Finance Bill

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that powerful point. As I said, I will explore the details in relation to data and the argument over the yield from the 50p rate, but he is right: we cannot continue to rely on a report produced when the rate had been in place for only one year. The Government should accept the new clause and produce a much more comprehensive analysis.

It was the Labour Government who introduced the 50p rate, which came into effect in 2010-11, a decision made after the financial crisis, as we sought to get the deficit down. When this Government came to power they did not say anything in the coalition agreement about abolishing the 50p rate, but in 2011 the Chancellor said that he would ask HMRC to look at the yields from the 50p rate, which was the warning signal that he was looking to cut it. In 2012, with HMRC’s report “The Exchequer effect of the 50 per cent additional rate of income tax” to back him up, the Chancellor cut the rate to 45p.

Why go through the process of looking at yield and getting HMRC to produce a report? Everyone knew that there were not enough data to come to an accurate view about yield because the rate had not been in place for long enough—a point about which I shall say more later. Well, the Chancellor knew that he needed cover for that deeply ideological decision so he was desperate to claim that a 50p rate raised very little money. If he could stand before the House and say that it raised hardly any money at all, never mind the uncertainty and the incompleteness of the data, he calculated that he could justify giving a tax cut to the richest in our country, knowing that on his watch ordinary people—those on middle and lower incomes—would pay the price for his economic plan, which has failed on the terms that he set for himself when he came to power in 2010.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

There are 15,300 people in work in my constituency who earn less than the living wage. They have lost out, as have many others, by £1,600 a year since this Government came to power. To them, accepting the new clause would indicate that the Government recognise that tax changes should be to the benefit of everybody in our society, not just a few. Does my hon. Friend think the Government appreciate that, or can she think of another reason why they will not accept it?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I fear that on previous form the Government will not listen today and accept our new clause. Nothing that has been said in previous debates gives me any confidence that they understand the message that they have sent to my hon. Friend’s constituents, mine and those of Members across the House that a tax cut for the wealthiest is prioritised, while ordinary working people at the lower end of the income scale are worse off.

--- Later in debate ---

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his intervention. I was about to come to the topic of tax avoidance, which I hope will answer his question.

Another weakness in the Government’s argument is the proposition that behavioural change, or tax avoidance, means it is not worth while maintaining the rate at 50p. This must be the only example of tax avoidance resulting in a huge tax cut, rather than in Government crackdowns to tackle and fight tax avoidance, which they are normally so quick to say they are doing. The Chancellor is on record as saying that he considers tax avoidance to be “morally repugnant”, but in the case of the 50p rate he rewarded a particular form of avoidance with a tax cut. I wonder if that has ever happened for people on middle and lower incomes. I think not.

The message that this Government have sent out is that if people are sufficiently well off to pay for advisers who can tell them how to avoid paying the 50p rate, and are organised enough and can lobby the Government, they are up for a tax cut, but everyone else, sorry, is simply worse off.

[Bill Esterson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government also send the message that a tax cut incentivises the wealthy to work harder, but that if everybody else is given benefits that does not work?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend is right.

The Government always tell us how proud they are of their record on tax avoidance, but how much effort did they put into thinking of ways in which they could protect revenue from the 50p rate? The Government have introduced the general anti-abuse rule, the so-called GAAR, which may have helped. They could have thought about a targeted anti-avoidance rule, a so-called TAAR. They could also have looked to HMRC to do more. I understand that no specific resources are allocated within HMRC to protect revenue from the 50p rate. A range of measures could have been taken to protect revenue. Before rushing to abolish the rate, the Government could and should have looked at protecting that revenue first. They were quick enough to publish an analysis saying that on their evidence it was not raising much money because of behavioural change, but their instinct was not to say, “Let’s look at how we might see off that behavioural change.” They did not commission a report or publish anything on that; they jumped straight to cutting it at the earliest opportunity: more evidence that this is an ideological and political choice made because they wanted to prioritise the tax cuts for the richest, while ordinary working people are worse off.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Redwood]

I thought that I had dealt with that point. As far as I am concerned, it was proven conclusively in the ’80s that taking the rate down from 83% to 40% increased the revenue very substantially and on a sustainable basis. That was sufficient to persuade the official Labour party—perhaps not some Labour colleagues here today—not to increase the tax rate from 40% throughout its long years in government until the very end.

[Bill Esterson]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not recognise that the economic circumstances are now rather different from those he is talking about. Surely we need a study, as the new clause proposes, to enable us to look at what is happening now.

[Mr Redwood]

I do not think that the economic circumstances were as different as the hon. Gentleman thinks. In the early ’80s the Conservative Government inherited an economic crisis from Labour, just as this Government did. There was a lot of unemployment and a big task in getting people back to work and getting the economy growing again, rather like today. The Government at the time managed to do that, just as this Government are, so I do not accept his point.

However, I find the fact that Labour is going backwards on these issues rather perturbing. Why can the modern Labour party not understand the basic points that the Labour party that was victorious between 1997 and 2010 understood fully? Why can it not understand that it is possible to take the tax rate too high and get less revenue? The Treasury has now accepted the doctrine of the Laffer curve and understands that putting the tax rate above the optimising rate would surely be a very foolish thing to do. It knows that that applies to capital gains tax, as it clearly does to income tax. I submit that 50% was well above the optimum rate, because we collected rather less revenue than many people would have liked. I welcome the fact that the Government have started to put that right.

I do not think that we need the study that the Labour party is recommending today, and I advise it to think again about what it learnt in the ’80s and ’90s but appears now to have forgotten. It shows that the former Labour Chancellor was clearly not crowd-pleasing when he refused to increase the rate from 40%—he was clearly antagonising many of his Back-Bench colleagues by not doing so—so there must have been a good reason for it. I think that reason was a sensible one: it would have raised less revenue, rather than more. I urge the Government to reject new clause 14.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chi Onwurah]

I shall be brief. The new clause would force the Chancellor to publish a report that made it clear how the Government were balancing the books on the backs of the poor. [Interruption.] Ministers may laugh, but that is why they are afraid to make the information available. The benefits of rising prosperity and productivity are increasingly concentrated on a small group at the top.

At the same time, there is growing evidence that economic inequality is a drag on the economy. Business profits, literally, from being part of a better functioning and more equal society. Businesses can function only when people form a society that is structured around the principles of trust, responsibility and fairness.

[Bill Esterson]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chi Onwurah]

I will not give way because other Members want to speak.

From the “The Spirit Level” by Wilkinson and Pickett through “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by the current economic rock star Thomas Piketty to “The Entrepreneurial State” by Mariana Mazzucato, economists and social scientists are raising their voices against the claims from Government Members that inequality is good for growth. Recent analysis concluded that

“inequality is bad for both the magnitude and sustainability of growth”.

Before Government Members jump in, that is the view not of some left-leaning sociologist but of the International Monetary Fund.

Equally, President Obama’s chief economic adviser has said that reducing inequality is good for growth. In other words, we must not balance the efforts to reduce the deficit unfairly on the poor, as they are less likely to be in a position to reap the benefits of any growth that follows. None the less, that is exactly what the Government are seeking to do.

The new clause would make the impact of the Government’s policies absolutely clear. I know what the impact of their policies is from my Newcastle surgeries. One constituent who is on a low income uses his so-called second bedroom to store his wheelchair and oxygen bottles. The result is rent arrears and constant anxiety. The threat of eviction hangs over his head. He is only hanging on because he believes that the next Labour Government will abolish the hated bedroom tax. And yet, at the other end of the income scale, taxes are being cut. If the rest of the House does not join Labour in voting for the new clause, people will know what to think.

The next Labour Government will reverse the £3 billion tax cut for the top 1% of earners to ensure that the books are balanced in a fairer way. We will cut taxes for 24 million working people on middle and low incomes with a lower 10p starting rate of income tax. At the next election, the Labour party will put an alternative vision to this Government’s classic 1980s trickle-down economics to the British people. Our vision is to build a new kind of economy that works for communities and ordinary people, and that does not put a premium on social and economic inequality.

[Ian Murray]

It is a great pleasure, as always, to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah). New clause 14 is simple, and I cannot understand why the Government would not want to produce figures showing whether the 50p tax rate raises more or less money. When the Budget was announced, the Red Book stated that the tax cut would cost £3 billion. If politics is the art of the possible, it is also about priorities, and if we consider the priorities of this Government, we see clearly why that cut was unfair and should be reversed, and why the Government should accept new clause 14 and state why they think that lowering taxes for millionaires is the right thing to do.

We have already heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central about the bedroom tax—that was a priority introduced by this Government. The bedroom tax raises only 10%, if not less, of the £3 billion that the 50p tax rate cost. The use of food banks has exploded across the country in all our constituencies, which is a disgrace in a modern society, and people on welfare are waiting for their personal independence payment applications to be processed—at the current rate it will take perhaps 42 years. Tuition fees have trebled, which is hitting young people and aspiration in this country, and we have seen the NHS privatised, with money spent on a top-down reorganisation that nobody voted for. Those are the priorities that the Government have introduced, which is why it is important to get from them in black and white as part of the Finance Bill the implications of what a tax rate does, what it raises, what it does not raise, and how much other levels of tax could raise. It may be that some of the pernicious policies introduced by the Government could be reversed if they realised that they could raise more money from different levels of taxation.

[Bill Esterson]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Ian Murray]

I am afraid we do not have much time, but if there is time at the end I will take an intervention.

Many hon. Members have mentioned the wages crisis in this country, which is of course connected to taxation. We also have a cost of living crisis: people will be £1,600 a year worse off by 2015. We have a youth unemployment crisis, and we are in danger of writing off another generation of young people, as happened in the 1980s when all those wonderful top rate reductions in tax were being made; and we have the lowest rate of house building since the 1920s. All these are priorities that the Government could put to the top of their policy agenda instead of concentrating on a tax cut for the wealthiest.

On the back of all this, we have a Chancellor who has set golden rules for the economic cycle but who has failed on pretty much all of them, while taking £3 billion from the Treasury’s coffers with this tax cut. The UK has lost its triple A rating, and not only will the Government not balance the books by the end of this Parliament, but they will borrow £75 billion this year alone— £190 billion more than planned. They have missed their targets for the deficit and for debt, and they broke every fiscal rule that they set themselves. What is their answer to the conundrum? It is to cut the top rate of income tax for the very richest in the country. Everyone has seen an increase in VAT, which is the most regressive tax; and we have had the granny tax—the list is endless. If politics is about priorities, the Government should come forward with a report, as suggested in new clause 14, and say how much the tax would raise or not raise. We can then decide whether it was the right idea and priority to lower that tax, alongside the long list of this Government’s failures, including social policy failures.

I was interested to hear the intervention from the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), who is no longer in his place. He wanted to talk about the 50p tax rate. I am very surprised that our Scottish nationalists have not mentioned it—they refuse to confirm whether or not an independent Scotland would back a 50p tax rate because the answer is no.