Business of the House

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard]

I am grateful to the Chairman of the Backbench Business Committee, and this is my first chance to thank him for all the work he does; the Committee is an important part of the House’s business.

The hon. Gentleman mentions the R and R debate. He is right that the Government are keen to ensure that we hear the views of those on all sides on this issue. We are working hard to secure the right date in the parliamentary calendar to make sure as many hon. Members as possible can take part. I know there is a Backbench Business Committee debate, but that should not obviate the need to have a wider debate, and I hope we will secure a date for it as soon as possible.

I hear the hon. Gentleman’s kind invitation. I spent many days in Durham between Christmas and new year, and I enjoyed my tour of Gateshead. I went to see the angel of the north, for example. So I have already been to see it and was much impressed.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Can a debate on rural bus transport be organised? The residents of the village of Tiverton have a once-a-week bus service and it has been cancelled, meaning they cannot access the pharmacy or collect their pensions from the local village, and my constituents also have problems with increasing journey times from Winsford to Chester.

[Paul Maynard]

As a native son of the fine county of Cheshire, I well know what a beautiful range of villages my hon. Friend represents. It is vital that they have good bus connections, and I urge her to make use of the opportunity afforded by Transport questions on Thursday to put those questions to the new ministerial team.

Finance Bill

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds]

The concern is that this could be part of a piece of a broader movement to erode some rights that have existed for working people in the past.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Some 85% of payments under the £30,000 threshold are not touched by these changes. Where there is the potential for manipulation of amounts above £30,000, does the hon. Lady not agree that that potential tax avoidance loophole should be closed?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her comments, but I must tell her that the consultation on the measure did not reveal widespread evidence of such manipulation of the rules. It was quite clear in that regard. Indeed, when advice was sought about appropriate measures in this area in the future, a range of different views came from stakeholders and consultees about the way forward. She is right to say that we are not talking about these changes affecting everyone who is made redundant. They apply to a minority of people, but it could be people who have had a very difficult time and who really rely on that redundancy payment for sustaining some kind of quality of life into the future. It is absolutely important that we have a proper debate about, and parliamentary scrutiny of, any changes, which is exactly what our amendments are intended to do.

I was talking about the new plans for injury to feelings payments as part of termination payments. I noted that there were many claims from the Government on this topic on First and Second Readings of the Bill, not least that payments allotted via tribunals would not be affected by these measures, but it is not the case that employment tribunals can decide whether payments are subject to tax or otherwise. That is not within their power. Yes, in some cases, some types of employment tribunal award are “grossed up” to take account of the tax that will be due, but that is very different from deciding whether an award is in and of itself taxable, which seemed to be implied in some of the previous debates on this issue.

In addition, the measures proposed in the Bill would cover the far more common payments made directly by an employer to settle discrimination complaints as part of a redundancy or other dismissal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kirsty Blackman]

The House will be delighted to know that I do not intend to speak for very long. We have discussed this matter a number of times before. It is important to note that this measure is a revenue-raising one; the aim is to make £430 million for the Government. However we paint it, these workers are facing redundancy. They are receiving the pay-out at the same time as losing their jobs, so they are vulnerable by their very nature, and are having to think carefully and reassess how they go forward. This additional money will go to the Government, rather than to these workers who are being made redundant. For that reason, the Scottish National party will support the Labour party’s calls, particularly those regarding termination payments.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

Does the hon. Lady put in that category, for example, Fred Goodwin, who received a £2.7 million advance on his pension as part of the package he received when he left the Royal Bank of Scotland?

Oral Answers to Questions

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

As I have said several times today, we are reassured by the fact that at the European Council the 27 agreed to start the internal preparatory discussions on an implementation period. We are absolutely aware of the needs of business in this area, and they have been reinforced again by business leaders this week. We are confident that we will be able to deliver reassurance to business in accordance with its needs.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

May I urge my right hon. Friend when looking at the business case for HS2 phase 2b to consider carefully the additional £750 million cost to the Exchequer of building over the Cheshire salt fields?

[Andrew Jones]

We discussed this issue when I was a Transport Minister. All the topography and construction implications as the route is finalised will be taken into consideration as part of the business case.

Public Sector Pay Cap

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Wednesday 5th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

The hon. Lady talks about the recommendations of the pay review bodies. We have accepted all of the recommendations that we have reported on so far this year. They are able to make the recommendations they see fit. The Government set a remit, but the bodies are independent in what they advise us, and they have to take account of areas such as retention and recruitment.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Unemployment has fallen by 63% in my constituency since 2010. I have many nurses and teachers working in my constituency, but I also have careworkers, all of whom have benefited from tax changes introduced by the Government that mean they have an extra £1,000 in their pockets and in their take-home pay. Does the Chief Secretary agree that tax changes do not discriminate between private and public sector workers?

[Elizabeth Truss]

Both private and public sector workers have a vital part to play in the economy of this country. By taking people out of tax, we have reduced the tax bills of basic rate taxpayers by £1,000. The Opposition propose the highest levels of taxation in this country’s peacetime history. Who would that fall on? It would fall on precisely the people whom we have been talking about in today’s debate.

Money Laundering: British Banks

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Simon Kirby]

I am sure that the MOJ will listen carefully to the hon. Lady’s point.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

The report indicates that many of the laundered funds went into shell companies. Can the Minister explain how the world’s first open register of equitable ownership will help prosecuting authorities to bring to justice those who benefit from such funds?

[Simon Kirby]

The people with significant control register is open for everyone to see. Thousands, if not millions, of people are able to see it. Transparency is absolutely the best thing to make people aware of wrongdoing and to make sure that nothing is hidden.

Oral Answers to Questions

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

No, that is not true. There is a balanced package and all parts of England will benefit from the transport measures. The Barnett consequentials should mean that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland can also benefit in this area. A specific announcement about the midlands hub was made in the autumn statement and there is more to be said about the midlands engine. This is a Government who are determined to ensure that the whole country benefits from economic growth.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

17. Can the Minister assure me that digital infrastructure is as important as road infrastructure and that part of the £1 billion broadband fund will be allocated to address the productivity gap in rural areas—in particular, to help shops such as the hollies farm shop in my constituency, which has three business lines and 2 megabits of speed?

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend highlights the fact that digital must be key to improving productivity. That is why a £1 billion package was announced in the autumn statement. There was also specific help for rural areas through rural rates relief. Our ambition is clear: to provide the best digital infrastructure we can for urban and rural areas.

Autumn Statement

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Again, I associate myself with the hon. Lady’s remarks. I am sure that she is right that the entirely sensible sentence that has been handed down will be a source of some comfort to the family.

The hon. Lady asks whether the taper rate is a disincentive or an incentive to work. Of course the lower the taper rate, the greater the incentive to work—I readily recognise that. I said in my statement that I had listened carefully to representations about doing something in this area and balanced those against my judgment about our fiscal capacity. I have funded every single spending commitment made today. If we had gone further than 63%, we would have had to raise more money somewhere else, and I judged that at the present time that was not the right thing to do. I also gently remind her that 65%, never mind 63%, is a lot lower than a marginal withdrawal rate of 90%, which was what many people were facing under the tax credits system.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

May I welcome the steps that the Chancellor has taken to tackle some of the issues facing rural businesses, particularly the extension of rural rate relief and of fibre broadband? I particularly thank him for the £1.4 million that will be going to the Alder centre, which will help to build a new building for the provision of counselling services across the north-west to bereaved parents. I know that the trustees are absolutely delighted.

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that, and I am delighted that, even in these difficult fiscal times, we are able to make these investments, which can be life-changing in local areas.

Surplus Target and Corporation Tax

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

We gained office because we were faced with the complete economic mess created under the last Labour Government. We promised to turn that around, and we got a record number of people into work and have had the fastest growing economy for the past three years. When it comes to the deficit, the right hon. Gentleman was a Treasury Minister and he left me with an 11% budget deficit—the highest in the peacetime history of this country—but this year it is forecast to be below 3%, so I will compare our record with Labour’s record.

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

The Chancellor will be aware that I have many small and medium-sized businesses in my constituency that export to Europe. Will he explain what steps he is taking to ensure that UKTI has a package that will allow such businesses to look more globally for their exports?

[Mr Osborne]

I know my hon. Friend’s constituency well, as it neighbours my own. We represent similar communities in Parliament. We as a country do not have to make a choice between exporting to Europe and exporting to the world; we should be doing both. Of course we should be doing everything we can to maintain close trading links with our European partners, and indeed building on them if that is possible, but we should also be looking for opportunities around the rest of the world. The trip that I am making to China will provide an opportunity to communicate that message, and I have also spoken to the Speaker of Congress and others in the United States Administration about what we can do to strengthen our links with that huge market. In the end, however, the best thing that UKTI can do is to help not only our largest companies but the small businesses that my hon. Friend has referred to. In countries such as Germany, many more small and medium-sized companies are exporting than is the case in the UK, but it is within our own gift to address that and we need to give those companies all the help that we can.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I want to finish the next section of my speech. I am straining your patience, Mr Speaker, so I shall press on.

The Chancellor is set to leave our children with £1.7 trillion of Government debt. Hundreds of billions have been borrowed on his watch. The welfare cap, which the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) mentioned, is set to be breached each year until 2020. The OBR confirmed to the Treasury Committee that it would be breached by £20 billion over five years. The Chancellor has broken two of his own rules already. The third—the overall surplus—now hangs by a thread, and only with some seriously creative accounting will he meet it.

Meanwhile, across the country, the Chancellor’s economic approach is failing, as was evidenced by last week’s OBR report: forecast for growth—down; forecast for wages—down; forecast for productivity—down; and forecast for business investment—down again. Why will he not take responsibility for the last six years?

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman celebrate the fact that 1,700 of the lowest paid in my constituency will be taken out of tax altogether as a result of the Budget, and that 1.3 million of the lowest paid have already been taken out of tax altogether in this Parliament?

[John McDonnell]

That is why we support the increase in the lower-rate threshold, but we have concerns that shifting the thresholds in that way actually benefits higher earners too much.

At the bottom of the Budget is a Chancellor who, as some have mentioned, is more interested in his political career than the welfare of disabled people, and more interested in becoming the leader of his party than in the health of our economy. He is not a Chancellor but a political chancer. I pay tribute to colleagues on both sides of the House who forced him to U-turn on his proposed cuts to disabled people.

This is not a one nation, compassionate Budget—nobody believes that—but a Budget shot through with unfairness at its heart. Even one of the Chancellor’s own Cabinet colleagues last week denounced it as fundamentally divisive and unfair. It is not a competent Budget. It fell apart within a couple of days, and the Chancellor still cannot explain how he will fill the £4 billion hole. This is not a Budget for the long term either—a long-term economic plan that lasts three days? It is a Budget built around short-term political tactics and it has backfired spectacularly. They used to say that a week was a long time in politics but, under this Chancellor, a weekend is the length of a long-term economic plan. What a failure!

This is not a Budget for the economy or the country, either, but one that is constructed around self-imposed austerity. It is about politics—incompetent politics at that —not economics, and it has blown up in the Chancellor’s face. For the sake of his party—he might think about that—and certainly for the sake of the country, it is time for him to go.

Equitable Life

Antoinette Sandbach Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my predecessor, Stephen O’Brien, who fought tirelessly on behalf of Equitable Life policyholders in my constituency. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for securing this debate.

The Minister may be surprised to know that some of my constituents who have received support from the compensation scheme have recognised the role of the coalition Government and want me to pass on their thanks to that Government for setting up the compensation scheme that has allowed them to salvage a little from the shipwreck that Equitable Life has in effect been. They fully recognise the good intentions of the last coalition Government in attempting to do something, when nothing had been done previously. I want to put that on the record.

[Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the dignified yet forceful way in which EMAG has conducted itself—Mr David Wakerley in my constituency has been involved—shows the realistic view it has taken of what has been done so far, but this in no way addresses the needs of those left behind?

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. A constituent of mine who wrote to me has lost 75% of his life savings. He is living on a pittance by contrast with the position he would have been in if Equitable Life had not gone under. There is a broad recognition among Equitable Life policyholders of the stresses and strains that the last coalition Government faced, particularly with a severe economic crisis and a ballooning deficit.

Of course, we are now seeing the impact of the long-term economic plan. When the Government were in difficulties and faced stark choices, I believe that my constituents recognised that and were grateful that the Government were willing to act. Now they can see that circumstances are changing, they are asking the Minister to keep this matter under review, as my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) suggested. We are in a different economic situation from that when this fund was originally set up.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point, as indeed have others. I do not wish to be pedantic, but when we talk about “keeping the matter under review”, we must remember that pension holders are dying, which makes the matter very urgent. My hon. Friend is right to say that the economy has improved to the extent that the Government can afford to pay full compensation, but beyond that I think there is a moral duty. There was regulatory failure, so whether or not they can realistically afford it today or tomorrow, do the Government not have a duty to pay this money?

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention, because his point about regulatory failure is absolutely key. Had the regulator been doing its job properly and effectively, we would not be in this situation. That is what lies behind the requests for fairness, justice and equity for the policyholders, who were entitled to believe that proper, appropriate and fit regulation was in place and would keep their policies safe. That is the inherent injustice about which those policyholders are rightly aggrieved. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East has said, it is unarguable that the unspent £139 million must be distributed among the pre-1992 policyholders.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Lady’s argument. I think that all Members want to find a constructive, positive approach. It occurs to me that a number of those who are not eligible for compensation might be falling on social security benefits, which, of course, is a cost to the taxpayer. Perhaps this is too difficult for us as individual Members, but I wonder whether it would be possible to do some modelling in order to see whether that accruing cost to the taxpayer would justify changing the compensation profile at this early stage. If we are trying to find ways to find money to improve the compensation offer, perhaps that would be an option.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

I am sure that the Exchequer Secretary has listened to the hon. Gentleman’s submission and I have no doubt that he will pay due regard to it. The Government have announced that payments to non-profit annuity policyholders who are on pension credit will be doubled, so some action has been taken, but we will not get to the heart of the unfairness until the regulatory failure has been properly addressed. That is what I am arguing for on behalf of my constituents.

We know that there are difficult spending decisions to be made, but these people trusted the system and paid in, in good faith, over many years, only to find that there has been consistent, repeated and unwarranted failure of regulation, and that it was so bad that there was found to be maladministration. In such circumstances, our constituents should not be having to pay the price for the failure of Government.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has mentioned difficult spending decisions—which is true, to an extent—and the £139 million, which has already been voted through by Parliament. It would be completely wrong for that not to be used for additional policyholders, if they can be found. Indeed, if it were not used for that purpose, it would represent a windfall for the Treasury in this fiscal year, which cannot be the right answer. I am as interested as my hon. Friend is to hear the Exchequer Secretary explain the plans for that £139 million.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

The Exchequer Secretary would be in danger of undoing all the good work the coalition Government did in setting up the fund in the first place if he were seen to be mealy-mouthed, if I may put it that way—I know he most certainly is not—and were to withhold those funds and to seek to bring them back into the Treasury, given the huge injustice suffered by the policyholders.

I am not going to take up much more time, Minister, because I know that you have other Members to hear from. I urge you please to look at the settlement and at what you can do to support those who are in desperate straits, including constituents of mine, and to do the right thing.

[Several hon. Members rose—]