Taxation (Post-transition Period) Bill

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 9th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Sir William Cash is not here, so we go to Alison Thewliss.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I am very sorry to hear that the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) is not here, because I am sure that there is so much more that he could have added to this debate that he has not already said.

[The First Deputy Chairman]

He may have withdrawn but I have not been told, so that may explain it.

[Alison Thewliss]

That is absolutely fine. I wish to speak to the amendments in my name and the names of my hon. Friends.

As I outlined on Second Reading, I have real concerns about the scrutiny aspects of the Bill. It is a thick and substantial Bill that gives substantial powers to the UK Government to move things through this House under the negative procedure, which gives very little opportunity for us or anybody else to scrutinise their proposals. We wish to see the proposals come under the affirmative procedure wherever possible, to allow extra scrutiny of the Government.

As I said, I am very concerned about the letter that the Minister sent to Members. It talks about a huge range of duties that the Government are creating but that, at this moment, they do not intend to use. I question why they are creating such duties if they do not intend to use them. At some stage perhaps they will use them, so we need a mechanism to scrutinise them. It is unfortunate, but perhaps not surprising, that the Government see taking back control as bringing it back from bureaucrats in Brussels to give it to bureaucrats in Whitehall, bypassing this place altogether. It should have been an opportunity for this place to get more powers to scrutinise such duties, but no; it all goes to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs or to the Treasury, and very little comes here or indeed to the Committees of this House. There should have been an opportunity to look at the new taxation structures that we are bringing in here and that we have responsibility for in this House, but the Committees of this House will not get the opportunity to scrutinise these measures either. I know that some have suggested that an additional Committee would allow that scrutiny to be made.

I very much support what the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) said and the questions he asked. We are dealing with complex supply chains when we talk about the movement of food, chemicals and manufactured goods. In my constituency and in the constituencies of some of my colleagues, for example, we have manufacturers of leather, who move raw hides from Ireland to the west of Scotland. They need to know how they will be able to move these goods through different territories, as they really should not be left hanging about for any length of time; they need to be moved quickly to where they are processed. We do not know whether they would fall under what the Government have termed “at risk goods”. It is not surprising that businesses are tearing their hair out with this shambles of a Government, because they do not know whether they will be able to continue with their business come the turn of the year.

There is also the cost and the red tape, whether it is the 265 million customs forms that will need to be filled out compared with the 54 million now, or whether it is the issue of rebates and the processing of fees and money. This is the end of the transition period, but we do not know what we are transitioning to. We certainly know what we had and what we will not have any more: free and unfettered access to a huge market in Europe. We do know that we are losing that, but we do not yet know what the Government’s plans are.

Despite the Government’s attempts to reassure us, concerns remain. Aodhán Connolly of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium, while acknowledging the progress that has been made, said of the delays:

“We are just 22 days out and retailers are still unsure about the exact processes needed to move food to Northern Ireland. Therefore, the Government needs to assure them how this will be done without additional bureaucracy.”

There are real concerns about the cost and the choice of food that people of Northern Ireland will have if we do not get this right.

The point that I made earlier about customs charges and duties was reflected in an item on RTÉ at about 2.30 this afternoon. It said that customers in Ireland will be faced with VAT and customs duty from 1 January if buying goods from the UK worth over €22. That is significantly lower than the levels that were spoken about earlier. It was said that the Irish Revenue has no way of knowing whether consumers will continue to buy from the UK when additional charges apply. I ask the Minister to consider this and to do some studies on whether these additional charges will have an impact on people in this country who make good-quality goods and export them to Ireland. A total of 70% goes to Ireland, and we need to have some certainty from the Government about the long-term impact.

The scrutiny mechanisms that we suggest give us ample opportunity to do that at every stage of this process, not just today while we are considering this Bill, and then putting it in a box and leaving it, but on an ongoing basis. This Government definitely need to be held to account.

The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton): I believe that the Members who were numbers five to 11 on the call list spoke in the earlier debate and have withdrawn from this one, which means that we go straight to Andrew Griffith.

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Dame Rosie.

I welcome this set of pragmatic measures. The Bill is a building block on the way to regaining our national self-determination in this very important area. I will oppose the amendment, although not on the principle— greater scrutiny and giving business greater certainty are things that I hope that those on both sides of the House can support. However, we should recognise that we are in a fast-moving environment. The Treasury team have been working incredibly intensively in the context of the pandemic and I think it is unfair to impose on them a specific timeframe when I know they will—perhaps the Minister will address this point—use their very best endeavours to give the very greatest amount of certainty as quickly as possible.

I follow the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), who I have to say takes something of an 18th-century approach to customs, borders, forms and tariffs. The reality is that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) said earlier, we are in an age of online forms and digital electronic surveillance. Any good that passes across any internal or external border is tracked through a multiplicity of different technologies. I made the observation to the hon. Lady that of course when one introduces any customs border—this is one reason why Government Members are so keen to keep our United Kingdom together—there is an added level of complexity, but we should not overstate the complexity or understate the ability of business to innovate and deal with that.

[Alison Thewliss]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for allowing an intervention. Is he aware that we were told in the Treasury Committee that the UK could have adopted the French customs system, which was up and running before ours? Ours is not ready, as the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee heard yesterday. Technological solutions exist, but they do not exist in the UK, and we do not have them up and running to get this moving by the turn of the year.

[Andrew Griffith]

I beg to differ with the hon. Lady. There will be different systems for different territories, but on the business side of things there is already sophisticated tracking of stock, sales and data, which can be used to feed into accounting systems.

What I really want to do is to celebrate—I hope that those on both sides of the House can do that—the absolute game-changer that is contained within clause 7 to crack down on the leakage of the important tax revenues that fund our valued public services, and, most importantly, to create a level playing field for the nation’s small and online retailers. That has needed to be addressed for far too long. I welcome the Minister to his place and what clause 7 will do for the enterprising small businesses of our nation.