Taxation: Beer and Pubs

Debate between Albert Owen and Toby Perkins

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

Order. We now resume the debate. Mr Perkins has 41 seconds left, but I will be generous and give him a minute to gather his thoughts. Mrs Anne Main will follow and will have four minutes.

[Toby Perkins]

I will finish with this. We have spoken a lot about beer duty and VAT, but it is crucial that the issue of business rates is addressed in the Budget. Every member of the Conservative party who stood in the 2015 election stood on a manifesto of a comprehensive review of business rates. That seemed to disappear from the 2017 manifesto, but the issue of business rates is crucial. We have the most expensive corporate property tax in all of Europe, and no Government who theoretically profess to be a low-tax Government can continue to see business rates going up in the way that they have. I urge the Government to get away from an over-reliance on business rates at the expense of corporation tax cuts and bring down business rates for our pubs instead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Toby Perkins]

And because my hon. Friend wants to hear what I have to say, I am sure. On the important point about the relief for small breweries, does he agree that although the policy is excellent, its impact sometimes means that brewers cannot grow any more as they will no longer come under it? Perhaps some kind of tapering to allow brewers to go from small to big would be helpful.

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

The hon. Gentleman does not have to take the full minute.

Energy Price Freeze

Debate between Albert Owen and Toby Perkins

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Albert Owen]

The Prime Minister has said numerous times on the record—I will find this and send it to the Minister—that his Government are the greenest ever and are putting on extra green levies; when he compares our schemes with the Government’s schemes he boasts that these levies are actually increasing to help on that. That is exactly what the Prime Minister has done, and I am sorry that the Minister does not understand his own Prime Minister—it is complicated at times.

[Toby Perkins]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Albert Owen]

I will give way briefly, but I am cutting into my own time.

[Toby Perkins]

This is the quote that my hon. Friend was looking for. The Prime Minister told “The Politics Show”:

“I think green taxes as a whole need to go up”.

[Albert Owen]

There we are. I am sure that the Minister agrees with the Prime Minister on that, and I thank my hon. Friend. Another levy that this Government have introduced unilaterally and which has pushed prices up is the carbon floor price. It is an Osborne levy if ever there was one. Again, the Government boasted in the Budget about how they were using these levies to control companies and push up costs on business. Those who blame Europe should remember that this is in addition to the European emissions trading scheme, and that companies in Britain are paying more because of what this Government have done this year—the levy came into being in April. It is no use their blaming Europe, or previous Governments. They must take responsibility, because all our constituents are paying the price of this Government's energy policy. That is why we are having the debate today.

I want to mention small businesses, because they are suffering more than the domestic customer. Average rises for small businesses, which do not have the luxury of comparison sites on which they can switch easily, have been up to 20%. I hope that the Government—and, indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint)—will consider helping those businesses. They cannot absorb the cost, so they pass it on to the customers. That means that we pay for those rises.

I am a member of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change and we had a robust discussion with the energy companies last week. Let us be honest. We hear the Government talking about Labour’s big six, and the Prime Minister leads on that. They forget that in 1993, Sir John Major—that Marxist, who has been accused of being a red by many people for wanting to intervene in the market—set up the integrated system we have now and allowed the then big three to dominate the energy market. Let us not take any lessons about how the big six were set up. Flawed privatisation policies and the former Prime Minister’s interventions allowed the companies to be both generators and retailers. That is the situation. I know that it does not sit comfortably with the Conservative party, but it is a fact and I challenge the Minister to say otherwise.

We have talked about green levies and wholesale prices.

Fuel Prices

Debate between Albert Owen and Toby Perkins

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Albert Owen]

Sure—and I was not making a rural versus urban argument, I was talking about peripheral areas, particularly those far from refineries. Indeed, I want to talk about British refineries. Quite often, crude oil from the North sea is actually refined in faraway countries and brought back here, which adds cost. We therefore need to improve our refinery capacity in this country, to keep prices down.

I welcome the fact that the escalator has been done away with. It was introduced in 1993, perhaps for good reasons: it was felt that people could move from private to public transport. However, in semi-rural areas that is just not possible. That is why motorists have been enraged by the rise in the escalator. It went up, I think, by 5% under the Conservatives and 6% under Labour.

The Government could deal with VAT now. We can talk about the effect that a semi-stabiliser would have on North sea oil and the prices at the pump, but the Government can take measures now to reduce VAT to help motorists today. When the previous Government lowered VAT from 17.5% to 15%, fuel prices came down, helping to stimulate the economy. [Interruption.] They did. The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) is laughing, but he needs to compare the prices. Prices came down and businesses were able to trade more. Individuals could also use their cars more, and not just for work but for leisure. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman says from a sedentary position that fuel duty went up, but the calculation shows an overall saving to the motorist at the pump, and that is what we are talking about. We can argue the complicated and technical aspects, but at the end of the day people want lower prices at the pump.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Government Members may well be laughing too, but people in Chesterfield are not laughing, because they are paying through the nose. It is not just the general public who are affected by the current level of VAT. Small businesses up and down the country that are not VAT-registered and do not qualify to get their VAT back are paying huge amounts. We should not be laughing about this; we should be taking the point seriously.

[Albert Owen]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The Government need to look again at changing the rate, because it worked. If we in this House are serious about stimulating the economy, we need to look at such mechanisms—which can be used now—because the economy is flatlining.

Areas such as mine are paying extra for energy and fuel, and we need to do something about it. We had a debate the other week about energy prices, and we agreed that we needed to investigate what is called the “rocket and feathers” effect—that means that when prices go up they shoot up quickly, but when they come down they come down slowly—for domestic energy users and retailers. As the hon. Member for Harlow said, we also need to look at that effect in relation to crude oil prices, which also escalate quickly but come down slowly. We need some sort of commission to examine that mechanism.

The three points that I wanted to make today are as follows. We need to look at the differentials between areas close to refineries and those on the periphery. I understand that a rebate is being considered for remote islands, but, as has already been said, that does not help the many motorists around the coastal areas of the United Kingdom who are paying considerably more. I heard one of my colleagues from Northern Ireland say that Northern Ireland has higher prices, but according to the website that compares prices, Bangor in north Wales pays 3p or 4p a litre more than Bangor in Northern Ireland. I say good luck to the people who live in Bangor in Northern Ireland, but my constituents are paying 7p a litre more, week in week out, to trade, to do business, to move people and goods across the area and to take young children to amenities and leisure facilities of a night.

It is time the Government did something. I will back them when they do the right thing. They can consider whether more could be done on refineries. We need to look at transport costs and VAT, and we need to help the people today.