nature of its wider trading relationship, yet once again we have been denied any detail in the Bill itself, as hon. Members have identified. There is nothing to guarantee frictionless trade through the UK’s ports from the moment of exit, no measures properly to resource Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for the task and nowhere near sufficient detail on the powers and provisions of the Trade Remedies Authority that will be charged with ensuring that our vital British industries are protected. Only yesterday we saw the potentially disastrous consequences of that lack of detail, with reports on the likely result of the Government’s failure to address the EU VAT area for thousands of businesses.

In short, instead of setting up a stable customs framework, this Bill provides few of the policy or, indeed, practical considerations required for the task of leaving the European Union.

[Richard Graham]

It seems rather curious to criticise the Government for denying any detail while we are in the middle of a negotiation. How could the hon. Gentleman expect any Government to guarantee anything until that negotiation is complete?

[Peter Dowd]

This Government have guaranteed absolutely nothing whatsoever. Time after time, they hide behind the veil of negotiation.

Before addressing the Bill’s specific failures in meeting the Government’s objectives, I will raise the issue of the powers created by this Bill that enable Ministers to do whatever they want. The leave campaign’s central message, the one repeated time and again and printed across its campaign literature, was that leaving the European Union would allow the Parliaments and Assemblies of the UK to “take back control” of our law making. And yet again, every piece of legislation published by the Government relating to our exit creates more powers for Ministers, while ignoring Parliament completely. Parliament is in a persistent state of having its head patted—that is as much as Parliament is getting at the moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kirsty Blackman]

I think that we should remain in the customs union and the single market, because then we would not have any of these issues. I appreciate that the Minister says that the Government are looking at this, but I am trying to make it clear how important this matter is, and I hope that I have been able to do that in my discussion of cumulation.

[Richard Graham]

The hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) raised the importance of the EU FTA deal with South Korea—indeed, it adds some £2 billion to our exports every year—but the interesting question is why the EU has been able to make free trade agreements only with South Korea and Vietnam. What about the rest of Asia? Does the SNP believe that sufficient progress has been made in expanding our trade, especially in Scottish whisky, across the whole of Asia, or could the process perhaps have been done more energetically and dynamically by Britain making its own free trade deals?

[Kirsty Blackman]

There are EU FTAs with many countries and we trade through them. Because the EU has such a large market, it is able to strike much better free trade agreements than the UK Government will be able to strike for their much smaller market. That is just the reality.

On the capacity of HMRC, I also want to talk about the issue of authorised economic operators, which was mentioned a lot in the customs White Paper. Relying on the AEO system causes a bit of a problem, as the UK is just not that good at either promoting or administering it. Some of the rules applied by HMRC are nearly impossible for many of the smaller operators to meet, such as the requirement we have heard about that the person who is in charge of customs in organisations has three years of customs experience. Some of our businesses have been trading exclusively with the EU, so they cannot meet that requirement very easily. HMRC must look at this as a matter of priority, and particularly consider the situation in Austria, where it takes less than three months for an initial AEO application to go through. Germany has increased the number of authorised economic operators incredibly successfully. The UK Government could benefit from looking at those countries when they consider making changes. It is not about making the regime slacker and enabling more people to jump through the hoops for AEOs; it is about making the process of applying for and getting AEO certification more accessible and streamlined. I know the UK Government have had representations on this matter, and I urge Ministers to consider them and act as soon as they can. We need to get the system in place as soon as possible so that companies can register and receive the certification to become AEOs in advance of the exit date.

As we heard earlier, there is also an HMRC capacity and streamlining problem in the area of VAT. That was also raised in the media recently in the context of the British Retail Consortium’s concerns. The changes to the VAT regime could create major cash-flow problems for businesses, and they might have to restructure or take on burdensome new cash-flow loans. The BRC says that there is no impact assessment produced by the Treasury about the costs of these measures in terms of additional compliance burdens for business, nor about what the costs of HMRC collecting and refunding these upfront costs would be. It seems that there is a real problem and that the required VAT changes have been pretty badly thought through.

I also want to raise the issue of virtual free trade zones. The Bill contemplates only physical free trade zones, but a virtual zone would allow businesses along the supply chain to benefit from simplifications and facilitations without having to incur the time and expense of individual applications, such as with inward processing relief. The British Chambers of Commerce has requested that the Treasury consider the possibility of including virtual free trade zones in its powers relating to designated free zones.

In the context of HMRC, I also want to mention import VAT on gifts from the EU, which I have spoken about before. Folk will be shocked when they get a bill because they have received a gift worth more than £39 from somebody in the EU. Such a system currently applies if people get a gift from elsewhere in the world, but the Government are suggesting that it should also apply in the case of goods from the EU. That is a major concern, because as there has been free movement and people have been able to live in other European countries, it is perfectly feasible that an awful lot of people will have family members in other EU countries and therefore will be likely to receive gifts of a value of over £39. I want to make it absolutely clear that if and when people start getting those bills, they will be totally caused by Brexit, leaving the customs union, and the proposed changes to VAT.

Trade remedies have been mentioned, particularly by Labour Members. Some of the evidence about the matter that the International Trade Committee received last year was concerning. The EU currently has anti-dumping and countervailing measures that would normally be expected to still be in place after Brexit day, such as a five-year measure that was put in place two years ago, meaning that it will have about two years to run at the time we leave the EU. Bernardine Adkins of the law firm Gowling WLG told the Committee that

“it won’t be possible to grandfather the measures, otherwise you will face problems with the World Trade Organization.”

If she is right, we have a pretty significant problem, especially because the call for evidence the Government issued at the end of November seems to suggest they do not know which trade remedies are relevant to UK companies. If the UK Government have to create a trade remedies agency, get it up and running, and furnish it with details that have not been provided in this Bill—how to conduct investigations, how subsidies are to be defined, how to assess if a UK industry has been injured, how to define a UK industry, and how to calculate the level of duties and guarantees needed to rectify the injury caused—and if they have do all that before putting in place even the trade remedies that currently exist, we have another problem.

UK Steel has been particularly vociferous in its criticism of this aspect of the Bill. It says that the chief and overriding concern is that schedules 4 and 5 to the Bill, concerning anti-dumping and anti-subsidy measures respectively, contain very little detail. It goes on to point out that for many of our major trading partners, including the EU and US, such issues are covered by primary legislation. The UK Government have chosen to deal with this through not primary legislation, but secondary legislation. That is yet another concern that we have about the Bill. The Bill does not even have the level of detail of the WTO agreements, so if the Government had included those, the Bill would have been substantially better.

The lesser duty rule is also a significant issue, as the UK Government are looking to go in that direction at a time when the EU is looking to move away from it. This is a concern for us, and for UK manufacturers and jobs in particular.

I and my party have general concerns about the loss of the customs union and the single market. We also have very specific concerns, which echo the views of businesses, about aspects of this Bill. A Fraser of Allander Institute report last year said that 134,000 jobs in Scotland are supported by trade with the EU, and Brexit threatens to cost our economy in Scotland £11 billion a year by 2030 and to result in many fewer jobs. The OECD highlighted in June last year:

“In case Brexit gets reversed by political decision…the positive impact on growth would be significant.”

There are major issues about tariffs if we leave the single market. The EU average tariff on imports from outside the EU was 5.2% in 2014. The average tariff on food was 15%. Skimmed milk exported into the EU from outside the single market attracts a tariff of 74%. If our organisations get hit by these tariffs when they are exporting—if we end up outside the EU single market and customs union as part of a no-deal scenario —we will not just have the problems I have mentioned about issues with the Bill, trade remedies and how HMRC will cope with all this. All these things are an incredible problem. Would it not be better and easier, and would it not be in the economic interests of everyone in this country, if the UK Government were to say, “Actually, we are going to stay in the single market and the customs union”?

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

In following the hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley), I can only applaud her support for her local port.

I support this Bill. Above all else, as I said earlier and the Minister confirmed, it is an enabling Bill to create a post-Brexit functioning customs, VAT and excise regime. Because this is being done well ahead of the results of the negotiation, it does not predetermine the result. That necessarily disappoints those in this House who want the predetermined detail in order to see the extent to which the Bill suits their own vision of what our post-Brexit relationship should look like. In so doing, the Bill satisfies those for whom the Bill is intended—not politicians, but traders, exporters of goods and services, businesses and organisations, including universities and hospitals, with cross-border business in a wider sense—for we and, above all, they need to have in place the mechanisms for setting import duties, regulations, protections, dispute resolution procedures and so on, whatever the final trade and customs arrangements with the EU turn out to be.

That should be uncontroversial, but because the details are not in the Bill, Members are finding all their concerns and worries in their own imaginations. After a speech of some half an hour, for the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) it all boils down to the fact that she wants to stay in the current customs union with the European Union. For the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), it is about protecting the ceramics industry. With respect to him and to Stoke-on-Trent, however, no customs Bill can do that, for the customs Bill is about making arrangements for future import duties, not about defining the new technology and brilliant designs that the world admires and wants to own, which is what will determine the future of the ceramics industry there.

[Stephen Kerr]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does he agree that without this Bill we will have the archetypal cliff edge that the Opposition parties go on and on about? By not supporting Second Reading, they risk creating the cliff edge that they are always going on about.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He brilliantly pre-empts the point I was about to make, which is that although some Opposition Members have described the uncertainty that they say the Bill will cause, the Bill will precisely help to avoid the cliff edge that all of us—but, above all, businesses—want to avoid. I thank him for his intervention.

The key is that the Bill will ensure that a customs regime is in place for cross-border business to flourish, whatever the results of the negotiations. To be honest, I think my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) underestimated the importance of technology not just in business, but for our customs processes. Regardless of whether or not we had decided to leave the EU, replacing the existing customs system, CHIEF, with the new IT platform, CDS, will, although it comes with a caveat about new Government IT systems, help our customs regime—it is currently rated fifth out of 160 countries in the world for its efficiency by the World Bank—to maintain or improve our position. The trusted trader system used by Canada and Australia, for example, has obvious replicability for trade at the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

At the same time, the Bill is not devoid of ideas. The earlier customs White Paper outlined the two key negotiating positions for the Government, the first being a streamlined option and the second being a new customs partnership. My own belief is that if our European partners—that is entirely the right word for members of an organisation with which we have 44% of our exports—prove pragmatic in their interpretation of the new partnership, I very much hope that option 2 will prove possible. This option would allow the UK to mirror EU customs arrangements and trade policies for goods that are eventually to be consumed within the EU—even if they are first used, as it were, in the UK—thereby ensuring that the right amount of EU duty is paid without introducing new customs processes between us. This would be a practical benefit from a new partnership that I very much hope will come forward from the negotiations.

Let me turn to the amendment. The hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) talked with some passion about the manufacturing jobs in his constituency—rather fewer, I have to tell him, than the 4,000 manufacturing jobs in Gloucester; we all have manufacturing as a key element of our constituency business. He has concerns about the Bill’s impact on manufacturing, and the amendment therefore raises three objections to the Bill, which I will come on to. At the same time, there is clearly a certain demand from Opposition Members for an internal Labour debate about their party’s position on the customs union. The hon. Member for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie) would like a special debate on whether the preference of the leading Opposition party is for a customs union or for the customs union, and I am sure others from the Scottish National party would add weight to his discussions on that subject.

The truth is that Labour’s objection to powers coming back to the UK because we are “denied any detail”—the hon. Member for Bootle used that phrase—is bizarre, given that the whole point of the Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) mentioned, is to avoid a cliff edge by putting in place the mechanisms needed, whatever the result of the negotiation, which has not yet started in detail. At the same time, Labour is complaining that the Bill gives powers back only to the Government, rather than to Parliament. In fact, of course, all the detail post-negotiation would come to Parliament through secondary legislation, on which all of us in this House would decide.

[Mr Leslie]

Has the hon. Gentleman had a chance to look at clause 31(4) in relation to forming a customs union with the United Kingdom? He can correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think that that would necessarily come before Parliament. It would be done by Her Majesty through an Order in Council.

[Richard Graham]

On that specific detail, the hon. Gentleman may well be right, but, ultimately, Parliament will decide the shape of any future agreement.

[Nigel Mills]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Richard Graham]

Let me respond to the intervention, if I may, and I will then come to my hon. Friend.

The key thing in all the arrangements for a future customs union is that the precise nature of its structure has not yet been decided. It is all still up for debate, and the Bill is therefore an enabling Bill that puts in place the future mechanisms.

[Nigel Mills]

I was just trying to help my hon. Friend. The answer is in clause 32(10), which states that the Order in Council cannot happen unless this House has approved the order first.

[Richard Graham]

Precisely. I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Everything comes back to this House.

The point about the options that the Government have set out and the new customs partnership is that this will have huge practical benefits. Let me give a couple of examples. We could apply our own tariffs to goods destined purely for the UK. For example, for mangoes from India and the Philippines, which are not really a competitive product with anything we grow in this country, there is no reason why the EU should determine what tariff we apply. However, if a basic bicycle was made in another part of the Commonwealth and then exported to the UK for further modifications for onward export to the EU, it would make absolute sense for us to mirror the EU trade and customs arrangements.

The future customs arrangements, which are being negotiated, will therefore have profound implications for our future trading opportunities, and the Bill provides the way forward and opens the door to success, whatever the outcome of the negotiations. That is why the Liberal Democrat amendment, seeking a guarantee that the UK’s trading relationships with the EU and the rest of the world are not damaged, is so bizarre. How can anything like that be guaranteed, particularly during a negotiation? That was doubtless the reason why the amendment was not selected for debate.

This evening, one Opposition party is concerned about guarantees while a negotiation is going on, and another—the main Opposition party—is complaining about being denied any detail about the same negotiation, which has not yet properly started, while a third has already decided, regardless of the results of that negotiation, that it is all a terrible mistake. This evening therefore provides us with an opportunity to back a Bill, which should be entirely uncontroversial politically, that enables the businesses and manufacturers in all our constituencies to know with certainty that, whatever the results of the negotiation, we will have in place the mechanisms for their future exports. It is precisely because the Bill is practical and flexible and because it caters for all outcomes, while making sure that there is no cliff edge, that all of us should support it this evening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Leslie]

I will come on to that when I discuss part 3 of the Bill and the VAT consequences for not just businesses, but potentially consumers as well.

[Richard Graham]

I know that the hon. Gentleman holds his views deeply and sincerely; colleagues of mine hold very different views equally sincerely. Surely the crucial thing for all of us, however, is that the Bill allows for any of those possible outcomes. It does not predetermine the result of the negotiations or determine whether the United Kingdom will have a future free trade agreement with the European Union that replicates almost completely the existing customs union. Therefore, surely we can agree tonight about the importance of having a mechanism in place that avoids the cliff edge that all the businesses in all of our constituencies want to avoid.

[Mr Leslie]

If only that were the case. In fact, that same point is raised in paragraph 9 on page 6 of the explanatory notes, which states:

“The Taxation…Bill does not presuppose any particular outcome from the UK’s negotiations with the EU.”

That is not true. The Government have absolutely presupposed that the customs union is off the table. It is the ultimate presupposition, if ever anyone wanted a definition. This Bill apparently does not allow us to stay in the customs union, but it should allow us to do so, because I happen to believe that there is a majority in this House of Commons for membership of the customs union. I have a little job of work to do to continue to persuade my own party’s Front Benchers of that particular point, but I will try my best to do so because I think they will eventually recognise that being part of the customs union is incredibly important for our economy not just in the transition period, but for the longer term. I believe that the numbers are here in the House of Commons to support that and that it will eventually be proven.

I am disappointed that the Government have tried to twist parliamentary procedure by deeming this measure to be a money Bill. It is Mr Speaker who will decide whether or not it is a money Bill, and I think he will do so at the end of this particular Commons procedure. The Government, though, in a slightly tricksy way, are putting through the Bill following a Ways and Means resolution. Why have they done that? They have gutted the Trade Bill and stuck everything they possibly can into what was the customs Bill so that it cannot be amended by the House of Lords. It is the most obvious trick in the book—rule 101 for a Minister. I have been around the block a number of times, and I have to tell the Minister that there are whole clauses in the Bill, such as clause 31, that are about the formation of a customs union. How is that a matter purely for a money Bill? It is absolutely an issue of public policy to do with our trading alliances that the other place should have every right to pass comment on. If it has advice and suggestions for this place, it should be allowed to amend the Bill.

Exiting the EU: Costs

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

The negotiations are taking place at the moment. We want to secure a reasonable transition deal, but we have to know what the future relationship will be like before we enter into the transition deal. The British public will not accept the can being kicked down the road. They want to know that we are leaving the European Union.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

The greatest risk to the new partnership that both the UK and the EU want is that the EU makes such unreasonable demands that no British Government could accept them, on the wrong assumption that this House will never vote for no deal. Does my right hon. Friend therefore agree that all Members who want a good deal, like the hon. Members for Nottingham East (Mr Leslie), for Dudley North (Ian Austin) and for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) and the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), should make it absolutely clear to their constituents that they do not subscribe to the ludicrous idea that any deal is better than no deal?

Duties of Customs

Richard Graham Excerpts

Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), who spoke, at considerable length, of his conviction that the customs union is the way forward. He has always spoken with great clarity and certainty, although I suggest that he is more compelling in his usual manner as Tigger than as the Eeyore whom we saw tonight. I would also say that the difficulty of assuming that business is monolithic, and always speaks with one voice, is that it does not. There are businesses in my constituency with which I deal as a trade envoy that are concerned about the future, but there are others that are relaxed. Both those views will depend, ultimately, on what sort of arrangement we reach on trade and customs, and on what terms.

That brings us to this preparatory Bill. As the Minister has explained, it is fundamentally nothing other than necessary preparation for when we leave the European Union. It is a framework, not a position on a preferred type of future customs relationship. It allows for either of the Government’s options: a streamlined system that is, as far as I can see, identical to the current one; and a new customs partnership of which I am sure we shall hear more when the Bill is published. This preparatory work will be even more important in the sad event of future arrangements not being agreed with the EU.

The Minister confirmed that HMRC arrangements at our roll-on/roll-off ports will be in place in January 2019, ready to deal with worst-case scenarios. I believe that there is an important political point behind that, which Members who, like the hon. Member for Edinburgh South, would much prefer to stay in the customs union need to consider very carefully. There are some who believe that leaving the EU without a future deal or any implementation period would be a walk in the park, whereas others believe that it would be impossible to operate our ports, and, perhaps, much of our trade, and that it would therefore be a disaster to leave the customs union at all.

However, many of us who have always thought that both the UK and the EU would benefit hugely from a strong customs partnership for the future, and what Michel Barnier calls a “new partnership” in general, believe that this preparatory Bill is essential to that. It is absolutely vital that the EU does not overplay its strong hand at this delicate stage of negotiations, for if it decides that negotiations on citizens’ rights, Ireland and finance have made insufficient progress to allow us to move on to debating an implementation period, future trade and other partnerships, there is a real danger that the momentum will move behind those who believe not only that no deal is possible, but that it is likely or even desirable, and that we need to prepare for that situation above all else.

[Peter Grant]

rose—

[Richard Graham]

I am sorry, but I will not give way.

For those of us who want the negotiations to succeed and a new partnership, it is therefore incredibly important that our partners in the EU encourage us to build momentum for that by moving to detailed talks on future trade and customs arrangements as soon as possible. For now, this is simply an enabling Bill of changes, allowing for future UK tariffs, VAT levels, goods classifications and so on. As the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) said, it is both practical and necessary. Today’s amendments close off the options and it would be sensible to avoid them.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), a fellow remainer, and I hope that remainers on the Conservative Benches will be a little more outspoken about their concerns.

[Richard Graham]

For clarification, I point out to the right hon. Gentleman that he is following a pragmatist.

[Tom Brake]

If I am indeed following a pragmatist, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will listen to what is being said by many economic sectors, and perhaps read carefully the 58 sectoral reports once they are published, and come to the very pragmatic conclusion that he, as a pragmatist, will want to start to be more outspoken about the Government’s agenda of taking us over the cliff.

Members have suggested that the UK needs to leave the EU to be able to trade, but that is clearly not true. Many European countries are just much more successful than us at trading with other countries, including Germany, France and Italy. They do so within the EU, so there is no reason why we could not do so more effectively than at present. If we are unable to trade while we are part of the EU, I wonder why previous Prime Ministers, particularly David Cameron, spent so much time and effort sending trade delegations to various countries around the world to drum up trade. Was that a completely pointless exercise? Was that just about having 10-course banquets in Beijing, or was it because we can do a lot to boost trade while we are in the European Union? I think it was the latter, rather than a desire to have big dinners courtesy of foreign Governments. Of course the UK is in a position to trade—and, perhaps, to do so more effectively—with other countries while we are members of the EU.

It is nice, as a Liberal Democrat, to be able to make a speech that is longer than three minutes, so I might take full advantage of that in the couple of hours that remain for me to make a contribution, before the Front Benchers make their response. First, I want to focus on the issue of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Frankly, Opposition Members have had enough of listening to Ministers’ platitudes about how they will sort out the problem that is the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. We do not want to hear about “frictionless” any more, or about blue-skies solutions that do not yet exist. What we want to hear from Ministers is the solution to this problem, because if the Irish Prime Minister was asking on Friday for a written guarantee from the UK Government that there would be no border controls, that was because he is worried and because he has heard nothing from our Government to explain how we will be able to leave the customs union, yet have no border and no border controls between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Brake]

Absolutely, and that is why I believe that the question of Ireland and Northern Ireland is the most challenging of the three. The Government could and should have resolved the question of EU citizens 15 months ago by simply saying to them, “You have the right to remain.” The settlement bill is clearly very difficult politically for the Conservative party, because many of its Members are on record as saying, “We won’t give the EU a single penny; in fact, they owe us loads of money,” so they now have a difficult political position to adopt if they say that they support a payment. We do not know how much that will be, but one figure that has been mentioned is £40 billion, and an interesting article in The Sunday Times a couple of weeks ago, which seemed to be flying a kite, referred to £53 billion. Although that question could be resolved at the cost of some political pain, no one has put forward any solution to the issue of Ireland and Northern Ireland that does not involve some sort of control. That might be ad hoc control, and it might not be directly at the border, but some sort of control will be required.

[Richard Graham]

The right hon. Gentleman has touched briefly on citizens’ rights. Given that both sides have said that that is their absolute top priority, can he explain why the European Union turned down our proposal to treat citizens’ rights first, on their own, so that the matter could have been agreed in perpetuity, regardless of what happened to anything else?

[Tom Brake]

That might be an issue on which we agree. If we are moving towards a no-deal scenario, there is an overwhelming case for parking the issue of EU and UK citizens’ rights and resolving it, because it is a question of humanity and giving safety and security to the 3 million EU citizens here and the 1.2 million UK citizens in the EU.

The border between Ireland and Northern Ireland has 275 crossings. If there is to be some sort of control, will it be at each and every one of those crossings? Presumably not; otherwise, the number of people that HMRC is going to have to recruit would be much greater than the 3,000 to 5,000 it already needs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Brake]

Absolutely; I do have those concerns. It is worth knowing that when the 17-mile tailback occurred two years ago, it was the result of just two French border officers not turning up for their shift. The 20 sq km lorry park—whose construction has now been kicked into the long grass because of the judicial review—would accommodate 3,500 lorries. However, 10,000 lorries go through that port each day, so a lorry park that would accommodate 3,500 lorries will not do very much if there is severe disruption at the port. That is why one of the options the port is considering is to create lorry parks all over the country. In the event of a delay, the port could text drivers in, for example, Leeds or Edinburgh to say, “Sorry, we’ve got a bit of a problem at Dover. Don’t bother coming, because if you do, the town will collapse. Just stay in that lorry park and we’ll tell you when it’s safe to come down.”

[Richard Graham]

We have heard much of what the right hon. Gentleman is saying before. No doubt he will have heard the mayor of Calais and the head of the port there saying that no deal would be a catastrophe for them as well. Does that not encourage him to believe that good sense should prevail, and that we can arrive at an arrangement that suits those on both sides of the channel equally well?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I think that the Minister said at the outset that it is the Government’s policy to leave the customs union. It was not on the ballot paper in the referendum; it is a policy choice that the Government are taking. It is therefore the Government’s policy to exit the most efficient, tariff-free, frictionless, free trade area anywhere in the world, and what we will end up with afterwards is therefore bound to be inferior—possibly very much inferior—to the basic free trade arrangements enjoyed by most countries around the world. We could find ourselves at the mercy of basic WTO tariff arrangements, so the Bill that we are paving the way for with this Ways and Means motion comes at a crucial juncture.

I thought it was unfair that many Government Members referred to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) as Eeyore-ish. He is actually quite a positive character, who wants to do the best for trade, for business and for this country. In fact, if anything is negative, it is the legislation that the Government are proposing. The Minister was the harbinger of doom, because the Bill plans for a no-deal scenario. This set of legislative changes paves the way for circumstances in which the UK may be imposing tariffs on our nearest trading neighbours and vice versa. I cannot think of something more depressing, defeatist or premature, especially given that we have not even had the negotiations yet. In fact, I cannot think of anything much more aggressive towards the negotiation settlement that we are trying to get than the suggestion that we are going to put into legislation the ability for us to raise significant tariffs with our nearest trading partners, with whom 50% of our trade takes place.

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Gentleman is talking rationally, as always. The reason why I felt that the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) was being rather Eeyore-ish is that he underestimates the impact on Scottish whisky, about which he talked quite a lot, of the far east. He needs to go and see the Johnnie Walker shops in Shanghai and Beijing. He needs to look closely at Whyte & Mackay—a failing Glaswegian whisky manufacturer now saved and re-energised by a buyer from the Philippines—to understand that the future of Scottish whisky lies as much in Asia and other far-flung places as it does in Europe.

[Mr Leslie]

That may be so, but this is not an either/or situation. This is not about selling a fantastic Scottish whisky product to China or to Europe; we should be doing both. German car manufacturers and French food producers are trading exceptionally well with the far east, while remaining a member of the customs union and of the single market. My quibble with Ministers and some Government Members is that they give an impression that this is a binary, either/or arrangement. They say, “Oh well, we can ditch our trading relationships and partnerships with our nearest neighbours, because we might eventually be able to do something with China, India, Australia or Brazil,” but we should be able to do all those things. We can do all those things simultaneously, while remaining part of the greatest free trade area of any set of nations anywhere in the world, but we are about to throw that overboard for no reason resulting from the referendum, but due to Government policy.

We all obviously hope that we can salvage that relationship within the single market and the customs unions in a short transitional period, but that will take quite a lot of negotiation and depends on several different things. It is a shame that the German Government are in an unstable situation, because I suspect that that will make things far harder. I did not vote in favour of triggering article 50 because I thought that doing so was premature. I thought we should have secured a better timetable than the one we ended up with, because of course the clock ticks down. We could end up with unforeseen diplomatic wrinkles in the process and be backed into a corner, possibly finding ourselves with an inferior transition arrangement and a snap general election that nobody anticipates, least of all Conservative Members.

Let us bear in mind what this Ways and Means motion might presage for tariffs on our different imports and exports. [Interruption.] I know the Whip, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), and the Minister are listening very carefully. A 7% tariff would be introduced on ceramic products. On cars, the tariff would be 10%.