NHS Pensions: Taxation

Steve Brine Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

As I said, the consultation will be launched fairly soon—the Health Secretary is looking at that—and people will of course be able to feed their views into it.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

It is welcome to see a Treasury Minister answering this question; it was a Health Minister in the Westminster Hall debate. As a former cancer Minister, I was incredibly proud of our Government’s 75% ambition, and I doubt whether there is a Member in this House who does not support that. The news from my trust is that this pension issue is hitting radiology, which is hitting cancer diagnoses. Theatre lists are being cancelled because we cannot get anaesthetic cover, as my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) mentioned earlier, so may I stress to the Minister the urgency of the situation? We need to grip this and fast, because the longer this goes on and the further it falls, the harder it will be to retrieve. Urgency is the key word here.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I can assure my hon. Friend that I spoke with the Health Secretary earlier today. We are seeking to get the consultation out as soon as possible. The Government have been working on this now for a number of weeks.

Business Rates

Steve Brine Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. He is quite right: we have known each other and been friends for a long time, and he has had a long interest in this subject. I will certainly come on to the subject of wholesale reform of the business rating system. Indeed, the British Hospitality Association, which I will refer to later, is calling for a royal commission to look into wholesale reform of the rates. Indeed, it was a manifesto commitment of my party, but the party seems to have gone cold on wholesale reform of the business rates system, for reasons to do with protecting the £30 billion of revenue it raises, as I will refer to in a moment.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

As the manifesto seems to be very popular this week, I will read from it. We said:

“we will also conduct a full review of the business rates system to make sure it is up to date for a world in which people increasingly shop online”.

The pretty market town of Alresford in my constituency has a chocolate box row of shops that includes a beautiful bookshop, but people increasingly tell me they use it to look, view and try, and then go online to buy the books. It is totally untrue that the Government have not done anything to help with businesses rates—we have supported those affected by the revaluation, introduced the discretionary rates scheme and said we will introduce more regular revaluations—and the very good Minister, who is in his place, has done a lot. That said, it is probably time to consider a more structural change away from just property—I understand why the Treasury likes property taxes—to a more transaction-based tax, which might help bookstores such as the one I referred to in Alresford.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that thoughtful intervention, and I want to reassure him and the Minister that I have not called this debate to criticise the Government. I called it to come up with some helpful and positive suggestions for how we might reform system, wholesale or otherwise, while bearing it in mind that we need to raise that £30 billion. Clearly, the Treasury cannot afford any reduction in that amount.