Growing the UK Economy
Alison Hume Excerpts(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Darren Jones
My hon. Friend makes an excellent case for the positive impacts that this will have on the Scottish economy and the important role that it plays in our United Kingdom economy in respect of growth across every nation and region. It is a nice contrast, might I say, with voices opposite that were talking down the potential for Scotland—unlike this Government, who are delivering the potential for Scotland.
Alison Hume (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)
The manufacturer Alexander Dennis proudly builds innovative British electric buses in Scarborough—I think this might be a case of a “build, baby, build British buses.” Does the Chief Secretary agree that British manufacturing and buying British goods are key to our economic growth?
Darren Jones
My hon. Friend is right, and she is a great advocate for businesses in her constituency. She will know that Mayors in the UK, for example, have committed themselves to buying electric buses from British manufacturers, and we will be working with mayoral authorities in the years ahead to ensure that we can do more of that, not less.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alison Hume Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Alison Hume (Scarborough and Whitby) (Lab)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rachel Reeves)
The Government are better targeting these reliefs to make them fairer. The latest figures for 2021-22 show that the top 7% of claims are counted for 40% of the total value of agricultural property relief.
Rachel Reeves
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. I remember a very nice dinner of fish and chips with her in her constituency just a few years ago, and she is a strong advocate for local businesses in South Shields. In the Budget, we were able to extend business rates relief to the retail, hospitality and leisure sector of 40% for the next financial year and then to move it on to a fairer footing, so that high street businesses and smaller businesses pay fairer rates of business tax compared with, for example, the online giants.
Alison Hume
The bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis builds innovative electric buses, employing 800 people in Scarborough. The Chancellor has spoken about the need for public procurement to take better account of employment and environmental standards. As bus services are brought back into the control of mayors and local authorities, will the Government use public procurement to back British companies such as Alexander Dennis to boost economic growth?
Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend is a good advocate for businesses, including Alexander Dennis in Scarborough. The Government will soon publish a new national procurement policy statement, which will set out our priorities for public procurement in support of our mission to grow the economy. In addition to the answer I gave my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams), we recognise the importance of buses in growing our economy by getting people to work, but also the opportunities to use public procurement to buy more buses made in this country, supporting good jobs here in Britain.
Farming and Inheritance Tax
Alison Hume Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Victoria Atkins
In a moment.
Since the Budget, the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers has analysed the family farm tax and applied tax law and the realities of modern-day farming to it. Its analysis has revealed that up to 75,000 individual owners of farming businesses could be affected over the coming generation, even before inflation, which is the equivalent of five times the Government’s figure of 500 farms affected in 2026-27. How could they have got this so wrong? It is because this city-dwelling Chancellor, Secretary of State and Exchequer Secretary do not understand modern farming or the countryside that they have overlooked a major area of tax policy and forgotten to consider thousands of farmers.
As the Exchequer Secretary has confirmed, the Government forgot to include one of the three routes to the relief in their calculations. They have not included business property relief-only claims in their figures, which means that as many as 14,000 tenant farmers who cannot claim agricultural property relief because they do not own the land on which they farm are absent from their calculations. What is worse is that Ministers do not know how many farmers are affected by that.
The city-dwelling Chancellor and Secretary of State have also forgotten about the farmers who in years gone by followed professional advice and transferred their farms into companies or partnerships. Those farmers will claim only BPR, so they have been left out of the calculations. Again, Ministers do not know how many farmers are in that position.
Victoria Atkins
I will in a minute.
I am told by advisers that some farmers choose to use BPR only because it is easier in probate. Guess what? Yet again, Ministers do not know how many farms are in that position, and they have not been included.
I will give way first to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and then to the hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume). I have so much more to say.
Alison Hume
The right hon. Member left a trail of destruction across the Government. She was the Health Secretary who broke the NHS, the Prisons Minister who ran out of prison places and the Treasury Minister who crashed the economy—no wonder her constituency majority crashed from 28,000 to 5,000. [Interruption.] Does she not think it is time to apologise and for once to support the Government, who are bringing back stability to the British economy and farmers’ profitability?
Mr Speaker
Order. I know that Members are jeering about reading. I know that when I came to the House it was a rule that you should not read, but both sides are doing it. Remember that.