Finance Bill
Andrew Gwynne Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Frank Dobson
Yes, my hon. Friend is quite right. Government Members are obviously anticipating the expected decline in national health service output, and that decline is the reason why the national health service is going to stop collecting figures on waiting lists and waiting times. One is always rather suspicious of any organisation that collects figures and then stops. One wonders why, and the idea that those figures might be embarrassing is a good explanation.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is coming on to precisely the point that I want to make. This week, my local hospital, Tameside general hospital, announced 200 job losses among front-line staff, and its waiting times have shot through the roof. Is not this the real picture of what is happening in the national health service? If money is available, should we not be prioritising care in hospitals such as Tameside, not giving a tax hand-out to people for medical insurance?
Frank Dobson
I agree with my hon. Friend. I am sure that he will draw this proposition to the attention of the electors of Tameside, who are facing valuable staff being got rid of and reductions in the number of operations being carried out. I hope that he will also point out, as I did at the beginning of my short contribution, that apparently the first priority of a lot of Back-Bench Tories, who seem to represent the true core of Tory opinion, is to bung £200 million into the hands of the best-off pensioners, some of whom will not agree with it either.
Thomas Docherty
Now the hon. Gentleman is shaking his head. There are many highly paid consultants who split their time between their private practice, their golf course and the national health service. The time that they spend in private practice is clearly time that is not available to the national health service.
Andrew Gwynne
Is this not a question of priorities? If there is a pot of money to be given away, would it not be much better to spend it on health care for the many, rather than on a tax give-away for the few?
Michael Connarty
I hear my right hon. Friend say that 40 million people in the United States of America exist without adequate health care insurance or provision. A friend of mine tried to set up a dental care service in New England based on Medicare, and found that the money was not available. Many people in New England are denied any form of dental care when they end up in private nursing homes in their old age. Something is seriously wrong with that. I commend President Obama’s attempts to at least moderate that.
Let me return to the debate. People should not be deluded into thinking that the proposal will encourage more resources into the health service. It will encourage more companies to demand the services of the limited number of available surgeons to carry out operations for their private patients, instead of allowing the surgeons to do the job they should be doing. I would commend a scheme of private health care payments that provided the NHS with new equipment, doctors and other staff on top of those already trained in this country to work in the NHS.
Those who say that this proposal could do that should look at what happened with a hospital built for the private sector on the west coast of Scotland. The idea was to build a huge hospital with private money and to have people come from around the world to use it, but eventually it had to be sold to the Scottish Government when Jack McConnell was First Minister. We bought the hospital at a knock-down price because, in reality, the private sector could not generate new and fresh talent and equipment. That is not going to happen. It will just suck out resources needed by my constituents, who believe that the NHS should be paid for through taxes.
Andrew Gwynne
Does my hon. Friend agree that this is not about restricting choice, but about prioritising finite resources and ensuring that any available money goes into front-line NHS services, rather than into a tax giveaway to a small number of people who are already accessing private health care?
Michael Connarty
I could not have put it better myself—I commend my hon. Friend for helping me with his analysis.
The Labour Government were right to encourage people to provide resources that the NHS could access using taxpayers’ money where it would be more efficient. That was an excellent scheme that enabled people in my constituency to go to hospitals where beds were available over Christmas for operations that were not being done and could not be fitted into the schedules of hospitals that were short of resources. That was a good initiative, but this proposal is not; it is the opposite. It would be a damaging initiative if it encouraged people to take out private health insurance and so divert resources from the NHS, where they are needed.
Andrew Gwynne
I am pleased that my hon. Friend has confirmed that those on the Labour Front Bench will oppose this measure. She is setting out the right arguments for why we should do so. Did more people not take up NHS care and treatment under the 13 years of Labour Government because of the improvements in NHS care and treatment that were achieved over the lifetime of the Labour Government?
Kerry McCarthy
My hon. Friend makes a good point as always. That is the crucial thing. Under the Conservative Government, the increased take-up in medical insurance from 500,000 to 600,000 did not necessarily have anything to do with the tax relief that was introduced; it happened because the NHS was in absolute crisis. Waiting lists were going through the roof under the last Conservative Government. People were terribly scared and did not feel confident that the NHS would look after them in their ill health. There were significant improvements under the Labour Government, which meant that fewer people felt the need to take out private health care.
Let me turn to the fairness argument. It remains to be seen how much the Health Secretary’s experiment through the measures in the Health and Social Care Bill—driven once again by a preoccupation with private sector involvement in health care—will eventually take from health care budgets. We know that £850 million will be spent on redundancies alone, and the estimates are that £2 billion of PCTs’ budgets are earmarked for what can only be described as—in those infamous words of the coalition agreement—a “top-down reorganisation”. Despite the Prime Minister’s promise of real-terms increases, NHS expenditure is falling in real terms. The King’s Fund has calculated that the NHS will have £910 million less to spend over the spending review period. Patients and staff know all too well that front-line services are being affected, but tax relief for private patients will not help them.
Mr Kevan Jones
New clause 5 would allow married couples to transfer their personal income tax allowances between each other, along the lines of what was said by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions during the election campaign about recognising marriage in the tax system. The new clause is not exactly what the Conservatives were proposing at the general election, and I shall deal with the differences in a while. The important point, which has not been clearly articulated by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), is that this policy arose from a 2005 report by a Conservative think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice, on the breakdown of the family. Its main argument was that marriage is the important point in keeping families together, tackling poverty and dealing with all the other arguments that he has covered. It also supported the introduction of an incentive in the tax system to encourage people to marry, and I shall return to that in a moment. I am not sure that most people who get married are thinking about the tax system before they decide to do so.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend makes a reasonable point and one that we were discussing on the Back Benches earlier. I am married and all three of my children attended my and Allison’s wedding in 2003. We did not need a tax allowance in order to get married—that is the important factor here that is being missed.
Andrew Gwynne
The Deputy Prime Minister did not just say that this proposal was Edwardian. I believe that he went on to say that it was also patronising drivel.
Mr Jones
That is a bit rich coming from the Liberal Democrats, because most of the things that they come out with are patronising drivel. However, they were clearly not happy about this policy, so in the scramble to get the red boxes and cars they had to reach some type of compromise. Thus, the coalition agreement simply states that there will be a provision whereby the Liberal Democrats can abstain at some point in the future when this policy is introduced.
Mr Jones
I think that report has been discredited, but I can look at the north-east of England and my constituency and consider the changes in employment that happened under the previous Labour Government as well as the life chances we gave to individuals, the new hospitals we provided and the investment we made in things such as Sure Start centres. Although I accept that such changes will not have benefits straight away, they will have real benefits over the lifetimes of those individuals. The Government that the hon. Gentleman supports is taking away such provision and says that the state is not important in one respect while, in this case, they want the state to engineer people’s private lives socially. I find that a completely contradictory stance, but, again, the hon. Gentleman is a Conservative and is therefore allowed to be contradictory.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is being generous in giving way and he is making the point that the state can be family friendly through its policies without having to give away a tax break to people based on their marital status. The previous Labour Government made great changes by giving life chances to young families, in particular, without having to manufacture the tax system in such a way.
Mr Jones
My hon. Friend makes a good point. A little later, I shall discuss what our Government did to recognise the fact that if we are to address the issues raised by the hon. Member for Gainsborough about child poverty, the tax system and marriage are not necessarily the way to do it. The way to do it is to ensure that the money goes to the families and children who are affected. That is why the child tax credits and other such provisions were vital in raising people out of poverty. Earlier, my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) mentioned the minimum wage, which lifted a lot of very poor individuals out of poverty who were getting a pittance. I remember seeing as a trade union official an advertisement in the jobcentre in Newcastle that read, “Night guard, bring your own dog, £1.35 an hour.” That is a thing of the past. I hope that it will remain so, but I do not know, as we hear from Conservative Back Benchers that they might want to change the minimum wage in some way.
Michael Connarty
In the contributions that I have heard via the live feed and in the Chamber, sadly there seem to have been moral overtones that echo speeches in a Victorian Parliament. If moral judgments are behind those arguments and people think that they this is a moral vote, I am quite sad about that. It might be a political strategy, however. Many political strategies were put forward by the Conservative leadership at the election, but hopefully they will not be reflected in the legislation put though this House. I hope that the contribution from the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) is more reflective of the coalition, which means that the Government will not do what the new clause proposes.
It is very important that people listening to this debate realise what the proposals are. After the advances that this country has made, in the recognition of civil partnerships, for example, this proposal is about spouses and spouses alone, not civil partners. It is attacking the progress that has been made, which is now being copied across Europe. It does not relate to people of the same gender in firm and committed relationships, which shows that it is not a forward movement at all. It is an attempt to throw out and make a moral judgment on the things that have been done by the joint agreement of this House to advance society’s value of firm and committed partnerships. That is what is important.
Michael Connarty
Not yet.
It is not just a matter of putting a marriage partnership or a firm partnership ahead of any other. My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) spoke strongly and has worked hard on single parenthood, but I happen to believe, in most cases but not all, that a partnership provides a much stronger place for children to grow up in than that provided by any single person—male or female—who has to go it alone. Therefore, our society has a lot of value when we can encourage partnerships.
We still have the oddest situation in Europe—and among many other countries outside Europe—because we do not recognise de facto partnerships. De facto partnerships are not civil marriages but agreements by people without either a civil or Church marriage to remain in a relationship and to commit to themselves and to any offspring.
My son lives in Australia, and he shared a de facto partnership for a number of years, recognising that if he or his partner had died their pension would have transferred to the other. In this country I have friends who, like me and my spouse, have been together for 41 years. They have had to get married because they might be coming to the end of their lives—not for a long time, I hope—and their pensions would have died with them.
That was a moral judgment which the previous Labour Government made, and it was shameful, because we should have had civil partnerships for all who wished to have them, and we should have recognised de facto partnerships as much as same-gender partnerships. That is how we should have looked at things, but we should not give cash incentives, as the new clause seeks. Indeed, that was the contradiction in the contribution from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), because he said that he was not about incentivising partnerships through finances and then spoke on behalf of the new clause—which would incentivise partnerships.
Michael Connarty
I have a call from my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) first.
That is what is wrong with the new clause. It is about spouses, it is backward looking and moralistic and it will not help children at all. It is sad that one in five marriages breaks down and that civil partnerships break down, so we must encourage people through the way we finance them and help them to keep their relationships together, because finances as much as personal fall-outs break down relationships.
Andrew Gwynne
I agree wholeheartedly that families come in different shapes and sizes, and we need to respect and reflect that in public policy. Is not that why the previous Labour Government were absolutely right to target limited resources on tackling child poverty, irrespective of the child’s family background?
Michael Connarty
My hon. Friend has made that point before, and he puts it better than I could.
My mother, who now has sadly passed away, was soured by the Labour Government very early on when we took away the additional money for single parents. From then on, every time I went to her house on a Sunday, she would start by saying, “Welcome,” and then she would say, “You and your Tony Blair,” and for the rest of my visit berate me for what we had not got right. She was a great touchstone, however, because she saw that the defence of children and the future of children were important, not the rest.
The new clause is a backwards step, but I am hopeful that the Minister will not support it and that such legislation will never get through. It states that only marriage—not any other relationship—is good enough or as good as we would wish.
Andrew Gwynne
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw the House’s attention to new clause 10. All it asks for is an impact assessment of the rate of VAT on UK economic growth. Is it not the case that, since the VAT rate was increased, consumer confidence has flatlined and retail sales have fallen?
Mr Hanson
It is very interesting that my hon. Friend makes that point about the VAT increase, because following that reckless gamble, inflation, which was 3.1% in September, was 4.5% in April and May, hitting savings, pensions, incomes, jobs and people’s livelihoods. He will know that confidence is important and that consumer confidence is now at minus 31%. Overall confidence was three points lower in April than in March, and lower than at any time since spring 2009.
Nia Griffith
I find that extraordinary, and I also find it extraordinary that the Tories seem to have so little comprehension of the impact of the increase. As I have said, many household items need to be replaced.
Andrew Gwynne
Is not the real purpose of new clause 10 to enable us to assess whether the impact of the VAT increase is indeed returning growth to the economy, and does not the evidence so far suggest that the economy is going into reverse as a result of the Government’s measures?
Nia Griffith
I am asking about the Government’s growth strategies. I am trying to explain by giving some examples of how Governments can stimulate the economy and make a difference. They can choose to kick-start the economy or to allow it to go spiralling down and unemployment to increase. These are active choices that a Government can make. We are asking in our new clause for a proper assessment of the effect of the increase in VAT on what is happening now in the economy.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend has been generous in giving way. She talks about the Government’s growth strategy. It appears to me that they have neither a coherent strategy nor, apparently, growth.
Nia Griffith
That is precisely the problem. In spring 2010 we were beginning to come out of the recession, the economy was growing, inflation was low, and unemployment was coming down. Under Labour’s plan, the economy was set to grow strongly. In fact, as more people were getting back into work, borrowing ended up £21 billion lower last year than had been forecast.
Toby Perkins
Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes an important point. The impact is being felt on the cost of everything, even items on which VAT is not charged, because businesses and members of the public are having to spend more on others items. There is the impact on fuel and heating costs and the downward pressure on wages, as we see the failure to achieve economic growth and the public sector being told that it will have no wage increases for two years and that pension contributions will increase. All those impacts are contributing to people spending more on VAT and having less money.
Andrew Gwynne
New clause 10 proposes an assessment of the impact of VAT on the economy, and of course we can now make a direct comparison with a fairly recent period when the previous Labour Government introduced a temporary cut in VAT and got the economy growing again. Is it not the case that we need to make that assessment so that we can see where this Government are getting it so badly wrong?
Toby Perkins
Absolutely. The new clause could not be more reasonable. It is impossible to imagine even having a vote on it, because I cannot see how anyone could argue against the need for an assessment when there is so little growth in our economy.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Gwynne Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I am extremely grateful. Under the procedures of the House, as colleagues are aware, we must proceed to the next question.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
14. What assessment he has made of the progressive effects of the measures in the June 2010 Budget which have been implemented to date.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Justine Greening)
As the House knows, the Government published huge amounts of analysis of the impact of the measures announced in the Budget of June 2010. The majority of the measures have now been implemented. The charts in the Budget book show that the most well-off households make the largest contribution to the fiscal consolidation, both in cash terms and as a proportion of their net income.
Andrew Gwynne
I am grateful to the Minister for that reply, but has she seen the analysis produced by the House of Commons Library and my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) showing that the measures in the last Budget hit women three times as hard as they hit men? Why is that?
Justine Greening
I do not accept the premise of the hon. Gentleman’s question at all. As ever, what we have heard from the Opposition is a cheap political point-scoring jibe. They might be better advised to come up with an alternative plan for tackling the fiscal deficit. The hon. Gentleman had nothing to say to my response to him, which implied that it is the most well-off households in the country that are bearing the brunt of the fiscal consolidation.
Eurozone (Contingency Plans)
Andrew Gwynne Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend has pointed to one way in which a country can regain competitiveness—through devaluation. There are other ways, including reducing labour costs and increasing productivity, and all those actions should be taken to ensure that the Greek economy and those elsewhere in the eurozone reach a much stronger position.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
The impact on the British economy of events in the eurozone, and in Greece in particular, is potentially very significant. May I press the Minister further on what contingency plans the Treasury is putting in place to protect the UK’s financial and economic interests in the event of a Greek default or, worse still, a domino effect across the eurozone?
Mr Hoban
I will say this again, so that no one leaves the Chamber unaware of what is happening: as ever, discussions are taking place between the Bank of England, the Treasury and the FSA, and we are considering a number of scenarios and potential market events. I can say to the hon. Gentleman that British banks are better capitalised than they were at the start of the crisis, and because of the strength of their balance sheets, they are able to access funding in what can be quite difficult market conditions. That is a good sign of market confidence in the strength of the UK banking sector.
Finance (No. 3) Bill
Andrew Gwynne Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is making an important point that is indeed linked with the previous clause. Clause 4 deals with the corporation tax cut, which is one side of the coin, but the other side is obviously investment. Constituencies such as mine are still heavily dependent on manufacturing industries—indeed, almost disproportionately so. Although local businesses that have spoken to me about the Budget measures have welcomed the corporation tax cut, they are incredibly concerned about the changes to capital allowances, which they think will serve as a disincentive for them to invest in the long term.
Mr Hanson
My hon. Friend makes some valid points. I know that he defends his constituency and the whole of the north-west region strongly when it comes to the importance of manufacturing industries. One issue that I want to explore with the Minister is the very question of whether the capital allowance reductions proposed in clause 10—as well as other in clauses, which we will consider in due course upstairs in Committee—will have an impact on the job creation and investment proposals that we are considering today. Unemployment in my hon. Friend’s region in the north-west will be very high, at around 9%, which again indicates the importance of generating and regenerating manufacturing industries in those areas.
Capital allowances allow businesses to write off the cost of certain capital assets, including plant and machinery, to arrive at their business profits. Capital allowances take the place of commercial depreciation, which is not allowed for tax. There are certain first-year capital allowances that allow 100% of a business’s expenditure on specific, environmentally-beneficial plant or machinery to be written off in the year that the expenditure is incurred. There is also the annual investment allowance, which allows businesses to write off the whole of their expenditure on most plant and machinery, up to a limit in the year in which it is incurred. Expenditure on plant and machinery not covered by the allowances also attracts writing-down allowances, at either the main rate or a special rate.
The changes in clause 10 are part of the package of corporate tax reforms announced in the Government’s 2010 Budget, as the Minister will undoubtedly explain later. The amendment calls for a review of the impact of the Government’s abolition of capital allowances for smaller businesses in 15 to 16 months—that is, October next year—when these allowances will have been operational and we can see what the growth potential in the economy has been over that period thanks to the corporation tax measures in the Budget, as well as the impact of stringent public spending cuts and rising unemployment across the UK.
Mr Hanson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that valid point. I know that he is committed to bringing jobs and investment to his part of east London, as indeed my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) is to the north-west and elsewhere.
I am not saying that we will not approve the cuts in capital allowances in due course. I am simply asking the Minister to monitor their impact, and if they are becoming detrimental, given the corporation tax cut to which they are inextricably linked, we shall need to look at how the process will continue.
Andrew Gwynne
My right hon. Friend is right to say that we shall need a regular assessment, because the regional economies do not stand alone. The decisions taken in one region might have an impact on another. An example is Mono Pumps, a manufacturing company in the Tameside area, part of which my constituency covers. It was one of just 50 schemes announced in the regional growth fund, and it is to relocate to a new facility on the Ashton Moss regional employment site in my constituency. That move is now being jeopardised because of supply chain issues with a manufacturing company based in Gloucestershire and south Wales. We need to ensure that manufacturing as a whole is supported across the United Kingdom, and only the kind of assessment that we are proposing will ensure that such regional disparities are properly looked into.
Mr Hanson
I could speculate on those points for my hon. Friend, but the Minister might be in a better position to comment on them. I will give my hon. Friend one thought, however. Perhaps the Chancellor realised that unemployment is rising because of the squeeze on public spending over the year; that growth is slowing because people feel uncertain in their jobs and businesses are not willing to invest; and that the level, depth and speed of public spending cuts over the next two years will lead to growing unemployment—not just in the public sector, but in the private sector, as people in private businesses depend on public investment. For those reasons, I suggest, the Chancellor has had to make additional changes to do what I believe is the right thing: to try to stimulate private sector growth.
If last-minute thought has been given to the impact of corporation tax changes and if full assessments have not been made of the impact of VAT on public spending cuts, we need to be aware that capital allowance reductions are coming into effect in April next year. The amendment simply says:
“The Chancellor shall publish, by 31 October 2012, an assessment of the impact of the changes to capital allowances on the UK economy.”
I find it difficult to think of anybody who would object to that. I am sure that the Treasury would make such an assessment as a matter of course in any case. Any good business—and the Treasury is a good business—would look at its outputs, outcomes and impacts and reflect on how they will affect the customer base, which in this case is manufacturing industry.
I have real concerns about the decision to reduce the rate of writing-down allowances for new and unrelieved expenditure, as I believe it could impact adversely on smaller businesses and on businesses that are more likely to invest, such as manufacturers. I say this because the Government regularly claim that small businesses are the key to future growth in the economy. Who depends on a capital allowance more—a very large or a smaller business? The argument I put to the Minister is that small businesses would be more affected.
Nobody disagrees with the fact that the UK should have a competitive tax regime, and the corporation tax cut should help with that in principle. The Government are paying for it by the measures in clauses 10, 11 and 12—slashing investment allowances by £2.6 billion. The package will penalise companies that invest, particularly manufacturing companies, in order to offer tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit the banks and the financial sector. At a time when the Government claim they are rebalancing the economy by trying to encourage manufacturing, this package could—I say could—do the reverse.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said:
“The largest beneficiaries from the package of measures”—
including corporation tax and capital allowances—
“will be high-profit, low investment firms”,
such as financial services, while the cuts to allowances under clauses 10, 11 and 12 will
“have the largest impact on those firms with capital-intensive operations”,
such as manufacturers. That is a direct quote—from page 229, for the Minister’s reference—from the IFS Green Budget 2011. The IFS also agrees:
“The losers would be firms that invested heavily but made little profit—notably in the manufacturing and transport sectors but also some capital-intensive service-sector firms. The winners will be less capital-intensive but more profitable firms, historically typified by the financial sector.”
I do not know whether it will pan out like that in real life, but my point is that if it does, clauses 4 and 10 together will mean giving a corporation tax cut that benefits the financial services sector most and a capital allowance cut that damages the private sector of small and medium-sized manufacturing industries most. That cannot be a good recipe for growth in the economy.
Andrew Gwynne
One of my concerns is that as we try desperately to rebalance the economy, we need to invest in some of the new high-tech and emerging industries, particularly in the renewable energy sector, which is incredibly capital-investment intensive. Does my right hon. Friend worry, like me, that these changes could put off growth in that emerging technology?
Mr Hanson
My hon. Friend makes a valid point, as it is exactly those companies that require capital investment support. The move will penalise companies that invest in manufacturing—for example, the car industry, advanced manufacturing, wind turbine manufacturing, and research and development across the board. These big manufacturing concerns are going to create the jobs of the future as well as protect current manufacturing jobs at a time when consumer demand might well be fragile because of high levels of unemployment, high levels of public spending cuts and general concerns about the squeeze on the economy and on people’s living standards and incomes generally.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has said:
“Many clients will balance the modest reduction in the capital allowances rates with the staggered reduction of the rate of Corporation Tax…Whilst the declining rates of capital allowances, in isolation, do not produce any winners, some businesses will benefit when the CT rate change is also taken into consideration. Capital intensive businesses”—
this is the key point—
“are likely to feel the reductions more, since they will have larger capital allowances pools.”
Deloitte has said:
“For some businesses the reduction in writing-down allowances for plant and machinery will be offset by the reduction in the main rate of corporation tax from April 2012.”
We accept that.
“However”—
and this is the key point—
“capital intensive companies…may not benefit to the same extent.”
John McDonnell
Strangely enough, given that I represent Hayes and Harlington, an urban area, I do not have an awful lot of engagement with the NFU, although my area does still have one farm left in it. I have an engagement with Hillingdon chamber of commerce—I am meant to be hosting its annual parliamentary lunch at the moment—and a number of its members have explained to me their concerns about the impact on small firms. I share the view of the hon. Member for Amber Valley: capital allowances should not be used just as mechanisms to be manipulated in years of high profit. There is a need for an overall review of capital allowances, but I find it unacceptable to cut them in the short term to pay for corporation tax reductions and for the beneficial treatment of multinational corporations. That is why I support the amendment, which is fairly mild-mannered and simply asks whether we can reconsider the matter.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn said, I would expect a wise Government to have the Treasury carry out such an assessment regularly. The amendment asks for that process to be more open and transparent and for it to be reported to the House so that we can have a full and thorough debate. I hope that the Minister can assure us that he can at least give us some line of reporting on the implementation of the policy over the coming period.
It worries me that as we cut capital allowances, which will reduce corporation tax in this country, we will get into a cycle just like that in the 1930s with an internecine battle between countries about reducing corporation taxes. That will lead to a policy of beggar thy neighbour in order to secure some short-term gain in the form of overseas investment in the UK. I do not believe that that is the solution and I think it will be found to be counter-productive in the long term, even though there might be some short-term gains to tide the Government over for the next 18 months, if they survive that long.
I believe that the Government are mistaken in bringing forward this process of corporation tax reduction. If we are paying for that through the capital allowances changes, we will divide industry and the private sector. A large number of small firms, particularly in the manufacturing sector, will lose out and will not gain sufficiently as a result of the corporation tax cuts. Other areas of the economy, particularly the finance sector, will gain yet again and yet more anxiety will be expressed in the private sector about the Government’s divide-and-rule policy.
Andrew Gwynne
Is it not worse than that? Many of the small manufacturing industries in my constituency have been dependent on an old declining style of manufacturing. The capital allowances were the mechanism that they used to diversify. On my hon. Friend’s point about rebalancing the economy, if we are to do that in areas that are heavily dependent on manufacturing industry, we must allow them to diversify into the new technologies and new manufacturing sectors.
John McDonnell
That is exactly the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn made and that I wish to reiterate. Capital allowances were introduced as a method of the Government’s trying to shape behaviour within industry as best we could. They were a way to stimulate sectors of the economy, but they have also been used to stimulate innovation. The Government are committed to the stimulation of the green economy and I, like other Members on both sides of the House, deeply regret the Government’s failure to act sufficiently swiftly to establish the green investment bank and to get it up and running, but that is a subject for another debate.
The role of capital allowances, particularly in the environmental field, could be key and cutting them with this broad-brush approach will deny the opportunity to the environmental industries, particularly those involved in the development of renewables, to become world leaders as the Government envisaged that they would in the coming period, an idea that we all supported. This is my right hon. Friend’s point: if a review of the impact of the capital allowances were linked to the disastrous corporation tax policies overall, we would have the opportunity to consider the implications sector by sector and industry by industry as well as the design of the appropriate mechanisms, allowances or other things to stimulate those sectors of industry.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is making a good start to his speech by setting out the background. Not long ago, when the Chancellor was promoting his Budget and introducing the measures that my hon. Friend is talking about, he did so on the basis that it was a Budget for growth. However, do not the OBR’s forecasts show that even with the measures in the Budget, growth is predicted to be lower than it would have been had Labour’s plans remained in place?
Mr Love
Absolutely. One has to question, as I am doing, the Government’s whole strategy, which they call a growth strategy but which does not appear to be delivering what we would expect from a proper growth strategy. Indeed, the previous Government’s growth strategy produced a far better result, as I shall discuss in a moment.
I want to cover two other issues that have caused quite a lot of surprise and concern in relation to the Government’s policies. First, on construction, the first quarter growth figures for this year show one glaring and prominent inadequacy is in construction activity, which is going down rapidly. If we add to that the incoherent policies that the Government are pursuing on house building, planning consents and oiling the wheels of the construction industry’s infrastructure, one can only be very gloomy about the prospects for the next year or two.
Secondly, I will mention manufacturing because it would be part of the report that we are suggesting the Government should produce. Manufacturing did rather better than I had suspected it would in the first quarter. Internationally, it seems to be delivering some of the changes in net exports that all the economic forecasters suggested, but we need a much more growth-oriented manufacturing sector if we are to bring about the changes that will be necessary if the changes in capital allowances are to go forward.
Those considerations lead me to conclude that the Budget proposals before us—the reduction in the headline rate and the compensatory measures widening the tax base to pay for that—are the main thrust of the Government’s growth strategy in real terms. The Government suggest that those measures will help to rebalance the economy. I look at all issues as objectively as I can and I have to say that, given the measures being undertaken in the comprehensive spending review in relation to the public sector, we certainly need to do something to boost the private sector. We are told that the measures will do that, but will they? That is the question being addressed in the amendment.
The Minister and the Chancellor have told us that a lower rate of corporation tax should act as a signal that we are open for business. There is some evidence that that approach has worked previously to a limited extent, but the question is whether it will work in the current economy. I am not a sceptic but, like the shadow Minister, I would like to see some Government projections about the number of businesses they expect to come from other countries either to expand existing operations or to start new ones here as a result of that signal.
In his Budget statement, the Chancellor proclaimed from the Treasury Bench that we have
“the lowest corporation tax in the G7”—[Official Report, 23 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 955.]
but we already had the lowest rate of corporation tax in the G7. If all we are trying to do is send a signal, surely we could have proclaimed that. There is also the wider Group of Twenty to consider. Looking at countries such as Ireland we must ask whether it is feasible and rational for our strategy to be to compete with that in Ireland. As we know, there is debate in Northern Ireland about whether corporation tax should come down to the level in the rest of the island. There is genuine debate about that, but I do not think it is being suggested that we want to compete with Ireland. We compete with the major G7 economies and our rate is already below theirs. The cut in corporation tax will re-emphasise that, but what we would like to know from the Minister is what benefit that will deliver to the British economy.
Andrew Gwynne
Is it not a fact that for the international companies seeking to invest inwardly in the United Kingdom, corporation tax is only one small part of the overall picture? They are looking at much more than just the headline tax rate.
Mr Love
Yes, absolutely. If we look at business investment, which in some senses reflects how optimistic employers, manufacturers and other parts of the economy are about the future, we will see that we have not had the increase in business investment that all the forecasters, economists and coalition politicians have been telling us we should have. That reflects the wider issues in the economy that should be of such major concern. We cannot expect a cut in corporation tax to solve all the problems, but the merit of the amendment is that it proposes that the Government try to indicate how much additional growth and employment will be created as a result. In the previous debate, the Minister suggested that a cut in corporation tax would boost investment.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend has been incredibly generous in accepting interventions. I am not sure of the extent of the manufacturing base in his constituency, but I imagine that it is pretty similar to mine. Small manufacturing industries tend, as he said, to be a remnant of the larger-scale manufacturing that once operated in our constituencies. Does he not regard the capital allowances scheme as a mechanism for manufacturing industries, however small, to diversify into the new sector?
Mr Love
I agree. If we take the coalition at face value, it has suggested that we need a vibrant small business and manufacturing sector, much of it consisting of small businesses. I would think that it would want to promote that by incentivising it through the taxation system. One wonders whether the measure would achieve that. I do not want to suggest, without any concrete figures, that that will in fact happen. We urge the Government to produce those figures, so that we can all make a judgment. Indeed, they can make a judgment about whether their policy has achieved their objectives.
Mr Hanson
Actually, Ministers answer the questions and the Opposition ask them. I have been clear with the Exchequer Secretary about the proposal that we outlined in government, and that will be our view. We are potentially four years from government.
I am simply pressing the Exchequer Secretary to explain what the impact is of clause 35, and why there has been a significant change—unless he wishes to clarify that further—to the proposals announced by the previous Government on extending child care for two-year-olds. It is important that we know not just what the clause means, because it will restrict child care support for higher rate families. The purpose of our proposal in government was to expand child care arrangements for poorer and lower-income families. The Government are now squeezing the middle while—unless the Exchequer Secretary clarifies that the contrary is the case—not providing the same level of child care places that were originally proposed by the Labour Government.
This measure is coupled with a range of other measures, which are not before the Committee in clause 35, but which I hope you will give me the scope to touch on, Mr Evans. There are real-terms cuts to child benefit, which is frozen at £75.40 this year for families; the baby element of child tax credits, which is worth £545 a year, has been scrapped; benefits have been set on a permanently lower path of inflation; the basic and 30-hour elements of working tax credit have been frozen; and the second income threshold for the family element of child tax credit has been cut. Those measures all add to the pressures on child care responsibilities and on families.
Andrew Gwynne
My right hon. Friend has set out a series of measures that the Government are implementing in the Budget. Does he find it ironic that those measures come from the Conservative party, given that the Prime Minister claimed before the general election that he would lead the most family friendly Government in history? Those measures are penalising hard-working families, and women more than men.
Mr Hanson
Indeed. It is a fact of life that child care often remains the prime responsibility of the woman. Child benefit is paid to the woman for that purpose. Clause 35 does not deal with child benefit—I do not wish to test your patience, Mr Evans—but, in principle, the purpose of the Labour Government’s original policy proposals was to expand free child care for people who could not afford it otherwise, to help to support women to get back into work and to help individuals to support their children.
As I understand it—I am willing to be contradicted and to hear clarification from the Minister—the impact of the proposals is that fewer child care places will be available than the previous Labour Government proposed. That must be a matter of some concern. Indeed, in our original amendment, we proposed a review of child care provision to consider the impact of all these measures. Clause 35 proposes changing higher-rate relief to basic-rate relief for higher-rate taxpayers, but we should not consider it in isolation; it is only one change among many on child benefit and the other issues that I have mentioned that raise concern among the official Opposition.
Mr Hanson
My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. That is another issue that we wish to explore not just today, but when we debate schedule 8 upstairs in Committee at a later date. The element of complexity and randomness in the application of the clause has been raised with me by the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group. It is incumbent on the Exchequer Secretary to answer those criticisms before we consent to the clause.
There are choices to be made in tackling the deficit and we must look at the options. The then Labour Government made the same choice, but would have ensured that more child care places were available.
Andrew Gwynne
My right hon. Friend makes his case on clause 35 and says that the previous Labour Government considered the possibility of targeting. However, they did so in the context of a wider range of measures available to families to support them in the upbringing of children. Does he share my dismay that clause 35 is being introduced against a backdrop of absolutely clobbering families hard and removing benefits that have made a huge difference to them in my constituency, and no doubt in his?
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)
I now have to announce the result of the deferred Division on the Budget report and the UK’s convergence programme. The Ayes were 249 and the Noes were 139, so the Ayes have it.
[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]
Andrew Gwynne
It was not my intention to speak in the clause 35 stand part debate. Having listened to my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris), however, I have decided that it is important for me to do so.
As has already been said, the clause introduces schedule 8, which introduces changes to the higher rate taxpayer relief for child care. That was first announced by the Government and, as my right hon. Friend the shadow Minister said, Labour does not oppose it, except for the important point—I bear in mind your earlier strictures on not extending the debate too widely, Mr Evans—that the measure has a wider impact on the Government’s child care policy and how it fits in with the Budget measures.
I have some sympathy with the notion of expanding child care places for two-year-olds. The previous Labour Government made greater provision for early years education, which has been incredibly beneficial to those children. I declare an interest in that all three of my children went through early years education under a Labour Government and, thanks to that Government’s investment, they are doing brilliantly at primary and secondary school.
Andrew Gwynne
I am happy to say that all three of my children went to St Anne’s primary school in Denton, where my wife, who is up for election tomorrow, is a chair of the governors. My eldest son goes to Audenshaw high school, which is also in my constituency, and all my children are getting a first-class education in those schools.
Let me return to clause 35, Mr Evans, for fear of being told off by your good self for straying too wide of the issue. The issue, for Labour Members, is this. We support the extra investment in child care for two-year-olds, especially in constituencies such as mine. Denton and Reddish is quite a deprived constituency, which covers five wards in the Tameside metropolitan borough—which is, I believe, the 52nd most deprived local authority in England—and the two Reddish wards in Stockport, which, although Stockport itself is a much more prosperous borough, are the two most deprived wards in the constituency. Investment in early years education has made a big difference to young people in constituencies such as Denton and Reddish. I would particularly welcome extra investment in nursery education in those deprived communities and, indeed, the Labour party proposed to provide it. I am pleased that the present Government are pressing ahead with a change that we proposed when we were in government.
Where we differ is in our approach to targeting. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington made a valid point about that. Although I understand the arguments for targeting as a way of ensuring that communities such as his and mine receive the benefit of extra early years provision, some constituents who are better off than the average in my constituency tell me—and it is difficult to argue against what they say—that they pay considerably higher taxes and pay into a welfare state system, and that they expect to get at least something in return. Those payments are their buy-in to the universal welfare system. I take on board your strictures, Mr Evans, but I also take on board the points made by my hon. Friend.
John Cryer
What concerns me about the changes is their incoherent nature. It appears that there have been knee-jerk reactions to save a bit of money here and a bit of money there. I fear that the Tory party may be moving from being, as Disraeli said, the party of organised hypocrisy to being the party of disorganised hypocrisy. For the benefit of Government Members, incidentally, Disraeli was a Prime Minister, and a Tory Prime Minister.
Andrew Gwynne
I entirely understand what my hon. Friend has said. There is a real inconsistency in the Government’s approach. While I think it commendable to raise additional money to target early years provision, particularly in constituencies such as mine, I also think that the Government’s so-called family-friendly approach is deeply questionable. As I said earlier in an intervention, when the Prime Minister was Leader of the Opposition he made it clear that he would be proud to lead the most family-friendly Government in history. Whether the Government are family-friendly is, of course, a matter for debate and conjecture. I can only say that the constituents who regularly come to my advice bureau seem to have been clobbered time and again by the changes that the Government are implementing, many of which—
The First Deputy Chairman
Order. The hon. Gentleman is much too wide of the mark again. If he cares to look at page 21 of the Bill, he will see that clause 35 is only 11 words long and is drafted quite precisely. Will he now please focus on the clause?
Mr Robinson
We are not opposing the 11 words per se. [Interruption.] We are not going to vote on them, to my knowledge. The point is that the expansion of child care for two-year-olds is not funded, and that is what the whole of our modification to the existing legislation was intended to do. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is the problem with this legislation?
Andrew Gwynne
Absolutely. The funding of these measures needs to fit within the wider context, as set out perfectly eloquently by my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson). He was given a certain degree of leeway by the Chairman to put all this in the context of the wider changes that this Government have introduced on family policy.
Clause 35 goes some way towards dealing with the issues raised about tackling child poverty. The clause intends to ensure that extra resource is released for early years provision, and we support that. As I said, we proposed to do that when we were in government and, as my right hon. Friend mentioned, it highlights the real progress that was made on tackling child poverty during the Labour years, as was highlighted in the OECD report. I do not know whether the clause will have any impact on the Government’s ambitions to tackle child poverty, because that remains to be seen, but some of these changes could well start to have an impact. The explanatory notes state:
“Approximately 450,000 parents currently qualify for the relief.”
I am sure that the Treasury stands by that figure, as it produced the explanatory notes. Those 450,000 people will be concerned by these changes and the Government will have to answer the question that they will be asking: what do they get out of the system? If they are to miss out on this relief as a result of the Government’s changes and the extra child care places are targeted, the Government will have to deal with the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Easington was answering on the general principle of universality.
Having said that, it is important that this Government maintain a commitment to early years education. There is a degree of consensus across the House on the benefits of ensuring that children can start their education as young as possible, whether or not that is education through play in the context of early years provision—I think that we probably all agree on that. I note that the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who has responsibility for children, is in his place. During the last general election campaign he visited a Sure Start centre in Horton Green, in my constituency, with the Conservative candidate. He also had his photograph taken outside my house as part of that campaign, and I was pleased that the then Opposition had visited a Sure Start children’s centre in my constituency. That underlined the background motive of the clause, which is to ensure that more resource is put into the early years.
However, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn made clear, people have concerns that this Government are not family-friendly, because what they are giving with one hand, they are taking with another. Many of the measures that they have introduced in this Budget, of which clause 35 is part, are deeply damaging to families.
Mr Hanson
As I mentioned in my speech—it is further confirmed by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales—the provision in clause 35 is based on an estimate of whether the employer will have earnings that exceed the higher rate limit on a particular payday. That causes some difficulties with fairness because there will be people who work part time, who change circumstances or who are on maternity leave for part of the year and the implementation of this is as potentially worrying as the policy—
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. The shadow Minister is talking about the schedule, which, as he knows, will be discussed in the Public Bill Committee.
Andrew Gwynne
Having heard your ruling, Mr Evans, I would not wish to stray on to the issue of the schedule. Suffice it to say that HMRC is often very good at making a complicated system far worse, as we have seen in the past with tax credits. That is straying quite wide of clause 35, however.
Let me bring my comments to a close. The Government’s intentions are good—they want to invest more in early years—but I think they are going about it in the wrong way. Their wider family-oriented policies are deeply flawed and clause 35 fails the fairness test. We need the Government seriously to rethink the range of family policies that they have introduced in the Budget, of which clause 35 plays an important part.
Kate Green
Not slightly—straying from the ambit of clause 35.
My hon. Friend’s point is correct: fundamentally, the clause removes a universal approach, an approach that keeps everyone in the context of the child care market and the wider social community. That is a really important point.
It is also important to recognise that we are talking about developing children’s long-term economic potential. I do not like to think of our children as future economic actors—I like to think of them enjoying and making the most of their childhood now—but they are the next generation of providers and sustainers of our economy and community care for us in our old age. Removing this financial support from some families and not placing it in the child care market means that some children will be more likely to lose the advantages that good-quality, professional, formal child care can bring.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is adding great expertise to the debate with her background in this area of policy. Although clause 35 was a mechanism that was suggested by the previous Labour Government, is not the difference between our approach and that of the Government that we would have invested the money raised back into child care provision?
The First Deputy Chairman
Order. I am not going to allow any further discussion as to what the money could have been spent on. This debate is simply about clause 35. I know that the hon. Lady has expertise in this matter, so I ask her to restrict herself to clause 35, which relates to higher earners’ child care.
Kate Green
We are aware of the difficulty in planning the paying for child care. Parents are often required to pay a lump sum at the beginning of term or for a group of sessions. They are often required to pay for sessions that they subsequently cannot use for various reasons, but there is no money-back guarantee. Parents will often pay for sessions for more than one child, but there is no financial advantage to them; there is regrettably no bulk discount when buying child care.
Removing money from parents that they could have used to meet some of the burden and the lumpiness in the structure of the way that child care charges are often levied will be a real financial burden on family budgets. Some families will take on debt to meet those commitments, because parents will always try to put their children’s best interests first. If they are happy with their current child care setting, they will do all that they can to keep their child in that stable child care place.
Even if parents are worried that they might be unable to afford that place because of the loss of the tax advantage but can see a time coming when they could resume paying for that place, they will none the less not want to give up that child care place. If they think that they can afford the place again in six or 12 months’ time because their economic prospects might improve, they will stagger on through those six or 12 months, desperate to keep their child in that child care place for two reasons. First, they know that child care places are like gold dust and that, if they give one up, they might not get one back again very easily. That is certainly the case in some parts of the country. Secondly, they know that it will be good for the child. If a child is thriving, doing well and prospering in a settled, high-quality child care place, a parent will make all sorts of sacrifices elsewhere to sustain that child in that place.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. Is not the underlying impact of clause 35 that the Government know that, although the allowance will be taken away from higher-rate taxpayers, many of those parents will still fund those places and make sacrifices elsewhere in their family budgets?
Kate Green
That is right. There is plenty of evidence that parents, especially women, will always make financial sacrifices for their children’s well-being. We should be concerned by the fact that families will have to stagger under considerable financial pressure for the best of reasons—to keep their children in good-quality child care places. They know that that will help their children’s well-being, because they will be happy and enjoy their child care setting and the friendships and relationships that they make there. Let us not underestimate the importance of social interaction in child development, and good-quality child care can offer that.
Parents will do everything they possibly can in the interests of their child’s well-being and happiness. They will do everything to hold on to a good-quality child care place, even if they find themselves under financial pressure, possibly for a prolonged period. That has a knock-on effect elsewhere in the family budget, which might lead to the problems of debt, financial difficulty and stress that my hon. Friends have mentioned.
Financial stress among parents tends to feed back into children’s well-being, and children become aware of it in the household. They are aware of tensions and anxieties in their parents’ attitudes and behaviour. We have to understand how central good-quality, sustainable and stable child care is to children’s much wider well-being. That is why it is of concern that funding for that child care provision is being eaten away at by the provisions of clause 35.
There are opportunities to compensate for what is happening within the market. I particularly highlight the need to ensure that we maintain a supply of well-qualified child care workers, because pressures elsewhere in the public finances may mean that we see fewer good-quality child care workers coming through from training. Indeed, the loss of education maintenance allowance may have an impact on that. There are real concerns among parents about the nibbling away at the different pillars of the child care market.
When we ask parents what they worry about in balancing the family budget, they repeatedly highlight the high cost of good-quality child care. They do not want to buy poor-quality child care if it is at all possible to avoid it, because they are mindful of the value of getting their child into a high-quality, professionally run child care setting with excellent developmental and social activity, which the children can enjoy and in which they can flourish. Parents know that quality costs, and they do not want to compromise or cut corners when it comes to their children’s well-being, so they want to spend all they can on quality care.
Finance (No. 3) Bill
Andrew Gwynne Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ian Lavery
The reality is that people in my constituency cannot even get a loan from the banks. In the past they could get loans for all sorts of things, and that was a run-of-the-mill thing to do in my community and many others. If someone wanted a holiday, a carpet or a car and they could not afford it outright, they would have gone to the bank or building society and got a loan.
Now they not only cannot get loans, they cannot even get credit cards. The bankers are making billions, but the people at the sharp end, who are suffering the most as a result of the Government’s cuts, cannot even get a loan from the banks or building societies.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is right, but it is not just his constituents who cannot get a loan—many of his local businesses face the same problem. He spoke earlier about the need for growth in our economy. Is it not a scandal that many banks will not, as the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) said, take a risk on small and medium-sized businesses? They will not even take a punt on a good business proposition.
Ian Lavery
That is exactly right. I was merely highlighting the plight of ordinary families. Small and medium-sized enterprises in every region of the country are suffering greatly as a result of the austerity measures and of the negative attitude of bankers, who think only about how much they will make at the top of the ladder, not about how anybody else—business people or ordinary people—will manage.
Barry Gardiner
It seems to me that when it comes to bonuses, the clue is in the word. If one looks at the etymology, the word “bonus” comes from the Latin: it means “good”. In fact, it should be “bonum”, as with “maximum”, “minimum” and “premium”, so that we had “bonum” and “bona”, but let us leave that aside. The bonus culture in the banks is supposed to be for something good—for good performance—and yet, certainly within the banks that are largely owned by the public, these bonuses are being given almost uniformly for bad performances: they are “malum”, not “bonum”. It is really quite ridiculous that these bonuses should be paid and that the Government should be proposing to levy such a low rate against them.
The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) gave us a bit of the history of how the recession had come about and the context in which these bonuses were being paid. Interestingly, however, his history stopped in 2006 or 2007, when he published a paper about the regulatory regime and the need for tighter regulation. To find out the true history of this, one has to go back to a time before 2006 and 2007, and beyond this country, to look at the sub-prime market in the United States in 2000. At that time, the proportion of mortgages in the United States that were lent to sub-prime borrowers was just 5%. Between 2000 and 2005, that increased to 47%. That meant that by 2005, 45% of mortgages in the US were in arrears by two months, or more than 60 days. That is the origin of the problem.
Much has been said by Government Members to try to set the recession in context. For months, they have said that it was because of the Labour Government’s disastrous economic management. Of course, the context for it is in the United States, where what happened with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two major mortgage-lending institutions, was the beginning of the collapse of what had been a virtuous circle, and what became a vicious one. Those institutions could not lend because they were not getting revenues in, which was because people with mortgages were more than two months in arrears. That meant that there was a drying up of credit in the system in the United States.
One of my hon. Friends—I cannot remember who—mentioned the role played by the rating agencies. The way in which the situation impacted more widely on the economy, first in the United States and subsequently elsewhere, was through the securitisation of mortgages into bundles to create revenue streams for companies and, indeed, for financial institutions.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is making a perfectly good point about the historical context of the global downturn. Is it not the case that the bubble burst because financial institutions across the globe were not certain about the packages that they had bought, because of the unpicking of those packages, and because of the percentages of those packages that were made up of bad debt?
Barry Gardiner
My hon. Friend is right, but perhaps he has missed a further element of that toxic mix. That is not the role of the rating agencies, although they played their part in bundling up sub-prime mortgages. In order to securitise them into revenue streams for companies, they had looked at the historical rate of default in the sub-prime sector in 2000, when only 5% of the market was being sold to sub-prime borrowers, not in 2005, when the figure was 47%. The effect was that many companies had security streams that were not very secure. The piece of the toxic mix that we need to introduce is the way in which hedge funds brought to bear their financial might.
Barry Gardiner
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. To give the right hon. Member for Wokingham his due, he did distinguish his own position on the issue from that of his party’s Front Benchers. Both would have failed to support Northern Rock, the consequences of which would have been disastrous for savers, but the right hon. Gentleman would have gone further. He would have stopped any support for the wider banking system, including for Halifax, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds. There we see the consequences of policies that had their origin in “There’s no such thing as society.” Only if someone does not pay regard to society can they adopt such a hard-line position, because it ignores the consequences of failure and the effect on ordinary human beings—not just savers but, as he said, investors. The structural consequences of the failure would have been economically disastrous for this country.
Andrew Gwynne
Is it not also the case that the banking system is getting the best of both worlds? Over the past few years it has received very substantial support for the taxpayer, but at the same time as paying itself ever-increasing bonuses it is refusing to invest in local companies and valid business propositions in all our constituencies, thus hampering economic growth across the country. Is it not right that the bank levy is introduced for a second year and beyond through the reviews suggested in the amendment, so that we can get that growth back into the economy?
Barry Gardiner
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point in contrasting the lending policies of the banks with the bonuses that they seek to pay, particularly to their higher-end staff. The Government have to be much clearer in the regulatory demands that they impose on the banks, because they are speaking with forked tongue. On one hand, they are insisting that there is tighter regulation and that there is a regime to ensure that there are adequate reserves and far more stringency in the banks’ investment policies. On the other hand, they are on the side of business, urging the banks to lend more money. It is not possible for them to have it both ways, and we must not fall into that trap either. Either the Government have to say, “We want tighter regulation, and to hell with small business”, or they have to say, “No, we want small businesses to thrive, because we want growth in the economy”, in which case the regulatory regime for banks has to allow for that.
That does not affect my hon. Friend’s point, because he is absolutely right to contrast the bonus structure with the banks’ lending policy. The bankers expect the situation to be all good for them, but it is not so good when they are dishing out the money at the other end.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is exactly right. Is not the real problem that we are actually getting neither of the things that he mentions? We are getting neither effective regulation of the banks nor money flowing into small and medium-sized enterprises.
Barry Gardiner
That is the sad fact of our situation. I am sure that all of us, as constituency MPs, have business people coming to us saying that they cannot get credit. Indeed, many successful businesses that have had no change in their circumstances are suddenly being told by their banks that their credit facilities are no longer there. The banks are unilaterally changing the terms of those facilities, and the Government must do something about that. They cannot on one hand let the banks off with a £20 billion tax allowance for bonuses and, on the other hand, say that they do not have to ensure that they are lending to small businesses.
The difference between Opposition and Government Members goes right to the heart of whether we believe that the most important thing to do is to get growth back into the economy, get money flowing into small businesses and pay people a decent wage rather than make them redundant—that means that their spending on goods and services does not contract, and they spend money on brown goods and white goods and generate wealth and jobs in the economy, so that we grow our way through the problems—or whether we believe that we have simply to cut, cut, cut the public sector and pay, pay, pay the bankers’ bonuses.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Does he understand the dismay of those from small and medium-sized companies in Denton and Reddish who come to see me? They would not mind their banks being a bit more generous in their lending now and then. They cannot even get a decent proposal through their local banks for funding to expand their businesses. These are not risks; they are sound business proposals that would generate jobs in my constituency. No doubt the same happens in my hon. Friend’s constituency, too.
Mr Jones
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Those examples can be seen up and down the country.
Given the amounts of money that some of the directors of Barclays are being paid, they could lend money to those small businesses themselves. The two highest-paid managers, Jerry del Missier and Rich Ricci—great name!— were handed more than £40 million each after share deals awarded over the previous five years. Bob Diamond, the chief executive, took the helm in January this year and, in that period of remorse, has received £27 million, including £6.5 million in bonuses for 2010 and £2.525 million awarded in shares, which could be paid out in the future. The share deal for the past five years paid out £40 million, and the one for 2007 paid out £5 million.
We know about those amounts because of the Government’s great deal under Project Merlin to force banks to expose what their directors are being paid. If that was supposed to act as a threat to them, they seem to be ignoring us and doing it all anyway. They seem to have very tough hides, because rather than being remorseful for the mess that they got us into, they are still taking the money.
Andrew Gwynne
Why does my hon. Friend think that those on the Government Front Bench are so apprehensive about having a review of their own banking levy? Does he suspect, as I do, that the findings could show that it was not working?
Mr Jones
I am, but that is part of the scrutiny process, and so is this. If the hon. Gentleman is so interested in the banking levy and the effects of the Bill on his constituents, why does he not speak? At one point he was alone on the Liberal Democrat Benches. The Government Benches have been fairly deserted this evening: the poop deck of the Mary Celeste may have had more life in it. Members who support the proposal in the Bill should at least turn up to argue in favour of it. No doubt we will be receiving “Focus” leaflets from the Liberal Democrats—although after Thursday they may be called something different—describing how tough they have been in regulating the banking system, but it is clear that they have not.
The hon. Gentleman has until late tonight, and tomorrow, in which to contribute to the debate so that he can reproduce his contribution in his “Focus” leaflets ad nauseam, which I know the Liberal Democrats love doing. People will be able to learn about how he stood up for them against the bankers rather than just listening to the hollow words and rhetoric of the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister in the run-up to the general election. The beauty of being in government is that politicians can actually do things. I know it has come as a big shock to many Liberal Democrats that they are in a position of responsibility whereby they can actually affect the lives of ordinary people. [Interruption.] Yes, responsibility without influence, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) says from a sedentary position. As the Liberal Democrats are in government, they can follow through and make sure that the Bill deals with the people who were responsible for getting us into this mess three years ago. They also have an opportunity to tackle the excessive profits. I do not know what the average salary is in Bradford, but I am sure that £1 million is a lot of money to the people there. I know that in 1914, prior to the first world war, Bradford won the competition for being the place where the most Silver Ghosts were sold, because it was a rich mill town back then; I learned that from the predecessor of the hon. Member for Bradford East when I was working for him in a by-election many years ago. I doubt whether many Rolls-Royces are sold in Bradford nowadays, however, and the hon. Gentleman’s constituents can only dream of some of the bonuses he is supporting this afternoon.
Andrew Gwynne
Will not such a review serve to make it clear that many of the commitments made by the Liberal Democrats in opposition have not been implemented—and, indeed, have not even made it off the drawing board to become Government policy?
Mr Jones
Yes. I do not particularly like giving opportunities to Liberal Democrats, but it would give them an opportunity to show that they have the teeth that the Liberal Democrat Cabinet Ministers claim they have got in this coalition, because they would be able to say to the Conservative part of the coalition that they want change—that they want, for example, to increase the levy or to make sure that the huge bonuses being paid are taxed in a different way, or to bring in regulation. Let us be honest about this, however: most Liberal Democrat Ministers have not got sharp teeth—unless they have been to the dentist in the last few weeks. In the next few days we will see the beginning of the demise of the Liberal Democrats, and, as it were, the extraction of their teeth. It will certainly be interesting to see how sharp their teeth are after Thursday.
The current Government’s bank levy should take the same amount as the Labour Government’s bank bonus measure raised, which was £3.5 billion.
Kerry McCarthy
Before the election, the Economic Secretary said in this House during a debate on fuel duty:
“What people want from the Government today is a helping hand to get them out of their financial troubles. Instead, what they see from the Government is no help at all. Far from providing a hand to pull them out of their troubles, the Government are pushing them further down into them.”—[Official Report, 16 July 2008; Vol. 479, c. 359.]
How astonishing, then, to find that that is exactly what she and her Government are doing. They may have made a show of helping people up with a small fuel duty cut, but that is after they have given them a much bigger push down with their VAT rise on fuel. Before the Chancellor gave his Budget statement, Labour Members called for him to look again at the fuel duty escalator, which I think the Economic Secretary is muttering about from a sedentary position. In previous Budgets, we cancelled or postponed fuel duty rises when pump prices were rising quickly. In the 2010 Budget, the then Labour Chancellor phased in the increase for that year in three stages to ease pressure on business and household incomes. In the 2008 Budget, the previous Government postponed the increase in fuel duty for six months, again to support the economy and help businesses and families. We therefore welcome the fact that the Chancellor has done so again in this Finance Bill. However, when that cut is put in context, we see that families and businesses are facing more pressure than before as a result of the Government’s policies on fuel tax.
This is not the only policy in the Bill that is not all that it seems when it is put in context. The Government have made much of their increase in the personal allowance for income tax. The Chancellor said:
“The increase in the personal tax allowance already announced will vastly exceed anything lost through employee NICs uprating”.—[Official Report, 23 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 954.]
However, he failed to mention that the rise in the allowance is swamped by his VAT rise, which will take £450 a year, on average, from the pockets of families with children. Families earning as little as £31,000 could lose their child tax credits as the Government take £400 million out of the system, while the Government’s Welfare Reform Bill creates uncertainty for families over whether they will keep their child care support and free school meals. In a couple of years, a family with two children with a single earner earning just £44,000 could find that the Government have taken £1,750 a year away from them in child benefit. It is no wonder that the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that the Chancellor was
“giving with one hand…and taking away with lots and lots of other hands.”
Nor is it surprising that the economist Roger Bootle said today that household incomes were “all but certain” to fall.
All this comes at a time when Government cuts mean front-line cuts in services that people rely on—schools, the NHS, social care, even the police—and workers in those vital public sector jobs are facing redundancies. The Government may say that some factors are outside their control. When we were in government, oil prices rose substantially, as we are seeing now, but we left government with a proportional tax take on fuel lower than when we came into government—down from 75% to less than 65% on petrol and down from 74% to 64% on diesel. It is no coincidence that under the last Conservative Government fuel taxation shot up from 66% of the price of petrol in 1992 to 75% in 1997, and from 66% to 74% for diesel.
The Minister of State for International Development made the front pages in March, saying:
“if this does go wrong”,
referring to the Budget,
“£1.30 at the pump could look like a luxury, $200 a barrel is on the cards”.
He can hardly have expected that remark to put a stop to speculation in the oil markets.
Rather than helping people through the tough times, the Government seem to want to make things worse. There was an alternative for the Government. Before the Budget, we called on the Chancellor to scrap the hike in VAT on fuel. That would have been of genuine help to families and businesses.
Andrew Gwynne
Is my hon. Friend, like me, extremely surprised at the lack of ambition from the Government parties when it comes to seeking a derogation for the rise in VAT on fuel? Given that President Sarkozy managed to get a derogation on VAT for French restaurants, does she not think that the British Government should do the same for fuel?
Kerry McCarthy
My hon. Friend makes a valid point, which I will come on to in a moment. [Interruption.] Ministers are peddling the line that it would take six years to achieve such a derogation from the EU. I ask them, have they even tried? I suspect that the answer is no. It is a fairly defeatist attitude to say that we will not even ask because we know what the answer will be. That is not fighting for Britain’s corner in the European Union.
As I was saying, there was an alternative for the Government. We called on the Chancellor to scrap the hike in VAT on fuel, which would have been of genuine help to families and businesses. It could have been paid for from the £800 million more than expected that was raised from the bank levy. Unlike the stabiliser proposed by the Conservatives in the run-up to the general election, that would not have been “unbelievably complicated and unpredictable”, to use the words of the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills.
The stabiliser is based on the idea that taxation will vary according to fluctuations in petrol prices, so that
“when fuel prices go up, fuel duty would fall. And when fuel prices go down, fuel duty would rise”,
to use a direct quotation from the Conservative party consultation document on the issue. The stabiliser was a flagship policy for the Conservatives in the general election campaign. The present Prime Minister made an issue of it when he visited a Coca-Cola plant in Morley just a week before polling day, where he said that
“it would give you certainty as you go about your lives, knowing what your salary is, knowing what your mortgage is, we’d be helping with the cost of living by trying to give you a flatter and more constant rate for filling up your car”.
When the Conservative party got into government, it soon realised that that was an empty promise, made glibly without doing the homework required, as we have seen with so many of its policies in its year in government. In the Budget, the Chancellor resorted to a different so-called stabiliser by increasing the supplementary charge on North sea oil. We will discuss that issue later tonight when we come on to the next group of amendments.
It is true, as my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) mentioned, that asking for a special rate of VAT would require our asking for a derogation from the European Commission. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury said that the Government could not afford to “sacrifice income willy-nilly”. However, he was willing to go to the EU to ask for a derogation for remote islands, although not for the rest of Scotland or the UK. Even members of the Conservative party agree that the solution should apply to the rest of the UK.
Ian Mearns
That is exactly what I am suggesting such a report could achieve.
The VAT chargeable on the duty element of the fuel price brings the total impact of fuel duty to about 69p a litre—that figure is a few days old, so it might be more or less than that now, depending on the daily price rate. Using a typical fuel consumption rate for road haulage of 8.5 miles per gallon, that means that each kilometre travelled provides 22p to the Exchequer; given an average load of 10 tonnes, each tonne of freight transported into or out of the north-east region delivers £4.30 to the Exchequer in fuel taxes, compared with an average for goods moved between English regions of only £3.52. We are already starting to see the impact on an economically deprived region in terms of businesses developing there and on its prospects for employment, given its peripherality to the bulk of the English economy.
Many hauliers in the North East chamber of commerce membership have no choice but to pass a proportion of those costs on to their customers, the vast majority of whom tend to be based in the north-east region. The chamber of commerce has argued that decisions on fuel duty need to take greater account of the impact on businesses in each part of the UK, and that a more considered approach is needed than that of the automatic increases that have been fixed into Government policy for the upcoming period. The figures I have quoted exclude those for goods transported within regions, as the impact of fuel duty would be the same in each region for that type of journey.
If the amendment were accepted, I would ask that a detailed analysis be included of the introduction of a measure that would help to stabilise fuel duty. In fact, that is exactly what the Federation of Small Businesses has been calling for. We have had debates in the past about some sort of fuel duty stabiliser, and it remains to be seen whether that would be a workable option, but surely when carrying out such an analysis, the Government could look at measures that would stabilise fuel duty and the cost of fuel.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is making a superb case stating the competitive disadvantage that the Government’s policies are placing on the road haulage industry in the north-east of England and in other English regions. Does he think that the reporting proposed in the amendment could help to determine Government policies for supporting economic growth in regions such as his?
Ian Mearns
I am trying to point out to Ministers that fuel duty imposed nationally has a differential impact across the different regions and indeed nations of the United Kingdom in terms of contacting the main hub of economic growth, the south-east of England. There has been a debate in my region about the dualling of the A1 north of Newcastle upon Tyne, but the main driver of growth in the north-east economy is actually to the south and west of the region in terms of the contact with the main drivers of our economic future.
Mr Jones
I am becoming concerned. The hon. Lady’s blood pressure does not seem stable tonight. She seems to be turning red and getting rather excited in tonight’s debate, which I am not sure is good for her health. Why did she argue for and push through an increase in VAT when she and her Prime Minister stood on a manifesto saying that they would not put VAT up? That is not being honest with the British people. What she has to explain to hard-working families in my constituency, North Durham, and in Putney is why she reneged on that promise.
There has been much talk in recent weeks about trust in politicians, and a lot of nonsense talked by the yes to AV campaign about whether MPs are hard working and trustworthy. When the Prime Minister and the hon. Lady say clearly that they will not increase VAT, and then that is the first thing she does, I understand why my constituents and hers are rather cynical about certain promises.
In the Budget the Chancellor used the gimmick of cutting the price of petrol by 1p. We will shortly debate how he will pay for it. It has had disastrous consequences for the economies of parts of Scotland and north-east England. He also increased VAT by 3p. He took it off with one hand and put in on with the other. Paying for that will have consequences for oil exploration in the North sea not only in the next year or so, but for a generation.
Andrew Gwynne
Does my hon. Friend recall that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, soon after the Budget, took a very dim view of those retailers who did not pass on the 1p decrease in fuel duty, and does he agree that the purpose of having such a review is to see whether the Government’s policy was ultimately a success or a failure?
Mr Jones
That is a very good suggestion. That is one of the issues that could be included in the review. Do the Government honestly think that they can con my constituents and others and that a 1p reduction in petrol duty will really be a vote clincher for them? Late last Friday I was in the excellent Sainsbury’s in Pity Me in Durham, and I noted that customers who spent £70 on their groceries could get 5p a litre off their fuel. It is a deal offered by other supermarkets—I do not want to favour Sainsbury’s. Are those on the Treasury Bench really convinced that constituents will be conned by the 1p reduction, when the cost is being increased by 3p, and if they can get 5p a litre off when they spend more on extra groceries?
My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) made a good point, which I accept, about the differences in fuel prices in different parts of the country. I think that there is a case for part of the review looking at why fuel is priced differently across the country. I hasten to add that at the weekend, when I was in Worksop in Bassetlaw visiting my father, I went to a Sainsbury’s—it happened to be the supermarket there—and noticed that diesel was £1.38, although down here in London and in parts of Durham it is £1.42. Clearly the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) are getting a good deal from the Sainsbury’s in Worksop. These are the issues that could be looked at in a review.
Justine Greening
Clause 19 cuts fuel duty by 1p per litre. In fact, it has already happened—at 6 pm on Budget day. That was the first step in removing the Labour party’s planned fuel duty escalator and, instead, putting in place a fair fuel stabiliser, which will ease the burden on motorists.
The hon. Members for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) and for North Durham (Mr Jones) talked about the burden that the planned tax rises would have placed on their own region, and I can tell the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) that, in fact, under the previous Government fuel duty rose by 55%, so it is simply wrong to focus totally on the previous Conservative Government. His Government increased the burden on motorists substantially.
The amendment calls for the Chancellor to publish an assessment of the impact of taxation on fuel prices within three months of the Act being passed, and it aims to determine the extent to which the cut in fuel duty has been passed on. By introducing such a measure, Opposition Members clearly intend to distract the public from their policy, which would have seen pump prices rise yet further as they introduced their planned escalator. In addition, the Opposition appear keen to suggest that the cut in fuel duty and the cancellation of their fuel duty escalator has not offset the effect of the VAT increase at the start of the year—a VAT increase that as a party they did not vote against.
I will go on to set out the Government’s assessment of the impact of this measure, as Members have requested, and to address the points raised in the debate, but perhaps I should start by explaining to the Committee why the Government took the action they did in the Budget to support motorists at this time of record pump prices. It is true that motoring is an essential part of everyday life for many households and businesses, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern). The Government also recognise that the rising price of petrol has become an increasingly significant part of day-to-day spending, and we know that high oil prices are causing real difficulties in ensuring that motoring remains affordable. It is important that when shocks such as the steep rise in the oil price occur a responsible Government are able to listen and respond.
The previous Government would have introduced a fuel duty escalator, which involved seven fuel duty increases, three of which have been implemented, adding 3p to pump prices, and they had planned another above-inflation increase for the start of last month.
Andrew Gwynne
Is the Minister not even slightly embarrassed that her Government did not seek the powers to get a derogation from the European Commission? Her party has gone from being the party of “No, no, no” on Europe to the Putney shrug.
Justine Greening
The hon. Gentleman’s party does not even have a position on that because Labour Members abstained on it. If the policy in clause 19 is so bad, I expect them to vote against it, but I suspect that it will be another case of abstention making the heart grow fonder. I do not think that that will work with taxpayers, who remember exactly who was planning to bring in the fuel duty escalator had they remained in power.
This Government listened to hard-pressed motorists and businesses. We declined to increase the escalator and to introduce the 1p per litre fuel duty increase, which would collectively have added 6p to pump prices compared with what they are now. Instead, we responded with a £1.9 billion package to ease the burden on motorists at this time of record pump prices. We acted by cutting fuel duty by 1p per litre from 6 pm on Budget day. We cancelled the previous Government’s fuel duty escalator for the rest of the Parliament. We introduced a fair fuel stabiliser that will better share the burden of high oil prices between motorists and oil companies, and so fuel duty will increase by inflation only when oil prices are high.
Malcolm Bruce
The purpose of this group of amendments is to persuade the Government to engage with the oil and gas industry to ensure that no major new investment opportunities are lost. I will explain the purpose of the main amendments, and I very much hope that Ministers will respond in a constructive way, because these are intended to be constructive proposals.
The Government are on record as saying that they understand the need for stability in the fiscal regime, and the Chancellor has described this as a Budget for growth. It is worth saying, however, that in contrast to the cautious way in which the Government have applied new taxes to banks, which have squandered our resources to the extent that many of them had to be nationalised, it is quite harsh to apply a marginal rate of tax of 82% to our single biggest industry. It is an industry that invests in real infrastructure and real engineering, and it takes risks in regard to weather, geology, exchange rates and cost unpredictability, as well as taxation.
I accept that the current spot price of Brent crude, at $125 a barrel, allows for unforeseen profits, at least for some fields. However, that does not apply to gas fields or to fields with large quantities of associated gas and, as Ministers will know, that is not the price that many operators actually realise, as they often contract their production at an average well below the spot peak.
I say in passing that the link between the oil tax changes and the fair fuel stabiliser are tenuous. Many of the companies operating in the North sea have no retail division, and there is no direct connection between their returns and the pump price. Also, the Government are themselves the recipient of a windfall. According to the Library brief and, I think, the Red Book, North sea profits are running at between £1.5 billion and £1.9 billion per annum over the next four years. That is additional revenue that was not anticipated in the pre-Budget statement in November. The Government have also received a VAT windfall on pump prices, averaging about 6p a litre. However, my point is not that there is no case for additional contributions from North sea operators and field shareholders. I do not take issue with the Government about that. My point is that this should be done after proper consultation and taking due account of the complex character of the mature North sea industry.
I have monitored the industry for 40 years. Indeed, 40 years ago this September, I started work as research and information officer for the North East Scotland Development Authority. Towards the end of that year, 1971, BP announced the successful commercial test of a well, which turned out to be the discovery of the Forties field. However, it is interesting to note that, believing that it had reached the end of its useful life, BP sold the Forties field to Apache in 2003. Since its acquisition of the field, Apache has greatly enhanced recovery from Forties and sees long-term potential for its development. It is worth noting that Apache has been one of the most vigorous critics of the Government’s policies, and that it questions whether its investment will be fully committed or realised.
Andrew Gwynne
I accept the right hon. Gentleman’s points about the North sea, but will he acknowledge that it is not only the North sea that is affected by these measures? For example, gas is a major industry in the north-west of England, and only this week, we have heard of the decision to cease operations in Morecambe bay and the Irish sea. Does he agree that that would be catastrophic for the economy of the north-west of England?
Malcolm Bruce
That is a very fair intervention. Perhaps I am using the term “North sea” in a slightly generic fashion. The term “UK continental shelf” is a bit long-winded, but that is what I really mean. Perhaps the House will take that as read for these purposes.
The hon. Gentleman is right: Centrica, the operator in Morecambe bay and other gas fields, has indeed indicated that it might not be able to resume production in the current regime and with the current prices. That makes the point, which I hope Ministers will acknowledge, that it is important for the industry and the Government to come together and negotiate, in order to ensure that we do not lose investment and production that might otherwise be lost altogether.
Kerry McCarthy
It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce). He has made an eloquent case on behalf of his constituents, who are directly affected in more ways than most people by the Government’s proposal to increase the supplementary charge on North sea oil to 32%. Amendment 10 simply asks the Chancellor to produce, before the end of this September, an assessment of the impact of taxation of ring-fenced profits on business investment and growth, including an assessment of the long-term sustainability of oil and gas exploration in the North sea.
The amendment should not be at all controversial, although we saw in the debate on the last group of amendments that the Government were not happy to be asked merely to produce an assessment of the impact of that policy. That is surprising because, after all, the Government say that they want more consultation and more transparency in their tax policy making. They say that they will—I am quoting their tax policy making document—
“embed impact analysis in the policy development process”
and
“integrate impact analysis into the consultation process.”
Those are both the kind of sentences that one has to read several times before one can work out quite what they are on about, but my understanding is that the Government are trying to say that they want more transparency and consultation. We have had to table amendment 10 because, in reality, none of that has happened.
The Government are right to consider increasing taxation on sectors of the economy that are enjoying windfall profits. We did the same when we were in government. There is an urgent need to deal with the fiscal deficit that is recognised on both sides of the House, and it is right that we should ask for more from those who are able to pay, but this change has been rushed through without consultation, as the right hon. Member for Gordon said, surprising the industry, and inevitably it has fallen down at the first scrutiny.
If the Economic Secretary had consulted representatives of the industry, they might have told her that the stability and predictability of the North sea tax regime is important for investment. Oilfields are long-term investments that require long-term certainty and stability to attract investors. The industry believes that the value of investments in UK oil and gas has fallen by 24% as a result of the 2011 Budget. That will cause long-term damage to the industry’s trust in the Government for short-term political gain.
I agree with the Select Committee on the Treasury, which said:
“The decision to increase the supplementary oil and gas levy by 12% without warning, less than a year after the Government had undertaken to provide a ‘stable’ tax regime in the sector, may weaken the Government’s credibility in seeking to establish a stable tax regime in this and other areas.”
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. Given the concern I raised earlier about people in the north-west of England who work in the industry, particularly in relation to Centrica’s decision about Morecombe bay, does she find it all the more surprising that the Economic Secretary once worked for Centrica?
Kerry McCarthy
My hon. Friend makes a valid point. I wonder what the current sales and marketing finance manager for Centrica thinks of the actions of the holder of that post from 2002 to 2005, and what experience the Economic Secretary had during her three years working for the company that has caused her to turn against it in such a fashion.
As I was saying, there is a real requirement, as the Treasury Committee has noted, for a stable tax regime in the sector. The Chartered Institute of Taxation has said that
“the last minute and precipitate change in Oil tax rates for an industry that is particularly dependent on long-term planning seems wrong”.
Does the Minister agree?
The threshold chosen by the Government may also be a problem for stability. The average oil price in 2008 was $100 a barrel, but in 2009 it was $60 a barrel and in 2010 it was $80 a barrel. If prices carry on fluctuating above and below the $75-a-barrel mark, as they have over the past three years, the uncertainty about the tax rate and whether companies will be caught by it could drive more investment away from the UK.
Had the Economic Secretary consulted the industry before the Budget, it might have reminded her that the supplementary charge applies to gas as well as oil. Gas prices are on the rise, but at less than 60p a therm they are still significantly below the Government’s $75 a barrel trigger price on an equivalent basis. In the UK, gas prices are less closely correlated with oil prices than in other jurisdictions, where there are often still contractual links between the two. Whereas oil prices are set by the global market, gas prices are more localised. Graham Parker of the Office for Budget Responsibility told the Treasury Committee quite recently that gas prices were “quite variable” so even if the Government think they have chosen the right level for oil, they might have set the balance wrongly for the gas sector. That could be disastrous given that gas accounts for 46% of the North sea industry’s production.
Kerry McCarthy
The Minister is trying to return to the topic we debated in the previous group, so perhaps she should have been a little quicker and thought up her intervention then. I am talking now about stability in fuel prices and the empty promises the Government made to the electorate in the run-up to the election that they would be able to do something to stabilise fuel prices at the petrol pumps.
Representatives of the oil and gas industry tell us that as recently as February the Government were giving assurances that they wanted to keep the North sea tax regime stable, as they had said in their previous Budget, but between February and April they very swiftly changed their mind. Perhaps the Minister can tell us why? What caused the Government to have such an urgent rethink on the fair fuel stabiliser? Many of us suspect that the increased scrutiny that the Opposition brought to bear on the Government’s policy might have prompted them belatedly into action—action they would have realised much sooner was needed if they had only done their homework and listened to what people were trying to tell them.
Inevitably, given the panicked way in which it was put together, the Government’s new version of the fair fuel stabiliser is equally as half-baked as the proposal put forward before the election. As a result, potentially tens of thousands of jobs, as well as billions of pounds worth of investment, are at risk, and the Government have broken their commitment to stable, consultative tax policy making.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is making a superb case about the short-termism of the Government’s approach. Is she not absolutely right to point out that, in a short-term fix on gas and oil, this discredited Government are going to risk jobs, industry and investment in this country?
Kerry McCarthy
Again, that is a very good intervention by my hon. Friend. The industry needs stability and long-term investment, because we cannot dig an oil well or develop an oilfield overnight, yet the Government are creating uncertainty that will send investors off to other countries where the tax regime is more stable.
The Government have also completely damaged the trust between themselves and the industry, and that is why we have tabled our amendment. We simply call on the Government to do what they said they would do before making major tax changes: carry out a proper assessment of the impact, so that we can scrutinise it and have transparency. The Government were right to look towards North sea oil and gas to ensure that the burden of taxation was fairly spread, but without stability tens of thousands of jobs could be at risk. For the Opposition, that is not a price worth paying for short-term political gain.
Andrew Gwynne
The hon. Gentleman has made a superb point about the Morecambe Bay gas field. Is it not crazy economics that that investment will be lost to north-west England, which has some of the most deprived communities in the United Kingdom? We need to nurture the investment in the Morecambe bay gas field, not drive it away and import gas from abroad.
Stewart Hosie
I could not agree more. This is not just about Scotland, but about the entire UK continental shelf and the 440,000 people who are employed throughout the UK, including in East Anglia, off the north-west coast and elsewhere.
As I said—this is important—the warnings did not end a day or two after the Budget; they kept on coming. The most comprehensive analysis of the problem is in the 2011 international annual energy survey, which will be launched at the offshore technology conference in Houston, Texas this weekend. It is conducted by Maxwell Drummond, the industry employment specialist, which covers 100 international directors from all energy sectors. It says:
“the Coalition Government’s ‘supplementary charge’ on oil and gas production, projected to add an extra £2 billion to Treasury coffers, significantly and immediately impacted on global perceptions of the already challenging North Sea environment.”
If the international energy markets are warning of significant and immediate impacts, if there is a threat to tens of thousands of jobs, and if there is a threat to tens of billions of pounds of investment, the decision is clearly wrong.
Andrew Gwynne
It is excellent that my hon. Friend is bringing her Treasury expertise to this debate. She is adding greatly to the discussion. Does she agree that one of the motives for the Government’s tax raid on the oil and gas industry is that they view it as the goose that laid the golden egg?
Helen Goodman
I defer to my hon. Friend’s knowledge of poultry-keeping. However, I agree that that is the problem that we face with the Government at the moment. Their approach simply is not serious; it is trivial.
Helen Goodman
Of course. I am extremely concerned, as my hon. Friend and neighbour is, about the impact that the proposals will have on the economy of the north-east, and it will not be just a short-term impact, but a long-term impact. When we get investment in the oil and gas industry, we are getting investment in an industry at the cutting edge of technology. There have been many other positive spin-offs from the investments that the oil and gas sector has made.
Andrew Gwynne
That is precisely the point. The jobs in a lot of the support industries for the gas and oil industry are high-skill, high-tech and pretty well-paid jobs. Once we lose those skills in areas such as the north-west and north-east of England, they are gone for good. We need to support those industries, as well as the wider oil and gas industry.
Helen Goodman
That is absolutely right. The investment that the Labour Government tried to encourage in completely new energy industries such as the offshore wind industry used very similar skills. It is important to have a critical mass in these industries, and the achievement of that is now being put at risk.
It is not at all clear what the Government mean by rebalancing the economy. Our debate earlier this evening revealed a bizarre situation in which taxes on the financial sector are not tough enough, while taxes on the primary sector are over-strong. That is simply not going to take us down the route that we all want to go down.
Andrew Gwynne
Is that not exactly the difference between this measure and the example raised in an earlier intervention about the effect of the windfall tax on the privatised utilities? When Labour was in opposition before 1997, the party was in full discussions with the privatised utilities, which might not have been 100% happy with the proposal but were altogether certain that if the Labour party came to office, it would invest in our young people and get them back to work.
Mr Anderson
My hon. Friend is correct. That debate went on in the Labour party for a long time long before that election. It was quite clear to the industry and to the people of this country that if they voted Labour on 1 May 1997, we would impose a windfall tax. Discussions had been going on and the companies were able to absorb the idea and plan for that.
As ACCA says further:
“The sudden change in rate came as a shock to those involved in the North Sea oil industry”—
the change was not a shock in 1997, because companies had been able to prepare for it—
“and has been widely condemned as reducing the competitiveness of the UK as a target for investment”.
Mr Kevan Jones
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and her point about investment will increasingly be thought of when making such decisions.
That brings us to the question of what the decision-making process was when coming up with this tax. We have already had the ludicrous situation whereby even a Minister who practically used to work for a gas company did not recognise the difference between gas and oil prices. In my experience as a Minister dealing with Treasury officials, I always thought that they knew what they were talking about, so I am surprised that the Treasury allowed this measure to get through, because everyone knows the difference between the prices of the two.
We have already seen the effects of that this week, with the possibility that Centrica might turn off investment in Morecambe bay, and I am sure that the Minister will be off the company’s Christmas card list next year unless she does something radical to change what has been proposed. That decision will not only mothball a gas field that would have provided this country with gas for years to come, but write it off.
What will we do instead? We will import gas, which does not make sense economically or for energy security, especially when we look at where the large concentrations of gas are in the world—the former Soviet Union, parts of the middle east and, lo and behold, north Africa. Any idiot can work out that even Morecambe bay, and possibly Blackpool on a rowdy Saturday night, is more peaceful than north Africa or parts of the former Soviet Union, so it is important that we take seriously the comments of companies such as Centrica, which have invested over many years and not just in oil and gas fields but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon said, in new technologies.
It is a dirty industry, but it is also a leader in new technologies, such as robotics and drilling, and, owing to the difficulty of extracting oil and gas from parts of the North sea, we have been able to develop new techniques that are now used throughout the world. That is why many UK companies are leaders not only in this country, but throughout the world.
It has also become increasingly clear that the tax rate will have a real effect on the economy of north-east England. I accept that hon. Members who represent Scottish constituencies feel passionately about the issue, but the measure will have a dramatic effect in the north-east, too. The Conservative part of the coalition tells us that we in the north-east should grow the private sector, but the oil and gas industry is a very vibrant part of the private sector. Indeed, my hon. Friend has already mentioned the sub-sea sector, which supports 10,000 jobs and 380 firms in the north-east.
Andrew Gwynne
Like my hon. Friend, I feel passionately about those jobs in those cutting-edge industries. Is not the issue to protect jobs today and invest in future jobs in the north-east and the north-west, including in things such as apprenticeships?
Mr Kevan Jones
It is, and the north-east has been able to take advantage of the change in, for example, the River Tyne, which was heavily dependent on shipbuilding. Now we have facilities such as the Walker technology park, and the city council was far-sighted when it developed an offshore park for the North sea oil industry.
Oral Answers to Questions
Andrew Gwynne Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
I am very happy to consider a number of ideas that have been put forward, but we have not yet reached that stage. If we sold the bank shares today, we would still be making a loss as a nation. That is an indication of the scale of the banking crisis. When we come to put those banks back in the private sector, I am sure that there will be a healthy debate in this Parliament and elsewhere about how we treat the proceeds.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Ministers will be aware that there is a sunset clause in the Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Act 2010, which comes into effect in June. Does the Treasury have a view about renewing this important landmark legislation, which tackles the worst abuses of vulture funds?
Loans to Ireland Bill
Andrew Gwynne Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Alan Johnson
I will not bother to take an intervention from the hon. Lady next time, because that point does not even begin to be germane to this problem.
My third concern is how we are going to draw a line under this matter. We had the Greek bail-out, and now we have had the Irish bail-out. There is no sign of any real stability in the eurozone to stop such events happening again.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Is it not important that Europe gets ahead of the crisis? As we saw with the Greek bail-out, such short-term measures do not solve the fundamental problems across the eurozone.
Alan Johnson
I am coming to exactly that point.
Some Conservative Members think that the root cause is the single currency. I do not share that view. The euro had nothing to do with the property boom and bust, and a failed euro would be an economic and political disaster with repercussions well beyond our continent. Ireland needs a healthy eurozone, or it will end up with years of deflation and unemployment, and we will be less likely to have our loan repaid.
As the loan that we are being asked to approve is equal to the amount of money that we would have contributed had we been a member of the eurozone, surely that gives us the right to influence the necessary debate on what action is needed to address the underlying causes of this recurring crisis. This bail-out buys time, but there is no sign that Europe’s leaders know how to put it to good use. In May, we had the Greek bail-out; six months later, we have to deal with Ireland. In neither case is there much sign that these countries have resolved the core dilemma, which is solvency.
Collective austerity across Europe offers countries with high debt burdens no way out. Cutting demand in Germany is the last thing that Ireland needs at the moment. What we are seeing in Europe bears out the IMF’s conclusion that fiscal austerity does not boost short-term growth and that deficit cuts are more painful if they occur simultaneously across many countries. Ireland needs a healthy eurozone with markets such as Germany consuming Irish goods, or it will end up with years of deflation and unemployment. Having engaged in repeated rounds of austerity, with VAT rises, welfare cuts and redundancies, Ireland still finds growth elusive: it has been consistently poor for the past three years. Indeed, the economy has shrunk in 11 of the 14 quarters since the beginning of 2007, and sluggish growth has made getting the deficit down much harder.