West Coast Main Line Franchise

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

I thank the hon. Lady for her tempting invitation, but I am not going to second-guess His Majesty on what he will announce in the King’s Speech. What I can say is that this is a topic of great interest to the Government and, as she will know, the Department is making considerable progress in the non-legislative mode that we are in at the moment to achieve many of the goals we all share.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

Avanti manufacturing director, Andy Mellors, told the Transport Committee that Avanti would be cutting staff at Glasgow Central station by more than a third and closing its ticket office. Why does a company that delivers such a poor and expensive service, and that holds its customers in such contempt, deserve to have its contract renewed, potentially for almost a decade?

[Jesse Norman]

What I recall from that hearing is that Mr Mellors said 1% of the tickets at Glasgow were sold through the ticket office, that there would be a full staff in front of the ticket office, that those staff would work from the first train in the morning until the last train at the end of the day and that they would continue to accept cash. That sounds like quite a good service offer to me.

Health and Social Care Levy Bill

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Committee stage & 3rd reading
Tuesday 14th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

I do not know whether the hon. Lady heard, but I was talking about the NHS and that has been a founding principle of the NHS, one the Conservative party have always adhered to, and rightly so. What we are doing with the levy is funding an expansion and a development of an existing set of arrangements, and, as I have discussed in relation to the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), the potential to expand that through the use of other mechanisms of support, now that these catastrophic risks have been removed, or will be removed, from people’s lives.

Let me turn to the amendments tabled by the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru which look to require a joint agreement between the Treasury and the Governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as to how the levy proceeds are to be shared between the four parts of the UK, and between healthcare and social care. As for how the levy revenue will be split between the four parts of the UK, this legislation mirrors existing legislation on how NHS allocation is divided between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is right and appropriate that we should follow that established precedent. The Government will work closely with the devolved Administrations on the implementation of the levy, including on the process for allocating revenues across the UK and on the split between health and social care from April 2023 onwards. It is also worth bearing in mind that the devolved Administrations’ overall funding will continue to be determined by the Barnett formula, so that this process will just determine the element provided by the levy. I hope that the Members concerned will not press their amendments, for the reasons I have outlined.

[Alison Thewliss]

I do not know whether the Minister has read the note from the Hansard Society on this, but it is concerned by some of the implications for the devolution settlement. It says:

“There is also no requirement in the Bill for the Treasury or the Health Secretary to consult the devolved administrations about any aspect of the process.”

Is that not a cause for concern?

[Jesse Norman]

The Treasury already consults the devolved Administrations very closely on many aspects of tax policy and there is no reason to think, and the Bill does not suggest, that there should be any other reason for handling this. On the contrary, following an existing hypothecation gives direct support to devolved Administrations that they will be able to receive the Union dividend, which is generated and delivered by this policy.

Clause 2 creates a legally binding obligation to use the funds raised by this levy for the purposes of health and social care, and sets out that HMRC will direct funds to the Secretary of State to be used for the cost of health and social care in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The funds from the levy will be shared between healthcare and social care, and will be shared between each nation in a proportion determined by the Treasury. The Treasury has used the long-standing Barnett formula to fund devolved Administrations and will continue to do so for the proceeds of this measure. Clause 2 goes further and ensures that any interest or penalties that can be attributed to the levy will also be used to fund health and social care. However, any expenses incurred by HMRC in collecting the levy will be deducted from the proceeds, which ensures that HMRC has the ability to collect and police this levy properly. I therefore ask Members to allow clause 2 to stand part of the Bill.

Finance (No.2) Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Alison Thewliss]

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)]

[Alison Thewliss]

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

[Alison Thewliss]

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

[Alison Thewliss]

--- Later in debate ---

[James Murray]

[Jesse Norman]

[Alison Thewliss]

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

[Alison Thewliss]

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

[Jesse Norman]

Finance (No.2) Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Alison Thewliss]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Gary. This is a small technical amendment, on which we have received a representation from the Association of Taxation Technicians. Clause 15 extends the availability of the temporarily increased level of the annual investment allowance for a further year, to 31 December 2021. Although we appreciate that the maintenance of a high AIA will be broadly welcomed by eligible businesses, the wider picture has been, as I said on Second Reading, that the chopping and changing of AIA levels is unhelpful, as it adds complexity to the system and creates traps that can disadvantage some businesses.

Specifically, the transitional rules that apply when the AIA level reverts to £200,000 on 1 January 2022 could result in businesses having their effective AIA limit restricted to significantly less than £200,000 for a period. The businesses most likely to be hit by that are the businesses least likely to be able to benefit from the temporary increase in the AIA limit. There is an opportunity to amend the transitional provisions in order to ensure that smaller businesses with lower levels of qualifying capital expenditure are not actually disadvantaged by a temporary increase from which they will not benefit at all. I hope that the Minister will consider this amendment.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)]

What a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I look forward to many happy hours of digestion and deliberation on the Finance Bill in Public Bill Committee.

Clause 15 temporarily extends, as the hon. Member for Glasgow Central mentioned, the increased annual investment allowance of £1 million until 31 December 2021. If I may, I will give some background and then address the amendment.

The annual investment allowance, or AIA, provides businesses with an up-front incentive to invest. It allows them 100% same-year tax relief on qualifying plant and machinery investments, up to an annual limit, and simplifies tax for many taxpayers. The summer Budget of 2015 set the permanent level of AIA at £200,000 from 1 January 2016. At Budget 2018, the level was temporarily increased to £1 million for two years, from 1 January 2019. The measure that will be enacted by this clause was announced in November 2020. The changes made by clause 15 will apply across the UK. The £1 million AIA cap covers the plant and machinery expenditures of more than 99% of all businesses.

There were a forecasted 24.9 million AIA claims in 2019-20, compared with 18 million when the cap was last at its £200,000 limit. The higher AIA cap provides businesses with more up-front support, encourages them to bring forward investment and makes tax simpler for any business investing between £200,000 and £1 million. Extending the AIA cap to £1 million supports business confidence at a time when covid-related economic shocks have severely dampened business investment. It is interesting that Chris Sanger, head of tax policy at EY, said that this measure

“will be particularly helpful for UK manufacturing at a time when, thanks to the announcement of a vaccine, business confidence is returning.”

Amendment 15, tabled by Opposition Members, seeks to change long-standing arrangements that manage the transition from one level of AIA to another. It is important to note that the current arrangements have been used by the Finance Acts of 2011, 2014 and 2019. They are familiar and well understood, and any change would create additional cost for businesses.

The change proposed would also give a benefit to a small subset of firms that have a chargeable period that straddles the date at which the AIA reduces to £200,000. However, those firms also received a benefit at the point of transition to the new £1 million level of the AIA, and therefore the amendment would not, in our judgment, be fair. It also risks encouraging some businesses to delay investment, which many would not think is in the public interest at present. I therefore urge the Committee to reject the amendment.

Overall, the clause and the measure it will constitute were warmly received by businesses at the end of last year as part of the Government’s desire to support business during the pandemic.

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[Jesse Norman]

I thank the hon. Member for Ealing North for his remarks in support of the previous clause. Clause 18 and schedule 2 make changes to the loss relief rules for businesses by extending the loss carry-back rule from one year to three years for corporation tax and income tax. The change will provide previously profitable businesses that have been forced into loss with extra flexibility to carry back up to £2 million of losses against historical profits and achieve an additional tax refund to help them to continue trading through this difficult period. I note that the measure has been welcomed by both the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Chartered Institute of Taxation.

In the 2021 Budget, the Government announced that they would increase the flexibility of the UK’s loss regime in order to provide additional cash-flow support to businesses. Currently, a business that incurs a trading loss over the course of its accounting period is able to carry that loss back to be relieved against taxable profits in the previous year. There is no limit on the value of losses that may be carried back to reduce last year’s profit. That is in addition to businesses’ ability to use losses to offset in-year profit or to carry forward against future years’ profit. We are temporarily extending that one-year loss carry-back rule to three years to support business cash flow, giving businesses greater flexibility to monetise their losses sooner, rather than carrying them forward to offset against profit in future years.

The changes made by clause 18 and schedule 2 will extend the loss carry-back facility from one year to three years. Unincorporated businesses will be able to carry back up to £2 million in trading losses incurred in each of the tax years 2020-21 and 2021-22. Incorporated businesses can carry up to the same amount of losses incurred in accounting periods ending in each of the financial years 2020 and 2021. HMRC expects around 130,000 companies to be in a position to take advantage of the policy and to receive additional relief for their trading losses. It is also expected that over 99% of claimant businesses will be unaffected by the overall cap.

The clause and the schedule also include provisions to ensure that the cap is applied proportionately across businesses and groups. Groups will need to allocate the £2 million cap across their companies, but in order to maintain the simplicity for smaller businesses, companies intending to carry back less than £200,000 of losses will not be subject to this requirement, and nor will unincorporated businesses.

Amendment 2 seeks to amend section 127(3A) of the Income Tax Act 2007 to allow for the extended carry-back rule to apply to losses incurred in UK furnished holiday letting businesses. However, the relief granted in the Bill is an extension of relief for businesses that already qualify for loss carry-back relief. There is no intention to make loss carry-back relief in its current or extended form available to other businesses.

I recognise that there is currently an incorrect reference to UK furnished holiday lettings businesses in the Bill as introduced in the House. That was included because UK furnished holiday lettings businesses are treated as trades for the purpose of part 4 of the 2007 Act, which relates to loss relief. However, as those businesses are not entitled to make the necessary claim for the existing loss carry-back relief, they cannot claim the extended relief. I have therefore tabled amendment 16 to remove that reference, and thus make the Government’s intention clear. I therefore urge the hon. Member for Glasgow Central not to put amendment 2 to a vote.

New clause 10 would require the Government to review the impact of clause 18 on levels of tax avoidance, tax evasion and tax revenues. The Government publish information every year on the tax gap, including that part of it relating to tax avoidance and evasion. That kind of information is already in the public domain. The tax information and impact note for the measure before the Committee already indicates its expected effect on tax yields. I therefore do not believe that a review is necessary, and urge Members to reject the new clause.

The policy overall will support businesses by providing accelerated relief for losses in the form of a cash refund of tax paid when times were good, to help them to continue trading through this difficult period.

[Alison Thewliss]

Amendment 2 has the opposite aim, I suppose, to Government amendment 16. We proposed to update the Income Tax Act 2007 so that the extended loss carry-back rules in the Bill, in relation to furnished holiday lettings businesses, would have effect, whereas the Government clearly intend that the measure will no longer apply to those businesses.

In tabling our amendment we assumed that the Government had drafted their measure incorrectly and had accidentally excluded the people in question, but clearly we were wrong. They have not excluded them as much as they had hoped to, and are coming back to double down on that exclusion by means of amendment 16. Our technical amendment would help the sector, and we are keen for the Government to take it on board.

The Low Incomes Tax Reform Group has also raised the wider implications of clause 18 and the potential for unintended consequences and pitfalls resulting from the interaction between any tax refund and universal credit. Has the Minister given that any consideration? The group feels that there has been a significant increase in claims for universal credit during the pandemic—it is clearly evidenced—including from self-employed individuals and limited company directors who may never have needed to claim such support before the pandemic.

Under the universal credit legislation, self-employed income for a universal credit monthly assessment period is calculated by taking actual receipts in the assessment period and deducting any amounts allowed as expenses, tax, national insurance and any relievable pension contributions in that period. The group points out that receipts specifically include any refund or repayment of income tax, VAT or national insurance contributions related to a trade, profession or vocation, so any tax refund made as a result of the provision may therefore fall to be treated as income for universal credit purposes in the assessment period in which it is received, which in most cases will lead to a reduction of universal credit of 63p for every £1 of refund. In addition, further to that, if the refund is large enough, it might trigger the surplus earnings rules, meaning that any excess income in one assessment period can be carried forward and treated as income in the next assessment period, up to a maximum of six months.

It would be helpful if the Minister said whether the Government are aware of the issue and what plans they have to raise new universal credit claimants’ awareness of it, so that they can understand that if they receive the refund while they are in receipt of universal credit, they will need to report it as income for universal credit purposes. They will have to understand the implications fully.

This is an unintended issue arising from the pandemic. People who have never claimed universal credit before, who may have recourse to the provisions that the Government are making, will not understand how the two things interact. They might not have access to appropriate financial advice, and I would not want the Treasury or HMRC to be doing something on one hand that the Department for Work and Pensions did not understand on the other. What discussions has the Minister had with DWP Ministers, and what information does he intend to give out to people? As the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group points out, there could be implications that have not been considered.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and for his support for this important legislation. Although not related to this clause, I thank him for the support the Labour party has given on the issue of the loan charge. These are important ways to curb forms of abuse of the rules that may mean people do not pay appropriate levels of tax, so I am grateful for that support.

On the last point that the hon. Gentleman raised, I am afraid that it was an unfortunate and slightly misinformed debate in Committee of the whole House, in part because there was a suggestion that somehow clause 21 benefited only umbrella companies and should be struck out, and that the effect of striking it out would somehow mean that workers would receive agency rights by working through agencies’ payrolls. In fact, that is not correct. Clause 21 has no bearing on workers receiving rights, and it also ensures that the rules apply correctly to agencies, and indeed to a wider group, such as employees on secondment. The effect of the amendment proposed in Committee of the whole House would have been to gut the legislation, which is why the Government opposed it.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 21 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 22

Payments on termination of employment

[Alison Thewliss]

I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 22, page 17, line 17, after “then” and before “ – ” insert

“where it is to the benefit of the employee the following calculation may be used”.

This amendment would ensure that, in new subsection 402D(6A) ITEPA03 to be inserted by FB clause 22(7), the method of calculating post-employment notice pay (PENP) for certain employees paid by equal monthly instalments whose post-employment notice period is not a whole number of months continues to be an alternative method that can be used if it benefits the employee, rather than being compulsory.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

I thank the hon. Members for Glasgow Central and for Ealing North. I do not think that we need to spend too long on this. Clause 22 makes changes to the taxation of termination payments. It was published in draft and announced in a ministerial statement in July 2020. The measure has been set out in the explanatory notes and in Opposition speeches, and I will not spend too much time on them now.

The clause alters the calculation used to define the amount of a termination payment that should be taxed as post-employment notice pay. This is when an unworked notice period is not in whole months but an individual is paid monthly. Secondly, as hon. Members mentioned, the clause brings post-employment notice pay paid to non-UK residents within the charge to UK tax. I am grateful for the support of the Labour Opposition on that.

In terms of the amendment, I am not surprised that the hon. Member for Glasgow Central slightly stuttered over what is a formidably technical matter, but I think we can digest the point very simply. There is currently no single way of calculating the payments. Amendment 1 seeks to make the calculation alternative rather than mandatory for the purposes of post-employment notice pay. I remind her and the Committee that the new calculation is more accurate for employees paid by equal monthly instalments, and that it is more straightforward for employers to administer a single mandatory calculation rather than having to choose between two alternative calculations. It is therefore just a better and more effective way of discharging the policy intent, and I urge her not to put the amendment to a vote.

[Alison Thewliss]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 22 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 23

Cash equivalent benefit of a zero-emissions van

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

The clause makes changes to ensure that employees who receive certain long-term salary sacrifice benefits do not lose entitlement to a tax advantage if they begin to receive statutory parental bereavement pay.

The optional remuneration arrangement legislation introduced on 6 April 2017 largely removed the income tax and national insurance contributions advantages for most employment-related benefits provided through salary sacrifice schemes. Transitional rules for relevant long-term benefits allow the benefit valuation rules prior to the optional remuneration arrangement legislation to apply until 5 April 2021, provided that there is no variation in an employee’s employment contract. The relevant long-term benefits are employer-provided living accommodation, relevant school fees arrangements and certain employer-provided vehicles. Statutory payments are normally treated as a variation in contract, but those were specifically listed and disregarded in the 2017 optional remuneration arrangement legislation.

On 6 April 2020, a new statutory payment, statutory parental bereavement pay, was introduced under the Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act 2018. The payment is payable to employed parents or partners of a parent who loses a child, whether biological, adoptive or born to a surrogate, under the age of 18, or who suffers a stillbirth from 24 weeks. This statutory payment is not listed in the 2017 optional remuneration arrangement legislation as one that may be disregarded as a variation in contract, as it did not exist at the time.

Where an employee is in receipt of statutory parental bereavement pay, therefore, and one or more of the relevant long-term benefits through a salary sacrifice arrangement, the variation to employment conditions under the optional remuneration arrangement legislation meant that they would lose entitlement to the income tax and national insurance contribution advantages of receiving the benefit in that manner.

The clause therefore includes statutory parental bereavement pay as a statutory payment that will be disregarded under the 2017 optional remuneration arrangement legislation. The clause will disregard statutory parental bereavement pay as a variation in contract under the optional remuneration arrangement legislation, ensuring that employees in receipt of one of the long-term benefits and statutory parental bereavement pay will be subject to the original remuneration arrangement rules, which continue to provide a tax advantage until 5 April 2021.

New clause 2 would require the Government to publish a report on the impact of clause 27. The Treasury carefully considers the impact of individual measures announced at fiscal events. This clause legislates for a temporary retrospective measure to protect a small number of individuals who receive a transitional benefit under the optional remuneration arrangements and statutory parental bereavement pay from losing their tax advantage in 2020-21. The legislation ceased to apply from 6 April 2021, so the clause will have no further impact. I therefore urge the hon. Member for Glasgow Central not to press the new clause to a vote.

[Alison Thewliss]

We of course welcome all moves to support parents through the difficult time of bereavement. Our new clause would require the Secretary of State to publish reports on the uptake of statutory bereavement pay. It is important that we encourage people to take it up and that we let people know it is available to them. If the Government are not monitoring that, it is difficult to tell how effective the policy is.

Bereaved parents must be given the space and the time to grieve at a time of unimaginable tragedy. A lot will not know that they are entitled to this provision should the worst happen. We welcome the Government’s move to introduce a statutory requirement for people in the event of the death of a child, and we welcome the provisions more generally. Our aim is to increase the uptake of the payment and public knowledge of it.

In Scotland, we are certainly doing everything we can, within the constitutional and financial constraints placed on us, to support parents. We are increasing funeral support payments to reflect the cost of living. The 2020-21 Budget includes £1.3 million for funeral support payments in Scotland, increasing the standard rate from £700 to £1,000. The UK Government have not built the cost of inflation into their awards, but we will certainly be doing that for ours. It is important to take that cost into account when considering the whole package of support that can be delivered for bereaved parents.

Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) has been pushing for an increase in bereavement leave for everybody in all circumstances, particularly given this last year, during which things have been so difficult for so many people across the country. Many employers still do not give the bereavement leave that they should when people are in such circumstances. I urge the Government to consider expanding bereavement leave to everybody in all circumstances. While it is incredibly important for parents, it is important that everybody has the time, space and financial backing to grieve. Sadly, many people do not have that vital support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

I rise to support the clause; I think it is absolutely the right thing to do. May we have more information on how many people have received such payments since 2009? It would be useful to have a picture of how many people have benefited from this.

[Jesse Norman]

Of course, HMRC does not disclose information about individual taxpayers. It has not made any income tax deductions on payments already made to potential victims. I am not aware of whether it has the data, but I am happy to check and, if it does, I will respond to the hon. Lady.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 35 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 37

Relief for losses etc

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

If I may just say, the hon. Gentleman is wrong. We are not talking about a claim that is not validated by third parties; it is understood internationally that the scheme is one of the most generous in the world. He will be aware that the issue is subject to legal challenge, which limits what I can say, but I can tell him that the Government are well aware that some self-employed people found that their eligibility for the scheme was affected if they had taken time out of their trade in 2018-19, which is why, in June last year, the scheme’s eligibility criteria were revised to ensure that people in that situation were able to claim self-employment income support.

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

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the UK Government have consistently failed to prioritise support for women on maternity leave. Despite the issue being raised by me and a host of others repeatedly in this House, the UK Government were taken to judicial review last week by Joeli Brearley and the tireless campaigners at Pregnant Then Screwed. Do the UK Government now accept that it is not a sabbatical, sick leave or a holiday—it is maternity leave? Will they end their discrimination against 75,000 self-employed mothers?

[Jesse Norman]

I am not sure whether the sound system was working but, as the hon. Lady will know from my previous remarks, the issue is subject to legal challenge so I cannot discuss it. I will say, though, that I met maternity groups as part of the excluded in early December, and we have taken steps to remedy the situation, where we have been able to do so, in relation to those who took time out in the year 2018-19.

Taxation (Post-transition Period) Bill

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 15th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss]

I also wish to thank the Minister and the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), for the way in which this debate has been conducted, as well as the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) for his contributions, which were typically detailed. There is one point of detail that I was quite surprised that he missed. I have been saving this up the end, just in the hope that he might have picked up on it. He has waxed lyrical about sovereignty, as he does in every single debate I think he has ever spoken in, but I am quite surprised that he allowed to fly the EU setting the level of taxation on aviation gasoline. The reason that I am quite surprised about that, in the most ludicrous of ludicrous Brexit-based patriotic ironies, is that avgas is the fuel used not just in private and leisure aircraft, as the Minister set out, but in Spitfires, Hurricanes and other similar planes. There is some mad irony in the UK Government handing over to the EU the power to set the taxation on those vintage planes that bear so much patriotism among so many people.

I suppose that it is typical of the Government’s approach to all of this that there is so much detail in the Bill that we cannot possibly see—

[Jesse Norman]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Alison Thewliss]

Of course.

[Jesse Norman]

Will the hon. Lady tell us how much extra cost filling a Spitfire with fuel will incur according to this extra avgas taxation?

[Alison Thewliss]

I think the Minister knows well that it is the principle of the EU continuing to set the fuel duty rate, rather than the cost of it. Conservative Members know well about all these principles—they are principles of patriotism that they hold dear. The Minister has allowed this to slide in and he has done very well not to alert their suspicions on it.

[Jesse Norman]

I think we can all have a patriotism that is rich and bold enough to incur an extra £10 on a 450-litre tank of avgas.

[Alison Thewliss]

I thank the Minister for that detail. If he can tell me the further details on the questions that I have not yet had answered from the previous day’s debate, that would be welcome. I can go through the things that he has not yet answered and have him answer all those, if he has that particular detail to hand. I thank him for that and look forward to letters appearing in my letterbox with the detail at some stage.

Other letters that have not yet appeared are those from Baroness Davidson and the former Secretary of State for Scotland, who both threatened to resign if Northern Ireland got any special treatment in these negotiations, yet that is exactly what we have as a result of this legislation. As the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said, it gets the “best of both worlds” in this deal—it gets to be in the EU and part of this Union—and yet Scotland is not getting any of that. Scotland is getting thoroughly ripped off as a result of the deal.

The Minister talked about strengthening the Union, but the Union is slipping away from the Government’s grasp. By every action that they take in this legislation, Scotland sees further and further how we are being undermined and left behind by this Government. They do not give much of a toss about Scotland—they are pushing their own Brexit agenda, and the rest of us can put up with it.

The Minister mentioned the additional paperwork that is coming. Northern Ireland in particular is being wound up in a giant Christmas ball of red tape as a result of the legislation. He talked about 11 million extra declarations and paperwork. That is more than 265 additional bits of form-filling that will happen after Brexit. The Government used to talk about getting rid of all the red tape, but in fact they are increasing it. They used to talk about taking powers back from the bureaucrats in Brussels, whereas in fact they are giving them back to bureaucrats in Whitehall, out of sight of this House.

We still do not know whether the transition period is ending, and with 16 days to go we still do not know what we are going to transition to. This Government have made an absolute mess of the four and a half years that they have had. We have absolutely no confidence in the direction that they are going and, with 16 polls in Scotland now showing support for independence consistently over the past months, we can see exactly where Scotland is going. It should be going there as soon as possible.

Taxation (Post-transition Period) (Ways and Means)

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Gentleman says sovereignty. I am not sure he really understands that either.

The UK Government have not known what they wanted from this situation from the start. I commend the Brexiteers on the Conservative Benches. They have taken this as far as it can go and they have got what they wanted. Perhaps they knew what they wanted, but the Government have not had a clue. That has been clear all the way through and that is part of the reason we are in the difficulties we are in.

The resolutions in front of us do not represent clever negotiating tactics by the UK Government. On the Opposition Benches, on the Government Benches and in Brussels, everyone can see quite plainly the Government’s recklessness in this scenario. At every stage of this laborious and unnecessary process, they have sought to undermine trust in proceedings. Any remaining shreds of goodwill that the UK Government have internationally are in absolute tatters. The UK Government are at the wind-up at a time when we no longer have time to waste. An EU diplomat quoted in the Financial Times this morning said that the moves of the UK Government amounted to the UK

“trying to use rogue behaviour as leverage”.

Presumably the UK Government have caved today in taking the clauses out of the Bill, but we have to ask why they were there in the first place. How does it help us to say that we will break international law? It is a pretty basic principle that the Government have breached. Presumably, if the negotiations take a further slide backwards, the clauses can be put back in again. With apologies to Mark Durkan, because it is the kind of thing he would have said, it is hokey-cokey legislation.

It is perhaps not a surprise to those of us in Scotland that the Prime Minister and this Tory Government would sell a devolved nation down the river in order to appease those on the more extreme fringes of their party—

[Jesse Norman]

Did the hon. Lady say that the Government had sold someone down the river?

[Alison Thewliss]

Devolution. If the Minister was paying attention, I said devolution has been sold down the river—

[Jesse Norman]

That is a most inappropriate term to use, if I may say so.

[Alison Thewliss]

But devolution has been fundamentally undermined—perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will like that phrasing better. Devolution has been fundamentally undermined by the actions of the Government in the internal market Bill yesterday, ripping up the very principles by which devolution was established 20 years ago. Scotland did not vote for any of this—not in the EU referendum, not in either of the snap general elections this Government have called, and not in the European elections—not once, but we are being dragged off the cliff edge anyway.

Even before the pandemic, modelling suggested that a no deal would decrease Scotland’s GDP by 6.1%, considerably more than even the 2008 crash. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that a no deal Brexit on 1 January would inflict a cost on the UK economy of about £40 billion, and increase unemployment by 300,000 next year. All this while the UK economy is already among the worst performing in the OECD due to the UK Government’s shambolic handling of covid.

Jim Harra, the head of HMRC, confirmed at the Treasury Committee yesterday that doing the paperwork alone for this will cost business an eye-watering £7.5 billion a year. That is £7.5 billion that businesses will not have to spend on improving their businesses, increasing staff wages or investing in productivity. There will be 265 million customs forms after Brexit, compared with 54 million now. What a complete and utter waste of everyone’s time and money, and nobody put that on the side of a bus.

Not content with inflicting damage on our economy, these resolutions and the behaviour of the UK Government throughout this process permanently damage and erode trust in the devolution settlement. We are seeing a shameless power grab of state aid powers that should have been devolved, quite rightly, to the Scottish Parliament.

There is still time to pull back from the no deal cliff edge. The choice is entirely the Prime Minister’s to make. It is as clear as day that Westminster is acting against Scotland’s interests. It is little wonder to any of us on these Benches that the majority of Scots now support independence. One of those people who supported Scottish independence relentlessly was Craig Munro, who passed away just recently, and our thoughts are with his sister Gail and his son Sam. They will be devastated that he will not be here to see independence when it comes, because it is there to be won for all of us. More and more people are seeing the urgent need for independence to protect Scotland’s place in Europe and all the powers that we have come to enjoy through devolution. Scotland will complete that journey. The UK Government’s behaviour through all of this is only hastening that journey’s end.

Finance Bill

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting & Report: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 2nd July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss]

Like everybody, I acknowledge these extraordinary times. The world has changed since the Budget was announced in March. All the certainties that we used to rely upon are gone, and things that we thought that the Government would never do, never say or never spend money on are suddenly things that are no barrier whatever. That goes some way to show that the Government can do a lot more when they want to, and that should give us some hope that they may go back on things they have said before.

I wish to take this opportunity to thank everybody who has contributed to debates on the Bill. I thank the Clerks and the Bill team, who have been so incredibly helpful; I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your sage advice; and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn), whose first Finance Bill this is and who has done a fantastic job representing both his constituents and the party.

I also thank our researchers, Scott Taylor and Jonathan Kiehlmann, who have supported us so well throughout this process—with all the amendments that we tabled and having to learn about everybody else’s amendments, it has been a huge challenge to keep up but they have risen to it admirably—and Mhairi Love in my office, who has also done an incredible job while studying for her exams and completing a dissertation. She has provided support to me throughout all that and I thank her for it. I thank the people on Twitter who think I talk too quickly. I swear that I am making an effort to slow down; this is just how I speak.

I repeat the call for evidence that I made at the start of the Bill’s progress. A Finance Bill Committee should be able to take evidence. Other Bill Committees in this House have the practice—for example, the Domestic Abuse Bill Committee for England and Wales took evidence from experts. It seems absolutely ludicrous that Finance Bills, which affect so many different aspects of everybody’s lives, do not take evidence from experts at the start and instead rely on getting written evidence and us scrutinising that written evidence, rather than being able to ask questions about the Government’s policies and find the best way through. I also reiterate that some kind of standing committee on the Budget is very much required to keep an eye on what the Government are doing and how effective their policies and proposals are.

Many questions remain at the end of this Budget process, and I suppose the first of those is whether we will be back here for another Budget in the autumn. Issues such as the loan charge and IR35 are not going away, as much as the Government would like them to. We cannot predict the course of the coronavirus, but we do know that the UK Government’s handling of it has been far from impressive. As I said yesterday, I fear a return to mass unemployment. The Treasury has the toughest of decisions to make, but it ought to put wellbeing and people first, because if we do not have that, we will not have much else to go with afterwards.

[Jesse Norman]

The hon. Lady has raised the loan charge; we did not really get a sense of it yesterday, but is the SNP in favour of the loan charge as a substantive matter or against it?

[Alison Thewliss]

We believe that there are still many questions to be answered on the loan charge, not least the revelations in the press during the week over the FOI request that have raised more questions. We want to see further probing on the issue and further support for those people who have ended up losing not only their livelihoods but their homes—and some have lost their lives. It is no light-hearted matter to be considered in such a flippant way.

If the Financial Secretary to the Treasury wants to prevent scarring in the economy, he must encourage his colleague the Chancellor to be bolder next week. He must keep the job retention scheme and the self-employment support scheme going, and he must fill the gaps in those schemes when he makes his announcement next week, because too many people have lost out and too many sectors are not yet back to full strength. When that change comes—when people have to pay more of the wage costs themselves—we will see more and more employers doing what many employers have done this week and simply deciding to hand back the keys, fire their staff and wind up their companies. And the unemployment figures will soar.

Finance Bill (Tenth sitting)

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 10th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 18th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Alison Thewliss]

People can promise things in the never-never—perhaps that will happen, but we do not quite know. But how Scotland ends up getting governed should not be down to whether votes in England sway one way or the other. We would do a far better job of governing ourselves, as many small independent countries around the world do. Many small independent countries are also making a much better fist of dealing with the coronavirus crisis than the UK is—in fact, most countries in the world are, never mind small ones. Look at how well New Zealand has managed the crisis, and how well it has been able to come out of it, under the brilliant leadership of Jacinda Ardern. We have a lot to learn from other countries about how to do things better in so many ways.

We are very supportive of Labour’s new clause 3 and of the complementary new clauses 18 and 21, which I tabled. New clause 18 seeks assessments of the impact of the Bill within a month on various economic variables, comparing situations in which the Treasury ceases or continues its covid-19 support schemes for the next year.

The likely reality is that when the schemes are discontinued, as planned, the economy and people’s living standards will be sent reeling. We know that from the many studies that have been done of people who have taken up the coronavirus job retention scheme—the majority of uptake of the scheme in the hospitality and tourism industries is significant. YouGov polling out yesterday suggested that a huge number of people would lay off their staff if the schemes were withdrawn. The Government need to listen carefully to the experience of people in those sectors on the impact of withdrawing too early.

We feel it is important that that is looked at in the context of the Finance Bill. As everyone has seen, as the Finance Bill progressed from the Budget to where we are now, the world in which we are living changed—changed dramatically—for so many people and their living standards. For the Government to have such a review seems wise.

The schemes covered by new clause 18 are the job retention scheme, the business interruption loan scheme, the bounce-back loan scheme and the self-employed support scheme. We know that the Chancellor has said that he will do “whatever it takes” to protect jobs, but we also know—I am a member of the Treasury Committee, and we have found that from the evidence received from many—that more than 1 million people have fallen through the gaps in the schemes. We need to understand what impact that and the measures in the Finance Bill will have on those groups.

Earlier, the Office for National Statistics revealed that in April the UK’s economy suffered its biggest monthly slump in GDP on record—20.4%—due to the pandemic. We therefore think that it would be wise for the Government to expand the support schemes, rather than winding them down. That is also critical for the devolved nations, which are moving at a slightly different pace, due to the circumstances in which we find ourselves, hence why we want to look at the different nations as well.

In new clause 21, we ask the Government to report on the effects of the Bill in a number of different business sectors. Different sectors will be differently affected. The sectors mentioned in the new clause include leisure, retail, hospitality and tourism, all of which we know from our constituency experiences have been severely hit, with retailers having real problems and many in the leisure sector perhaps falling outwith some of the schemes and finding it very difficult to get started up again. As I mentioned earlier, some businesses in my constituency were unable to access the support for various technical reasons. Financial services, business services, health life/medical services, haulage and logistics and aviation have also been severely impacted. Many bus firms and tour firms are struggling to keep going, which will impact on schools as they return. Many are rural schools and so rely on the transport sector to move pupils around. Those factors need to be considered as well.

My hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) has spoken a great deal about the impact on the aviation sector, which, in turn, will have a huge impact on the behaviour of BA. The way it is currently treating its staff is absolutely appalling.

We also want to talk about professional sport and oil and gas, which my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South covered so well earlier. Universities will be hugely impacted by the number and ability of foreign students to come here to work, study and live. Those universities have been in contact with me—indeed, several are based in my constituency and several neighbour my constituency —saying that they are very concerned about their future, which the Government have not really talked about to any great extent. Fairs, too, face problems. I have many show people based in my constituency, and they are also very concerned about the loss of their season and their ability to continue trading, because they do rely on that public-facing role—opening up the funfair to people, taking money and exchanging cash. Without that, they have no income at all. They have very few alternatives. Many may operate things such as snack bar vans, which, again, have not been operating to the same extent as previously.

We are keen to press the Government on these things and to understand the impact of what has been proposed here and to see what schemes are running. I am very happy to move these new clauses in my name and the names of my hon. Friends.

[Jesse Norman]

I rise to urge the Committee to reject these new clauses. Let me say a few things about them and then I will turn to the comments that have been made.

New clause 1 would require the Chancellor to conduct an impact assessment on the effect of household incomes on GDP in each part of the United Kingdom and in each region of England. New clause 18 would require the Government to conduct a review within one month of Royal Assent, of the effect of the Bill on the nations and regions of the United Kingdom if the Government’s main coronavirus support schemes continue for the next year—a hypothetical case if that be so—or if they were ended or changed in any way by a Minister of the Crown. The SNP’s new clause 21 would require the Chancellor to make an assessment of the impact of the legislation on a large number of different sectors and to lay a report of that assessment before the House of Commons within six months of Royal Assent.

We do not think that any of those clauses are necessary. I should remind the Committee that, apart from the provisions relating to the main rates of income tax, provisions in this Bill will apply across the whole of the United Kingdom and will directly benefit households and businesses in every part of the country. They have been developed with careful consideration of their impact on all regions and sectors of the United Kingdom. It is worth just saying that Ministers assess individual measures as well as the package as a whole for the differential impacts that they may have on each part of the UK throughout the policy development process, and they are under a statutory duty to assess the equalities impact of the provisions contained in the Bill, and those have been analysed and published.

In addition, the Treasury publishes extensive distributional analysis of the impacts of this Bill, together with the impact of the Government’s decisions on welfare and public services. What that amounts to is a rigorous and detailed record of the impact of the Government’s policies on households. The Office for National Statistics also publishes monthly estimates of GDP, and analysis of the impact of Government decisions on GDP is also carried out by the Office for Budget Responsibility, which is itself independent.

Therefore, between those checks and balances and that degree of inbuilt institutional consideration and the packages of support that we have offered, I think that it should be fairly plain that these new clauses are not required. We continue to monitor the impact of the coronavirus crisis closely as well as the response to the schemes that have been put in place. It is right that we should do so alongside the general continuous review of tax and the economy in relation to policy.

Let me remind the Committee that the Government have a commitment to consult—and they do consult—regularly on new tax policy and tax legislation in order to make sure that as wide a range of views and impacts as possible are captured during the tax policy-making process. We have touched on that matter in a previous discussion.

Let me come quickly to the points raised by the hon. Members opposite. The hon. Member for Ilford North rightly highlighted the levelling-up agenda, and he was fully justified in doing so. He said that London was a global city and should be understood as such, but that the Government’s attention should properly be on all the regions and nations of the country, and of course I share that view.

The hon. Gentleman talked about centralisation within the Treasury. I have been a trenchant critic of centralisation in the Treasury historically and on the public record, and I think it reached a bit of an apogee under the last Labour Government—I would say that, wouldn’t I? But I still think it is true—there was a tendency to view every problem as potentially soluble by tweaking the marginal costs and benefits of a system. In some respects, we have had to counteract that tendency in order to give us more of an inclusive view of what ultimately are a set of devolved settlements as well as a UK picture.

The hon. Member for Glasgow Central said something that I thought was quite bold: that the Scottish Government would do a far better job of governing Scotland than the UK Government do within a UK national framework. Of course, the UK does not govern Scotland; it has areas that are reserved and areas that are devolved, and many areas, including higher education, are devolved in Scotland.

I must say that I share the high regard that the hon. Member for Ilford North has for the history of higher education in Scotland. He will know that for many hundreds of years there were two universities in England and five in Scotland, which represented and reflected a high-quality orientation and a commitment to higher education. Unfortunately, it is in the record that Scottish higher education has not made the same kind of progress under the Scottish National party Government, particularly in relation to minorities and equalities, which is a terrible, terrible shame. I wish it were otherwise. So I would not accept the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Glasgow Central, but I will invite the Committee to reject these clauses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South. She has gone into extensive detail, and I am sure everybody will be glad to know that I do not aim to repeat what she said, but the notion of the tax gap, and the fact that money is not coming in that our public services desperately need, particularly at this time, is very serious. The UK Government should be seized of the significance of this, and should do everything they can to eliminate the tax gap.

In many cases, the tax gap arises because of the complexity of our tax system. Those who are looking for loopholes—who are looking not to pay their taxes, and to divert and dodge—find ample opportunity to do so. It is not acceptable that this and successive Governments have played whack-a-mole with all these tax schemes as they have appeared. As soon as one appears, the Government shut it down, and then another one, or several more, emerge. A whole lot more needs to be done on anti-avoidance, rather than our being reactive to all this. A comprehensive anti-avoidance rule, and measures to make sure that the tax that is supposed to come in does so, ought to be a priority for the Government.

Our new clause—it is similar to Labour’s new clause, which we fully support—states:

“The Chancellor…must review the effects on tax revenues”

of the measures in the Act and bring that review before the House of Commons. It asks that

“any change attributable to the provisions in this Act in the difference between the amount of tax required to be paid…and the amount paid”

be reported on.

However, I want to touch more on Scottish limited partnerships, because this issue is not going away. The Government have failed to deal with it comprehensively. There is a continuing problem, both in respect of Companies House and in respect of how the partnerships are dealt with; that includes fines not being enforced and collected. Again, that money should be in the Government’s bank account, but if they are not going to enforce the rules, they will not get the fines. The fines would have been quite substantial had they been enforced since the measures came into place a couple of years ago.

The system allows those with an intent to conceal or deceive to do so easily by registering in secret as an SLP. These vehicles have a legal personality that makes them quite different from English limited liability partnerships. It means that individuals can make agreements in the name of the financial product without ever having to name the person or the people who control it. They have been used for years to funnel millions of pounds of dirty money created by illicit business activities, and this is still ongoing.

I can quote headlines to the Committee. There is, “How a Scots council house was secret base for criminals busting Putin sanctions”. There is one about Scotland’s firms and bribes to Argentina and Uzbekistan. There is, “Russian gang leader jailed for faking metal exports to Scotland”, and “Ukrainian mercenaries are using Scottish ‘tax haven’ firm as front”. There are headlines about money coming through Baltic banks, the effect on issues in Peru and a private war in Libya funded by Scottish funds. These are all current or previous issues in which Scottish limited partnerships have been involved. As I said in a previous debate, this is having an impact on Scotland’s reputation in the world. Most recently, just last month, David Leask and Richard Smith, who have been brilliant campaigners on this issue, revealed that more than 700 British firms have been blacklisted in Ukraine for suspicious activity related to money laundering across the former Soviet Union, and all involve Scottish limited partnerships.

That is why we in the SNP keep pushing on this issue; that is why it is so important to us. There is dirty money going around the world, fuelled in part by SLPs and the way in which they work. Also, the Government are not collecting tax on any of this money, and that contributes to the tax gap—the money that is not going to the Exchequer—as well as to global criminality.

If the Minister will not accept the new clause—given all the new clauses that the Government have not accepted, I suspect that they will not accept this one either—I urge him, at the very least, to listen to my concerns and those of campaigners about SLPs, and to take action to close the loopholes, including by fining the companies that are still flouting the rules, which the Government are not doing, and making sure that the money collected goes to the Exchequer, where it can be spent for the benefit of all our constituents.

[Jesse Norman]

I thank the hon. Members for Houghton and Sunderland South, and for Glasgow Central, for their comments, which I will respond to in due course.

New clause 6 would require the Government to review all tax reliefs in the Bill within a year, while new clause 22 would require the Government to review the effect on tax revenue of the Bill within six months of it being passed into law. These amendments are not necessary. Let me deal first with new clause 6 and then turn to new clause 22.

As Members will know, the Government keep all tax reliefs under review, to ensure that they strike the right balance between simplicity, effective targeting and overall yield. When a new tax relief is announced at a fiscal event, the Government publish estimates of the Exchequer impacts of the policy change in the Budget document.

The Government also consult on new tax reliefs and proposed changes to tax reliefs, bringing in external expertise as part of the policy-making cycle. Officials are constantly working on ways to improve policy development and administration, and management of reliefs.

The Government also conduct evaluations, including of a number of quite significant reliefs, such as research and development expenditure credit, or R&D tax credits, and entrepreneurs’ relief. In 2015, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs published an evaluation of R&D tax credits. In 2017, it commissioned an evaluation of entrepreneurs’ relief that led to a series of reforms—most recently, in Budget 2020, a significant reduction in the lifetime limit. HMRC will continue to monitor and evaluate reliefs, and it will bring forward a pipeline of further evaluations in due course.

HMRC is also considering—very much at my insistence—a proposal for a more systematic evaluation programme for tax reliefs, which would respond to the concern raised by the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South, and it already monitors the effect of tax reliefs on taxation revenue.

HMRC issues an annual tax reliefs statistics publication, which includes estimates of the costs of tax reliefs. It is also undertaking a project to expand its published cost information, and I am pleased to remind the Committee that in May HMRC published cost estimates for a further 47 previously uncosted tax reliefs.

New clause 22 would require the Government to review the impact of the Bill on tax revenues within six months of it receiving Royal Assent. As I have said, the Government keep all taxes under review, and will continue to measure and publish annual statistics on the tax gap.

HMRC’s annual “Measuring tax gaps” report estimates the difference between the amount of tax due to be paid to HMRC and what is actually paid. It provides a breakdown of different kinds of behaviour, taxpayer groups and changes over time. However, the tax gap report is retrospective, with some time lag, due to the dates on which data become available. For example, estimates for 2018-19 are due for publication in July 2020, with some components projected in this year.

In addition, data limitations mean the tax gap is not suitable for evaluation at a granular level. For this reason, it would not be possible to disaggregate the impact of the compliance, for example, of SLPs. Furthermore, the tax gap may rise or fall due to a number of external factors that are unrelated to the actions of the Government.

HMRC also publishes annual reports and accounts, which include detailed information on revenue collection and on additional yield from compliance activity. It is committed to providing transparency to taxpayers about its activities, and these publications are important in demonstrating that commitment.

I now come to some of the points made by the hon. Members for Houghton and Sunderland South, and for Glasgow Central. The hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South, who I welcome back to the Committee after her period of absence, is absolutely right that tax reliefs can play a valuable role. However, she is also right that there are reliefs that can and should be reduced. That is, as I have said, a matter on which the Government are closely focused.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

We will look at the effects of that and at whether it will be adequate to meet the challenge the Scottish Government have laid down for themselves.

We have now reached the end of this process. I have found it very exciting, and I thank all colleagues for the work that they have done. With that in mind, I reject the new clauses.

[Alison Thewliss]

I wish to press the new clause to a vote.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

Finance Bill (Ninth sitting)

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 9th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 18th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

It is regrettable that so many people are still waiting for their money through the Windrush compensation scheme. I urge the Minister to do everything he can to make sure that the money gets out the door.

It is useful that the clause allows for future schemes so that there will, hopefully, be fewer delays and less confusion for people in future about the impact of those schemes. We want to make sure that, where wrongs have been done, people can get the money that they are entitled to in compensation as swiftly as possible.

[Jesse Norman]

I thank both hon. Members for their comments. To pick up on the last point, the hon. Lady is absolutely right about the value of building in capacity to respond more quickly in future. It is noticeable that the Chartered Institute of Taxation, which is well respected across the Committee, commented that,

“This is a sensible move from the government to help… It is also encouraging to see that the bill…will make it easier in the future for payments…to be made tax-free, without the need for fresh legislation.”

That very much remakes the point she made, and I thank her for that.

On the point about the numbers paid out, I completely understand the concern and I know that other Ministers do as well. There is a balance between due process and speed. Of course, the compensation claims have to be agreed on both sides—the offers have to be accepted—for them to be payable. It is important that the hon. Members have put their concerns on the record, and I fully share them.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 99 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 14 agreed to.

Clause 100

HMRC: exercise of officer functions

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

I want to raise some of the concerns expressed to us by the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ Tax Law Review Committee, which sent an extensive note earlier in the week. It is looking for ministerial reassurance that the powers will not be used without proper consultation and discussion of safeguards to replace the discretionary decisions, especially about penalties, currently made by human officers. It is the discretionary point that I am most worried about. We must not get to a situation where computer says no and that is the end of the story, because sometimes it can be quite difficult for businesses to get the decision pulled back and unpicked, and reconsidered.

I will highlight the case of uploading real-time information, because businesses in my constituency had serious issues with the technology for uploading RTI prior to coronavirus and now find themselves unable to claim under the job retention scheme, for example. That has been an issue with technology, and it has been very difficult to resolve it. Meanwhile, those businesses are on the brink, on the point of going bust, with employees whom they are struggling to pay. That is because in an emergency it is difficult to unwind a technical, computer-based decision, made months ago.

I ask for reassurance about the automating of discretionary decisions. What safeguards will be put in place to ensure sure that no businesses find themselves in a situation where they cannot unpick a decision made by a computer, and to ensure that they will be able to speak to a human who has discretion and is able to exercise it effectively?

[Jesse Norman]

Again, I thank Opposition colleagues. Let me pick up a couple of the points raised. The hon. Member for Glasgow Central asks for safeguards, and of course she makes a very important wider point. In a rule of law society we want as little discretion as possible to be exercised—and, in particular, personal discretion—so it is important that within HMRC there is baked in a culture of accountability for decisions. From that point of view, nothing is changing. This measure is ratifying an existing set of arrangements by putting them on a legal basis. However, I can reassure her that the issue of safeguards and the balance of powers between HMRC and taxpayers is taken very seriously, and I have specifically commissioned work within HMRC to ensure that that balance is appropriately maintained, not just at customer level but more generally.

The hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Ilford North raised the question of decision making more generally. I think I have, in a way, spoken to that, but I recognise that there is a distinction between the automated exercise of a decision and the capacity to make a decision itself. Of course, HMRC does increasingly rely on computerised systems, and it is absolutely right for our purposes as a nation that it should do so. It is, for example, inconceivable that we could have responded to coronavirus with either the self-employed scheme or the furlough scheme without heavy reliance on computing. It is to HMRC’s enormous credit that it was able to commission and bring into effect a platform and an approach to those schemes in a matter of weeks, using that computing expertise. I also agree with the hon. Gentleman when he points out that there are benefits not merely in terms of customer service, but in freeing up people and, we hope, improving the quality of work by taking HMRC staff away from the more routine operations and more towards higher quality work that can give more professional satisfaction.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 100 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 101

Returns relating to LLP not carrying on business etc with view to profit

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jesse Norman]

I am winding up, so perhaps I could let the hon. Lady introduce her point in her speech.

When their engagement meets the tests of an employment relationship, contractors should not pay less tax than those who are directly employed. I therefore move that new clause 1 and new schedule 1 stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

We are obviously very concerned about the effects of coronavirus, which is precisely why we have delayed the implementation of the reform by a year. The message I would give is that we absolutely respect and support the work that those individuals are doing and understand the position they are in. The Government have rapidly made available very important sources of support for the economy across a whole range of different areas and sectors of work and, indeed, in the benefits system, both for businesses and families and the sustaining of jobs. Therefore, there is no absence of respect or support for the people the hon. Gentleman describes.

The hon. Member for Ilford North mentioned the diverse nature of these different forms of employment. He referred to the self-employed, but actually the self-employed are not taxed by this. The genuinely self-employed are not affected by the reform. The reform is designed merely to change the way in which the status of someone who is latently employed—actually employed, but perhaps unaware of it or not behaving on that basis—is determined. The hon. Member asks us to use the additional time appropriately. We have got before April 2021. I have said already, but let me say again that we are in the process of commissioning external research into the effect of the public sector reform. As he will be aware, the early research immediately after the public sector reform did not bear out the dire predictions regarding flexibility or reduction of income, but we will make sure that external research into the longer-term effects of the public sector reform is completed and placed in front of the House before April next year.

[Alison Thewliss]

Can I ask the Minister about the impact assessments that will be done? What monitoring is his Department doing of the chilling effect that this is having on contracts right now? What I am hearing from contractors in my constituency is that those contracts are not being renewed now and it is already having a chilling effect, regardless of when the measure is coming in. What monitoring is he doing of the situation?

[Jesse Norman]

As I have said, in relation to public sector reform, the external research did not detect any great chilling effect. We will be looking at the longer-term effects of public sector reform. On this reform, it is undoubtedly true that the measure is nudging some companies to consider whether people they had thought of as contractors are not, in fact, employees. In some cases, they are having to review the structure of their workforces. I do not think that is a chilling effect on the status of those contracts, because those people were always latently employed. It is then for the contractor and the company to work out what future arrangement they wish to have.

[Alison Thewliss]

The IT contractors from India who I mentioned earlier can choose to go anywhere in the world. They have chosen to locate in Glasgow because the work is there, the skills are there and they have a good community in my constituency. If the contracts are not there, they will take their skills and their money and go somewhere else. What is the Minister doing to mitigate against that?

[Jesse Norman]

That is a claim that the hon. Lady makes and we will be able to test it over time through external research. It is not a view that has been validated so far in the roll-out to the public sector. It is a diverse and vibrant area of our life and it may well have more resilience overall than she is giving it credit for, but we will not know until we have seen the effects of the reform.

The final point, raised by the hon. Member for Ilford North, is to do with rights. Of course, the measure is to do with the determination of tax due, but the Government have put in the Queen’s Speech a substantial commitment to bring forward a Bill in that area following the Taylor review. I know that my colleagues in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy take that very seriously.

Question put and agreed to.

New clause 1 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 2

Review of geographical effects of provisions of Sections 27 to 30

‘The Chancellor of the Exchequer must within twelve months of the passing of this Act lay before both Houses of Parliament a report assessing the differential geographical effects, broken down by nation and NUTS 1 statistical region, of the changes made by sections 27 to 30 of this Act.’—(Alison Thewliss.)

This new clause would require a geographical impact assessment of the clauses of the Bill relating to reliefs for business.

Brought up, and read the First time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wes Streeting]

The hon. Member for Glasgow Central makes a reasonable case—that will be a running theme throughout a number of new clauses, not least when we turn to new clause 3 in the afternoon session. I will make the points I want to make about the importance of reviewing the geographical impact of measures in the Finance Bill at that point, but I concur with her remarks.

[Jesse Norman]

I thank colleagues who have spoken. New clause 2 would require the Government to assess and report on the geographical effects of changes to business tax reliefs made by clauses 27 to 30 within 12 months. That relates specifically to the research and development expenditure credit, the structures and buildings allowance, and the treatment of intangible fixed assets.

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs does not routinely require businesses to provide geographical information about where expenditure is incurred as part of their claims for RDEC, SBA or intangible fixed assets treatment. In order to do so, changes would need to be made to the CT600 form, which would create a burden for businesses. In addition, those claiming the reliefs would only provide information after the year-end. For that reason, it does not make sense. It is not possible for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to have that information within the 12 months stipulated in the amendment. HMRC does in fact already publish annual statistics on many tax reliefs, including a detailed breakdown of R&D tax relief claims, which analyses, by region and sector, the number of claims and the amount of relief received. However, the regional analysis is based on the company’s registered office, not necessarily where expenditure is incurred.

Although the next set of annual R&D tax relief statistics will be published by HMRC in the autumn, companies can claim R&D tax relief up to two years after the end of their accounting period. For that reason, the 2020 statistical release will include claims only until 2018-19, and will therefore not include claims for the increased 13% RDEC rate. The Government do, of course, remain committed to levelling up every region and nation of the UK to spread opportunity and to ensure that everyone benefits from growth. For example, the spring Budget provided a £1.14 billion increase to block grants for devolved Administrations to spend on their own priorities. That is in addition to the £2.7 billion that the Government are investing in city deals across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with £800 million of funding being provided to support four deals in Wales alone, and a further £1.4 billion being provided across 10 deals in Scotland.

As we look to our economic recovery from the impact of covid-19, that levelling-up agenda will be more important than ever. Given that the Government already publish detailed analyses and that regional information is collected and held as part of HMRC’s tax returns, asking business to record further information would represent a significant additional business burden. I ask the Committee to reject the new clause.

[Alison Thewliss]

The Treasury Select Committee is also looking at regional imbalances. Part of the Committee’s work has identified that the data collected by the Government on a range of areas is not sufficient. It is not good enough for the Minister to say, “Oh, it’s difficult to do that.” I accept that money is not necessarily spent where an office is based, but it is a start in understanding where that money is going. If lots of organisations based in London are taking in the money and perhaps it is going somewhere else, the Government ought to be aware of that and ought to be looking at it to make sure that if somebody based in London is taking in the money but it is being spent somewhere else, then perhaps they should be based where the money is being spent. Perhaps they should be moving their offices to where the money is being spent. That puts it back on to those businesses, to add to that consideration, so I do not buy the Minister’s argument that it is awfully difficult and that we should not do it. It is a first step into looking at how it might be done, so I would like to press clause 2.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

Finance Bill (Eighth sitting)

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 16th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Alison Thewliss]

I want to comment briefly on the huge gap that exists within Companies House as part of this process. If we go after companies and directors that are involved in phoenixing, why can that not be stopped at source when those companies are registered at Companies House? Why is there no link to the Government’s Verify scheme for those who wish to register companies there? Companies House is obliged only to register the information, not to check whether any of the information is accurate, correct or related to any other kind of activity. It is not involved in anti-money laundering obligations, but it really should be. Will the Minister look carefully at the question of Companies House? That could be a key part of preventing phoenixing in the first place. For example, I have a friend who employed a builder to do work on his house for his disabled son. The builder went bust and phoenixed, as he has done on several occasions. My friend is out of pocket, and that company continues to trade. It is employing sub-contractors who lost out last time because there is nobody else to hire them in that small community. There needs to be a stop on those types of people and behaviours, and I urge the Minister to consider ensuring that Companies House is a big part of that.

[Jesse Norman]

I thank both hon. Members for their comments. I draw from them strong support for the clause, although it was caveated in the way they described. Let me address the issues that they raised.

The hon. Member for Ilford North asked, “Why not do this earlier?” There is a long-standing principle in company law that the corporate veil should not be pierced, and limited liability should exist in place. As he will recall, there was a moment not so long ago when HMRC had Crown preference and was always the first, or close to the first, creditor to get paid out. It then got moved to the back of the queue.

As we think about the current insolvency and abuse regime, there has been a process of further reflection on all the different aspects of it, and that inevitably includes the phenomenon that we have seen. My impression—I do not know whether it is true—is that phoenixism is a better recognised phenomenon and a more widely understood problem than it has been. This is part of a much wider effort that has been made—particularly since I have been Financial Secretary to the Treasury, but before that, too—to really push on the issue of avoidance and evasion, and that is what we are doing.

The hon. Gentleman also asked about process. It is a perfectly good, important question, and I have been through it myself with HMRC officials. I will not read out the conditions in each case, but there are central cases for the issuance of avoidance and evasion notices, avoidance and evasion facilitation notices, and repeated insolvency notices. Each has some quite specific criteria sitting underneath it. For avoidance and evasion facilitation notices, a company must have begun an insolvency procedure or given assurance that it will; it must have incurred a penalty for facilitating tax avoidance or evasion; there must be a serious risk that some or all of that liability will not be paid; and the person must have a relevant connection to the company at the time that the behaviour leading to the penalty occurs. There are important threshold tests that must be met, and there are appeals processes against notices that have been filed, which are designed to provide safeguards, for all the reasons that one might imagine.

I have a degree of sympathy for the point that the hon. Member for Glasgow Central makes about Companies House. In the promoter strategy, which we published at the time of the Budget, we looked to create a more integrated approach to trying to crack down on abusive avoidance and evasion, and the promotion of avoidance and evasion. It has been in part about pulling together different entities, one of which might be Companies House and another of which might be the Advertising Standards Authority, if the two had been outside the purview of a more traditional approach. I take the hon. Lady’s point, and I thank both hon. Members for their support for this important clause and schedule.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 97 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill

Schedule 12 agreed to.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

In new clause 12, we mention the issue of Scottish limited partnerships. I make no apology for doing so, as they are still a problem. We only need to look at the ongoing campaign journalism by Richard Smith and David Leask on this issue to know that Scottish limited partnerships are being used in nefarious ways to move money and goods around the world. They have been involved in war crimes and all kinds of things. The loopholes existing in Scottish limited partnerships and Companies House must be closed by the Government. They are harming not only individuals who suffer the effects of these crimes, but Scotland’s reputation. They are called Scottish limited partnerships, but Scotland really has no part in it; they are an historic arrangement, but they are governed here.

There are still people not doing the simplest things such as registering persons of significant control. The answer to my recent parliamentary question suggested that 948 companies have still not registered a person of significant control. That is dramatically down from where it was, but it tells me that people are using other means to hide their money, rather than going through Scottish limited partnerships, and that no Government fines have been levied on the 948 companies that have not registered a person of significant control. That is money that the Government could have in their pocket. They are deciding that they do not want to pursue that for their own reasons. It really does stick in my craw that this is a continual issue: I have to raise it on the Finance Bill and the Scottish National party has to raise it in this House.

We are also concerned about the tax gap. The tweaks being made here are not really going to change that significant gap. In June 2019, HMRC published revised estimates, which put the tax gap at £35 billion for 2017-18, representing 5.6% of total tax liabilities. The Minister, no doubt, will say that the tax gap has fallen—it has—but that does not disguise the fact that it still exists, and that tax is money that could be coming into the revenues. It could be supporting businesses and individuals across the country and we could be abolishing policies such as the two-child limit, because the money would be there in the Government’s bank account. The Government could use that money rather than not collecting it. I could go into great detail, which I have here, about all the anti-avoidance mechanisms that have happened. I am sure other hon. Members are as warm as I am and would like to get some fresh air, so I will skip that in the interest of the patience of all colleagues.

We do need workable general anti-avoidance rules. They must tackle tax avoidance in all its forms. They must not exempt existing established abuse from action being taken. They must include international tax abuse within their scope. They must give the right to the tax authority to take action against tax avoidance, defined in an objective fashion capable of being numerically assessed, without the consent of the unelected authority. They must increase the burden of proof on this issue on to the taxpayer.

In 2014, the coalition Government announced the introduction of a system of follower notices and accelerated payment notices. In cases where someone is in dispute over their assessment, HMRC may issue a follower notice if this arises from the use of an avoidance scheme that is the same or similar to arrangements that HMRC has successfully challenged in court. In July 2017, HMRC reported that it issued over 75,000 such notices worth in excess of £7 billion and managed to collect nearly £4 billion. That is still a significant gap of £3 billion. HMRC must be able to collect the taxes it is due in real time instead of waiting for those judicial decisions.

With Scottish limited partnerships, the extent of the abuse of the current system is laid bare in the Global Witness report “Getting the UK’s house in order”, which highlights the deficiencies at Companies House that have been going on for many years. This needs to be dealt with soon. Reviews have been carried out, things have been talked about, but there has not really been any action. It makes no sense to me that we have such a system but do not allow it to catch the people it should be catching.

I sat on the pre-legislative Joint Committee for the Registration of Overseas Entities Bill in the last Parliament. That Bill seems to have disappeared completely. It would help to tackle some of the money laundering that goes on with property registered in the UK. People across the country, particularly in many London boroughs, see blocks of flats with nobody living in them. People could live in those flats. They are being used for money laundering and moving money about. We need to bring that Bill back and ensure those people are held to account. We should close these loopholes in the system and ensure that the tax that is due is collected for the benefit of all of us.

[Jesse Norman]

I am grateful to colleagues for their contributions. I want to take up some of the points made by the hon. Member for Ilford North. The delicacy and agility in his ability to pivot from detailed scrutiny to a swingeing extension of tax powers, and new taxes galore, is interesting to watch, but the fertility of his invention is great, and I will read his suggestions with some care, in the record. I am grateful to him for that.

The ugly truth of the matter is that tax avoidance and, in particular, the promotion of it, is an amoebic activity that tends to flow into empty spaces and to be parasitic, if amoebas can be parasitic—I am not sure whether they can—on good activity. So, right next to where we see good or lawful and legal activity, we can see some unpleasant, nasty and abusive tax avoidance.

The hon. Gentleman is right to focus on how we see new forms emerging. It means that the battle against tax avoidance and evasion is never fully won. I hope that he will take some comfort from all the work we are doing on the promoter strategy. It is designed not merely for potential new powers, but for a different way of thinking about disrupting the economics of the supply chain. To pick up on a point that he raised about effectiveness, the GAAR can lead to a fine of 60% of the counteracted advantage. It can be pretty substantial, and it has genuine teeth.

I hope what I say in responding to the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow Central on Scottish limited partnerships falls within the framework of the Bill. The issue is well understood, and there is public concern about it, which is shared across the House. She will be aware that BEIS introduced some new reporting requirements for Scottish limited partnerships in June 2017. Since then, new registrations have declined sharply. Of course, there is a sump of existing partnerships and, as she will be aware, BEIS is consulting on wider reforms to prevent the criminal misuse of those partnerships but retain their core and, in many ways, effective and important other purpose. It announced reforms in that area as of December 2018, and the Government have made clear that they will legislate when parliamentary time admits. So although the matter does not, in its preponderance, fall directly within the clause, she is right to raise it and the Government are fully sighted in that regard, and fully seized of it.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 98 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 13 agreed to.

Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned. —(David Rutley.)

Finance Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 16th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

Let me begin by picking up on a point made by the Member for Glasgow Central about the provenance of clause 78. As we heard from the Financial Secretary, the clause transposes into UK law an EU directive that provides for simplified VAT treatment of call-off stock.

To begin, it is tempting to make the same point, and I know that repetition is not a novelty. Let me put it this way: it is very welcome to hear from the Treasury that divergence from EU rules and regulations is not considered by the Government to be an end in and of itself. I was curious last night, as I walked past the Annunciator in the Tea Room, to see the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) making a lengthy speech on a fairly straightforward statutory instrument on electricity. I reviewed his speech this morning in Hansard, because it piqued my curiosity, and I received in passing from my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) a precis of the thrust of the right hon. Gentleman’s argument. It seems that a number of Conservative Members consider divergence from EU rules and regulations to be an aim in and of itself. Regardless of the merits of the case and the merits of continued co-operation, it is clear that, for a section of the House, there is a virtue in divergence.

I am glad that the Treasury does not share that view, although of course the Treasury looks at the numbers. We may not have had an impassioned exposition from the Financial Secretary of the arguments in favour of this particular alignment with EU rules and regulations, but what we did hear was a very clear argument from Her Majesty’s Treasury that, even having left the European Union, there are still benefits to be found for UK businesses from continued alignment, co-operation, simplification, axing bureaucracy and making things simpler.

I hope that that common-sense approach to our future relationship with the European Union prevails. As much as those of us who campaigned in a different direction in the referendum accept the result and the outcome, and accept that this is a settled political question, it is in all our interests and in our national interest that we maintain a future relationship with the European Union that is based on co-operation, where that is in the interest of our own country.

I turn to the specifics of clause 78. The Financial Secretary’s speech seemed to me to address some of the concerns expressed by businesses and chartered tax advisers, but I will raise them for the sake of clarity. Writing in Taxation, Angela Lang-Horgan, a German and British chartered tax adviser and lawyer, said:

“If businesses have continued to operate under the old simplification rule after 31 December 2019, VAT returns must be corrected once the new legislation is in place. This will add additional confusion to the situation. So far, HMRC has not indicated whether it would apply a soft-landing period. There is no transition period either because under EU law the UK was obliged to introduce the changes from the beginning of this year.”

Could I get some clarity from the Financial Secretary on those points? Will HMRC provide a soft landing period for the implementation of the new rules, or is a soft landing period not even necessary? If I understood him correctly—I may have misunderstood, in which case he will clarify—it seems that there is a degree of flexibility and choice on the part of businesses over whether to adopt this approach. Some clarity in direct response to the concern expressed by Angela Lang-Horgan would be welcome.

What efforts have the UK Government made to communicate with affected businesses in anticipation of the rules, which are effectively already in place? It is worth saying, although it is a mild digression from clause 78, that concern has been expressed—particularly by colleagues in the shadow Business team—that the Government are not communicating with businesses in a timely way with respect to changes in Government policy and their impact on businesses. I think that for some time there has been a cultural problem in government of not giving businesses long enough to anticipate and adjust to new rules; I wonder whether in this case that communication has been a bit more proactive.

The explanatory notes state that

“businesses could structure transactions to remain outside the scope of the new rules if businesses found them onerous.”

What proportion of businesses are expected to exercise that discretionary power?

[Jesse Norman]

I am grateful to hon. Members for their comments. The hon. Member for Glasgow Central regards it as an irony that the Government are bringing forward this rule. I would not describe it as an irony; it is a simplification for those companies that wish to use it, and it is optional. Some companies will prefer the current arrangements as more settled and simpler, while others may not—I do not think that there is anything more to it than that. So far, 200 companies have already taken it up; of course, we cannot say in advance how many may have chosen to do so by the end of the transition period, but it is a relatively small number of companies, as I have indicated.

[Alison Thewliss]

Can the Financial Secretary tell us how many companies are using the previous rules?

[Jesse Norman]

I certainly do not know the number of companies operating under the previous rules, but I would be happy to drop the hon. Lady a letter with any number that HMRC may have that can be publicly disclosed. The point is that there is a relatively small number of companies; they have seen this coming and it is an optional advantage for them. In reply to the point raised by the hon. Member for Ilford North, it applies only during the transition period, which will end at the end of this year.

We will be leaving the transition period on 1 January, which is not only stated by Government but is commonly understood. That goes to the question of divergence, which was raised by the hon. Member for Ilford North. We are bound by EU law while we are in the transition period. The Government certainly do not have any interest in divergence for the sake of divergence; the Government have an interest in the ability to set our own law, including our own tax law, as we as a sovereign nation see fit. That might or might not involve divergence, but this measure will not apply after the transition period.

The hon. Member for Ilford North also raises an important question about whether there is enough time for business to accommodate rules. I cannot comment on behalf of other Departments, but it certainly is a concern that has been raised in relation to the creation of tax law. Wherever possible, the Government try to abide by rules that we introduced after 2010 in order to have a more effective tax process. As he knows, it involves several stages and periods of consultation. We are coming up to an L day for legislation to be considered for the 2020 Budget, for the autumn Budget—if there is one—and for a Finance Bill next year. There is an orderly process, but I take his point about the importance of ensuring that it is as orderly and well structured as possible.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 78 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 79

Post-duty point dilution of wine or made-wine

Economic Outlook and Furlough Scheme Changes

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Tuesday 16th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I thank the Minister for the comments he has made. While the support under the schemes, including the coronavirus job retention scheme, is welcome, many of the comments I made on 17 March and 27 April about those who have not been supported still stand. The Treasury Committee would agree that the 1 million who have been left out of this support have been left out of support because of the Government’s own choice—the Government have decided not to support these people—and further issues remain about maternity, the derisory 26p extra given to refugees and those with no recourse to public funds.

The Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Fair Work and Culture, Fiona Hyslop, has written to the Government, identifying tourism, arts and culture, oil and gas, childcare, retail, and rural and island communities as being particularly at risk, so will the Minister now accept that winding up the furlough scheme and putting the costs on to employers is a significant risk and will put people out of jobs? Will he extend it beyond October for sectors that are particularly pressed? Will he look at extending the self-employed support scheme, as many of those people will still require support on an ongoing basis because the work they did is no longer there? Will he look at VAT cuts to tourism and hospitality, which will support those sectors that have seen so much pressure and get them back on their feet at a time when they are really struggling? Lastly, does he agree with Lord Forsyth that there will be a tsunami of job losses, with 3 million people left without work?

[Jesse Norman]

I thank the hon. Lady for her questions. In the middle of a crisis, with emergency responses being brought out almost every other week, it would be a brave person who could commit to any sensible forecast with a degree of accuracy of what the future may bring. We have already seen astonishing changes to levels of GDP even in a month.

On the points the hon. Lady raises, I just remind her that the job retention scheme has so far supported nearly 9 million people—8.9 million people—and 1.1 million businesses. The self-employed scheme has supported 2.3 million individuals at a cost of £6.8 billion. Both schemes were brought in at record speed precisely to address the critical need to get the vast majority of people the support they would need, and to target that, wherever possible, on the most vulnerable. I do not think that those were mistakes. I do not think it would have been right to delay the process. I think it has been recognised by Opposition Members across the piece that a delayed response—which, on advice received from experts within HMRC and elsewhere, would have been the inevitable result—would have been a mistake and we took the view that we should proceed. I put it to the hon. Lady that the two schemes in question, together with a plethora of other support, have been extremely effective.

Finance Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 4th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Jesse Norman]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his thorough and wide-ranging remarks. He is right that it is a kind of principle of tax policy in a way, or the typical reaction of an individual, and one wishes that the general instinct shared by 98% or 99% of the tax-paying population that he articulated well —namely, that if it looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is too good to be true—was shared by the whole of the population. However, for different reasons, that is not the case. The hon. Gentleman is right to articulate the principle that if it looks too good to be true, it is, and I thank him for doing so. I also thank him and his colleagues for the nuanced interrogation they have given this policy, but not diverging from us on its core thrust.

I want to make it clear that I am not remotely downplaying, undervaluing or minimising the personal feelings of people, or the impact or hardship that they have experienced as a result of this situation. Clearly, there have been cases that have been felt across the House and raised by different MPs, and Revenue and Customs understands that as well. It has made it very clear that it will not force people to sell their main home; that it will not, except in the most unusual circumstances, put people into bankruptcy; and that it will exercise, by adhering to a series of principles, a judicious approach to people’s settlement processes. That includes a principle that no more than half of someone’s disposable income should go to settle a tax dispute, so that families have not only their non-disposable income but at least half of their disposable income to support themselves.

Those principles also include, as I have indicated, a set of basic time periods to make a settlement—of five years in the case of someone earning under £50,000 a year, and of seven years in the case of someone earning under £30,000 a year—and that is part of the practice of Revenue and Customs, and a well-embedded principle.

Furthermore, if people have concerns that they are being badly handled in this process—this also relates to the point that the hon. Gentleman made about an independent review—they can appeal to tax commissioners for, as it were, an investigation and review. Of course, they also have the ability to go to their MP, and Members are very effective in raising tax-related issues on behalf of their constituents.

[Alison Thewliss]

On the point about MPs intervening on constituents’ issues, I would challenge the question around disposable income. A constituent of mine had been asked to pay money back, and the definition that HMRC gave of his disposable income was incredibly tight compared with the definition of it that he had, which included his finding difficulty in giving his children money for school meals. That seemed to be treated as part of his disposable income. His children have to eat; that is not disposable income as such. I ask the Minister to be very careful about how that is described and how HMRC acts on those kinds of things, because it takes a very strict line on disposable income.

[Jesse Norman]

Of course, the approach taken needs to have foundational principles aligned to it, and those can be questioned in specific contexts and by the mechanisms that I have described.

The distributional impact of the way the loan charge disguised remuneration population breaks down has been put into the public domain and analysed by HM Revenue and Customs. For example, a relatively small number of people work in caring professions, contrary to the impression that colleagues may have been given. That is the context in which the final recommendation by Sir Amyas Morse, which is that these debts should be written off after 10 years, has been rejected by the Government. It is a recognition of Sir Amyas’s expertise and independence that 19 of his recommendations were accepted, and the Government have given a full account of the reason why they have rejected the 20th.

In line with Sir Amyas’s recommendations on voluntary restitution, HMRC will refund voluntary restitution already paid for years now out of scope of the loan charge, but will not refund settlements for the underlying tax liability where HMRC had protected its position. That is so that the treatment remains in line with the existing legal framework for HMRC to recover tax. Sir Amyas also recommended that for disguised remuneration loans taken out on or after 9 December 2010, HMRC should only refund voluntary restitution where the scheme user had reasonably disclosed their scheme use. We have discussed that already at some length.

Regarding some of the impact of the different pressures that may be on taxpayers, HMRC will not as a matter of course meet professional costs incurred by taxpayers in reaching their original settlement or claiming refunds, but it may meet professional costs where they have been incurred as a direct result of a mistake or an unreasonable delay in its own dealings with a taxpayer’s affairs. That was not the position when HMRC was applying legislation in place at the time.

Refunding fees to those who have used avoidance schemes would send the thoroughly troubling message that taxpayers who had not used those schemes might not do as well as those who had, which is not one that this House should be particularly encouraging. Of course, if a taxpayer feels they have grounds for making a complaint, the usual mechanisms are available for them to do so.

In his recommendation 14, Sir Amyas called for the Government to report to Parliament on all aspects of their implementation of the loan charge changes,

“before the end of 2020”.

We will do that. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for laying out her concerns in that regard in this debate, and I will ensure that the officials understand and reflect on them when they start to frame this report.

As per Sir Amyas’s recommendations, the report will draw on input from the HMRC customer experience committee. It is very important to realise that the committee includes not only the non-executive directors of Revenue and Customs, but highly experienced independent people in positions of authority and expertise who are specifically customer experience experts in the private sector. The effect of the committee is to support but also challenge the HMRC executive on customer experience-related issues, and to help the Department deliver on its strategic objectives. In other words, part of its point is to ensure that HMRC treats taxpayers with a proper degree of courtesy and service levels, but in no sense becomes oppressive to them.

Let me pick up another important point, which I meant to mention earlier but have not yet: the very strong approach that HMRC is taking on promoters and enablers of tax avoidance. Certainly since I have been Financial Secretary to the Treasury, we have significantly enhanced the already substantial work being done in that area. That includes work that builds collaboration across Government, including with bodies such as the Advertising Standards Authority or the Insolvency Service. It involves proactive communications to help taxpayers to steer clear of avoidance.

HMRC has launched a consultation on ways to combat the promotion and enabling of tax avoidance; colleagues from different parties are welcome to make contributions to that if they wish. The areas it is looking at include tackling promoters and their supply chains, looking at the economics of tax avoidance, disrupting business models and improving compliance and enforcement in other ways. I would like the Committee to understand that HMRC is in no sense minimising the importance of going after promoters and enablers where it can—subject to law, and with new powers if it should be so decided after the process of consultation.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 19 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 20 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Finance Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 4th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Jesse Norman]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that as we work through this crisis and, as we all hope, come out the other side, there will need to be a more detailed understanding of the implications in data terms, how it has affected different groups and its distributional impacts. We have well-established procedures within existing frameworks, as she will know.

The question was touched on more generally by the hon. Member for Ilford North in relation to corporation tax, but we have a whole procedure of making updates to Parliament and a procedure for forecasting that is now independent, thanks to the decision taken in 2010 to create the Office for Budget Responsibility. That includes a fiscal sustainability report on the overall benefit of measures, which goes to his question about corporation tax revenues. Needless to say, the Government’s support for the NHS is not contingent on the revenues from corporation tax; it goes much deeper than that.

The hon. Member for Glasgow Central raised many of these issues. She touched on a question in relation to the Scottish tax system. Of course, it is for the Scottish Government to review the effects of their decisions on income tax and the benefits for which they are responsible. At the same time, they can review their own progress on equality and inequality.

Turning to the hon. Member for Ilford North, I noted with support his inclusive approach towards business. That is very important. He asked about the impact of maintaining the tax rate at 19%. I have indicated that that is estimated to raise several tens of billions over the course of the spending round. What the effect of covid-19 will be on that we do not know, but, as I say, we have processes for evaluating and forecasting on that basis.

Amendment 6 would require the Government to conduct a review of current corporation tax rates, including the effect on tax revenue and the impact of the corporation tax rate structure on businesses of different sizes within six months of the Bill receiving Royal Assent. As I have mentioned, the OBR-certified Exchequer impact for this measure was published in table 2.1 of the Budget Red Book.

We recognise that the economic disruption created by the pandemic will have an effect on the tax revenue forecast at Budget. That will be monitored and changes will be made through the OBR principle and process to the forecast and reflected at the next Budget. HMRC also publishes corporation tax statistics annually, alongside a report that includes a breakdown of the amount and proportion of total corporation tax receipts paid by businesses at different levels of profitability. Therefore, the Government already publish the information called for in the amendment and the separate review legislated for in amendment 6 is, in our judgment, not necessary. I ask the Committee to reject amendment 6 and move separately that clauses 5 and 6 stand part of the Bill.

[Alison Thewliss]

Corporate taxation is not within the power of the Scottish Parliament. We have to live with the decisions that Westminster makes on this, but I am glad the Government have realised the error their ways in originally aiming to cut corporation tax. Given the money that would have been lost to the economy, that is wise.

The Minister mentioned the impact on women in work. Findings from various women’s organisations suggest that coronavirus will have an impact on women’s employment, and that employment will not recover unless there is significant investment in childcare to redress that as we come out of this crisis. If we were to take evidence from groups such as the Women’s Budget Group, we would have a lot more detailed evidence on the impact of the proposed measures on women. I encourage him to look at that evidence and engage with the Women’s Budget Group to consider how better we can have evidence brought from groups who have expertise in this area. Such groups have pointed out that women are more likely to be furloughed and more likely to lose their jobs. As the furlough scheme is wound up, they will face unemployment sooner than they would have anticipated as employers look at the scheme and say, “I can’t afford to pay these wages. I’m just going to sack my staff.” None of that necessarily relates to the amendment on corporation tax, but I want to make sure those points are on the record.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

Again, I am not looking to oppose the clause. The aim is laudable, but I want to highlight a couple of things about apprenticeships. Coronavirus could significantly affect the number of apprenticeships that will be available to young people this year and perhaps even into next year as well. What do the Government intend to do to make sure that those opportunities are not lost to a generation of young people who are leaving school as well as leaving care?

As you will appreciate, Ms McDonagh, if those young people do not have the opportunities that they should, the impact on them will be devastating—as it will be on society as a whole if their skills and talents do not go into the workplace. I implore Ministers to look carefully at that, to make sure that they do not miss those young people, and that those concerns are high on their agenda. Apprenticeships can be transformational for young people. They can give them new opportunities and a chance to do something that they would never have anticipated through their family background or their ambitions growing up. It is vital to protect them in the months ahead.

I would also highlight the fact that the minimum wage rate for apprenticeships remains staggeringly low. The Government should look carefully at apprentices more generally. The bursary in the clause is fine and laudable, but apprenticeships for all young people need to be properly remunerated. Some of those young people will have families themselves and will be unable to take up those opportunities if they cannot afford to put food on the table because the apprenticeship rate is so low.

Not all young people live with their families, as the bursary recognises; but all young people who want them should have access to apprenticeships. I urge the Government to reconsider minimum wage rates more generally. There should be a living wage for everyone, but apprenticeship rates in particular are incredibly low in this country and they need to be addressed urgently so that all young people who want to can take up those places.

The Government could also look at the work done in the care review in Scotland. We appreciate that not all the things that could have been done to help young people have been done. The care review took an in-depth look at that. I urge the Minister to look at that and at what more can be done to support young carers in society.

[Jesse Norman]

Those were two useful, helpful contributions from the Opposition. The broad answer to the technical question raised by the hon. Member for Ilford North is that this is a cleaner and more direct way of addressing the problem; but I should be delighted to write to him and set out the reasoning in more detail.

The hon. Gentleman raised the question of other exemptions. As he will be aware, we are absolutely amenable to considering these things on a case-by-case basis, and if there are others that he thinks deserve further consideration, he is again welcome to write to me and we will give that a review.

The hon. Member for Glasgow Central raised a point about apprenticeship opportunities more widely, and she is absolutely right. The Government have already been leaning into the issue of apprenticeships, as she will know, through the levy. There is much more work to be done in this area, and it is well understood, certainly from the Prime Minister down, that the response to the coronavirus may well cause the Government to want to look at the whole area in more detail.

I cannot pass from this topic without drawing the hon. Lady’s attention to a personal interest that I have, which is the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering, in Hereford. That is the new university we are setting up precisely to integrate the academic and the vocational in a way that gives scope for very high value-added learning, using apprenticeships but also actual project work, in a way that is integrated into the engineering curriculum in many ways.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 10 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 11

Tax treatment of certain Scottish social security benefits

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments, which she is quite right to make—the Library analysis is really important. I am moving the amendments to point out just how complex the system is that there is of course a cost to having and administrating such a system. People have difficulty navigating that system, because it makes it more difficult to claim what they are entitled to, particularly if they are moving from one benefit to another. Although I appreciate the points that she has made and understand why she made them, these are probing amendments to see what the point is and what the Government are doing to make an ongoing assessment of the logic of that complexity, for which there is a cost and a difficulty. Although I in no way deny the cost—I know the amendments have no prospect of being passed by the Committee—I would like the Government to consider carefully the impact of that complexity on individuals, and whether they can simplify the system, which is ludicrously complicated.

[Jesse Norman]

I thank colleagues for their contributions. As they have recognised, the amendments are very technical in nature. I will keep my remarks brief because, if we can, I would like to discuss clause 13 before we break, which will leave us a clear run at the afternoon. Clause 12 introduces a power that commits the Government to clarifying tax exempt status for future new social security benefits introduced by the UK Government or devolved Administrations using a statutory instrument. That power has a more general applicability and creates an additional flexibility that will be of value to Government in making changes to address needs more rapidly than at the moment.

The hon. Member for Glasgow Central tabled her amendments in an interrogatory—or probing—spirit, for which I thank her. My response has been very well articulated by the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South. Scottish benefits are treated in line with the fiscal framework and, under that framework, which exists between the UK Government and the Scottish Government, only new benefits that top up or replace an existing taxable benefit will be liable to tax. That is an established principle of taxation exactly to avoid the perverse incentives that might otherwise be created.

In addition to the questions raised by the shadow Minister about cost and equity, it is worth mentioning that the effect of entertaining the amendments would be to undermine the fiscal framework agreement and that longstanding principle of taxation. I ask the hon. Member for Glasgow Central, in a rhetorical spirit, whether she really means to overturn the fiscal framework that was hammered out over a number of years between those two sides. If she does, is it her intention to throw out other settled agreements between the Scottish Government and the UK Government within that framework? I suggest that that is not her intent and, because the meaning and purpose of the clause is clear, I commend it to the Committee and invite her to withdraw the amendment.

[Alison Thewliss]

I am indeed content to withdraw the amendment, but the point stands that there is an inconsistency within the system, in which a war widow’s pension is not taxable but a widow’s pension is. There are huge inconsistencies about which I have questions. The Minister is being mischievous when he suggests that I would want to undermine the fiscal framework, but he knows fine well that I long for the day when the fiscal framework is not necessary because Scotland is an independent country that makes for ourselves the full range of decisions about what is best for our people. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 12 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Thursday 12th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jesse Norman]

There have been so many interventions and I simply cannot cover all the speeches if I take an intervention now. I know that the hon. Lady will excuse me. We gave the party opposite the chance to intervene.

We are delivering a £20 billion patient capital action plan to unlock private financing in high-growth innovative companies, and we have established a regulatory system that strikes the balance between responsibility and opportunity to allow us to embrace the most exciting ideas in technology.

Let me touch on many of the important speeches that have been made today. The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) raised the question of Barnett consequentials and, if she looks at page 49 of the Red Book, she will find them in paragraph 1.159.

The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) raised the question of human capital. I know that he will be thrilled that we have a £2.5 billion skills fund—

[Alison Thewliss]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jesse Norman]

I will not give way, for the reasons I have already described. I can continue to waste the hon. Lady’s time and the House’s time responding to these interventions, but we need to press on.

I am sure that the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East will also enjoy the investment we have made in further education colleges—more than £1.5 billion for further education capex over the next few years.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) asked where the revenue from the tampon tax would go. The tampon tax fund supports women’s charities, as she knows, and I am happy to tell her that the revenue will go to that. The competition for the next round of funds will be launched by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport shortly for the 2019-20 VAT receipts.

My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) rightly stressed the importance of long-term investment and as little bureaucracy as possible in making capital investment, and how right he was.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) asked us to reach for wartime analogies in fighting coronavirus. He will have seen that the Chancellor made it perfectly clear that we are prepared to do whatever it takes to assist the British people in dealing with this temporary crisis. We will continue to do that.

The hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) asked about free debt advice. I think she knows that the Government are investing an initial £12.5 million in HMRC in 2020-21 to begin implementing the breathing space initiative. Those in problem debt will be able to get 60 days’ breathing space, including from HMRC, while they engage with debt advice, and I think that is a very important contribution.

What a delight it is to see my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) back in this Chamber. He rightly celebrates the small business focus of the Budget and asks us to consider business rates in relation to nurseries, and other petitions have been made in relation to that, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith). Let me remind my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire that most nurseries will pay no rates if their rateable value is under £12,000 because of the small business rate relief. They will now also get a £3,000 coronavirus cash grant, of course, if they are in receipt of small business rate relief. There should be some bounce already in there, but of course we continue to reflect on business rates. We have a business rates review coming up, and he and my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs would be welcome to contribute to that.

The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) raised the question of red diesel. As she will know, there is a consultation associated with the changes we are making and she is welcome to support it and to make a petition to it if she wishes.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) raised a range of questions, some of which I have already touched on, such as business rates. He asked whether we would be monitoring the impact of the reduction in entrepreneurs’ relief. Let me tell him that of course we will. The problem with entrepreneurs’ relief is that it is not very well targeted on entrepreneurship. We wish to support entrepreneurship, small business growth and rapid innovation and that is what we are seeking to do.

The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) raised the question of green packages and rightly stressed the tough choices involved in a Budget. Let me refer her to the national infrastructure strategy. We already have a green package in this Budget. It is quite wide-ranging, but we intend to do more on it. What will not be true of us is what was true of Lord Prescott when he was in this place, when he said, “The Labour party supports the green belt and we intend to build on it.” We will not be doing that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) raised the question of the “Winds of Change” and gave us a historical dimension. I celebrate that, and I celebrate Lord Hennessy in his wisdom, because he is truly an ornament to the House of Lords.

Let me close by saying that this is a Budget for this country as a whole. It will make our economy and our country stronger still.

High-income Child Benefit Charge

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Westminster Hall

[Jesse Norman]

The judgment made in 2013 was that it was appropriate to claw back some of the money paid to people on higher incomes and that everyone should make a fair contribution to removing the deficit while supporting those on the lowest incomes. I think that was the right judgment. Of course, for a minority of claimants where either they or their partner earn more than £50,000 in adjusted net income, there is a requirement to pay the tax charge or to opt out of receiving child benefit payments and therefore not pay the charge.

It is a fair criticism, made eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet and others from across the House, that the charge does not take into account overall household incomes, so it is possible—and it does happen—that a single parent earning more than £50,000 is liable to the charge while a couple each earning up to £50,000 is not. That is because, as he said, the charge is a tax, calculated in accordance with the principles of individual taxation at the individual level alongside other tax policy. Here we have one of those difficult decisions for the Government about what is the right thing to do. The judgment made in 2013 was that it was better to take that approach than to base a charge on household incomes, because that would require HMRC to assess annually both household composition and the incomes of everyone in the 8 million or so households eligible for child benefit, which would effectively introduce a new means test, creating a substantial administrative burden on both the state and families. That is the dilemma.

The effect of the charge is to introduce a high marginal tax rate. That is an unattractive aspect of the policy; we should be clear about that. If I may say so, it is not a salutary lesson in how not to withdraw a benefit, because the alternatives of not levying the charge at all or levying it on a cliff edge rather than by gradual withdrawal are worse. It is open to others to take the view that one of the alternatives is better, and my hon. Friend may do so, but not subject to the fiscal constraints in which we have operated.

A series of questions were raised about HMRC communications. As my hon. Friend recognised, the Revenue and Customs took considerable steps to raise awareness of the higher income child benefit charge. It wrote to about 800,000 affected families when the charge was introduced. It also ran a high-profile advertising media campaign and included a prominent message about the charge in 2 million letters to pay-as-you-earn-only higher rate taxpayers. There was a considerable communication process.

Today, to respond to the question from the hon. Member for Strangford, information on the charge is included in packs for new parents telling them how to claim child benefit. The front page of the child benefit application form includes a prominent message about the charge to help people make a decision on whether they should claim and be paid child benefit, about the importance of claiming even if they do not receive payments, and about the important issue of eligibility, which was rightly highlighted in the debate. Guidelines are available online formally through gov.uk and through innumerable organisations and groups.

As my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet mentioned, individuals who pay the charge need to make a self-assessment tax return and may face a failure to notify penalty if they do not. I think he will know that HMRC announced a review of cases where a failure to notify penalty was issued for three tax years. It reviewed 35,000 cases and responded by reviewing the amount for over 6,000 people.

There are many other points to cover in the short time that remains. My hon. Friend said that 500,000 people have been forced into self-assessment. I am happy to write to him on that. As he will be aware, the current number paying the charge through tax returns is 293,000. Of course, there are some 40 million people in pay-as-you-earn. He also said that the charge has dragged 1.2 million people into the system. I am not quite sure about that, but if he wants to contact me, I will be happy to assist him further.

The hon. Member for Glasgow Central said that the charge is a gendered policy. I do not think that is true at all, and many other aspects of Government policy do not reflect anything like that position, as she will be aware. For example, there is extensive work in supporting women as entrepreneurs and women in business.

[Alison Thewliss]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jesse Norman]

I really cannot; I have two seconds left.

The hon. Member for Oxford East mentioned fiscal drag. That is an important issue, but I do not think she is right that the charge has removed the universal nature of child benefit; it merely allows for a charge against it.

Social Mobility: Treasury Reform

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and I am grateful for the opportunity to make my parliamentary debut as Financial Secretary to the Treasury and Paymaster General by discussing social mobility, which is an issue of great importance to the House, as today’s interesting debate has demonstrated. I have a certain degree of nerves, however, because if in my first debate a former senior Treasury Minister contemplates the abolition of the Treasury, I shudder slightly to think what my second debate may lead to, but I will take it for what it is.

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening) for her fascinating and thought-provoking contribution, and I congratulate her on securing this debate. A Putney debate on social mobility is becoming an important part of the Treasury calendar—perhaps it should be counted as a fiscal event, along with other events of more familiar coinage. I very much congratulate her on her long-standing commitment to improving the life chances of people from disadvantaged backgrounds. That was a hallmark of her time in government, and I respect and applaud her tenacity in pursuing the issue now, as well as her work on social mobility more widely, which includes the social mobility pledge that she highlighted in her speech.

If I may, Mr Robertson, I will briefly canter through some facts about what the Government are doing in this area, and then come to the contributions that have been made, in particular that from my right hon. Friend. The Treasury’s record on social mobility is a good one. There may be plenty of work to do across Government, but the Treasury has had 35 new apprentices in the last financial year, and it offers internships and insight days to students from diverse backgrounds. It was ranked 34th on the Social Mobility Foundation employer survey last year. The Treasury is rightly seeking to make headway in this area, as should the Government as a whole.

The wider point is that social mobility is a force not just for social progress but, as has been highlighted, for economic progress. If one were to use philosophical terms, we should seek to create not merely negative freedom but positive freedom. We need not just relief from the things that constrict and impede human potential but active empowerment and support for people from every background in this country. Supporting social mobility is not only right but it is in the public interest, as it means that our culture, national conversation, politics and economics will benefit from the widest possible range and diversity of voices. It is also wise in a more directly economic sense because, as the global economy’s centre of gravity moves eastwards in the 21st century, the UK’s strength will lie in not merely the size but above all the quality of its workforce. Social capital and investment in human capital is vital to those things. It is therefore in our national interest to encourage and nurture people to achieve their best, because we need their talents and skills.

The Government’s record is a good one. They have achieved higher employment in every region of the UK, and introduced and increased the national living wage. They have taken millions of the lowest paid out of income tax altogether. That can, of course, only be a staging post, and the Social Mobility Commission’s report, published at the end of April, demonstrates that there is plenty of work still to be done. Importantly, however, we understand the magnitude of the task.

For many people, the yardstick for social mobility is home ownership, and as a result of Government policy, 80% of first-time buyers pay no stamp duty at all—that is one reason why the number of first-time buyers is reaching its highest level for 11 years. The Government have also made a real impact in education, which was in part due to my right hon. Friend’s time in government. A combination of the free schools programme and a reformed curriculum has narrowed the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and others at every stage, from early years to secondary school. Ninety-five per cent. of all early years settings are now rated good or outstanding. That is up from 68% in 2010 and means that a record proportion of children start year 1 with a good level of development.

The Government have backed schools with £1.3 billion of extra investment and protected the pupil premium, with 1.9 million more children in good and outstanding schools. However, that funding will not get to the heart of improving social mobility unless we also tackle geographical inequalities. That is why, as my right hon. Friend rightly highlighted, it is important to make school funding fairer and more consistent.

The Department for Education provides roughly £25 million every year through the national funding formula to assist the smallest and most remote schools, and in the last Budget it was announced that rural primary schools would benefit from a £200 million programme for fast and reliable internet access across the country. The apprenticeship funding model is designed to support individuals from disadvantaged areas, by providing cash payments to providers for training apprentices who live in the top 27% of deprived areas. The Government have awarded the first 11 Institutes of Technology across England, so that even more students can access an excellent technical education.

My county of Herefordshire is something of a social mobility cold spot, and I am particularly grateful to my right hon. Friend as she was Secretary of State when the Department for Education approved the New Model in Technology and Engineering in my constituency. That was the first new university in this country for 40 years, and it is a specialist tech and engineering institution that focuses specifically on a 50:50 gender balance, open access, and the kind of empowerment that is characteristic of social mobility around the country. It will make a huge difference not only in Herefordshire, where social mobility is much lower than it should be, but elsewhere around our nation.

The Government have invested in 12 coastal, urban and rural opportunity areas, where young people face entrenched challenges, to bring together local and national partners to work with local communities and bring about lasting change. Education must ultimately equip young people to make a successful transition into employment and life as a whole. Employment is obviously important, and people should have choices as they reach adulthood. That is why technical education is so important. The transformation is now under way through T-levels, which will mean that young people have the knowledge to get the highly-skilled, well-paid jobs of the future, and through continuing work on the apprenticeship programme, which will try to create more diverse opportunities; over 1.7 million people have started apprenticeships since 2015. As my right hon. Friend will be aware, in higher education we have record rates of disadvantaged 18-year-olds getting into university. There has been an increase in the take-up of degree apprenticeships, and we have been specifically encouraging bids to improve access to degree apprenticeships for disadvantaged and under-represented groups.

Skills remain of vital importance later in life, particularly in a 21st century in which people will be regularly re-skilling and re-educating themselves. The Government fully fund all adults to take English and maths to level 2, and from 2020 they will be funding basic digital skills. They are also establishing a national retraining scheme to support those in work, including the self-employed, to develop the skills that they will need to thrive in the new economy. To that end, the Government have pledged £100 million in funding to get the scheme up and running.

Let me pick up some of the questions raised by Members in the debate. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) rightly stressed the importance of sexual equality across social mobility and highlighted the complexity of the benefits system as a potential impediment to change. He is absolutely right about both those points. He may have misread the proposals in the Augar review. It is an independent report the purpose of which is not to diminish social mobility but to enhance it; it needs to be read as a whole. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the members of the panel who commissioned the report, he will see that they are all deeply committed to improving social mobility, not just through this report but in their wider lives and work.

The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) gave a more combative speech. I remind her that the Treasury is the product of cross-party evolution; whatever its weaknesses, they are the product of historical processes. It may require radical change—I will come to that question later—but the suggestion that it is not an institution with its own ethos that has developed over many years and generations is one that any Treasury Minister would contest. If the Scottish Government are unhappy with the fiscal arrangements that they have with the UK as a whole, it is up to them to raise taxes themselves, using the new tax powers they have, and to spend that money as they see fit.

The hon. Lady was dismissive of the Government as regards inequality in different ways, including in education. I remind her that Scottish higher education policy has been regularly criticised for being regressive, that Scottish schools performed worse than ever in the Programme for International Student Assessment scores for 2016 and that it may be worth her while looking at the Scottish Government’s own record before raising these issues more widely.

[Alison Thewliss]

The Minister is quite wrong in what he says; I ask him to correct the record, or at least to show his working. For the first time, more than 30% of pupils left school last year with a minimum of five Higher passes at a higher level, which is up from 22.2% in 2009 and 2010. The gap between those in the most and least deprived areas achieving a pass at higher level has reduced for the eighth successive year. The Scottish Government have made huge progress on education, in vast contrast to what is happening in England.

[Jesse Norman]

The hon. Lady misunderstood what I said. I said that the Scottish Government had been regularly criticised for having a regressive higher education policy. There is some evidence for that.

[Alison Thewliss]

That is not true.

[Jesse Norman]

It certainly has been; if the hon. Lady looks at the record, she can see that. I also pointed out that Scottish schools had performed worse than ever before in the PISA rankings in 2016. She can check that; it is an objective fact, not a matter for debate. She is entitled to her views, but not to the facts.

The Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for East Ham—I apologise, I mean the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown); I am sure many footballers will not thank me for that. The hon. Lady mentioned table tennis tables; having been a director of the Roundhouse in London for many years, I know the value of local social involvement and engagement. I agree with it, and the Government have invested significantly in it. She seems to have forgotten that the Government will have spent almost £6 billion in 2019-20 on childcare, which is a record amount. They have doubled the amount of free childcare available for working parents of three and four-year-olds to 30 hours. The Government have a tremendous record in this area in many ways. I am glad she mentioned table tennis tables; I was playing at a free table tennis table, provided through public funding, only last weekend, in the village of Little Dewchurch in my constituency.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Jesse Norman

Thursday 2nd May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

My hon. Friend will be aware that we have just made an award to Shrewsbury for the relief road, through the large local majors scheme. I look forward to visiting that road at some future point, and at the same time I will certainly tie in a happy cycle down the excellent cycle path between Pontesbury and Minsterley. My hon. Friend should know that, more widely, we are now investing at a high rate in cycling and walking schemes, including through the transforming cities fund, which is now up to £2.5 billion in total; the housing infrastructure fund; and our new £675 million future high streets fund, which is specifically targeted at smaller conurbations.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

Yorkhill and Kelvingrove Community Council recently submitted a £2 million community-led bid to the Sustrans Community Links Plus competition, with the ambition of making the area Scotland’s most accessible community. Will the Minister welcome this cycling-village project which, as well as linking three national cycle routes, will be pedestrian, wheelchair and autism friendly? Would he welcome similar community-led initiatives throughout the UK?

[Jesse Norman]

As the hon. Lady will know, I am almost idiotically keen on cycling projects, so I massively welcome that development. We have recently funded Sustrans with a further £20 million-odd to support the national cycle network and are a great believer in much of the work that it does.