Finance (No. 2) Bill

Alun Cairns Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 20th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments, but I feel he is misguided in claiming that it is somehow only Labour calling for a doctors-only pension scheme to be investigated. I referred to the Chair of the Treasury Committee, but I could also refer to the current Chancellor—the current Chancellor—who less than a year ago suggested that we should go for a doctors-only scheme. All we are asking is for the current Chancellor to do what he told himself to do less than a year ago and investigate the possibilities. That is important, because that is how we spend public money wisely.

To return to air passenger duty, Ministers may try to point out, when we discuss it later in the debate, that the lower rate of domestic air passenger duty has been accompanied by the introduction of an ultra long-haul rate. But when taken together, the air passenger duty changes in the Bill are set to cost the taxpayer an additional £35 million a year. That cannot be the right priority for spending public money. In Committee, we tried to get to the bottom of why this tax cut is being prioritised.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way on that point. How does the shadow Minister square his comments with those made by the Welsh Government calling for air passenger duty to be devolved and abolished to support Cardiff Airport, which they have purchased?

[James Murray]

I will leave matters for the Welsh Government to the Welsh Government to set out their position. We are trying to challenge the position of the UK Government on air passenger duty.

Whatever the UK Government say, the reasoning behind air passenger duty changes have been hard to come by. In Committee, we wanted to understand why the cost of domestic flights is so high up the agenda of this Government under this Prime Minister. I asked the Minister whether, if someone were to travel by helicopter around the UK, for instance from London and Southampton, that would be subject to air passenger duty. I could equally have asked if that would be the case if someone were to get a helicopter ride from London to Dover. At the time, the Minister clarified that there is no air passenger duty other than on fixed-wing aircraft, so that anyone wanting to make short hops in a helicopter can rest assured that this tax would not apply.

I also asked the Minister whether, if someone travelled on a private jet around the UK from, say, London to Blackpool, what rate of air passenger duty would apply in that case. The Minister confirmed that private jets will not benefit from the domestic air passenger duty cut—something the Chancellor may want to let his neighbour on Downing Street know. Finally, I asked the Minister what rate of air passenger duty would apply if someone lived in the UK but was travelling to another home of theirs, let us say in Santa Monica, California. The Minister did not say at the time whether such a flight would attract the ultra long-haul rate, but my understanding is that it would not, so anyone on the Government Benches who needs to fly to their Los Angeles home will not be hit.

It is clear from the Tories’ approach that they have no idea how to spend public money wisely, and that their judgment over what to prioritise is at odds with the British people. Under the Conservatives in this Parliament alone, people across Britain have faced 25 tax rises and 12 interest rate rises. Yet the Tories think the priorities for taxpayers’ money in the middle of a cost of living crisis should be tax cuts for frequent flyers and for those with the very largest pension pots. The truth is that under the Conservatives, working people always end up paying the bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stewart Hosie]

Before I turn to the new clauses and amendments before us, it is worth reminding ourselves briefly about the debate so far, not least that the Bill was derived from a Budget that had the stated intention of seeing the debt, borrowing and inflation all fall. As the Financial Secretary has said previously, debt servicing costs are down, and indeed they are—they are down from last November, but massively up from the previous year. She said that the fiscal targets are to be met. Again, indeed they are. The debt target in particular is forecast to be met in five years’ time measured against the fiscal charter, but it will be at 0.2% of GDP. That is £6 billion out of a GDP approaching £3 trillion. As I have said before, these are very fine margins.

Although it is true that having a weather eye on debt and deficit—the big macro-economic indicators—is important, so too is immediate help for families suffering from high inflation, high energy prices and spiralling mortgage costs. Those things, however, are all sadly absent from the Bill. That is important because the OBR has told us that living standards will fall by 6% over this fiscal year. That will be the largest two-year fall since Office for National Statistics records began in the 1950s. It is important because inflation is still at 8.7%, and it is far worse for certain essentials such as sugar, at nearly 50%. Remember that inflation was forecast to fall to 2.9% by the end of this year. Since then, it has been revised up to 5% by the end of this year. That means that the forecasts and the pain keep rising.

We know that real pay is not keeping pace with inflation. Troublingly, the Government are keeping their head in the sand regarding the inflationary impact of Brexit, ignoring even the former Bank of England Governor, Mark Carney, who could not have been clearer about the contribution Brexit has made to the soaring inflation we face.

I turn to the amendments and new clauses we are considering on Report. New clause 1 calls for a review of alternatives to the abolition of the lifetime allowance, and amendments 1 to 6 delete clauses associated with the abolition. On Second Reading, I suggested the need to probe this matter in Committee. The decision to remove the cap on lifetime pension allowances, which will cost around £3 billion, will benefit a tiny number of already pretty comfortably off or very well-off people. I also suggested that, if the measure was genuinely designed to lift certain categories of worker—doctors in particular—out of a pension and employment trap, the Government should, to be brutally honest, have come up with a much better and far narrower solution.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) also raised the matter in the Committee upstairs. She made the point that a significant number of questions have been raised in the House and elsewhere about the lifetime allowance and the problem it has caused, particularly for NHS doctors, but went on to quote Torsten Bell of the Resolution Foundation, who noted that 20% of those who will benefit from the change in the lifetime allowance work in the finance industry, meaning that nearly as many bankers as doctors will benefit. That surely cannot have been the intention. We are pleased to support new clause 1, because it seeks not simply a review, but a review that will make recommendations about how a more focused alternative could be delivered.

Amendment 7 seeks to remove entirely the abolition of the Office of Tax Simplification, and new clause 2 seeks reports based on metrics to measure the performance of tax simplification. We will support both if they are voted upon. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman) provided some excellent context in Committee, arguing that

“the OTS achieved a significant amount during its 12 years of existence and, with greater ministerial support for its proposals, could have achieved much more.”—[Official Report, Finance (No. 2) Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2023; c. 136.]

He also quoted George Crozier of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, as many have done over many years, who said that there had been

“useful reforms to employee expenses and inheritance tax reporting,”

and that

“every Finance Act of the last decade has had measures in it which owe their genesis to the OTS, and which have made navigating the tax system easier for one group or another.”

My hon. Friend also made the rather important point that it was the independence of the Office of Tax Simplification that made it stand out from anything that can be provided in-house. We will back amendment 7 and new clause 2 if they are pressed to a Division.

If I may say a few words about Government new clause 4 and Government amendments 9 to 13, they appear to come under the category of tidying up and clarification. New clause 4 in particular ensures that both domestic and international top-up taxes commence at the same time, and the other amendments ensure that reliefs and charges operate as intended.

However, I am rather less sanguine about Government new clause 5. Ostensibly, it is required to deal with the situation where

“financial institutions are regarded as telecommunications or postal operators”.

For example, subsection (5) of Government new clause 5 suggests that paragraph 19(4) and (5) of schedule 36 to the Finance Act 2008 be removed, but paragraph (19)(4) says:

“An information notice does not require a telecommunications operator or postal operator to provide or produce communications data.”

That is a protection against the requirement to produce data in certain circumstances. Paragraph 19(5) defines “communications data”, “postal operator” and “telecommunications operator” as per the Investigatory Powers Act 2016—the very legislation that inserted those protections into schedule 36 to the Finance Act 2008 in the first place. Government new clause 5 not only affects the financial institutions regarded as telecoms or postal operators but, it would appear on my reading, removes protections in the Act for all telecommunications and postal operators not to be required to provide certain information in certain circumstances.

The Financial Secretary said she would answer questions at the end in her summing-up, and my questions are rather simple. What problem is Government new clause 5 designed to address? Why has a potentially significant amendment such as this come so late in the day? Is it even remotely appropriate that a criminal justice measure, the Investigatory Powers Act, should be amended in a potentially significant way through a late-delivered new clause on Report of a Finance Bill?

New clauses 3 and 8 to 14 call for reviews or reports of one form or another on the public health and poverty effects of the Bill, the oil and gas profits levy allowance, the impact of those with non-dom status, the bands and rates of air passenger duty, the impact of tax changes on households, and the effect of the Bill on the affordability of food and on small businesses. We are happy to look on those positively, although I am not certain that new clause 12 should really be opening the door to reducing the electricity generator levy. The Lib Dems have disappeared, but I would have said to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord), had he been in this place, that if one opens the door to a tax cut to the Tories, they by and large take it.

We will also support new clause 7, which requires a statement of progress on the pillar 2 reforms, seeking

“to extend and strengthen the global minimum corporate tax framework”.

It is important that we have a global minimum corporate tax framework, and I am not convinced by the arguments made by the right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) about offering the opportunity for implementation to be delayed.

Again, the Lib Dems are not in their place, but I am also not yet convinced by new clause 15 because, while there are issues with the Government’s research and development framework, which I have raised before—namely, the stated intention to limit attributable expenditure for data and cloud computing licences—the new clause seeks to make the regime more restrictive and introduces the extraordinarily subjective viability clause in subsection (2)(a).

It is, however, true that none or few of the amendments and new clauses tabled substantially alter the Bill. It is also sadly true that none of the Government changes offer any hope of substantial help for the cost of living crisis any time soon. I fear that the Bill, and the Budget it derived from, will go down in the missed opportunity category.

[Alun Cairns]

I will speak to part 2 of the Bill, clauses 46 to 60, to which Government amendments 15 and 16 refer. In general, they relate to duty rates and any exemptions that apply thereafter. The Government’s objectives have been to simplify the system, to have an emphasis on health and healthy consumption, and, of course, to support pubs. In general, these are significant changes that have a positive impact on the hospitality sector.

When the Exchequer Secretary’s predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), said at the Dispatch Box that the Bill delivers the Brexit pub guarantee, there was significant enthusiasm within the sector to recognise and interpret a long-term commitment. There are two elements that immediately stem from that. The first is that these are changes that can be delivered as a result of Brexit; there were difficulties, challenges and nonsensical structures in the sector that could not be amended while we were a member of the EU. That is a major positive impact. However, the significance of the Brexit pub guarantee is that it will be long-term and we look for it to be ever extended.

I pay tribute to the Exchequer Secretary, who has engaged with me on some of the points that I have already made, but also to his predecessor, to the Chancellor, and to the Prime Minister when he was Chancellor, for recognising the opportunities to amend duty rates. That can genuinely help the hospitality sector, particularly pubs.

The original draft duty relief, which was in the Budget two years ago, was set to be 5% and to come into force this year. This year’s Budget and the Bill increased that to 9.1%, which will make a real difference. It follows the theme, all being well, of a continuing differential between rates that apply to the off-licence trade and those that apply to pubs and the general hospitality sector. The Government have therefore taken important, positive steps, which are welcomed far and wide.