Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and James Cartlidge

Committee of the whole House
Wednesday 19th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

We have had strong support from public health groups for the differential duty, because the evidence shows that is healthier to drink in a social environment than privately. That is another significant benefit.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

rose—

[James Cartlidge]

This is a popular area of the debate. I give way.

[Mr Carmichael]

I think the Minister has a sound case in relation to what the Government have done on beer duty. What is less clear, however, is why they have chosen to treat spirits so differently. Spirits are also an important part of the on trade. What will the impact be on the spirits trade from the differential that the Minister has now baked into the duty system?

[James Cartlidge]

There are spirits that will benefit from the differential—not spirits served from what I think are called optics, but spirits served on tap. There are mixers served on tap that will benefit from a more generous differential duty. On spirits, I am more than happy to set out further detail when I respond to the relevant amendments, because I think they are specifically focused on Scotch whisky, and I understand the concerns there.

I just want to finish my point on our Brexit pubs guarantee. Just to underline what we are doing, we are giving pubs a new permanent competitive advantage. We are levelling the playing field against supermarkets. Following the difficult times that pubs have had with the pandemic and higher energy costs, that hopefully gives them a new narrative for their communities with more positive times to look forward to ahead. That is what we want for our pubs. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett) said, they are so important for our communities and our economy. We continue to do everything possible to back the great British pub.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Cartlidge]

Before I turn to the very good speeches that we have heard during the current debate, let me clarify a point relating to our earlier debate on the electricity generator levy. I mistakenly said that “private wire” was included in the levy, when of course I meant to say that it was excluded.

Let me begin by saying that I welcome the support expressed by the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) for the clause relating to devolved welfare payments. As for alcohol duty, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) may not recall the debate that he initiated in Westminster Hall in October 2017, when I was a mere Back Bencher, but I was the first Member to intervene on his speech. All the others were Scottish. I intervened because a leading company in my constituency produces the bottle tops for the whisky trade. That, along with the East Anglian grain that is sent up to Scotland from time to time to help support the sector, underlines the fact that this is a UK industry, and a UK export. We are all proud of Scotch whisky and the role that it plays in our economy. However, I must say this to the right hon. Gentleman, and also to the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), who spoke with his usual eloquence and conjured up wonderful images. I understand the importance of the Scotch whisky sector, and we have supported it—in nine of the last 10 Budgets, we have either frozen or cut the tax—but the key point is that not introducing the RPI-linked increase would have a significant cost.

[Mr Carmichael]

The Minister is making our case himself, so presumably he will be joining us in the Lobby—as, indeed, the Secretary of State for Scotland should be doing—or else accepting my amendment.

[James Cartlidge]

I had never thought of the right hon. Gentleman as a cheeky chappie, but for that brief moment, he almost was. Let me now address his amendment 7. The Scottish National party Members have, very nobly, effectively withdrawn their amendments to ride on the back of it, which is perfectly fair: they seek, ultimately, to arrive at roughly the same point, which could be described as the protection of spirits, and Scotch whisky in particular, from the RPI-linked increase.

The proposal in amendment 7 would cost an amount between £1.7 billion and £2 billion. An overall RPI freeze would cost £5 billion across the scorecard. We have, of course, supported freezes in the past, and it was I who announced the freeze back in December. Members may recall the reason for that freeze: in view of the August reform, we did not want the sector to go through two separate alcohol tax increases. We supported the industry, but it is expensive, and with the public finances as they are, we feel that the responsible option is to introduce the RPI-linked increase—which, after all, is not a real-terms increase—but, nevertheless, to bring in the differential duty to support our pubs.

[Mr Carmichael]

rose—

[James Cartlidge]

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman, for the last time.

[Mr Carmichael]

The Minister needs to look at the actual data relating to the revenue brought in over these years of cuts and freezes, because the story that it tells is very different from the forecasts on which he relies. He should remember that in 2015 the forecast was for a 2% reduction, but in fact there was a 4% increase. When will the Government become a bit more realistic about the effect of their own policies in this area?

[James Cartlidge]

I have to disagree with the right hon. Gentleman’s use of the word “realistic”. I have met representatives of the Scotch Whisky Association, whom I greatly respect, and they have said to me that if we freeze the tax we get the revenue. Unfortunately, however, the Government have what I believe is the very important and successful policy of using an independent body, the Office for Budget Responsibility, which makes forecasts independently for Governments on the effects of fiscal measures. [Interruption.] I hear voices behind me saying that they are wrong. The point is that the OBR is not a collection of soothsayers employed to predict, entirely accurately, exactly what will happen in the future. With the greatest respect to everyone, if that was the case, I suspect they would spend rather more of their time looking at accountancy of the turf-related kind rather than trying to forecast the national accounts. The point is that this enables us to ground fiscal events in a forecast of where we are at that time and the fiscal costs at the time, therefore adding credibility to the decisions we make and avoiding the easy situation where we do not have to make the difficult trade-offs that households and businesses know that, in reality, we have to face. If we want to cut one tax, we have to find the money from somewhere else. It is a good discipline.

Covid-19: Contracts and Public Inquiry

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and James Cartlidge

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

I might give the hon. Gentleman another turn, but let us just put some facts on the table.

In June, 2,000 people in Scotland who tested positive for covid had attended a Euro 2021 event. I am no killjoy. I am quite happy that they attended. I will be attending a Euro 2021 event tonight to watch England vs Denmark. I am quite happy that many thousands of Scots made the journey to London to watch that game, in which their team performed admirably—far better than we did. The idea that the Scottish Government had no power in this matter is ludicrous. If they really thought that this variant was such a concern and that we should have closed the borders, they should not have allowed people to come down in their thousands. The evidence shows that those people are now super-spreaders of covid in Scotland. The hon. Gentleman should not pretend that the Scottish Government had no power in this matter.

Having said all that, I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, who has now returned to the Chamber, for introducing this debate about covid contracts, because it gives me the opportunity to talk about two covid contracts that are far more important than all the other guff we have heard today. Those contracts are, first, the contract that this Government—indeed, my right hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock)—signed with AstraZeneca to procure a vaccine, along with all the other ones that we took a risk on procuring before the rest of the EU. That has brought liberty to millions and saved the lives of thousands, for which we should all be grateful.

The second contract is one that we will not find a copy of, and there was no procurement for it, but again it is of fundamental importance: it is the social contract that exists between the Government and the governed on the basis of when we are expected to give up our precious rights because an emergency exists and when—the key question for me—those rights should be returned because the emergency has passed: a fundamental point given the Prime Minister’s statement on Monday.

The first contract was the generic process through which the UK Department of Health and Social Care negotiated contracts for those vaccines and delivered them in a way exceeding almost all other major nations, delivering millions and millions of doses. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) for saying in his intervention that that was the one thing the Government got right, but, boy, that one thing is more important than anything else: it is the way out of the mess; it is the way we get out of lockdown; it is the ways we save millions of lives. And it is not just lives in the United Kingdom that are being saved; it is not just lives in every corner of this precious Union. The AstraZeneca vaccine contract was negotiated so it would be produced at cost. The significance of that enormous contractual point is that the vaccine has been spread around the developing world. We have seen 400 million Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines go into the arms of the poorest in the world. We should be incredibly proud of that. This Government have an incredibly honourable record in what has passed.

Covid was one of the greatest crises the world has faced; it was completely unprecedented, and every time we have had to make a choice we have been between a rock and a hard place, but the only way out of it, as we all knew, was through vaccines, and we made the right call at the right time, which no other Government in Europe made at that point, and we should be proud of that contract, and it is far more important than all the other stuff mentioned today.

On the second point, the social contract, this is my first opportunity to respond to the enormous announcement we heard on Monday—one I am so grateful for—that we will be returning to normal, restoring our precious freedoms. I believe in the social contract; it is implicit—we all have our own interpretation of it—but at its heart must be the idea that Government have certain powers but they can only use them in exceptional circumstances, if those circumstances are truly an emergency.

Tonight, as I said, thousands—millions—of people around part of the Union will be going to watch a football match. They will be crowded in pubs. The idea that we are still in an emergency is for the birds, and that is because of medical science, and I am profoundly grateful; it is because of the first part of the contract that I spoke about, but because of that we must start taking decisions that restore freedom and return this country back to normal.

I understand that some people are nervous, because I have had emails from constituents who voted in all ways for all parties—and in all ways in the referendum, in case anyone tries to make that link. Some people are still nervous; they worry and think we should still have to wear masks after 19 July and that the Government should still keep measures on. I have no idea where the Labour party stands on this; as far as I can see, they want us to remain in lockdown, but, as the Prime Minister said, if not now, when? Let me answer that: if not now, it is never, because the whole point of the social contract is that if we allow the state to keep that power for too long, it will not come back. The default disposition of the state must be that its citizens are free and that they are only not free in exceptional circumstances, and I believe those circumstances have now passed, and that is because of the vaccine; there are still high numbers of cases, but they are generally not resulting in significant ill health, and because of that we can unlock this lock- down.

[Mr Carmichael]

For the record, I agree with a lot of what the hon. Gentleman says with regard to the social contract, but if his analysis is that we are genuinely out of the end of the emergency period, then surely the same question—if not now, when?—should be applied in respect of the start of the inquiry?

[James Cartlidge]

I have great respect for the right hon. Gentleman and that is a fair question. My own view is that to most of my constituents the question of how soon the time comes when, for instance, they can sing in a choir in a church or go to a nightclub or gather inside with family and friends and loved ones without fearing that they are breaking the law, is more important than how soon the Westminster bubble can get excited about something that will take months and months and months and be pored over by legal people and many others.