Finance (No. 2) Bill

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP) [V]]

It is a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Treasury Committee. As the SNP reasoned amendment sets out, the Bill falls short in a number of respects. My colleagues and I approach the Budget and the Finance Bill that follows with a sense of frustration, given the limited powers that the Scottish Parliament has over many matters in the Bill, and the imperviousness of the UK Tory Government to suggestions of improvements to their legislation. The most minor suggestions for how they might do things better are dismissed, whether they come from us as Members of the House, or from expert organisations.

That is a symptom of how this Parliament does its work, with no real incentive for compromise. There are aspects of the Bill in clauses 36 to 38 where Ministers are coming back to fix measures from the 2017 Finance Bill to make them work as intended. Expert organisations such as the Chartered Institute of Taxation, the Association of Taxation Technicians, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland, the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, and the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group have all pointed out sensible tweaks to the Bill the Government could easily make. I urge Ministers to listen carefully to that expertise and to act.

I ask again for evidence sessions ahead of the Finance Bill. All other Government Bills—even, on occasion, private Members’ Bills—schedule evidence sessions, but not this major piece of legislation, which will impact everyone in these islands. The recent Financial Services Bill had useful evidence sessions where the Economic Secretary to the Treasury asked useful questions of our witnesses. I see no reason why the Government would not make time for that. Indeed, they might make better, more considered financial legislation if the evidence to support it was better examined.

Over the past year, the UK Government, like all Governments around the world, have taken a range of steps to support people and businesses. The Bill gives us an opportunity again to assess those measures, commend those that have worked, and examine which could usefully be extended and enhanced. It also allows us the chance to reflect on how we got here. The overriding context for the situation in which we find ourselves today has been a decade of austerity. The British Medical Association, in an article last October, referred to austerity as “covid’s little helper”, reflecting on how public health services in England have been cut back and undermined, resulting in a stalling of life expectancy in England. That came through the political choices—the budgetary and taxation choices—of this UK Tory Government. The tax breaks and the loopholes of this and previous Finance Bills, and the decisions of the Chancellor, have caused significant damage to public services across the UK, including in Scotland, where people did not vote for this austerity but have been forced to mitigate its impact.

We know that austerity is far from over; a second wave of Tory austerity is rushing towards us. The IFS has said that under current plans

“many public services are due a second, sharp dose of austerity”

and that for non-protected Departments the

“Chancellor’s spending plans are even tighter than they first appeared.”

Departments such as the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Housing, Community and Local Government, and the Department for Work and Pensions, will suffer cuts of 3% in 2022-23, which represents an 8% cut relative to pre-coronavirus plans in March 2020. When the Barnett formula is taken into account, that represents a cut of around £4 billion. It is a cut we cannot afford, on the back of so many that have come before. I am sure the Tories will argue that the Scottish Government should simply put up taxes, but they continually fail to recognise that we already pay in to the UK coffers, but we do not have control over what the Chancellor chooses to waste on dangerous vanity projects such as Trident, or on crony contracts to his Tory pals.

The measures in this Finance Bill regarding the coronavirus job support scheme and the self-employment income support scheme show the degree of complexity that we are now left with as a result of schemes being brought in necessarily in haste and extended for longer than the UK Government had anticipated. While the vaccine roll-out is progressing well, we are not yet out of this pandemic, and the scenes of young people out celebrating the end of lockdown last night should give us all a wee bit of pause for thought, along with the new variants that could evade vaccination in the future.

The UK Government have never been able to guarantee, regardless of their rhetoric, that life will be back to normal any time soon, so they should ensure that the support schemes reflect the course of the virus and extend them for as long as is necessary. They must now fill in the gaps in the support schemes and finally give some certainty to the millions of excluded people who have been left with not one penny piece from the UK Government for over a year.

I received some mail this morning with a book called “£xcluded Voices” from Stephen Liddell. It includes 151 stories of those excluded from support, and I hope very much that his book reaches the Chancellor’s desk. Stephen is a tour guide whom I had the pleasure to meet during a demonstration last year, and 95% of his income comes from overseas tourists. It is a sector of the economy that is highly unlikely to get going even when sectors start to reopen, and that will be two summer tourist seasons lost. He is among so many who have been left behind, completely without hope—and entirely without justification.

UKHospitality has highlighted that, with over 1 million employees in the hospitality sector still on furlough, it was critical the schemes were maintained, and it did welcome that, as do we. Yet moving to business contributions from July could prove difficult for some businesses that are not yet trading or that are off-season, and could yet result in further job losses. The stop-start, on-off furlough dither last autumn caused job losses from employers unable to bear the costs and the uncertainty, and the UK Government must not repeat that mistake.

It almost goes without saying that the SNP wants the £20 universal credit and tax credits uplift to be made permanent, but I have a wee query on the specifics in clause 31 about making the working tax credit uplift match the temporary £20 increase to UC by means of a one-off £500 payment. There are real concerns about the rough edges of this policy from experts such as the low incomes tax reform group. My understanding is that this £500 will be paid automatically, but there will be a charge to income tax where someone receives this in error—an error that would be HMRC’s error, not the recipient’s. There is a lack of certainty about what will happen if people get money they are not entitled to through HMRC’s own error, and what those receiving support are expected to do if they are unsure, especially as there is only a 90-day period in which to notify that error. I ask the Minister to give us some further detail on how exactly he envisages that this will work and what information people will receive.

We will certainly get into further detail next week, but I wish to run through some of the concerns that we and experts have with the measures put forward in this Finance Bill, in the doubtless vain hope that Ministers will start to get moving on improvements to it.

Beginning with the income tax personal allowance uplift and freeze, this would appear to be contrary to the Government’s stated policy on low-income taxpayers. National insurance thresholds will continue to move, and those under the personal allowance threshold, including those on universal credit, will not really see any benefits from this move. As always with the UK Government, there are problems in the detail. I would note that Ministers are also not taking the opportunity to amend the high income child benefit charge, which has proved so problematic for so many people.

We welcome the UK Government’s move on corporation tax, but would push them to work alongside President Biden on his call for global action on corporation tax. This is a golden opportunity for a concerted effort to move away from a race to the bottom.

On the super deduction, I must at least give the UK Government credit for a snazzy slogan, if for nothing else, but we have some queries about how it will work in practice, whether the benefits of the scheme will make a real difference to the wider economy and, as some have said already, whether this will give rise to tax dodges. The SNP has raised concerns for years about the UK’s low productivity, and the UK Government might want to act further to encourage businesses to invest more in staff, skills and technology. A real living wage, rather than their pretendy living wage, might be a better place to start.

We believe there should be a greater focus on pushing investment to meet net zero. The UK Government must ensure that this investment is one for future generations, and I ask how exactly Ministers intend to monitor the effectiveness of this super deduction. There should be safeguards against what Tax Justice has called egregious investments such as Jacuzzis. I note also that the purchase of flags might be on the list of things people could buy through their companies, which will no doubt please all the Tories on Zoom.

The Association of Taxation Technicians has some concerns about interaction with the introduction from 1 April 2023 of the small profits rate. I appreciate that the UK Government may believe they have good grounds for excluding leased or second-hand machinery, but the ICAEW has pointed out that industries that lease plant and machinery rather than acquire it outright make a significant contribution to the UK economy. The Construction Plant-hire Association estimates that the UK’s plant hire industry is worth £4 billion per annum, and the Construction Equipment Association estimates that 60% to 65% of all construction equipment sold in the UK goes into plant hire. This sounds to me to be quite significant, and I would ask Ministers to set out their reasoning in greater detail.

Moving on to clause 15, the annual investment allowance has jumped about over recent years with permanent and temporary limits, so it would be good to get more certainty on that. In the “Tax after coronavirus” report, the Treasury Committee, on which I sit, commented:

“The Annual Investment Allowance is valued by business and it appears well targeted to promote growth in small and medium-sized enterprises. As with all tax reliefs there is likely to be some deadweight cost; but we urge the Government to look favourably on further extension and possibly permanency at the existing level, which would provide welcome certainty to small and medium-sized enterprises.”

The ATT agrees that such extension or permanency would be welcome for many businesses in providing certainty, although for smaller businesses an opt-out provision might be a useful solution.

Part 2, on plastic packaging tax, takes up a substantial chunk of the Bill and is a particular area where I would like to see more evidence and scrutiny of the UK Government’s proposals from experts in the sector. There is certainly a lot in here for businesses to get their heads around. The Green Alliance sent a helpful briefing to Members, which I hope Ministers have also seen. It suggests: differentiated obligations; an escalator for the percentage of recycled material and the level of tax; a price-stabilising mechanism to de-risk investments in reprocessing and ensure that recycled content, as the more sustainable option, is always cheaper than virgin material; removing the exemption from packaging made of multiple materials, which can be difficult to recycle; and, finally, ensuring that a verification mechanism is in place. Those are all worthy of further consideration, and I am sure that as the Bill progresses we will hear from more organisations out there with their views. We have an opportunity to make legislation useful not only for the here and now, but for the future.

Clauses 92 and 93 are on VAT on tourism and hospitality, which is an area long overdue for reform. The UK has had one of the highest VAT rates on hospitality in Europe. It is welcome that the UK Government heeded the calls from industry and from the SNP for a cut in VAT for tourism and for hospitality. With people unlikely to be able to travel for their holidays this year, it is more important than ever to build the local tourism sector up and encourage people to take up the wonderful tourism opportunities on our doorstep. Scotland has done its part in giving 100% business rates relief for hospitality, and the UK Government must now do their part, too.

It is deeply disappointing that the UK Government will extend the 5% rate only until the end of September, as due to the lockdowns people have not been able to take full advantage of the reductions. Increasing the rate to 12.5% until March next year—then presumably it will revert to 20%—will mean that the tourism and hospitality sector will not see the benefit over the October holidays or the Christmas period, and then it will take a further hit next Easter. As I understand it, the reduction also applied to live music, funfairs, shows and events, so it makes even more sense to extend the reduction to a sector that has been unable to open its doors at all for the best part of a year. I urge the UK Government to consider that fully. There are also some practical difficulties for firms in moving the rates and dates, as that may cause confusion. A wider review of VAT more generally would seem sensible. I ask Ministers where that features in their plans.

On clause 113 and schedule 25, on penalties for failure to pay tax, there is no doubt that I support people paying the taxes they should in full and on time and that there should be a penalty for not doing so. That said, the ATT and the ICAEW have concerns that the proposed late payment penalty regime is overly complex and, as a result, will not be understood by taxpayers and not act as an effective deterrent. The ATT in particular feels that allowing HMRC up to 48 weeks in some circumstances to notify a person of the award of a penalty point, and up to two years to assess a penalty liability, is quite excessive. The periods should be further reduced and/or assurances should be given by Ministers that they will be used only in the most exceptional circumstances.

I turn to freeports. We on the Opposition side continue to have concerns about their effectiveness and the potential for tax dodging. The point by the Chair of the Select Committee about displacement was also well made. Their use around Europe and around the world has left many scratching their heads about what the UK Government aim to achieve. Scotland has set out a differentiated approach, engaging in good faith but adapting and improving the UK’s model to address the climate emergency in our green port approach. The Scottish Government stated:

“Operators and beneficiaries will be required to commit to adopting Fair Work First criteria and contribute to Scotland’s just transition to net zero”.

Trade Minister Ivan McKee recently raised concerns about the UK Government’s lack of willingness to engage on that while pushing forward with their own plans. If devolution means anything at all to the UK Tory Government, they must allow Scotland to pursue a model that fits the policies and ambitions of the democratically elected Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government. They must step back from using the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 as a battering ram, driving through policies that Scotland did not vote for.



Where this Finance Bill really does not go far enough is on tax evasion and tax avoidance. Yes, there are some measures here, but there are also some massive gaps. Despite raising it in every Finance Bill, Scottish limited partnerships continue to exist as a means of shifting dirty money around the world. Just last month, the investigative journalist, David Leask, wrote about NovoLine Resources, a shell company with an address in Edinburgh, which was blacklisted by the World Bank following an investigation into the contracts that it won to supply equipment to Uzbekistan’s Health Ministry. If the World Bank can see that this company is up to no good, it baffles me why the UK Government will not act to shut it down. Ministers must get serious about the financial crime that their lack of attention is facilitating.

There are also gaps around trusts, and we are still waiting for the much-delayed Registration of Overseas Entities Bill. I really do have to question whose interests this serves: it is now three years since I implored the Government to stop fannying about on this matter during the consideration of the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, and very little has happened since.

This is another great big chunk of a Finance Bill, but there is so much still that is missing. It is a point of some frustration that the Scottish Parliament, with its ambitious agenda for fairness, sustainable growth and a green recovery, does not have access to the levers and the powers that it needs and that, in so many instances, the UK Government, who do, do not even want to make use of them. We will do our best in diligently trying to improve this Bill. We will engage with experts and we will move our amendments, which the UK Government will almost certainly choose to reject. I look forward to the day when these financial powers are vested much closer to the people of Scotland, in our own Parliament, where we can make much better use of them.