Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Bill [Lords]

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Peter Grant

Report stage
Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I am keen that we do not just have a whole debate about BDS. I want the amendments to be addressed, and there are a few other speakers trying to get in.

[Peter Grant]

I made the point much earlier that the amendment is not about BDS; BDS is not mentioned anywhere in it. Going back to the question of whose money it is, we can go round in constitutional or legalistic circles, but morally that money belongs to the people who rely on it for their pensions. If members of the pension scheme want to make strong representations to their trustees, saying, “I do not want to profit in my pension from investments that benefit countries that act in breach of international law”, why is it such a bad thing for pension scheme members to be allowed to make those representations to the trustees? Why is it such a bad thing for the trustees to be allowed to say, “At the request of our members, we will take a decision that might not deliver quite such a high yield for the pensioners, but the pensioners are happy to accept that, because they will be comfortable in their consciences about where the money is going and where the profits are coming from”?

We cannot support new clause 1, and we are minded to divide the House on it later. My final point is that every pension fund trustee has a duty entirely to look after the interests of their pensioners and future pensioners. I do not want to see anything being done that gets in the way of that. We will support the Bill on Third Reading, but I hope it will come to Third Reading without new clause 1 included. The fundamental point is that the £17 billion mistake was made by the Government. If we eventually pass the Bill into law to be an Act of Parliament that makes pensioners or their employing authorities pick up part of that tab, it has not done enough. I fear that by tonight we will still have a Bill that has not done enough and that the Government will not be made to take full responsibility for a mistake entirely of their making.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Peter Grant

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

It is my great pleasure to contribute to this debate. Today, 16 November, we mark the feast of St Margaret Atheling, Queen of Scots, one of our two national patron saints and, like the rest of us, an adopted Fifer. For those not familiar with it, I recommend a read through her life story, because a surprising amount of it has lessons that are as relevant today as they were nearly 1,000 years ago, when she was alive. For example, Margaret was revered for her generosity to the poor. She is said to have regularly gone into the streets dressed in poor clothing and given food to the hungry and money to the poor. She clearly believed that earthly power has no legitimacy unless it is used in the interests of others. We might want to bear that in mind in the decisions we take later today, and indeed every day, in this place.

I wish to look at some aspects of the Finance Bill, and at who it benefits and who it damages. I go back to the question I raised with the Minister earlier about prosecutions and penalties against promoters of the loan charge. I was disappointed that the Minister did not answer the question as to how many such penalties had been applied. I would have thought that, if it was that important to the Government, they would have made sure that their officials put that information into the briefing for today. I have no issue with people who deliberately went into loan charge agreements knowing that they were wrong and that they were doing that only to dodge their rightful tax liabilities going through the full legal process. However, a lot of people who signed up to the loan charge did so because they did not understand it or because they were assured by paid tax advisers that it was all okay, and a lot of them did it because they would have lost their jobs if they had not. They get hounded to the ends of the earth—some of them literally get hounded to death—yet very few of the people who made millions out of these schemes have ever been brought to justice. The victims in my constituency have serious doubts as to whether any of the real villains of the piece will ever be brought to justice or indeed whether this Government have any intention of doing that.

When we look at the impact of this Finance Bill, and of the Budget statement it is based on, we must not let ourselves be hoodwinked by the massive impact of other announcements that have been flipped through by the Government in other ways over the past six months or so to try to make it look as though their Budget was not quite as savage as it was. We must recall the £1,000 a year cut in universal credit; the ending of the pensions triple lock, leaving our pensioners more at the mercy of rampant inflation than they were before; and the national insurance hike, which has been trumpeted as the saviour of the health and social care sector, whereas the reality is that, for several years at least, very little of it indeed will go into improving the availability of social care in England. It might be there in three or four years, but this is not a crisis that is going to be there in three or four years—it is a crisis that has been there and has been ignored for far too long.

Of course, sometimes when the Government want to increase taxes, they like to find sneaky ways to increase taxes on low-paid workers in a way that does not make it obvious what they are doing. All they have to do to achieve that is to do nothing. There is nothing in this year’s Finance Bill about the thresholds for the different rates of income tax. There is nothing in it about the level of income at which someone first becomes liable to pay income tax, because they have left it exactly as it was last year in cash terms. With people likely to face inflation of 4%, people on low incomes will either take a real-terms cut in wage of 4%, or if they get enough of an increase to match inflation the Chancellor will say, “Thank you very much. I’ll have a bigger cut of it for myself than I had before.” People on low earnings who are already struggling need an increase of 4% to stand still and to continue to struggle.

The 1.25% increase in the national insurance charge might not seem to be that much; 10p or 50p an hour below the proper living wage might not seem to be that much, but it soon adds up. Take, for example, someone working 40 hours a week on the Government’s new minimum wage of £9.50 an hour, and paying income tax and national insurance according to the rates and thresholds set out in the Bill. Those are exactly the people the Government say the Budget is designed to help. They are exactly the people for whom work is supposed to pay. Now, take the same person but this time getting the real living wage of £9.90 an hour, let their personal allowances and national insurance thresholds keep pace with inflation, and scrap the national insurance increase, leaving it at 12%, instead of 13.25%. The difference in their take-home pay is £800 a year. That does not seem much to those of us lucky enough to be on an MP’s salary, but for those who are just about managing to get through to the end of the week, another £800 a year in their pocket—or £800 taken out of their pocket by the Budget—makes a significant difference. The impact of this year’s Tory cuts alone—they are cuts, no matter what the Minister might say—is that those people are suffering a pay cut of almost 5% in real terms.

We have not even started to look at the more fundamental issues referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) and why we need a complete rehash of the entire tax system. Why should somebody who, by an agreed definition, is earning only enough to live on pay income-based taxes at all? Why do we not set tax and national insurance thresholds to match the proper living wage so that the tax authorities have no claim whatsoever on the wages of those earning only just enough to keep them and their family alive?

The Government may well say that times are difficult, that tough choices must be made and that we cannot afford to inflation-proof tax allowances this year, but the tax allowances of some have been inflation-proofed and more—not individuals but businesses that are, for example, lucky enough to be able to afford to buy a casino. In clause 80, on page 63, we see changes to the thresholds for the various rates of gaming duty: the tax that casino operators pay in what is termed the gross gaming yield, which is the difference between the stakes that people pay in and the winnings they take out. It is in effect an income tax on casinos and similar places. Lo and behold, the tax thresholds for casinos are going up by 5.4%, which is higher than the rate of inflation that the Chancellor expects to see. That is on top of their inflation-busting increase last year. They have had an increase of 8.7% over just two years.

To put that into context, a casino with a gross gaming yield of £10 million a year will pay £100,000 less in tax next year than it would have last year, while the poor souls working their tails off in the casino kitchen keeping the clients fed and watered will be paying higher taxes. How can it be right that a casino owner pays £100,000 less in tax while the people whom they employ on low pay in their kitchens and catering departments have to pay increased tax? That is not a necessity; it is a deliberate political choice, and it is the wrong choice.

If only other businesses had as much to celebrate as the casino industry clearly does. Hospitality businesses are—quite rightly—being told to adapt their business models so that all their workers get paid a fair living wage. I have had some quite difficult conversations with hospitality businesses in my constituency that are not happy at that. But why on earth do the Government think it is also the right time to tell them that they must pay more tax on every single job that they create? Why on earth is it right to tell them that the rate of VAT that they will pay next year will be 60% higher than this year? It is ridiculous.

I am not saying that we should not take difficult decisions. The UK’s finances, like those of many western democracies, are in a seriously difficult place. The Minister said that levels of debt and borrowing are affordable. They are—just about—but they certainly are not sustainable. We must turn that around quickly. Difficult decisions need to be taken, but the problem is that, far too often, the Government are happy to take decisions that are difficult for other people but not at all difficult for their friends, chums and millionaire donors. The economic impact of the covid pandemic has almost certainly been made much worse because of their total lack of planning on the economic impact of the action needed. That means nearly all the Government’s support schemes had to be thrown together at almost no notice, which inevitably means they did not achieve what they were supposed to achieve. Very few of them achieved optimal results from day one. Too many people, several million of them, were excluded from support altogether, and almost all the schemes that were implemented turned out to carry levels of fraud risk that were far higher than they needed to be. Billions of pounds of public money has been lost to fraud that would have been avoided if the Government had prepared better in advance.

The economic damage of the pandemic could have been lessened, although we accept it almost certainly could not have been avoided completely, but the economic damage of Brexit could have been avoided completely if, in 2016, people had been told the truth of what it would involve. Let us not forget that the Government’s analysis is that the self-inflicted damage of Brexit is likely to be twice as bad as the economic damage of the covid pandemic.

To a much larger degree than the Government will admit, the tax rises on the poor contained in this Finance Bill are the price of a Brexit that, let us not forget, was rejected by almost two in three voters and every single local authority area in Scotland. If that is the price for Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom, it is a price I do not believe the people of Scotland are willing to pay any longer.

Interestingly, a standard form of wording that I do not see in this Bill is, “Extent. This Bill shall apply to Scotland.” I do not expect it to be too much longer before those words are no longer part of any legislation passed by this House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call John McDonnell.

Health and Social Care Levy

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Peter Grant

1st reading
Wednesday 8th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

On the subject of cases being demolished, one of the cases that the right hon. Gentleman’s colleagues have made great deal of play of today is that of the fictional Yusuf in the Government’s own document. According to the Government, Yusuf’s care home costs are £700 a week. They claim that under the current system they would have had to spend £293,000 before they reached the current cap. The Minister will be aware—I hope he can count—that in order to spend £293,000 at £700 a week—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I would like the hon. Gentleman to put his question.

[Peter Grant]

What percentage of people going into a care home have any chance of still being alive in nine years’ time?

Point of Order

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Peter Grant

Monday 6th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have told the other Member concerned of my intention to raise this matter tonight.

Over the past two weeks or so, several thousand of my constituents have been direct mailed political material in two names, one of whom is the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) and the other holds no elected office of any kind. In this literature the hon. Lady is referred to as the local Member of Parliament, and constituents who receive it are encouraged to contact her with any queries, rather than me.

Is it in order, Madam Deputy Speaker, for a Member of Parliament to target large numbers of residents in a neighbouring constituency with literature that is clearly calculated to create the impression that they, and not me, are the local Member of Parliament? If it is not in order, what corrective action might you suggest?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order, and I completely understand his concern. I am sure he will understand that I am not responsible for Members’ communications with their constituents, and I have not seen the leaflet in question. I am pleased that he has informed the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) of his intention to raise this point of order.

Of course, all hon. and right hon. Members should be accurate in the material they provide to constituents. That includes ensuring that leaflets describing an hon. Member as the local Member of Parliament are, indeed, distributed only within the relevant constituency.

The hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) has put his point on record, and I am pleased he has been in touch with the other hon. Member concerned. Having made that general point about the need for accuracy, which I stress, I hope the two hon. Members can now resolve this matter speedily.

Coronavirus: Supporting Businesses and Individuals

Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Peter Grant

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP) [V]]

I am pleased to speak in this debate and to confirm that the Scottish National party will support the motion if it comes to a vote. I do not want to eat too much into the time available for the large number of Back Benchers who wish to speak, so I shall look in detail at only a small number of the items in the Labour motion. Given that so many of the main asks in the motion have been publicly supported by some highly influential Tory MPs, including a number of members of the Treasury Committee, I look forward to the Government’s supporting the motion if a vote is called later.

We support the call for business rates relief to be extended. Scotland’s Finance Secretary, Kate Forbes, made a similar request in a letter to the Chancellor on 27 January, ahead of the Scottish Budget. The SNP Scottish Government have led the way in reducing the rates bills of businesses in key sectors and of small businesses in particular. For example, the small business bonus scheme meant that last year 117,000 business properties in Scotland were paying no rates at all. Some 95% of all Scottish business properties have a lower rate poundage than they would have anywhere else in the United Kingdom. In addition, the businesses worst affected by covid restrictions—those in retail, tourism, hospitality and aviation—will pay no rates at all during the next financial year.

Given that the leader of the Tory party in Scotland and his colleagues demanded, ahead of the Scottish Budget, that

“retail, hospitality and leisure businesses”

be given

“certainty that they will not face full business rates in the next financial year”,

it is a wee bit disappointing that they do not seem so keen to speak up in this debate for hard-pressed businesses in other parts of this precious Union of theirs. I am sure they will do the decent thing and support the motion later.

We fully support the call to extend the 5% VAT rate, but I do not think it goes far enough, because if the sectors we are talking about currently have a 5% VAT rate, for all they know, their VAT bill could increase by 300% in just five weeks’ time. Nobody can run a business with that degree of uncertainty, so the Government need to make it clear tonight—not next week or in two or three weeks’ time—that that 5% VAT rate will be extended.

We need to start to take decisions now, based on the long-term interests of the economy, about the unprecedented levels of debt with which millions of businesses are saddled. They have had to borrow heavily, often through Government-backed schemes, to survive the first year of lockdown; they are not going to be in a position to repay those debts next year, or any time in the next two years.

In addition to supporting the call for small businesses to be allowed to defer the repayments on their loans, the SNP wants to go further. In the previous economic crisis, the Government spent huge amounts of our money on bailing out the self-same banks that were responsible for the problem; surely, it is not too much to ask that we should now give the same kind of support to the more than 5 million small businesses that have done nothing wrong and could play a vital part in our post-covid recovery. We therefore call on the Government to agree to write off the bounce back loan debts of small and medium-sized businesses and to look carefully at proposals from organisations such as TheCityUK that covid debts should be converted into equity or contingent tax liability, so that the public sector retains an interest in the business and the business is not forced to go to the wall because of a lack of cash.

My support, and that of my party, for the excluded 3 million is well documented, so I will not go into it in detail. All I will say is that, when I have raised the exclusion of those people with representatives of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs through the Public Accounts Committee, I have been given the excuse that it was not possible to set up a scheme quickly. It is now almost a year since the first lockdown was announced. The reason so many self-employed people and owners of small businesses are still excluded is nothing to do with the Government’s not being able to help them; it is to do with the Government’s not being prepared to help them. For the party that claims to be the party of small business, that is an absolute disgrace.

In the interests of brevity, I bring my remarks to a close with a final observation: the British Government are the only one of the four UK national Governments who have the full range of taxation and borrowing powers necessary to deliver on what the motion asks for. I cannot speak for the people of Wales or Northern Ireland, but I know that as far as my constituents and the people of Scotland are concerned, if the British Government are not prepared to use their powers to get Scotland’s businesses back on track and back into business, they should devolve those powers to a national Government who will.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I remind hon. Members that there is now a three-minute time limit on Back-Bench speeches. When that limit is in effect, a countdown clock is visible on the screens of hon. Members participating virtually and on the screens in the Chamber. For those participating physically in the Chamber, the usual clock will operate.