Jobs and Growth

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls]

The Chancellor’s whipping team really must tell people to listen to the answers before they intervene.

The Nobel prize winner himself, Chris Pissarides, says in the New Statesman tomorrow that a temporary VAT cut is the right way—[Interruption.] I say to Government Members that Nobel prize winners who give good advice to the Chancellor should be listened to. Given that 70 more people are unemployed in the constituency of the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) than a year ago, perhaps she should start to listen too.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

I know that the shadow Chancellor is aware of the “Cut the VAT” campaign, which wants the Government to reduce the VAT on home repairs, maintenance and improvement work from 20% to 5%. Its analysis shows that when the rate was 17.5%, cutting it to 5% would have injected £1.4 billion into the UK economy in the first year alone. I wonder whether he is aware that the campaign is backed by 49 business organisations.

[Ed Balls]

I know the details of that campaign, although I do not know all 49 members. I know that it argues for a widening of our proposal.

One business organisation, the Federation of Small Businesses, has said:

“the Government’s growth strategy is just not working…We must see a cut in VAT to five per cent in the construction and tourism sectors to boost consumer demand.”

The business demand for a change of course is growing.

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[Mr Osborne]

That is another thing that Labour refuses to condemn. There we have it. We asked the former Labour Work and Pensions Secretary, Lord Hutton, to do a report for us. In his interim report, he set out a case for increased contributions. In his final report, he set out proposals for the defined benefit. We are negotiating on the basis of that. I want to know whether, if it comes to a strike, the people who are paid for by the trade unions are going to condemn trade union activity that would be the wrong thing for the British economy at the moment. Will the shadow Chancellor condemn it?

[Bill Esterson]

The only people in this country who want a strike are the people sitting on the Government Benches, because they think that they will get a short-term political gain from it. The Chancellor has mentioned interest rates a number of times. Is it not the truth that they, and confidence, are low because the economy has ground to a standstill because of his policies? Will he confirm that?

[Mr Osborne]

I will tell the hon. Gentleman what would damage confidence: a strike by the trade unions this autumn. Opposition Members are the people who are paid for by the trade unions, and I want to know whether they are going to condemn the strike or not.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

I am sorry that the Minister repeats the point he made earlier. Of course, if the previous Government could have got international agreement writ large on a bank levy, so much the better, but this Government have introduced their bank levy at a puny level. It is a shame that the Minister refuses to repeat the bonus tax on senior executive bankers who take home obscene amounts of money, when that revenue could be used to help to get young people off benefit and into work. It is a shame that he turns his face against that idea. He thinks that the revenue raised by the levy is adequate, but the Opposition do not. We believe that it is necessary for the banks to do more to pay their fair share.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is right. Does he agree that the Government’s arguments on the levy would be more credible if their corporation tax cuts did not substantially benefit the banks? It would be better if they supported amendment 13.

[Chris Leslie]

Indeed. Sometimes Government Members protest too much. The Opposition simply want a review of what the bank levy combined with the bonus tax could yield. My hon. Friend is right about the corporation tax cuts from which the financial sector will benefit. The sector will have a tax cut of £100 million in 2011-12, £200 million in 2012-13, £300 million in 2013-14, and £400 million in 2014-15. That is a £1 billion corporation tax cut over this Parliament. The Treasury ought to supplement its very modest bank levy plan with the bank bonus tax because it is only fair that those who played such a central role in the global economic downturn make a greater contribution to help to secure the economic recovery by supporting jobs and growth.

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My hon. Friends will be used to getting that kind of answer to written questions. We must therefore take it that there have been no meetings whatever with the Minister’s European counterparts to get agreement on transparency on bonuses—[Interruption.] If he has had such meetings, I would be delighted if he informed the House of the progress that has been made. It does not sound as though he has talked to a single one of his counterparts about this issue, however. Bonuses remain staggeringly high, and the Government must say why they are scared of transparency.

[Bill Esterson]

Does my hon. Friend remember hon. Members talking in Committee about the large-scale donations that bankers had made to the Conservative party? Has he had cause to reflect on whether that might be the reason for the Government being so reluctant to act on this matter?

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[John McDonnell]

Yes, I had forgotten that example. It is a good example of how unilateral action can raise the standard overall across Europe and globally.

Another issue raised in our debate on the Tobin tax a number of years ago concerned whether it would be practical. Things have moved on since then and the system for undertaking financial transactions is highly automated and centralised. New systems have been put in place, and I refer Members to the study by the Institute of Development Studies that identified how the system now operates:

“The Continuous Linked Settlement Bank, launched in 2002, now settles more than half of all foreign exchange transactions, with the remainder processed through national real-time gross settlements systems.”

Now we have the systems in place, through advances in new technology, to monitor the process and thereby ensure that tax is collected easily and that avoidance can be prevented.

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend just mentioned avoidance and the problems that it causes. Does he agree that if avoidance was the reason for not doing what he proposes, the Government would give up on collecting any taxes? Avoidance of tax is a far greater problem than any to do with claiming benefits, yet the Government focus their energy on benefits and not on tax.

[John McDonnell]

The main argument on the Tobin tax involved the inability mechanically to identify the transactions and therefore levy the tax. I think that that has been overcome with the new systems.

The avoidance issues will concern migration to tax havens and elsewhere and the report on this tax would have to address them, but we must also attack them more generally. That is why I was so disappointed that my amendment on that subject was not called for debate. That is another issue, however, that I shall raise at another time.

Financial transaction taxes have been introduced elsewhere in the world. In fact, they have been identified in about 40 countries—including ours, with stamp duty. Another question that was raised concerned whether, if we introduced this tax, it would be passed on to the customers. That is a concern, but the report we receive from the Government can consider how to design the tax so that it is targeted at the casino banking that has resulted in this crisis and so that we can protect ordinary people and businesses.

The key point about this tax is that, as the IMF study said, it is “highly progressive”. It falls on the richest institutions and individuals in a very similar manner to capital gains tax. As for the competition element and whether the cost will be passed on to customers, thereby hitting individuals harder, the finance sector is competitive and institutions that try to pass on the cost of the tax to customers will find themselves attacked through a shortage of business.

Another argument that has been made more recently is that this tax could help to assist in addressing high-frequency trading, where transactions happen every few seconds. There has been a huge increase in the number of transactions to do with derivatives. The volume of such financial transactions is now 70 times the size of the world economy and commentators have argued that that is dangerously large and destabilising. Lord Turner, the chair of the Financial Services Authority, said that many such speculative transactions are socially useless. Many of them are based on extremely small profit margins, so even a low rate financial transaction tax of 0.05% would reduce the size of the market by reducing the profitability of these risky transactions. In that way, it would contribute to stabilising the economy overall.

I do not want to delay the House. Many Members have considered the issue in some depth as a result of the lobbying, but for all the reasons I have given I agree with the 1,000 economists who wrote to the G20 summit. This is an idea whose time has come. Issues still need to be addressed, which were set out by Neil McCulloch in the IDS study, but the principal issue is political will. I hope that we can display political will across the parties and across the House to move on this matter.

I finish by quoting from the letter from the 1,000 economists to the G20:

“The financial crisis has shown us the dangers of unregulated finance, and the link between the financial sector and society has been broken. It is time to fix this link and for the financial sector to give something back to society.”

The letter says that a Robin Hood tax is not only “technically feasible”, but “morally right.” That is why I invite the House to support my amendment.

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[Stephen Williams]

I want to make some brief remarks on the amendments. The hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), who leads for the Labour party, mentioned that youth unemployment has grown to roughly a fifth of 16 to 24-year-olds. Of course we all deeply regret the wasted talent that that represents, whether of young people who have qualified at school or college or have left university with a degree and cannot find jobs or those who have not acquired any training or education—the so-called NEETs, those not in education, employment or training. Over the years, I have worked with many charities, such as Fairbridge and the Prince’s Trust, which try to help such people in my constituency. I must gently tell the hon. Gentleman that many of his points were made in the previous Parliament when I used to sit where his hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) is sitting now and I spoke for the Liberal Democrats on skills and higher education. The number of NEETs and the rate of youth unemployment increased year on year throughout the previous Parliament; the number just about touched 1 million before the general election.

I am sure the hon. Member for Nottingham East was not trying to give the impression that youth unemployment had reached 1 million purely because of the actions of the Government. It has been a problem in some cohorts of young people for a long time and has seemed intractable for Administrations of many parties, but the Government are trying to do some good things to tackle it, such as investment in apprenticeships and in the Work programme that will come in shortly.

[Bill Esterson]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman has given way, because I cannot believe he has the nerve to say what he has just said. One of the first actions of the incoming Government was to scrap the successful future jobs fund, which was bringing down youth unemployment. If he reads Professor Wolf’s report, he will see that her worry is about what is happening to 16 to 18-year-olds. We are in danger of repeating the mistakes of the ’80s when youth unemployment peaked four years after the middle of the recession.

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[Stephen Williams]

I was not aware of the continuation of that quote. However—[Hon. Members: “Withdraw!”] Rather than withdraw, I shall expand on my point and make it more strongly. The previous Government engendered the culture of get rich quick by slashing the rates of capital gains tax and making a virtue of cutting income tax and holding down higher rate taxation. Ironically, it is under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition that capital gains tax has gone up and the 50p top tax rate has been levied in this Parliament.

[Bill Esterson]

The hon. Gentleman called himself a free market liberal. Another Member of the House who described himself as a free market liberal is the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), who describes the current arrangements in this country and the way in which capitalism operates as wealth extraction, rather than wealth creation. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with that assessment when it comes to bankers’ bonuses, and will he support the amendment on the reasonable grounds that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) set out?

[Stephen Williams]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I have already stated clearly for the record that I share the moral and ethical outrage at the level of bonuses being paid by certain firms in the City and elsewhere. The question is whether reintroducing the bonus tax designed by the Labour Government would make any difference, because the evidence suggests that it made absolutely no difference to the bonus culture. It was a handy device for raising rather more than the expected revenue, but it certainly did not change behaviour.

As a free market liberal, I think that companies should be free to decide their remuneration policies, but they must justify them to their shareholders. One way that behaviour might change would be if shareholders took a more active interest in the bonuses that the remuneration committees award within their companies, whether they are banks or not. As was mentioned in yesterday’s debate, the people on those committees are often executive directors of other companies and so have a vested interest in the magic circle of super bonuses being justified in other companies. If the shareholders of the banks that we own, Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland, were able to express a view, that would introduce a new dynamic into capitalism.

I hope that the Government will seriously consider giving each citizen a share in RBS and Lloyds Banking Group when the time comes for both banks to be divested from the state—this is another plug for the pamphlet I published in March, “Getting your share of the banks: giving the banks back to the people”. I had an interesting meeting with officials from UK Financial Investments last Wednesday in the Treasury in order to discuss that.

Amendment 31, tabled by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), proposes a Robin Hood tax. I fully support such a tax, as I have mentioned in many debates in the House. I have spoken with many non-governmental organisations in my constituency and at lobbying events, such as the one that took place last week and has already been mentioned. A Robin Hood tax has three elements. The first is a levy on banks’ balance sheets, and the Government introduced that in the form of a bank levy. We might disagree about the level of the levy, but the important fact is that the coalition Government have legislated for it to exist and said that it will be permanent, in the sense that it will last for the lifetime of this Parliament. The rate has been changed once, as I mentioned in an intervention, and I hope that it might be increased again.

The second element of a Robin Hood tax is a financial activities tax—FAT, as opposed to VAT, which the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) might have phonetic difficulty with when speaking in Welsh, in distinguishing between an F and a V. I hope that the Minister can update us on what discussions are taking place on that between Finance Ministers across the European Union and what progress has been made on the introduction of such a tax, which is a tax on certain profits of the banks.

The third element of a Robin Hood tax is a financial transactions tax, which is the subject of the amendment. As the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington said, that has traditionally been called a Tobin tax. It would be the most problematic component of a Robin Hood tax to introduce. It might impede liquidity, which is not necessarily a good thing, and the other barriers he mentioned would be difficult to surmount without international agreement between the major trading nations.

Another problem with a Robin Hood tax is the question of how much it would raise, as I have heard a wide variety of figures for that which are in the billions. The hon. Gentleman referred to the great coalition of NGOs that support such a tax, and many of us support them, but I wish that they would agree a figure for what the different components of the tax could reasonably be expected to raise.

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[Alison McGovern]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. Having grown up on Merseyside in the 1980s, I know it was only when I studied economics later in my life that I found out that there was a word for the thing I always knew happened—that people got punished throughout their lives for being unemployed when they were young. The economic word for that is hysteresis. The labour market has memory: if someone fails to get a job early in life, it stays with them, scarring not only the person’s career prospects, but the economic prospects of the locality. We know all about that and the previous Government worked to stop it happening when the economic crisis hit. I would like to see this Government take that problem seriously, introduce measures that will bring real work to young people and deal with some of the problems we face, which are getting worse.

[Bill Esterson]

Let me draw Members’ attention to the proposals of the Opposition Front-Bench team. Amendment 13 states:

“The Chancellor…shall review the possibility of incorporating a bank payroll tax within the bank levy and publish a report”—

not an unreasonable request, but a very sensible and measured one. Yet we have heard from Conservative Members and from the Minister in an intervention that they are reluctant to take that action. I guess that the Minister will take the same attitude towards the amendment proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), which similarly calls for a review. Neither of these measures calls for the City of London to be disbanded or for bankers to be put in the stocks and pilloried by the public—much as many members of the public might wish to do just that! However, given that many members of the public may have recently wished to do the same to Members of Parliament, perhaps we should not pursue that line too far.

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[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

One of the benefits of this tax is that a considerable sum would be put into building 25,000 new homes for affordable social renting. Does my hon. Friend agree that through investing in housing we invest in apprenticeships and jobs and we get a higher tax take because people are working?

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend is right: a virtuous circle is created by investment, and especially investment in construction. It is one of the most efficient ways of putting money into the economy, and there is clear evidence that in periods of recession and downturn the role of the public sector should be to put money into the economy until such time as the private sector is strong enough to take up the slack and create jobs and continue to grow the economy. I fear that stage of the economic cycle has not yet been reached, which is why we need measures such as a bankers’ bonus tax to enable money to come into the economy.

Those 25,000 affordable homes would only be a start, but it would be a very important start. We have a housing crisis in this country, and it will be made worse by the benefits cap the Government are introducing, as revealed by the evidence from the private secretary of the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government that the cap could result in 40,000 families losing their homes. We certainly need activities such as those mentioned by my hon. Friend to make up for Government problems being caused by activities elsewhere.

I hope the Government will read carefully the two Labour amendments, and acknowledge that, as they merely call for a review and are very reasoned, they are worthy of support. I therefore hope that we will hear later that they accept both amendments.

[Frank Dobson]

I should begin by saying that I support the Robin Hood tax, and it therefore follows that I am opposed to the Sheriff of Nottingham, who in this context is the British banking industry. The sheriff was known for robbing the people and feathering his own nest, which is a characteristic of our banking industry. When the bankers start squealing and the City journalists start repeating their squeals and appearing on radio and television saying how terrible it would be to impose further taxation on the bankers, it is worth remembering the scale of the banking industry, and the scale of the damage the banking crisis did to this country.

It is estimated—I think this estimate is generally accepted—that the effect of the banking crisis on Britain has been to reduce our output of goods and services by more than £300 billion. In other words, had that recession caused by the bankers not taken place the country would be £300 billion better off than we are now, and, with a normal tax take, the Treasury would have been about £120 billion better off than now. In other words, a large slice of the famous deficit would have been wiped out, and a large slice of that deficit has been caused by the incompetence, stupidity and greed of the bankers.

When the bankers say they cannot afford to pay any more, it is worth looking at the sums Britain’s leading banks lost in the crisis while still managing to survive—and most of them survived only by being either taken over or backed up by the taxpayer. HSBC lost $27 billion in the crisis; Morgan Stanley lost $15.7 billion in the crisis; Royal Bank of Scotland lost $14 billion in the crisis; Barclays lost $7.6 billion in the crisis; HBOS lost $6.8 billion in the crisis; and Lloyds TSB lost $4.7 billion in the crisis. Yet all of them have paid bonuses to management who presided over those losses. In the case of Barclays, as I understand it even the shareholders have been doing rather badly and have been treated unfairly, because the Barclays leadership has been paying bonuses while the bank’s share value has been halved in the last 10 years. These are therefore undeserved bonuses not only from the point of view of the rest of us, but even from the point of view of the banks’ shareholders. There is a lot of scope for getting some money out of these banks because they are rolling in money, and we should spend it in ways such as those mentioned in amendment 13, tabled by my party’s Front-Bench team, and amendment 31, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell).

To put matters in perspective, this year—a frugal, austere year in the City, we understand—City bonuses amounted to more than £6 billion, yet we are told that the Government may not be able to accept the Dilnot report recommendations because they would cost the taxpayer £2 billion. That means that the Dilnot recommendations, which would help all the people who look with fear to the future and to getting older, could be implemented at an annual cost of one third of the bonuses being paid in the City of London. If that does not demonstrate how ridiculous the remuneration in the City of London is, I cannot imagine what does.

As I said in an intervention on my Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), these people in the City have now started to refer to their pay as “compensation”. They apparently need to be compensated to turn up at work, and apparently their normal compensation is not sufficiently high, so they have to get a bonus on top of that to compensate them for going to work and turning up at their office—and then, as we know from the crisis, losing money. It is about time these bankers started compensating the rest of us and doing what my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) discussed: making more of the undeserved wealth splashing around in the banking industry available to those who are providing useful goods and services to people in this country and the rest of the world, and getting us to a fairer and better situation.

Finance Bill

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

The most passionate rejection that I have seen in recent years was in Chesterfield, of my hon. Friend’s predecessor. He stood just next to where I am now before the election, when I was Police Minister, calling for more police and more expenditure. Yet now, the Liberal Democrats are saying that we should have had less expenditure.

I accept that I am going slightly wide of the issue of VAT, Mr Deputy Speaker, so I will return to it. VAT hits not just families or businesses but public services. The national health service in England will be hit by an extra £250 million a year because of the rise in VAT. A CT body scanner that cost £700,000 before the rise in VAT will now cost £17,500 more. A fully equipped ambulance that would have cost £225,000 will cost an extra £5,500. There is about £3 million a year of expenditure by each NHS trust on locum doctors, which will increase by £75,000. A Government who want to cut public spending are levying additional costs on the health service in England.

In my own region, in Wales, the actual cost of the increase in VAT to NHS budgets since 1 January is estimated at £13.2 million. For colleagues in Scotland, I add that Scottish health boards have been saddled with an extra £71 million of costs because of the VAT increase. At a time of decreasing public spending and squeezed budgets, we need to review the matter over the next few months and consider whether the VAT increase is causing even more difficulty.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is explaining in incredible detail the danger that the VAT increase is causing. I wish to bring to his attention the effect that it is having on pensioners in my constituency, one of whom wrote to me to express his outrage. I cannot repeat what he said, because he swore in his e-mail, but he said that

“if these costs were not so damaging it could be laughable.”

Does my right hon. Friend agree?

[Mr Hanson]

I do agree with my hon. Friend’s concerns.

Time is pressing, so I will move on. I know that we have a lot of time, but I want to ensure that my right hon. and hon. Friends have an opportunity to speak.

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[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.

[Bill Esterson]

I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware that the Treasury is set to borrow £46 billion more than it planned last autumn as a result of slower growth. I am sure that she agrees that without growth the deficit will continue to rise. Surely that is why we are right in the new clause to call for an investigation of the impact of the measures on growth. Clearly, the Liberal Democrats do not understand the impact of the rise in VAT.

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[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

That is an interesting point, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said earlier from the Front Bench, we would like to see a time scale and an end point.

As I was saying, we need a full assessment about whether a reduction in VAT would really help to turn around areas such as the one I represent. I also want to know exactly what the impact is on growth, and I will come to that in a moment or two. I want to take up the point that my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) made point about retail, but my argument is that almost every single sector in Durham is being affected by the rise in VAT that was brought in by the parties in government. We are a constituency that has a large public sector not because it is crowding out the private sector, which is the mantra we always hear from the Government parties, but because it is an administrative centre and so has a large number of public sector jobs. However, the public sector is being hit by public expenditure cuts as well as by the rise in VAT.

[Bill Esterson]

The situation that my hon. Friend describes is also typical of my constituency, where we have a very high level of people working in the public sector who are threatened with job losses from the parties in government. We also have a large number of small businesses that depend on those public sector workers for their custom. Those businesss are finding, as other Members have mentioned, that the VAT rise makes it very difficult for them to keep prices at the same level, and that has made it very difficult for them to trade effectively.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which clearly demonstrates a major problem in the economic strategy of the parties in government, which show no understanding of the links between spending in the public sector and private sector businesses. That is a very great shame and is to the detriment of business in many areas.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Durham has talked about the great impact on retail businesses in my constituency, and I am concerned about the ability of some businesses in the city centre to keep going. I have been talking to the head of one of the construction businesses in my constituency, which has been a very vibrant business in the past, and he told me that it is not only flatlining but might be about to go bust. That is extraordinary because it is a major company, but jobs in the construction sector are drying up. Other hon. Members have made this important point, which shows the lack of growth strategy from the parties in government. I would like there to be some consideration about whether a reduction in VAT could help to push down inflation and could lead to a boost in job creation, particularly in areas such as mine.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

The corporation tax arrangements for banks are similar to those for other businesses. That is one reason why we have imposed the additional bank levy, which will raise more each year over this Parliament than the previous Government’s bank payroll tax did. It is important that the banks make a contribution to reflect the risk that they pose to the wider economy.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

11. What recent assessment he has made of the effect on the economy of trends in the rate of unemployment.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

15. What recent assessment he has made of the effect on the economy of trends in the rate of unemployment.

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Danny Alexander)]

The unemployment rate has fallen recently: in the latest data, it was 7.7%—down from 7.9% on the quarter. The Office for Budget Responsibility assumed at Budget 2011 that the structural rate of unemployment was unchanged from its previous trends at 5.25%. In the medium term, unemployment is expected to fall as the economy recovers, supported by the action taken by the Government, including measures published in the Budget and “The Plan for Growth.”

[Bill Esterson]

Youth unemployment peaked in 1985 four years after the recession of 1981, with disastrous consequences for a generation of young people. When the Chancellor scrapped the future jobs fund he showed that he had not learned from what happened in the 1980s. Is not the truth that the Chancellor is out of touch with the realities of life for young people and is on course to repeat the same mistakes as the Tories made in the 1980s, with the same disastrous consequences?

[Danny Alexander]

If the hon. Gentleman was being fair, he would recognise that youth unemployment was growing substantially under the previous Government as well. The country has faced the problem for many years, which is why in the Budget we announced a £200 million package of support, including work experience placements for young people, skills training, guaranteed interviews and progression to apprenticeships. Including the measures in the Budget and the spending review, we will deliver at least 250,000 more apprenticeships over the next four years, compared with the previous Government’s plans.

Eurozone (Contingency Plans)

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hoban]

Madame Lagarde is a strong candidate for the role of director-general of the IMF. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point out that she is French; that fact has not escaped us in ECOFIN meetings. Madame Lagarde said on “Newsnight” a couple of weeks ago that she recognised that the bail-out of Greece involved a series of agreements between eurozone countries, and that that should remain the case.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

The Minister has an extraordinary level of confidence—well, I think it is confidence—in the Greeks’ ability to repay the loans they are currently receiving. I just want to check with him: how much of the £19.7 billion UK contribution to the IMF forms part of the Greek bail-out and how long he is prepared to see us continue to make our contributions through the IMF?

[Mr Hoban]

I do not think the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that we should withdraw our membership of the IMF—[Interruption.] It is not clear from the question he is asking. Part of the condition of any bail-out of an economy by the IMF—whether it is a eurozone economy or another economy—is a debt sustainability plan, which is a rigorous part of the assessment process. As was clear in the Eurogroup statement last night, the IMF and the Eurogroup have signed off on Greece’s debt sustainability plan, so they expect that money to be paid back.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

As I said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (John Pugh), one of the things we need to do as part of the listening exercise is hear the concerns about how consortia will work and ensure that the financial regime that is in place is sustainable and puts the maximum amount of resource to the front line.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

The Chancellor did not answer the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), so I would like to give the right hon. Gentleman another chance. Will he repeat the bank bonus tax that was so successful last year and use that money to build the extra affordable homes, to rent and to buy, which are desperately needed by people in this country and by the construction industry, and which would be good for the economy?

[Mr Osborne]

As I was explaining to the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), the bank bonus tax was introduced by the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer, and it was his judgment that it would not work for another year because the banks would find a way of avoiding it. That is why we introduced a permanent bank levy not just for one year, but for each and every year. In any one year it raises more than the bank bonus tax net, so that is what we have done. It is pretty striking: Labour Members had 13 years in government to introduce a permanent bank tax; they did not do so, and they cannot carp from the sidelines now.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

The Chancellor of the Exchequer was asked—

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

1. What assessment he has made of the effects on the economy of the trade in mortgage-backed securities and collateralised debt obligations.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)]

The rapid increase in mortgage-backed securities and collateralised debt obligations contributed to a build-up of excessive and unstable levels of private debt in the UK in the years running up to the financial crisis. Although we would wish to see a properly regulated securitisation market reopened to help with lending, this must happen under a much more effective supervision regime. That is why we are abolishing the failed tripartite system and have restored to the Bank of England the responsibility for monitoring overall levels of debt in the economy. We have already established a new Financial Policy Committee to assess risks to the stability of the system, such as the emergence of excessive debt.

[Bill Esterson]

Although I accept the analysis in the first half of the right hon. Gentleman’s answer, I wonder whether the fact that financial services companies donated 51% of all funds to the Conservative party has led to a conflict of interests that prevents adequate regulation.

[Mr Osborne]

I think that I pointed out in an earlier exchange that an ex-Lehman Brothers and RBS banker contributed to the leadership campaign of the shadow Chancellor, so if the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) wants to make that point again, and if you would allow, Mr Speaker, perhaps he could intervene.

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[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Mark Hoban)]

My hon. Friend is right. The mortgage market needs reform, but it needs stability as well, which is why I welcome the statement by the FSA today. It says that it will not introduce reforms this year and will take into account overall economic stability before it introduces any further changes. It has also made it clear that lenders should not pre-empt any conclusions from its review.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

T5. Can the Chancellor confirm that between 1990 and 1997 the proportion of tax paid on a litre of fuel rose from 59% to 75%? Can he also confirm that the proportion of tax paid then fell by more than 10% between 1997 and 2010?

[Mr Osborne]

What I can confirm is that Labour left us with six duty rises. Now they are wriggling desperately to find some excuse to get off the hook they put themselves on.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. As for the politics of the matter, it was, of course, the previous Government who oversaw a massive expansion of PFI. It does not come well from the hon. Gentleman and other Opposition Members to be criticising an approach that ballooned under the previous Government.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

My constituent Jeanette May wrote to me recently about the cancellation of the PFI at Maghull prison in my constituency to say that cutting the prison will affect the local economy, especially the immediate population. Does the Chief Secretary understand the impact that cuts such as the cancellation of Maghull prison will have, and how they will hit jobs and growth in communities across the country?

[Danny Alexander]

I am bound to say that that is yet another example of a saving that is necessary to tackle the terrible inheritance left by the previous Government, which Opposition Members now seem to be opposing. They also oppose every single cut, yet do not recognise that the consequence of such an approach would be to put this country back in the economic mess that they caused.

Autumn Forecast

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

We avoided the increase in the small companies rate that the previous Government wanted to introduce even in a recovery. We have been able to avoid the damaging part of the jobs tax. Of course, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. The forecast in this report and the forecast from many other people is for jobs to be created in the private sector across the country, including in the north-west—a part of the country that both of us represent in the House. Frankly, one can see again today that the Labour party wants to talk down the economy, does not believe independent forecasts and talks down the regions. It is no wonder that people rejected it at the election.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Was the Chancellor talking a “complete load of nonsense”, as he put it earlier, when he said:

“Look and learn from across the Irish Sea…What has caused this Irish miracle, and how can we in Britain emulate it?”

Does he recognise that a private sector recovery has not happened in Ireland? Why should following the same policies be any different here?

[Mr Osborne]

If the hon. Gentleman cannot tell the difference between the economic situations in which Britain and Ireland find themselves today perhaps he should not turn up to these events.

I just make this observation. This is an independent report, produced by Robert Chote. [Interruption.] I have had a lot of chuntering from Opposition Front Benchers about the independence of the Office for Budget Responsibility. We set it up on an independent basis and we have given all members of the Treasury Committee the right to approve or reject the members of the budget responsibility committee. We will see whether Opposition Members, including Front Benchers, support this legislation when it comes before Parliament. At the moment, it does not sound as if they will support it, but perhaps they will change their minds.

Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Monday 22nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[John Hemming]

The point is that spending £7 million to give £2 million is an appalling waste of money. Anyone who votes for anything like that will have a real stain on their financial track record, because people will observe the Opposition saying, “This is so important that we have do things in this inefficient way.” It is a ludicrous proposal.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman has talked about ISAs replacing the child trust fund as a way of saving for children. Does he appreciate that ISAs are often related to stocks and shares and that their value can go down as well as up? I do not see the difference in what he proposes.

[John Hemming]

At this point, I should declare my interest, which is on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as the chair of a company, John Hemming and Co., which provides software to ISA providers. I understand how ISAs operate and that the value of ISAs that are exposed to the stock market can go up as well as down. The difficulty with the child trust fund is that it is relatively small and that there is a great challenge in managing small funds. As a proportion of the fund, the 1.5% charges rate is higher than that for many other funds.

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[Mr Hanson]

There are two points about that. I do not wish to cause the hon. Lady any difficulty, but I think that her intervention relates to the previous group of amendments, on the child trust fund. We are now talking about the saving gateway account, which is for poorer people. It does not relate to people under the age of 18, and if she looks at Hansard, I think that she will realise that she is talking to the previous group of amendments.

However, I should also say that if the hon. Lady thinks that the current financial situation is difficult, I look forward to her supporting amendment 13 in the Lobby, because it would give the Minister time to reflect. Amendment 13 says that we should delay scrapping the saving gateway until 2014. We have had the saving gateway account—which the Minister and the Liberal Democrats supported in opposition and which Labour supported in government—which has had its pilots. The pilots have proved successful, and by any assessment more people have saved, resources have been generated and people on low incomes have learned the saving habit. The Bill abolishes the saving gateway account that was to be implemented in July this year, until the Minister put that on hold.

Two amendments are the focus of the debate. Amendment 2 would delete clause 2, so that the saving gateway account would not be abolished. However, I am being pragmatic, and I tabled an amendment to abolish the saving gateway account on 1 January 2014. That would provide a three-year gap in which the Minister could, as the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) said, look at the economic situation and assess whether the financial contributions are practical and desirable. I happen to believe that they are, and that the scheme is affordable now, but I will park that debate for the moment, and simply tell the Minister and the hon. Lady that if they accepted amendment 13, they would accept minimal cost, if not almost no cost, to the Treasury. All that would be abolished, effectively, is the pilots, and their assessment. The saving gateway scheme has not started, and there would be no financial contribution to it because it did not commence in July 2010.

The Minister could accept amendment 13 and not commence the scheme next year. He could accept it and not commence it in 2012, or 2013. He could make an assessment in 2014 of the principles that he espoused in Opposition with his hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane—that the scheme is a positive one that brings benefits. If the economic situation improves during those three years—the Minister presumably believes it will as a result of his other economic policies—he could consider returning to the saving gateway scheme without repealing the Saving Gateway Accounts Act, which is what the clause will do, and end any possibility of the scheme being introduced.

I am offering the Minister an opportunity. He need not abolish the scheme, but could reflect on it. He could delay its commencement until 2014, and not rip up a scheme that he supported in opposition, and on which valuable work was done in five areas in the first pilot, and in those areas plus south Yorkshire in the second pilot.

The Minister has a duty to explain why he believes the scheme should not progress now. If the reason is finance, amendment 13 provides the opportunity to reflect on that. The Opposition would swallow our pride and support him in not having the saving gateway scheme starting this year, next year or the year after. That would be a big step for us, but we might consider it if he would accept amendment 13.

[Bill Esterson]

Is not the truth about the Government’s position on the saving gateway that if they were serious about using it as part of tackling the deficit, as the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) said, they would support amendment 13 and delay repeal of the 2009 Act, because improving the financial habits of people from the poorest backgrounds is part of what the coalition Government say is their solution to the country’s financial problems?

[Mr Hanson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He emphasises that amendment 13 would not cost the Government anything. If it cost anything, it would be a minuscule amount to maintain the scheme because it has not yet started. The Minister froze it, and said that he would not start it in July 2010, as planned by the previous Labour Government. All the expense to date has been on the pilots in phase 1 and phase 2. I remind him that the legislation had his support and that of his hon. Friends the Liberal Democrats without a vote on Third Reading, and with warm words being spoken by them in Opposition. The situation now—it is self-evident to my hon. Friends—is that we have a scheme that is on the statute book and that has been successfully piloted but has not commenced. Amendment 13 gives the Minister the opportunity to delay its commencement until at least 1 January 2014.

If the situation improves and the Minister’s economic policies ensure that we tackle the deficit, build a strong economy, recoup our money from Ireland and consider all the issues that we have talked about during debates on the economy over the past few months, he will be able, if he wants, to go back to his electorate in Fareham, Truro, Falmouth and everywhere else and say, “Not only have we helped to tackle the deficit, we have not hit poor people in doing so.” He will have secured a scheme that he can continue to implement because he will be able to repeal the 1 January 2014 date later. Presumably, both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives thought that it was a good thing in February last year, or they would have voted against it on Third Reading, and would not have used such warm words to describe it from the Opposition Dispatch Box.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Maynard]

I welcome this opportunity to express my views on the concept of saving gateways. I listened with interest to the shadow Minister expressing his desire to save them for the future, but in his defence he missed some of the key pieces of evidence that we heard in the Bill Committee. I should like to remind him of some of that evidence. Adrian Coles, director general of the Building Societies Association, told us:

“No building society had committed to offering a saving gateway”.

Eric Leenders, executive director of the British Bankers Association, said that there were

“only a couple of providers who felt that it was suitably beneficial for them to provide the account”.––[Official Report, Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Public Bill Committee, 2 November 2010; c. 34, Q98.]

The Post Office would participate only if provided with taxpayers’ subsidy. It will cost £300 million to continue with the scheme.

There was a great deal of debate in Committee about the possibility of the fourth link in that chain being credit unions, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) for her assiduous advocacy of their cause. In a way, she was quite right. I was impressed to hear how many credit unions there were in Makerfield. I think she said that there is one at the end of almost every street, or certainly within walking distance for most of her constituents. We have a very successful one in Blackpool, too, but they would not be available for this purpose in the many parts of the country where the credit union movement has yet to implant itself fully, so we would be left with the kind of postcode lottery against which the shadow Minister was fulminating in the previous debate. We cannot have it both ways.

[Bill Esterson]

The hon. Gentleman describes a lack of credit unions in certain parts of the country, which is precisely why the opportunity to have the saving gateway is so important. Does he not appreciate that Government input into helping lower-income families to save is exactly what is needed to provide the necessary impetus?

[Paul Maynard]

Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman’s point was not borne out by the evidence of Mark Lyonette of the Association of British Credit Unions Ltd. He was quite clear when he said of the saving gateway:

“None of the credit unions built their business plan around it, so I don’t think its withdrawal is a threat to the health of credit unions.”––[Official Report, Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Public Bill Committee, 2 November 2010; c. 52, Q149.]

It is important to ensure that we give credit unions what they want, and that is why we are seeing reforms to the Credit Unions Act 1979 enabling them to work with more than just individuals—they will now be able to work with interest groups, social enterprises and the like. We should not therefore allow the Opposition’s statement that credit unions have to be involved to obstruct the fact that this scheme will cost £300 million to continue. This might cause some Opposition Members to roll their eyes and shake their heads, as they did earlier in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), but we are now living in a very different fiscal situation. The shadow Minister was quite right: the Government have changed, and we now have to take tougher financial decisions. We cannot justify spending £300 million on a saving gateway that will not be universally accessible across the country because there simply are not enough commercial providers willing to provide it. This is not a debate about a group hug, or about trying to encourage everyone to save more. We all know about those things.

I have been delighted to hear the hon. Member for Makerfield talk about Brighthouse, of which there is a branch in my constituency. I almost thought that she must have sneaked into my surgeries, because her tales about her voters’ problems with Brighthouse were the same as mine. However, I do not think that the saving gateway is the answer to the problems that many poor people face in getting access to cheap credit. It is not the answer to the problems we have been discussing. It fails the test that I raised on Second Reading—a test that I call my rhododendron test. The Opposition have a tendency to fixate on a single item of legislation that they believe will somehow solve all the problems in the world, but I am afraid that the saving gateway, however popular the pilots might have been, has not been popular enough with the providers that we need to ensure its success. That is why I support the Government’s decision to remove the scheme.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Hemming]

If there were an amendment to say that we should delay it until it is instituted by order, I would find that more reasonable, but I do not think we should set a date in the future. If there is not sufficient independent evidence that this scheme achieves a result and there are good arguments to show that there are better ways of helping people in these circumstances, I would press the Government to consider them and work with organisations such as the credit union movement to ensure that everyone has access to accounts, is encouraged to balance out their financial positions and gain wider access to crisis loans.

[Bill Esterson]

The hon. Gentleman did not answer the question about why there was such a change of heart. When the figures came out after the election, they showed that borrowing was £20 billion lower than had been assumed before the election. That could not have been the reason for the change of policy.

[John Hemming]

The hon. Gentleman ignores the fact that there was a sovereign debt crisis in Greece and that we need to learn from circumstances. If we do not do so, we will face great difficulties. We have a saving of some £100 million-plus on a scheme viewed by independent experts as not being the best way to use that money. There is no independent evidence that it even achieved its objective, save perhaps for reducing the amount of money people spent on restaurant bills when eating outside the home or on takeaways. That is what the IFS drew our attention to at the evidence session. If we are serious—and we are—about ensuring that the Government keep the interest rate on sovereign debt down so that we avoid ending up with the problems of Greece or Ireland, we must take that into account.

Yes, I accept there is a job to be done: we need to look after people on lower incomes and ensure that they have access to funding systems so they can balance their finances when they incur higher expenditure. We also need to encourage people to save where appropriate, but it is not always appropriate to do so. As I mentioned, the Royal College of Midwives said that a mother who has just given birth should not be concentrating on saving all her money; she needs to focus on eating well. On that basis, the proposals represent an entirely sensible and reasonable way of reducing the amount of money that the country has to borrow.

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[Sheila Gilmore]

I was not being dismissive of advice; I said that it is not enough in itself. To suggest that it can be a substitute for something like the saving gateway is to miss the point—the real nudge, or the real incentive, that comes from the matching.

It has been suggested that there were not enough outlets for people to use the saving gateway, but the housing association movement was very interested in it and had a great deal of discussion about how it could become, in effect, a front end for people who wanted to save through the saving gateway scheme.

[Bill Esterson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that although advice and budgeting are important, one problem in society is the lack of good financial education? For people on very low incomes, it is difficult to find a means of saving. That is the whole point about the saving gateway and credit unions; otherwise, there are not the accounts or mechanisms for people on low incomes to save.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Indeed; I agree with my hon. Friend.

My point about the housing association movement is that the people who say that there are not enough outlets to make the saving gateway really work are not sufficiently prepared to look at some of the things that already exist. I firmly believe that we could have built the scheme up. If tenants could have agreed to small savings being taken at the same time as they paid their rent, for example, which would then be passed over to the provider—whether it be a credit union or another organisation involved in the saving gateway—that would have provided a relatively straightforward and easy-to-access method for those tenants. Housing associations, which see themselves as having a wider role than simply being a landlord, felt that this would have been helpful for their tenants.

We hear so much of “We have to do this because of the deficit.” We are told by the coalition Government, “We had to change our minds about all these things”—in fact, both Government parties did not support all these proposals, although they did support the saving gateway scheme—“because of the financial situation.” We have two different views about how to get out of a recession. The Government parties did not just want to pay down a deficit which they suddenly claim not to have known about before, although they did know about it and, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), it had in fact been falling. They decided to reduce that deficit speedily, within five years, regardless of the consequences. There is another choice, although the Government may not agree with it.

The Government say to us, “You cannot support child trust funds or any of the other measures involved, because if you do, you will not reduce the deficit.” That is not the case. We take a different view on the economy. Our view is that the deficit should be reduced far more gradually. That was also the clear view of the Liberal Democrats as recently as late April: they said that fast cuts would be exceedingly dangerous. I do not see what has changed since then.

Ireland has been mentioned yet again. It cut public sector salaries and services, and it cut very hard. Indeed, only a few months ago it was being set up as a model in that regard. However, it has not got itself out of its financial difficulties.

We believe that if we reduced the deficit more slowly, two things would happen. First, we would be able to make choices about the things that are important, and I believe that the saving gateway would be one of them. Secondly, if we did not cut so drastically, unemployment would not be as high, which would mean more money for the Treasury, and we would not have a growing deficit problem. I firmly believe that if we proceed with the Government’s proposals the deficit will not be reduced as fast as they would like, despite the cuts, and it may actually increase.

We believe that those choices exist, and that the saving gateway is important because of the advantage that it brings to low-income families. It represents a long-term and real effort to change behaviour and improve the circumstances of such families, and that is why we want to retain it.

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[Mr Hoban]

If the hon. Lady reads the comments of international organisations such as the OECD, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union, and those of rating agencies such as Standard & Poor’s, she will find that mainstream opinion agrees with the Government about the need to take action now to tackle the deficit in order to avoid the crises that we are seeing elsewhere in the world. All that we hear from the Labour party is “Let us delay the difficult decisions. Let us go into the election with the structural deficit, and try to deal with it in four or five years’ time rather than now.” That has been the theme of Labour Members’ contributions throughout our debates on the Bill. They have denied the need to tackle the deficit now, and have ignored the lessons that are being presented all around us.

[Bill Esterson]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hoban]

Let me make some progress and explain why we are repealing the Saving Gateway Accounts Act 2009. The repeal is part of our deficit reduction policy. The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) quoted from my Second Reading speech. It was the third time that I had heard him use the same quotation. Let me now, for the third time, expand a little on what I said on that occasion. I said:

“The pilot scheme demonstrated some benefits, but it demonstrated some challenges too… What are the long-term benefits? What are we getting in return for the quite generous bonus that we are giving to savers?.. In the second pilot, questions were raised about whether the scheme was effective… First, there was no statistically significant evidence that, in delivering genuinely new savings, the saving gateway accounts delivered higher overall net worth.”

I referred to a

“number of anecdotes, rather than hard evidence, used to support the proposal”,

and added:

“It appears that money was moved from one set of savings to another, perhaps from a current account to a savings gateway account, simply to secure the Government match.”—[Official Report, 13 January 2009; Vol. 486, c. 145.]

While accepting the principle behind the saving gateway account, we nevertheless flagged significant concerns about its effectiveness.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the pilots. According to the conclusion from the second pilot,

“when we look at a broader measure of net worth (including investments as well as all cash deposit accounts), there is no statistically significant evidence that funds held in these forms have increased… we nevertheless do not find statistically significant evidence of an increase in overall net worth among this group.”

Carl Emmerson said in his evidence to the Committee:

“There was not any really strong evidence from the saving gateway that it led to more overall saving from lower-income households.”––[Official Report, Saving Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Public Bill Committee, 2 November 2010; c. 18, Q42.]

Given the fiscal constraints that we face, we must question the value for money to be obtained from this project. It would be nice to be able to proceed with it, but the evidence suggests that it does not increase saving and does not possess the benefits ascribed to it by Labour Members. Not only is the evidence of its effectiveness in question, but it would cost more than £300 million over the next five years, which makes it unaffordable in the light of the need to reduce the deficit.

The other strand of the argument, touched on by the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), is access. Who would be able to gain access to the saving gateway account? My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) echoed Adrian Coles, the director general of the Building Societies Association, who said that

“no building society had committed to offering a saving gateway account”.

Eric Leenders of the British Bankers’ Association said

“there were only a couple of providers who felt that it was suitably beneficial for them to provide the account.”

The banks that said they would provide accounts were Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds. The Post Office would take part in the scheme only if it received more taxpayers’ money.

I do not think we would have seen the easy access that the hon. Lady believed to be a key part of the scheme’s attraction. The only credit union outlet in my constituency is in a deprived area, and is open for only a short time each week. In my constituency, credit unions would not have been a vehicle for access to the saving gateway account.

Given that we do not intend to proceed with the scheme, we should leave no room for uncertainty among financial institutions or advice-giving bodies, and the best way in which to be clear about our intentions is to repeal the 2009 Act. I believe that if a future Government revisited the scheme, they would design it very differently. If the right hon. Gentleman wishes to press his amendment to the vote, I will ask my hon. Friends to oppose it.