Finance Bill

Debate between Abena Oppong-Asare and Jesse Norman

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 24th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

No, the Government have been clear that there needs to be an extension of the employment agency standards inspectorate in this area, and there may well be operational measures that HMRC needs to continue to undertake. My right hon. Friend will be aware that the Bill contains very considerable additional measures designed elsewhere in the tax system to curb the promotion of tax avoidance schemes, to improve the disclosure of those schemes and to combat organisations that would attempt to derive an unfair advantage of the kind that he has described, so we are absolutely not unaware of the importance of ensuring that people across the board pay appropriate levels of tax.

It is also worth saying that none of this really falls within the context of a Finance Bill, let alone the one that we have laid out in front of us. It is also worth saying that HMRC has used real time information in ways that were contemplated and discussed earlier in the debate in order to try to be more forward-leaning in this area. We recognise the concern and HMRC is highly active in it, but in many cases these umbrella companies do have a legitimate function, and it is important to recognise that.

I think that is it—thank you very much.

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

Once again, I thank all Members who have spoken. This has been a varied and wide-ranging debate, with Members focusing on different aspects of the Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) spoke about the impact of overseas buyers buying properties in her community in bulk. My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) spoke about the impact that dirty money is having on her local area and how other countries, such as the USA, are using sanctions to target corrupt individuals. Both are excellent champions for their constituents, who are too often at the sharp end of the housing crisis.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Abena Oppong-Asare and Jesse Norman

Committee stage & Committee of the Whole House (Day 2)
Tuesday 20th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

It is a pleasure to speak for the Opposition on this group of amendments and new clauses relating to stamp duty. I rise to speak on those in my name and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends.

Amendment 81 will prevent the extension of stamp duty holiday from being used for second homes, buy-to-lets and investment properties. New clause 26 would require the Government to review the equalities impact of this group of clauses, including their impact on households with different income levels and on people with protected characteristics, their compliance with the public sector equality duty and their impact on the different regions and nations of the United Kingdom. New clause 27 would require the Government to review the impact of a non-residential surcharge of 2%, which it is set at in the Bill, and 3%, which, as I shall come on to, the Conservative party previously committed to.

Before I come on to the amendments in more detail, let me say a little about the stamp duty holiday extension. Clause 87 extends the £500,000 nil rate band until 30 June. From July until the end of September, the nil rate band will be £250,000, double its normal level; it will return to the usual level of £125,000 from 1 October. It is estimated that the total cost of this extension will be £1.5 billion by the end of 2021-22. That is on top of the £3.2 billion cost of the initial stamp duty land tax holiday announced in July 2020.

The extension will of course be welcome news for those people in the process of buying a new home who face a cliff edge at the end of March. We know that many people have struggled to complete purchases in time due to the coronavirus restrictions and the significant backlog of pending transactions. In previous debates, Members raised issues of cyber-attacks on council services in Hackney that impacted the planning department and delayed people’s securing mortgages.

However, we have concerns about the broader effects of the policy. Our new clause 26 is intended to encourage the Government to be honest about the impact of the stamp duty holiday on the housing market. The Resolution Foundation says that the lower stamp duty liabilities have contributed to house price rises over the last eight months. House prices in England grew 7% between July and December 2020, which is highly unusual behaviour during a recession. In many cases, the rise in house prices over the period will have cancelled out the benefit of the stamp duty holiday. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Resolution Foundation and others have pointed out, the stamp duty holiday has also had the perverse effect of temporarily removing the advantage that first-time buyers had in the market compared with existing homeowners. This, coupled with rapidly rising house prices, has meant that many first-time buyers continue to be priced out of the market. The Bill does nothing to address the housing crisis that affects millions of families across the country—yet again, a wasted opportunity from this Government.

I turn now to clause 88 and our amendment 81. It is unbelievable that, at the same time as the Chancellor is pressing ahead with a £2 billion council tax rise, he has given another tax break to second-home owners and buy-to-let landlords. This half a billion pound tax break for second-home owners and landlords is the wrong priority in the middle of an economic crisis that is hitting family incomes. Instead, this money could have been used to build nearly 3,000 socially rented homes, which is half the total built in England last year. In Wales, the equivalent tax relief has not been extended to property acquired as investment or as a second home. Labour’s amendment 81 would ensure that the extended stamp duty holiday in England and Northern Ireland followed that approach. I turn to the non-residential surcharge introduced under clause 88. During the 2019 general election campaign, the Chancellor, who was then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said:

“Evidence shows that by adding significant amounts of demand to limited housing supply, purchases by non-residents inflate house prices.”

He went on to announce a Conservative manifesto commitment to introduce a non-resident stamp duty surcharge of 3%, which would have been spent on programmes aimed at tackling rough sleeping. But clause 88 introduces a non-resident surcharge of 2%, rather than 3%. As yet, we have had no explanation from the Government as to why they have watered down that commitment. We estimate that this means the Government could miss out on £52 million a year in revenue that should have been spent on tackling homelessness and rough sleeping.

Our new clause 27 would require the Government to review the difference between the 2% charge and the 3% charge and to reveal the lost income as a result of that decision. When the Minister stands up, perhaps he will tell us why the Government have moved from 3% to 2%.

We welcome clauses 89 to 91, which provide relief from the annual tax on enveloped dwellings and the 15% stamp duty charge for the ownership and transfer of property by housing co-operatives that do not have transferable share capital. The Treasury has listened to the co-operative housing sector on the issue and that is welcome.

To conclude, we do not believe that the Government’s clauses in this group would do anything to solve the housing crisis we face in this country. Year after year, Government have failed to build the homes we need, especially social and affordable homes. The Government are on track to miss their target of building 300,000 homes by almost a decade. The number of new social rented homes has fallen by over 80% since 2010 and home ownership is down sharply among young people, with 800,000 fewer households under 45 owning their home than in 2010. Without urgent action the housing crisis in the UK will deepen. Instead the Government have decided to give a tax break to landlords and failed to meet their own commitment on the non-residential surcharge. Our amendments will remedy these wrongs.

[Jesse Norman]

Last spring, we were only just beginning to understand as a nation what the full impact of the coronavirus might mean for us. We were told to stay at home and, for many people, that meant postponing plans that they might have made to move, creating considerable uncertainty. It was evident that the housing market was affected by that and it was made much worse when, on 26 March, buying and selling a property was largely put on hold. While business was enabled to resume from 13 May, there was concern about what the pandemic would mean for the market and for the jobs that rely on the sector.

The Chancellor announced that he would support the housing market through the stamp duty land tax holiday, quadrupling the starting threshold for SDLT to £500,000. That was designed to give a boost—indeed, the boost to the housing market that it needed to thrive through the pandemic. It has thrived: transactions in the last quarter of 2020 were 16% higher than in the same period in 2019. In other words, the SDLT holiday has given hundreds of thousands of families the confidence to buy and to sell their homes at a particularly difficult time. In turn, it has supported the livelihoods of people—tens of thousands of them, or more than that—whose businesses and jobs rely on trade with, through and from the housing market.

Towards the end of last year, it became apparent that the housing industry was struggling to meet the additional demand to move home and that there were delays in processing transactions. That meant that some of those moving home would not be able to complete the transactions that they had entered into until after the holiday ended, through no fault of their own. The Bill therefore extends the stamp duty land tax holiday in order to allow those buyers still to receive the relief. In addition, the nil rate band will be £250,000, double its standard level, until the end of September, in order to allow the market to return smoothly to its normal rates.

The Bill also introduces a non-residential SDLT surcharge. The surcharge will apply to property purchases by non-UK residents who do not come to live and work here, helping to ease house price inflation and to keep housing free for UK residents to buy. Revenue raised from the surcharge will be used to help address the issue of rough sleeping.

The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) raised the question about the non-resident surcharge. She may not be aware that, at Budget 2018, the Government announced that a consultation for a 1% non-UK resident surcharge would be published. Following the announcement of the surcharge, HMRC and the Treasury carried out a public consultation in spring 2019. That included questions on whether a 1% rate was set at the right level to balance the Government’s objectives on home ownership with those of the UK remaining an open and dynamic economy. Having listened to stakeholders, the Government believe that the 2% surcharge—twice the original amount contemplated—strikes the right balance in this area. That is the basis on which the surcharge has been set.

The Bill will also relieve the 15% rate of SDLT and the annual tax for enveloped dwellings for qualifying housing co-operatives. That change ensures that these measures are fairly targeted at companies that use so-called envelopes in order to avoid tax on their properties.

Amendment 81 would disapply the SDLT holiday to purchases of additional dwellings. As the Committee will know, the SDLT holiday was intended to give a boost to the entire property market, of which developers and landlords are important parts. Although those buying second homes or buy-to-let properties will benefit from that tax change, they will continue to pay an additional 3% on top of the standard SDLT rates.

The Government have maintained the relative advantage that buyers of main homes had before the tax change. For example, the purchaser of a second home worth £500,000 will still pay £15,000 in SDLT, compared with nothing for the purchase of a main residence. It was a Conservative Government who introduced the phasing out of finance cost relief, and the higher rates of SDLT for the purchase of additional property—all steps towards a more balanced tax treatment between homeowners and landlords.

On new clause 26, HMRC routinely publishes information about SDLT, collected by house price bands and by region. Of course, a full tax impact assessment, including equalities impacts, has been published for each measure.

Extending the SDLT holiday ensures that buyers who were affected by delays in the industry will still be able to receive the tax relief.

In the longer term, the Bill introduces a new surcharge that will help more people on to the housing ladder through the new non-UK residents’ surcharge. It also ensures that stamp duty and the annual tax on enveloped dwellings remain fair by making certain that only those who the Government intend to pay corporate rates of tax are captured.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

I do not think I will ever give a more popular speech than the one I am going to give now, because I just want to thank everyone who has made comments. I thank the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) for her remarks, which I have already answered. I thank colleagues for the speeches they have made to explore the effects, purpose and potential limits, even, of the stamp duty land tax and the holiday. I ask Members to support the clauses, and I will sit down.

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

This has been a good debate, and I too thank Members on both sides of the House for their contributions. Members on both sides have spoken on behalf of their constituents about the impact of the stamp duty holiday, the challenges of buying a home and the need for more action to make affordable housing a reality.

As I said in my opening contribution, the Opposition simply do not believe that the Government should be handing a half a billion pound tax break to buy-to-let investors and second home buyers. Once again, this is the wrong priority from a Government who are letting families down. Labour’s amendment 81 would end that unfairness, and I want to press it to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Abena Oppong-Asare and Jesse Norman

Committee stage & Committee of the Whole House (Day 1)
Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak for the Opposition on the clauses relating to freeports. I will speak to new clause 25 in my name and the names of my hon. and right hon. Friends. Before I turn to the detail of our new clauses in this group, I would like to say a little about Labour’s position on freeports and regional economic policy more generally.

Labour wants to see good new jobs created in every region and nation of the United Kingdom. We want to see genuine levelling up that hands power and opportunity to areas that have been deprived of them for too long. We want an economic policy that addresses the fundamental challenges facing our country and our constituents: ever widening regional inequality, low productivity and low wages in too many places; a social care crisis that threatens the dignity of older people; and an environmental crisis that threatens us all.

I am afraid that the Government’s approach to levelling up has been far less ambitious. We have seen regions and areas pitted against each other to bid for pots of money, only to find that Conservative Ministers overruled officials and handed funding to already wealthy areas. We have seen nothing to make up for the 11 years of a Conservative Government who have sucked funding and opportunities out of areas that they now say need levelling up. We have seen a total lack of ambition from the Government on supporting a recovery from the coronavirus crisis to build a stronger and more resilient economy. That brings me to freeports and the clauses that we are considering today.

I think we were all a little underwhelmed when the rabbit pulled from the hat at the end of the Chancellor’s Budget speech last month was the reannouncement of his freeports policy. The Opposition simply do not believe that freeports are the silver bullet for our post-Brexit economy that the Chancellor clearly hopes they are. In fact, the evidence is that freeports are likely to have relatively little impact on overall job creation and are far more likely to move jobs from one place to another. We want every area to flourish, whether or not they have a freeport. We know that Ministers are aware of this problem because they asked potential freeports operators to address it in their bids. Our new clause 25 would require the Government to produce an annual review of the impact of the freeports policy on job creation in freeport sites and across the country as a whole.

[Jesse Norman]

I would be grateful if the hon. Lady could tell us whether the Labour party’s position is to support freeports or not to support freeports.

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

I thank the Minister. I will approach that later in my speech, so I thank him for already guessing what I was going to say.

We really need some honesty and transparency from the Government on this. The estimates of the job creation benefits of freeports made by their advocates so far have been flimsy to say the least. We also need a proper assessment of the risk of job displacement. If freeports simply move existing economic activity around, they risk doing harm to the economic fortunes of neighbouring areas, with no net benefit to the country as a whole. Indeed, a 2019 report by the UK Trade Policy Observatory found that the main effect of freeports was to divert businesses into a port from a surrounding area, rather than creating new jobs, so it is not just Labour saying this; it is the experts saying it too. That may be especially problematic in areas where freeports are situated near a local authority, or regional or even national borders.

Our new clause would require the Government to report on tax avoidance and evasion and criminal activity in freeports and to set out the level of additional staffing and resources required by HMRC and other Government bodies. There are long-standing concerns that freeports allow or encourage tax avoidance and evasion, and there is international evidence that freeports have been used for criminal activity. For example, the OECD has stated that there is

“clear evidence that free trade zones are being used by criminals to traffic fake goods”.

The Financial Action Task Force has said that the lack of scrutiny can facilitate trade-based money laundering through relaxed oversight and a lack of transparency. The TUC and others have warned of the dangers to workers’ rights from deregulation in freeports. We need to take these concerns seriously. As a minimum, the Government should commit to trade union representation in the governance of freeports at local and national levels.

I will now make a few points about the clauses we are considering. First, on the cost of the tax reliefs being introduced, the Government have provided some information on the expected operational costs of HMRC but, as recently as last month, they were unable to estimate the reduced revenue that the Exchequer will receive as a result of these reliefs. I hope the Minister can address that. Clause 110 includes the enhanced capital allowance for plant and machinery spending at 100%, but that is less generous than the 130% super deduction. Presumably, for the period that they overlap, companies will need to consider whether they can claim the super deduction rather than this allowance.

The Chartered Institute of Taxation has raised a number of concerns about the operation of the stamp duty relief in clause 111. One issue is how exactly freeport tax sites will be designated and whether particular buildings can be identified as either in or out the boundary of the tax site. Can the Minister provide some clarity on joint ventures where there is both commercial and residential development? The Chartered Institute of Taxation points out that the clause, as currently drafted, excludes a common commercial arrangement from that relief. Finally, there is the issue of withdrawal of relief for subsequent non-qualifying activity. A small amount of non-qualifying use can potentially lead to withdrawal of all the relief. Is the Minister concerned that the risk of loss of the full relief in such circumstances could discourage investment?

To conclude, the Opposition have real concerns about the Government’s freeports policy. If it is going to succeed and bring the sorts of benefit that those on the Government Benches claim, we need to see more detail on the operation of freeports and how the Government plan to mitigate the risks. We need regular monitoring of the effectiveness and the impact on the country as a whole over the years to come, which is exactly what new clause 25 would require the Government to do. If the Government are confident in their policy, they should be confident in allowing scrutiny of how it works in practice. I call on them to support our new clause.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Abena Oppong-Asare and Jesse Norman

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

It is no secret that bus services are close to the Prime Minister’s heart. The Government have committed to improving bus services and since the start of the pandemic have supported operators with more than £1 billion of funding, as well as with £120 million at the spending review for the delivery of new zero emission buses. The national bus strategy is due to be published soon and will start to set out this wider ambition. I am also pleased to note that Budget 2020 allocated £166 million to the Sheffield city region from the transforming cities fund to support local transport investment, including bus infrastructure.

[Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab) [V]]

To deliver transport connectivity in every part of the United Kingdom, we need long-term investment in infrastructure but, staggeringly, the OBR analysis reveals that the Chancellor has cut capital investment plans by half a billion pounds since last March. The Budget also made no mention of Northern Powerhouse Rail and slashed the Transport for the North budget by 40%. Can the Minister explain why the reality of the Budget on infrastructure investment is so far from this Government’s rhetoric?

[Jesse Norman]

I do not recognise the figures the hon. Lady has used at all. The facts are that this Government published the “National Infrastructure Strategy” in November, which set out plans for £300 billion-worth of public investment over the next few years, as well as supporting £300 billion of private investment. Since then, the Chancellor has announced the new UK infrastructure bank, which will further support the development of infrastructure and levelling up, and the development of our green infrastructure across the UK.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Abena Oppong-Asare and Jesse Norman

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

As I have said, the Government are doing everything they can and have been working round the clock for a year to address the full needs of the country across all the different aspect of our economy and society, including through support for the self-employed.

[Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab) [V]]

The self-employment income support scheme’s third grant closes this Friday. The crisis has not ended, but the Chancellor has not provided many details on the future of the scheme. Will the Minister explain why he thinks it is right that employees can be furloughed until 30 April but self-employed people have no clarity about the future of support beyond the end of this week?

[Jesse Norman]

I think that it is well-understood that the Chancellor will be setting out further plans in the March Budget. It is normal for this time of year for different decisions to be consolidated into that important fiscal event for well-known reasons.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Abena Oppong-Asare and Jesse Norman

Tuesday 1st December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

As my hon. Friend will be aware, I have a history of being closely involved with the performing arts sector. As I have indicated, I will be meeting many of the groups representing people in this situation. He should be aware that, in addition to the £1.57 billion culture recovery fund, the Government have put in place the film and TV insurance scheme, to which more than 150 applications have been made so far. The Government do and continue to take these issues extremely seriously.

[Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

The situation for the self-employed is especially difficult in areas with additional restrictions and for those working in the hardest hit sectors. The Government’s additional restrictions grant must go further in areas that have been in restrictions for longer. What plans do the Government have to improve this situation?

[Jesse Norman]

The hon. Lady will be aware that we have backdated business grants to address some of these concerns. It is also worth mentioning that the third phase alone of the self-employed scheme is expected to cost more than £7 billion. As the Chancellor said, it is part of a wider package of support that we are trying to give to businesses and individuals affected by the crisis.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Abena Oppong-Asare and Jesse Norman

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

[Jesse Norman]