HMRC Impact Analysis: Customs
Stephen Timms Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jesse Norman
The hon. Lady has managed to pull off the trick of saying almost exactly what I said, but in slightly fewer words. As I pointed out, 150,000 businesses registered for VAT, and a further 100,000 that are not registered for VAT, may be affected. That makes 250,000, which is not a million miles away from the 245,000 that she described. If she looks at the impact assessment, she will see that the declaration cost will vary from between £15 for an export declaration for fast parcel operators, to £56 for traders operating below the VAT threshold and outsourcing their declarations, so there is a range of impacts. This was scouted, as she will know, in previous discussions with HMRC officials and in past impact assessments.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
What has become of the Tory party? If the Minister really believes that a £15 billion additional burden on business is acceptable, can he tell us how large a burden would be unacceptable?
Jesse Norman
I would have expected the right hon. Gentleman, as a man of great assiduity who is widely respected across the House, to differentiate between the £7.5 billion that we are talking about and the overall impact on the EU as well as the UK of £15 billion, which is one of the things that will bring both sides together into what we hope would be, in these extreme circumstances, a deal. Of course, no impact on business is something that we want. That is why we are pressing the House for a deal, and I hope he will support us in doing that.
Customs Safety and Security Procedures (EU Exit) (No. 2) Regulations 2019
Stephen Timms Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I have a question for the Minister that builds on those that have been asked. I understand that safety and security information will be required on all goods transiting between the UK and the European Union. That has not been necessary before; it is onerous, difficult and complex, and both entry summary and exit summary declarations would normally be required. I can well see the sense of the UK authorities deciding that they do not want those declarations for the first 12 months, or six months in some cases.
What I do not think the Minister has told us is whether the EU side will still require those declarations. When there is an entry declaration required of the EU, presumably the EU would require an exit summary declaration. Similarly, when the UK would require an exit summary declaration, the EU would require an entry summary declaration. It is a good thing that, at least for a period, the UK will not require all those difficult and costly declarations, but can the Minister tell us whether the EU will issue a similar waiver for the first 12 months, or will all that information still have to be compiled in order to satisfy the needs of the EU authorities, even if HMRC will not require it? That strikes me as yet another very damaging burden that is being imposed on UK firms—perhaps not for the first 12 months but certainly thereafter—if we leave the EU without a deal. Under these proposals, in a year, that damaging burden will be imposed anyway. That strikes me as another good reason why Parliament has determined that if we do not have a deal by the end of this month, the Government need to apply to the EU for an extension—precisely so we do not have to impose those costly and difficult burdens on UK firms.
Jesse Norman
I think the hon. Gentleman is making my point for me. The instrument introduces a 12-month transitional period until 1 November 2020, during which there is no requirement for entry summary declarations for goods imported from territories where the UK does not currently require them. That is precisely in order to allow people to adopt guidance as necessary.
Stephen Timms
I am grateful to the Minister for explaining that the UK authority is not going to require these declarations, but what about the EU side? Will the EU still require them? He makes the point that businesses need 12 months to prepare. Are they going to be ready to meet the EU’s requirements, which obviously are not covered by the SI?
Jesse Norman
That is true. The right hon. Gentleman raises the question he asked in his speech, so let me take that point out of order. The EU has indicated that it will still require declarations, and of course declarations are required already on goods imported from outside the EU. That structure is not changed as regards imports; as regards exports, exporters will need to adjust.
Stephen Timms
I am grateful to the Minister for that answer, but if the information and declarations are still required by the EU side, what is the benefit in not requiring them on the UK side?
Jesse Norman
The benefit is that we require, for imports, declarations of safety and security that are reasonably full and cover a whole variety of different elements, and we will need to assure ourselves in due course, if and when we introduce declarations following a no-deal scenario, that that data is being provided. Of course, not to have to provide that, and to give oneself the opportunity to put in arrangements that allow it, is a considerable benefit.
Stephen Timms
I think the Minister is telling us that businesses need 12 months to prepare for providing these declarations, but he is also telling us that, from day one of a no-deal Brexit, the EU is going to require those declarations from our businesses. How are they expected to cope with that?
Jesse Norman
It has always been built into the situation that we cannot control what EU countries may insist or demand. There have been plenty of other areas in which the EU has sought to give reliefs or allow easements for the first period. It has chosen not to do so in this case, but that does not bear on the question of what we require as a matter of import security declarations from our own hauliers and others. That is what the statutory instrument seeks to address.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen North asked about the timing and the process by which the statutory instrument was laid before Parliament. As she will be aware, it was laid on 4 September, which was in plenty of time before 31 October. It should be understood that it was thought at that point that Parliament was going to be prorogued, and that there would have been time to assess the instrument after that, but the timing reflects the reality.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen North asked how the SI relates to the earlier SI introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon. Being in front of him is like being a young priest being pushed up for ordination with the Pope sitting behind him in St Peter’s. It is a great privilege and honour to have him behind me. He will know better than anyone that the SI replaces the earlier one and will come into effect from day one if we have a no-deal scenario.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen North raises an important question about whether too much power has been given to HMRC. She will know that, more widely, I have asked HMRC, alongside Her Majesty’s Treasury, to conduct a serious investigation into the balance of its powers, and to make recommendations on how those can be adjusted. In this case, the power is relatively limited. To remind the Committee, it is a discretionary power, lasting for a year, that allows businesses to submit safety and security declarations for certain exports after the goods have left the UK. It is subject to HMRC’s discretion, but it is required to be exercised according to a public notice.
The broad point is that this is designed to be an intervention that allows HMRC discretion to give additional easements. HMRC does not believe that it needs to do that at the moment; it wishes to have the power to make those easements, conceivably for a 12-month period. In order to do that, it will have to consult Ministers and publish a public notice. It would be a matter of intense public interest if there was any suggestion that those easements picked out a particular subsection in a discriminatory or unfair way, so there are implicit constraints, both of time and of public pressure, on how those powers can be exercised.
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Timms Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Simon Clarke
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He is a tireless champion of the motor industry, which we all take very seriously. The Government have made a commitment to delivering net zero emissions by mid-century; that is hugely important and has cross-party support across the House. We will not be making any precipitate moves that would concern him without proper consultation fully across Government about the ramifications of any change in that date.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Jesse Norman
I do not have the number to hand, but I would be glad to write to the right hon. Gentleman with it.
Summer Adjournment
Stephen Timms Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney), and I commend the work that he has described, not least his campaign to save the Springburn works.
Years ago, as a Minister in the Treasury and the then Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, I played my part in encouraging universities to commercialise their superb research outcomes. I think that was the right thing to do, but there is growing evidence that in some very prestigious institutions that approach can go badly wrong.
My constituent Sunil Purushothaman qualified as a doctor at Guy’s Hospital in 1998 and worked as a doctor for two years. Fascinated since childhood by electronics, he was very interested in its medical applications, so in 2000 he started a PhD at Imperial College, supervised by Professor Christofer Toumazou, who is now regius professor of engineering at Imperial. My constituent came up with the idea of using a common electronic device for DNA testing. Professor Toumazou thought it was a good idea but told my constituent that in order to obtain a PhD under his supervision, under the terms of what he called a “pipeline agreement” that he had with Imperial College, my constituent would have to write a patent for the new idea and to vest it in Professor Toumazou’s company.
My constituent has since discovered that there was no such pipeline agreement and that obtaining a PhD did not require him to write a patent application, still less to vest it in Professor Toumazou’s company. However, he felt that he had to do as he had been told, and so he did. Initially his idea was just a vague idea, but it proved to be a very good one and in 2004 he demonstrated it successfully. The demands of delivering it were immense, and it took Mr Purushothaman six very stressful and demanding years. He obtained his PhD in 2006.
In August 2003, Professor Toumazou arranged the establishment of a company, Suniseq Ltd, subsequently DNA Electronics, to commercialise my constituent’s idea. Professor Toumazou instructed him to raise investment of £50,000 to buy the rights to his patent from Toumaz Technology. A third of the shares in DNA Electronics were vested in Mr Purushothaman.
On completing his PhD, Mr Purushothaman finally left Imperial in March 2006. He was due to start GP training a few months later, but instead, tragically, he suffered a nervous breakdown brought on by the strain at Imperial. He was unable to work at all for over 10 years. He continued to receive demands from DNA Electronics, addressed to him as shareholder, adding to the pressure he was under. So in 2010 he handed all his shares over to the company, receiving no payment at all for them, and he agreed to have his name taken off a European patent of his work, leaving Professor Toumazou as apparently the main author. My constituent was in fact the sole author of that work.
Mr Purushothaman’s invention achieved immense commercial success, which continues, for DNA Electronics, and great wealth and numerous awards and honours for Professor Toumazou. My constituent has had no benefit from his invention at all. Robbed of a promising career, he has endured over a decade of hardship.
The central problem was that Imperial College’s intellectual property policy specifies, rightly, that any IP created by its students should be vested in the first instance in the college. In the case of Mr Purushothaman’s invention, that never happened; it was vested instead in Professor Toumazou’s company. That should never have happened.
I have been writing to the provost of Imperial about this for over four years, but he has never been willing to meet to discuss it. Professor Toumazou’s behaviour has been a disgrace, but has led to him being showered with wealth and honours. And I am sorry to say that Imperial has facilitated a shameful cover-up.
Anyone planning pioneering scientific work, even at an institution as reputable as Imperial, needs to be aware of what can go wrong. Students’ IP should be protected. A change in the law, in my view, is going to be needed.
Leaving the EU: Economic Impact of Proposed Deal
Stephen Timms Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mel Stride
This Government totally understand and get the significant importance—not just to Scotland but to the entire United Kingdom—of Scotch whisky exports, which account for some 20% of all exports of food and drink from our country. That was also signalled in our recent Budget, which once again froze duty on Scotch whisky. The hon. Lady can rest assured that we will make sure that we do the right thing by Scotland’s most important export.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The Department’s assessment is that any form of Brexit will leave us worse off than if we stayed in the European Union. Will the Minister simply confirm that that is his Department’s view?
Mel Stride
The analysis, quite rightly, does not assess staying in the European Union, and there is an obvious reason for that, which is that in June 2016 the country took the decision—17.4 million people voted—to leave the European Union, and that is an outcome that this Government will respect.
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Timms Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hammond
As I have just said twice, we have substantially increased the national living wage and reduced the amount of tax that people on low incomes are paying. With regard to the question on the gig economy, the hon. Gentleman will know that my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary is currently reviewing proposals for introducing additional employment protections to those in this sector of the economy.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mel Stride)
Last year, the Government published a comprehensive assessment of the impact of our departure from the European Union, covering four different scenarios and looking at the effect on GDP and GDP per capita on exports and imports. That analysis is available on gov.uk.
Stephen Timms
The British Retail Consortium estimates that if we leave the EU without a deal, new non-tariff barriers will add on average 29% to the cost of food imports from the EU, on top of new import duties on food. The Chancellor was surely right in his call to business leaders to argue for no deal to be taken off the table. Will he continue to press the Prime Minister to do so?
Mel Stride
What we will continue is our extensive planning for the possibility of a no-deal, day-one exit to make sure that our ports are indeed flowing and goods are moving, including food. But the best way to ensure that we have the right conditions for UK consumers is to back the deal that has been negotiated with the European Union.
Draft Gaming Machine (Miscellaneous Amendments and Revocation) Regulations 2018
Stephen Timms Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I am very pleased to be serving under your chairmanship this evening, Ms Ryan, I think for the first time. Rarely will a statutory instrument have elicited the joy that this one will. It represents success at last for a long, hard-fought campaign. We should have succeeded years ago, and would have done were it not for the fact that the Treasury were profiting from the shameful racket to which the statutory instrument will finally put an end.
It is right, as others have said, that we give credit where it is due. My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East has led the campaign as chair of the all-party parliamentary group with a unique blend of passion and warmth, and we are greatly in her debt. My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting pointed out, has played an exemplary and crucial part as well.
Like others, I pay tribute to the Minister’s predecessor, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford, who was absolutely right to resign last month when the Government tried, shamefully, to delay this change, and to the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green—with whom I disagree about virtually everything—who has played a positive role in this campaign.
I also pay tribute to local authorities outside of the House. My local authority, Newham, has provided valuable support to the all-party parliamentary group on fixed odds betting terminals—the one local authority to do so. I pay tribute to the current Mayor of Newham, Rokhsana Fiaz, and to her long-serving predecessor, Sir Robin Wales. I also pay tribute to Christian Action Research and Education, which has been a consistent supporter, with Newham Council, of the APPG.
Unfortunately, the role of some others has been lamentable. Some in the House have lobbied for the continuation of this shameful racket, which has destroyed the wellbeing of so many families. The Chancellor of the Exchequer should be ashamed of himself for apparently caving in to the lobbying. The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport also behaved lamentably in failing to support his Minister, who was forced to resign,.
Ministers missed the chance to act on the growing menace of FOBTs five years ago, in the 2013 triennial review. Five years ago next month, we had a debate in the Chamber, which made the scale of the menace crystal clear. I reported in my speech—my constituency has a lot in common with that of the—that at that time in East Ham, on High Street North we had 14 betting shops open from 7.30 am to 10 pm, each with just one member of staff.
I quoted a former Paddy Power manager, who told me of families and businesses ruined while he was managing a shop, and of students who gambled away their student loans. He estimated that on a typical day in any Paddy Power shop with four fixed odds betting terminals, as they all have, one could meet half a dozen people whose lives had been destroyed by their addiction to these vile machines. A big use of the terminals has been to launder the proceeds of drug crime, giving criminals an apparently legitimate source for their cash. They are in those shops day in and day out.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
It is right to say that it is not just a case of lives ruined; in some cases lives are lost, because of the amount of suicides. That needs to go on the record as well.
Stephen Timms
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. A fair number of people, I am afraid, literally have blood on their hands through what has happened.
Often, punters losing huge sums would smash up terminals in the shop in anger, but the one member of staff there was instructed not to call the police, so that the incident would not feature in the crime statistics. Some of the shops act as honey pots for drunken louts intimidating decent shoppers who pass by. We were warned in the course of this campaign that if it succeeded in reducing the maximum stake to £2, the danger was that the number of betting shops could be halved. I must say, if the number of betting shops in East Ham falls by only 50%, I shall be very disappointed. I hope we will see a much larger reduction than that.
These vile machines have been cynically fostered by shameless, irresponsible conglomerates in the poorest communities, as the hon. Member for Glasgow East has rightly pointed out, destroying hard-working families and, on occasions, lives—the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire is right about that. They are a magnet for crime. They launder the proceeds of crime. They are a tawdry and soulless presence on high streets such as the one I represent, driving decent shops away and repelling family shoppers.
How can it have taken five years from the time of that debate, which made the extent of the damage so clear, to bring about this statutory instrument? So much money has been made by the betting companies that they have been able to employ armies of unscrupulous lobbyists and lawyers, and—let us be honest—sold-out former police officers, to give evidence for them from time to time. Of course, the Treasury has been among the principal beneficiaries of this vile trade.
Having spread blame around the place, I want to recognise that—unwittingly, at the time—I bear some personal responsibility for what has happened. From 1999 to 2001, I was the Treasury Minister responsible for betting duty. I introduced a series of reforms to betting duty designed to recognise the fact that gambling was moving online. Indeed, there was a real worry, which to some extent has been fulfilled but not as far as it might have been, that the online betting companies were also going to move offshore.
With the reform package that we introduced, part of its aim was to make low-margin betting products viable. I did not know then about fixed odds betting terminals, but I remember asking industry representatives—I particularly recall a conversation with somebody from Ladbrokes—whether the industry would use this change and behave responsibly. Looking me in the eye, that individual assured me that it would.
Rarely have I been so badly misled. The industry has been utterly irresponsible in the way that it has behaved with these terminals. The vast sums that it has raked in have completely blinded people to the ruin that it has caused. The Association of British Bookmakers, with which I worked in that period at the Treasury, has behaved shamefully, and industry leaders, who comport themselves as respectable businessmen, should hang their heads in shame for the lives they have destroyed in their pursuit of profit.
The Minister said that only those showing social responsibility would be able to take part in this industry. The industry has shown zero social responsibility; it has not even shown morality, let alone social responsibility. Let nobody try to pretend otherwise, because I am afraid that nobody involved in this vile trade knows anything of social responsibility. They have been completely blinded by the enormous sums they have been able to make.
I am absolutely delighted that we have finally got the chance to vote for this statutory instrument, but let us never forget the lessons that must be learned from this sorry and shameful saga.
Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure, Ms Ryan, to serve under your chairmanship for the first time.
I rise to speak as the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on racing and bloodstock industries; I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in that regard.
I pay tribute to the speeches that we have heard, particularly those from the Front Bench, including that of my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting. Her work on this issue, along with that of my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East, has shone an important light on various aspects of the gambling industry that Parliament needs to look at. However, I am afraid that I want to raise some issues, primarily in relation to racing and the impact that these changes could have on it.
First, I will say very clearly that problem gambling is a curse. It is one of the worst afflictions I have seen, not only as a Member of Parliament in the cases of my own constituents, but personally, with friends and family, from the community I live in now in St Helens to the community that I come from, in Northern Ireland.
We need to focus very strongly on treating the addiction and while I welcome any moves to tackle problem gambling, all I would say about fixed odds betting terminals is that, first, as a punter I do not like them, I have never played them and I cannot see the attraction at all for anyone. However, we need to be careful in this victory lap of virtue— not to be too flippant about it—that we do not see this change as the panacea to all of the ills.
Although I think that a stake reduction was inevitable due to both public pressure and the comparison with other machines in places such as arcades and casinos, I will just note that the Gambling Commission itself said the stake should be reduced to £30, and I wonder whether the Minister would explain why she felt it necessary to reduce the stake further to £2.
Let me say something about gambling, I have a love-hate relationship with the bookies: I love taking money off them, and I hate losing to them. That is the adversarial nature of being a punter and enjoying a bet on the football or the horses on a Saturday, or occasionally—and I hope that Mrs McGinn is not viewing this—taking an hour on a Friday afternoon before or after a surgery to nip into the bookies and watch the racing on the high street.
I have huge respect for my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham and the work he has done. I fear that, while we have a shared Christian faith, my Irish Catholicism is coming out in my contribution to the debate, as his evangelical Protestantism comes out in his. I would just say to him gently that he needs to be careful when he talks about decency—decent shoppers and decent people. The single mum who does a few hours part time to supplement her income, by working in a bookies in Newton-le-Willows, where I live, is far from indecent. The older men who have been widowed, who go into the bookies of a Tuesday or Wednesday morning, and sit and pick their horses out and drink their cup of coffee—and who are there, during the winter, for the heat—are far from indecent.
Stephen Timms
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the generous tone in which he expresses his criticism, but can I ask him about a comment that a constituent of mine put to me—someone who does a lot of gambling on horses? He said to me that he found it impossible in a lot of those shops to get a bet on a horse because the businesses are so completely taken over by these appalling machines. Horse betting is not going on there at all.
Conor McGinn
I have no reason to disbelieve my right hon. Friend’s constituent. All I would say is that in my constituency, in the bookies I go into, the machines are not played that often. I am not naive about it, and I am certainly not going to pretend that machines are not a problem, but we have heard contributions from London and from Glasgow and I think that the problem could be more prevalent in cities, where there is non-traditional gambling. I have Haydock Park racecourse in my constituency—and St Helens rugby league club. There are Liverpool and Everton, and Manchester City and Manchester United, and traditional modes of gambling. One of my concerns is that I want people to gamble on horse-racing and not what I would see as the competitor products.
Gambling on the high street is just 20% of gambling overall. As others have pointed out, we need to think about other arenas and the move away from the high street. I contend that the high street may be a safer environment for gambling because it means being with other people, including staff, in an open environment, rather than gambling online, alone at home. It is worth noting—and it will become apparent why this is important for racing—that the number of betting shops on the high street has fallen by 150 in the past six months, and there are fewer of them on the high street than at any time since the 1970s. It is interesting to think that at that time there were only the dogs, horses and football to gamble on.
European Union (Withdrawal) Act
Stephen Timms Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hammond
Yes, it is no deal. As I will say later in my speech, if we did leave the European Union without a deal, we would actually be the only advanced economy in the world trading with the European Union on pure WTO terms, with no facilitation agreements whatsoever. In my view, that would be a very bad outcome for the United Kingdom.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I agree with the Chancellor that there will inevitably be an economic penalty from leaving the EU. Does he agree that having to comply with lots of rules set by the EU, over which we will no longer have any say—that will be the position under the withdrawal agreement—is part of the economic penalty that we will suffer?
Mr Hammond
It depends very much on what those rules are. Rules on the goods acquis, the part of EU regulation that deals with goods, are very stable and have been for many years. We know that our manufacturers in this country will continue to follow EU rules on goods, whether we choose to adopt those rules or not, so I think that the economic price of having such rules would be very small. In other areas, such as financial services, where rules are changing rapidly and where there is a great dynamism in the system, there could be much greater dangers for us in being locked into following rules over which we have no influence. That is why the deal we are putting before the House proposes a very different way forward for goods than for services, and particularly financial services.
I have observed this process at close quarters for two and a half years, and I am absolutely clear about one thing: this deal is the best deal to exit the EU that is available or that is going to be available. The idea that there is an option of renegotiating at the eleventh hour is simply a delusion. We need to be honest with ourselves that the alternatives to this deal are no deal or no Brexit. Either would leave us a fractured society and a divided nation.
Only the compromise of this negotiated deal—delivering on the referendum result by leaving the EU, ending the free movement of people and reasserting our sovereign control over our laws, while at the same time maintaining the closest possible trade, security and cultural links with the European Union to protect our jobs, our living standards and our values—can allow our country to move on. Only that compromise can bring us back together after Brexit is delivered, and we should remember the lesson of history that divided nations are not successful nations.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I welcome the constructive tone set by the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris).
I wish to pick up a telling point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) when he opened the debate for the Opposition. It is the case that an inevitable consequence of trying to leave the European Union in a way that minimises the economic damage—that is what the Prime Minister has been trying to define—is that we will end up complying, across the board, with large quantities of rules over which we will no longer have any say at all. It is particularly ironic that that is the outcome of an initiative that was designed to take back control.
The situation is very well illustrated by the arrangements on data protection, about which I asked the Prime Minister in the House on Tuesday. We all know about the general data protection regulation. The Prime Minister made it clear, I think in her speech in Munich, that she wanted the UK Information Commissioner to keep her place on the European Data Protection Board—quite rightly—so that we can continue to influence, as we have done, the development of GDPR policy and the rules that we will certainly have to continue to apply so that data exchange between the UK and the EU can continue. That was the Prime Minister’s objective, but the agreement but does not provide for that continuing place on the board. Under the agreement, the UK Information Commissioner will lose her seat on the board at the end of March, when we are due to leave the EU, and we will lose our say and influence on rules that we are certainly going to have to continue to apply.
The problem is particularly clear in that case, but there will be a lot of examples of that kind right across the board. When I asked the Prime Minister about this issue on Tuesday, she made the point, correctly, that we will continue to have our place in global standards bodies. That is true, but on data protection, with the GDPR, on chemicals regulation and in a whole host of other areas, it is the EU that is setting the pace on global regulation. Under this agreement, we will lose the influence that we have been able to wield in the past through our influence over those EU rules.
It is absolutely right that balancing national autonomy on the one hand with prosperity on the other is the nub of this debate. The Prime Minister has tried to reconcile those two conflicting objectives. I readily acknowledge that she has worked very hard over nearly two years to bring that about. She recognises just how damaging leaving the EU without a deal would be. Some people in this debate have denied that, so I was pleased to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer robustly argue that case in this remarks earlier.
In my view, given that a referendum kicked all this off, we now have to ask the people what the right way forward should be. The Prime Minister has negotiated a deal designed to minimise the economic damage. The question now is: should we leave the EU on the basis she has negotiated, or should we stay? That question has to be answered by the people who took part in the initial referendum, either through a general election, at which the parties could set out their stools, or, if that is not possible, through a people’s vote.
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Timms Excerpts(5 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. Under the previous Labour Government, we saw 20% of young people unemployed and we saw families trapped on benefits. What we have done is create a system where it pays to work. There are now a record number of children in houses where parents are out at work. That is good for them and good for the next generation.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The Chancellor announced in the Budget a two-week run-on of legacy benefits for those being migrated to universal credit, but it takes five weeks for a universal credit payment to come through, so what does the Chief Secretary expect families to do in the three-week gap between those two?
Elizabeth Truss
We already have an advances system that enables those families to be covered for that period. Universal credit is designed to mirror the world of work to make it easier for people to get into work and that is exactly what it is doing, as opposed to the previous benefits system, which trapped people in poverty and kept people where they are, which is what the Labour party wants to do.
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Timms Excerpts(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hammond
My hon. Friend puts her finger on the significant structural challenge that we face. This country has a higher penetration of online retailing than any other major economy—we are at the cutting edge—but that, of course, has an impact on traditional retailing, and we have to expect that patterns of retailing will change. We have brought forward by a year the switch to three-year business rates reviews, and we have introduced a package of £9 billion of business rates relief, but we will have to consider this major structural challenge over the coming years as a nation.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Mr Hammond
As the right hon. Gentleman will well understand, I much prefer a system based on mutual recognition. There are problems with the EU’s equivalence regime: it is arbitrary, it is unilateral, and it can be withdrawn with zero notice. No one can operate a multitrillion-dollar business on the basis of such arbitrary arrangements. However, we are working with the Commission and key member states, and I am optimistic that we will reach a satisfactory solution.