EU Parliament Elections: Denial of Votes

Debate between Anneliese Dodds and Kevin Foster

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

As I said, the Government took all legal steps necessary in conducting the European parliamentary elections. That included complying with European law, including the Council directive, which requires details of these declarations to be sent “sufficiently in advance” of polling day. We cannot just assume that people wish to vote in this country, rather than the country where they are a citizen.

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister is actually right about two things. He is right that this process has been used before, and he is right that the Electoral Commission makes independent recommendations. But ridiculously, he refuses to acknowledge that Conservative Ministers ignored those recommendations about this process right back in July 2014. Does he acknowledge that the Electoral Commission made recommendations about this process back in July 2014—yes or no?

[Kevin Foster]

As I have said in numerous answers, we complied with the legal steps necessary to conduct these polls, following the House’s refusal to back an exit from the European Union which many Members elected to this place had pledged to do. We will of course listen with interest to the Electoral Commission’s review of these elections, but it is our intention that the UK will no longer participate in European parliamentary elections, having implemented the result of the referendum.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Anneliese Dodds and Kevin Foster

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 20th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to participate in this debate and to follow the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. I will speak to Labour amendments 3, 4, 19 and 23 and to new clauses 5 and 6.

As other Opposition Members have noted, it is disappointing, to say the least, that the Government have been unwilling to allow proper scrutiny and challenge of their proposals in this Finance Bill, as they have failed to introduce an amendment to the law resolution. Members will be aware that this approach has been used six times in the past century, each time necessitated by Budget provisions needing to be passed quickly.

[Kevin Foster]

This is about scrutiny.

[Anneliese Dodds]

Indeed. When we are unable to table amendments on provisions within a Budget, it is a severe restriction on the House’s ability appropriately to challenge the Government’s policies. In any case, if the Government can muster backing for their approach to prevent a change in policy, they can do so.

[Kevin Foster]

If the Labour party is so committed to scrutiny of this Bill, how come the Opposition Benches are virtually empty? The hon. Lady says that it is because Labour Members cannot table amendments, but they could come along and make speeches.

[Anneliese Dodds]

The hon. Gentleman has made the point for himself. It is precisely because we do not have the ability to table meaningful amendments that we are in this position. I am sure that he is aware that, when it was possible for Labour Members, often with other Members, to table meaningful amendments to Finance Bills, there was a huge amount of participation, such as when amendments were tabled on country-by-country reporting. Sadly, despite those amendments, we have not yet seen the change in Government policy that we would have liked. When the House is given the power, we exercise it; when we are not given the power, we are unable to exercise it.

As “Erskine May” sets out very clearly, in these circumstances, the only permissible amendments are

“strictly limited to what is authorized by the specific resolutions on which the bill is founded.”

Because of those restrictions, the Opposition cannot expand the scope of measures against tax avoidance and evasion beyond the very limited scope presented in the Bill.

There is a whole host of areas in which the Government should be taking action but where the Bill is completely silent. There has been no new approach from the Conservative Government on the verification of information supplied by companies when they register, despite widespread evidence of tax avoidance and money laundering being facilitated through the registration of fake companies via Companies House.

On shell companies, the Government have provided only a consultation on partnerships rather than action, and they have failed to use to any great extent their legal ability to impose fines on partnerships that fail to provide beneficial ownership information. Despite their consultation on a new offence of failure to prevent economic crime finishing more than a year ago, we still appear to have no more progress on that. Although our Government now have, as I mentioned, the legal means to require country-by-country reporting wholesale, following that amendment to a Finance Bill two years ago, when we were able properly to amend the Bill, they have refused to take up that option.

Despite this catalogue of failure, the Government continue to talk up their record. We saw this elevated to the level of farce last night, when Conservative central office—I assume—released a graphic on Facebook with the laughable claim that Labour had just voted against cracking down on tax avoidance. Labour has consistently advocated much stronger measures on tax avoidance than this Government have done. Indeed, the weakness of measures in the Bill is one of many reasons why we oppose it. The graphic included a background of palm trees, presumably a bizarre reference to our overseas territories. It is bizarre, given the woeful lack of action by our Government in this regard.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anneliese Dodds]

It is always a pleasure to hear from the hon. Gentleman, who is always a very friendly face. Sadly, however—I feel bad doing this—I do have to correct him on two of the points that he mentioned. He stated that the poorest people will not pay any tax at all. That is simply not the case. Of course, they will pay—[Interruption.] No, no—he said “any tax”. Let us be clear: of course, large numbers of very badly off people pay a lot of value added tax, which is a regressive tax, even with the exemptions that apply to it.

In addition to that, increasing numbers of low-income people across this country are now paying council tax, many of them for the first time, because of the swingeing cuts that the hon. Gentleman’s Government have delivered to local authorities’ budgets for council tax relief. So we now have very large numbers of very-low-income people being taken to court because they are unable to pay their council tax. That situation is novel in our country but some might say it approximates things that happened back in the 1980s, which I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is too young to remember but which the history books have certainly not forgotten.

We also need a thorough understanding of how the failure to tackle tax avoidance affects our different regions, given that austerity’s impact on incomes has been strongest in areas that were already struggling economically. We need a thorough impact assessment of the impact that the failure to deal with tax avoidance is having on child poverty. Yesterday Ministers tried to deflect attention from their record on poverty by using only figures on absolute poverty. They never speak about the measure that is instead used by most academics and experts—relative poverty—because they know that more children are now living in relative poverty under their watch: almost a third of children, in fact. The problem is such that the chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group has described the Conservative Government as being “in denial” on child poverty.

I will explain why we need to look at relative poverty. We should not look simply at whether people are destitute, as measured by absolute poverty, even though, sadly, many are having to resort to food banks for bare necessities; we also need to look at what people’s incomes are in relation to the living standards that everyone else enjoys. That is why the concept of relative poverty measures whether people are poor in relation to median-income people. Relative poverty matters because it shows whether people can afford to live a decent life.

[Kevin Foster]

That is what absolute poverty measures.

[Anneliese Dodds]

No, it does not. Absolute poverty measures whether people can afford the bare necessities of life. To be able to participate in society—in their communities—they cannot fall so massively behind the median income. We are talking about families whose children cannot go to birthday parties for their friends because they cannot afford a card and a present. For me, that is a failure of our society, and it is to do with relative poverty, not absolute poverty. Over 4 million children in this country are classified as living in relative poverty, and that number is rising, not diminishing.