Finance (No. 2) Bill

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 20th June 2023 Commons Chamber

I turn to the example of a young father of, say, three children who is doing well at work and who gets a promotion taking his income above £50,000 for the first time. We might think this would be unadulterated good news but, actually, the tax system will send him a message that this is perhaps not such a wise thing, because he will immediately go into the upper tax threshold and his marginal rate of tax will be 40%. He will get the extra 2 percentage point national insurance surcharge as well. If he has a student loan, 9% might be taken off the outstanding balance. And of course child benefit will start to taper. For a father of three children, that could mean a marginal withdrawal rate of a further 29%. Our potential go-getter would be left with only 20% of the pay rise he had been awarded, and this applies to the kind of people we want to encourage to take on pay rises and extra work because it is good for the economy.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I am ignorant about tax affairs, but trying to sort it out might make it even more complicated.

[Harriett Baldwin]

My right hon. Friend highlights that this is not an easy task. The point I am trying to make with my amendments, which I hope he will support, is that, by abolishing the Office of Tax Simplification, we lose not only a source of valuable advice on how to simplify the tax system but the message that we want to do so, which I know the Chancellor wants to convey.

Higher up the income scale, the £100,000 income bracket triggers the withdrawal of the very welcome steps we have taken on tax-free childcare and the personal allowance. This means that a family with two children in full-time childcare, if they happen to live in London, would be better off earning £99,999 than earning more than £150,000 because they would have a more than 100% withdrawal of extra earnings in that income bracket, which is very distorting. It provides disincentives to work, and we see that obstacle to economic growth reflected in the workforce numbers produced by the Office for National Statistics.

The Chancellor agrees that

“the tax system is overcomplicated and the trend of ever more complication must be reversed.”

It is surprising that, on coming to office, he chose not to reverse the abolition of the Office of Tax Simplification. It was established in 2010, and it was given a ringing endorsement by the Treasury in its 2021 statutory review. Disbanding the independent champion for simpler tax sits very uncomfortably with the Government’s insistence that tax simplification is a priority.

However, the most important factor in securing tax simplification in practice would be for the Chancellor to take on the personal responsibility for simplification that he pledged to take, which brings me to the Treasury Committee’s new clause 2. We have heard that, while the Treasury and HMRC focus on new taxes, the Office of Tax Simplification did important practical work seeking to simplify the existing tax system. We also heard in our evidence session that the Office of Tax Simplification did good work listening to taxpayers to understand how the complexity of the tax system works against them. The reports of the Office of Tax Simplification were published very transparently, unlike the private advice given to Ministers, and they facilitated parliamentary scrutiny of tax simplification efforts.

The Chancellor told us that he intends to be a Chancellor who makes “progress on tax simplification.” I welcome the simplification of the lifetime allowance, which the Opposition opposed earlier, but the Committee wants the ability to hold him accountable for that. Under new clause 2, the Treasury would report to the Committee annually on the Chancellor’s promise to simplify taxes.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Wednesday 19th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cartlidge]

We have had pensions and energy, and we conclude with alcohol, and of course one other minor matter is covered. We are specifically debating clauses 27, 47, 48 and 50 to 60, and schedules 7 to 9, which cover powers to clarify the tax treatment of devolved social security benefits—that is the measure not relating to alcohol—as well as the change to alcohol duty and the introduction of two new reliefs for alcohol duty.

Clause 27 introduces a new power to enable the tax treatment of new payments or new top-up welfare payments introduced by the devolved Administrations to be confirmed as social security income by statutory instrument. The changes made by clause 27 will allow the UK Government to confirm the tax treatment of new payments or new top-up payments introduced by the devolved Administrations within the tax year, rather than their being subject to the UK parliamentary timetable.

I will now turn to the main issue of alcohol duty, and specifically clauses 47 and 48, which set out the charging of alcohol duty, and schedule 7. In line with our plan to manage the UK economy responsibly, we are reverting to the standard approach of uprating the previously published reformed rates and structures by the retail price index, while increasing the value of draught relief to ensure that the duty on an average pint of beer or lower-strength cider served on tap in a pub does not increase. Most importantly, these clauses introduce the Government’s historic alcohol duty reforms: the biggest overhaul of the alcohol duty system in over 140 years, made possible by our departure from the European Union.

The current alcohol duty system is complex and outdated. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that our system of alcohol taxation is “a mess”; the Institute of Economic Affairs has said that it “defies common sense”; and the World Health Organisation has said that countries such as the UK that follow the EU alcohol rules are

“unable to implement tax systems that are optimal from the perspective of public health.”

As such, at Budget 2020, the Government announced that they would take forward a review of alcohol duty. This legislation is the culmination of that review, and makes changes to the overall duty structure for alcohol. It moves us from individual, product-specific duties and bands to a single duty on all alcoholic products and a standardised series of tax bands based on alcoholic strength.

The clauses we are debating today repeal and replace, with variations, the Alcoholic Liquor Duties Act 1979 and sections 4 and 5 of the Finance Act 1995. Specifically, clause 47 provides for alcohol duty to be charged on alcoholic products, clause 48 explains where the rates of alcohol duty can be found—that is, in schedule 7—and schedule 7 itself provides the standard or full rates of alcohol duty to be applied to alcoholic products. This radical simplification of the alcohol duty system reduces the number of duty bands from 15 to six, and has only been made possible since leaving the EU. Now, thanks to the Windsor framework, I can confirm that these reforms can now also be implemented in Northern Ireland. The new alcohol duty structures, rates and reliefs will take effect from 1 August this year, which brings me to the new reliefs.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

As a member of the Campaign for Real Ale, may I ask the Minister whether that means beer that is not very strong will come down in price?

[James Cartlidge]

That is an excellent question from my right hon. Friend. As he will appreciate, there is obviously a difference between the duty and the price—we control the duty. As I am about to explain, we are doing everything possible, and I hope he will be interested, because I know that members of CAMRA have great fondness and support for our brilliant pubs up and down the country.

The first of the two new reliefs, which is our new draught relief, applies to alcoholic products under 8.5% alcohol by volume intended to be sold on draught. This draught relief is historic, because as Members will remember, in the EU, we had a thing called the EU structures directive. Under that directive, as a country, we could of course vary our alcohol duty—we could increase it, decrease it or whatever—but what we could not do was charge differential duty between the on trade, meaning pubs, and the off trade, meaning supermarkets, retail and so on. For the first time, we will have that differential draught relief, and I am pleased to confirm that in the Budget, we brought forward two very important measures in relation to that relief. It had been anticipated that we would set the draught relief at 5%, but the Chancellor confirmed in the Budget that it would be increased to 9.2%. I can therefore confirm to my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) that as a result of that increase in the draught relief, when the new system comes in this August, the duty on the average pint of beer or lower-strength cider that people buy in pubs will still be frozen.

More importantly, we have issued our Brexit pubs guarantee. As I say, this change would not have been possible in the EU, and we are using this opportunity to send a very powerful message to our pubs: to guarantee that from August onwards, the duty on a pint in a pub will always be lower than the duty on the equivalent in a supermarket.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Cartlidge]

There are spirits that will benefit from the differential—not spirits served from what I think are called optics, but spirits served on tap. There are mixers served on tap that will benefit from a more generous differential duty. On spirits, I am more than happy to set out further detail when I respond to the relevant amendments, because I think they are specifically focused on Scotch whisky, and I understand the concerns there.

I just want to finish my point on our Brexit pubs guarantee. Just to underline what we are doing, we are giving pubs a new permanent competitive advantage. We are levelling the playing field against supermarkets. Following the difficult times that pubs have had with the pandemic and higher energy costs, that hopefully gives them a new narrative for their communities with more positive times to look forward to ahead. That is what we want for our pubs. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett) said, they are so important for our communities and our economy. We continue to do everything possible to back the great British pub.

[Bob Stewart]

It seems that we will finish early tonight, in which case I am going straight to the Jolly Woodman in my constituency. I hope I will be able to tell it that the price of its beer will come down. Is there any possibility that there can be a differentiation to encourage real ale, speaking as a member of the Campaign for Real Ale?

[James Cartlidge]

I hope my right hon. Friend is welcomed with open arms in the Jolly Woodman, having given it fulsome promotion. I might make do with Strangers Bar downstairs. Real ales will benefit from the differential duty, particularly those served on tap. There are lower rates for those with lower alcohol by volume, which will hopefully encourage innovation. I hope that will support our craft brewers, not least with the second relief, which replaces and extends small brewers relief with a small producer relief applying to alcoholic products under 8.5% ABV produced by those making less than 4,500 hectolitres of alcohol per year. That will be precisely those sorts of craft brewers.

Clauses 50 to 53 introduce the new draught relief and clauses 54 to 60 provide for the new small producer relief. Taking each clause in turn quickly—I will canter through them—clause 50 explains that alcohol duty is charged on qualifying draught products at the reduced rates shown in schedule 8. Clause 51 sets out the eligibility criteria for draught relief. Clause 52 defines repackaging for the purposes of draught relief and introduces a penalty for repackaging that is not authorised. Clause 53 provides assessment and penalty consequences for a person repackaging qualifying draught products in a way not allowed under clause 52. Clause 54 provides for discounted rates to be charged on all small producer alcoholic products and explains how the discounted rate is calculated. Clause 55 defines small producer alcoholic products.

Clause 56 introduces the criteria for determining whether premises used to produce alcoholic products are small production premises. Clause 57 explains the alcohol production amount used for the purposes of determining eligibility for the duty discount and calculating the duty discount for small producer alcoholic products. Clause 58 sets out the circumstances, other than not meeting the eligibility conditions, in which alcoholic products are not small producer alcoholic products. I hope hon. Members are all following. Clause 59 and schedule 9 set out how to calculate the duty discount used to determine the discounted rate for small producer alcoholic products, and clause 60 allows the commissioners to assess alcohol duty that is due in circumstances where the small producer rate has not been applied correctly. The remaining clauses concerning alcohol duty will be debated in the Public Bill Committee.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Bob Stewart Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 29th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

The Chancellor heralded these proposals two weeks ago as “a Budget for growth”, and thank goodness, after 13 years of a stagnating economy and with the OECD confirming that we are the only G20 economy that will shrink this year, with the exception of Russia—what a record. It is completely shameful.

I want to talk about the proposals on childcare and the extension of the free childcare entitlement, which is aimed at boosting growth and getting more parents of young children, particularly women, back into work. That is a welcome ambition. At the moment, about 1.7 million women are prevented from taking on more hours of paid work due to childcare issues, representing an estimated loss of £30 billion to the economy every year. Those numbers are as true now as they were before the Budget, because although the £1 billion tax cut for people making large tax savings on their pensions comes into effect straight away, the implementation of the free childcare arrangements is still a long way off being delivered. Parents will not receive the full benefits of the scheme until September 2025; a child who is two today will not see any of that entitlement.

The policy also risks embedding inequalities and widening the attainment gap. I worry that the Government are missing an opportunity to truly tackle the issues that are dragging growth in our economy, by not supporting parents into work, and are compounding the inequalities in our society, which are also holding people back from reaching their full productive potential. Some 80% of families earning less than £20,000 a year will not benefit from any of these entitlements—only one in five will. The north-east has the highest rate of child poverty in the country. One in five children live in workless households, and 38% of children live in households where someone has a disability, which might mean that they are unable to work. Yet those children will not receive any of this entitlement. We know that the poorest children are, on average, 11 months behind their peers when they start school. Leaving them out of this policy will just embed that inequality further. I fear that the policy confirms what we already know: levelling up is no more than a billboard announcement. If we scratch the surface, we find that there is very little underneath.

Even on the Government’s own terms, the childcare entitlement falls short. If it is about getting parents back into work, why are those who want to train as nurses, paramedics, teachers or midwives, and those who want to be apprentices, not entitled to this childcare support? Parents are trapped in low-paid work and low-skilled jobs. They dare not take time out to train because if they do so, they will lose any childcare support that they might be entitled to.

As Chair of the Petitions Committee, I know that childcare is an issue that has been raised with us time and time again, with thousands and thousands of petitioners signing petitions calling on the Government to think again. Although the Government do seem to have finally listened, it is far from job done. The provision offered covers only term time—38 weeks of the year—so for the rest of the year parents need to find the money to pay for childcare. The long-standing problem with the Government’s free childcare offer that is already in existence has been baked into these new provisions, with the risk that prices will be driven up even more.

The Government acknowledge that we have one of the most expensive childcare systems in the world. According to the Women’s Budget Group, the current provision already falls short by £1.8 billion. The new proposals from the Government have a projected £5.2 billion shortfall—the shortfall is increasing, along with the promises. Without proper funding, childcare providers will have to drive up prices, because for every hour that they provide for which there is a shortfall in funding they have to find the money to top up the rest. We must be honest here: it is parents who are picking up the tab, because the hours that parents are paying for cost far more as a result. This really should not have to be said, but crashing the childcare sector and taking money out of the pockets of hard-working parents are the absolute opposite of helping our economy to grow.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for allowing me to intervene. I am getting a few cases now of people who are going to the Government to get the voucher for childcare, but the Government are taking far too long, which means that those people miss the deadline for giving the voucher to the local council—Bromley Council—so that they can get funded. This is a real problem, and it is increasing in my view.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising his concern. That is just one of a number of complexities in the childcare system that are holding parents back. Adding more complexity in the system, which I fear some of these reforms will do, will only compound those problems. Parents, who are so busy, so stressed and so under pressure trying to work and bring up their children, are having to navigate the various Government offers of childcare. They call these offers free, but parents have to pay for so many hours. They also say that it is tax-free, but it is no such thing and parents need to apply for it and get the money back. It is an incredibly complex system. We could provide a much more simplified system that truly helps parents to reach their full potential and that also helps their children to reach their full potential in a quality early years environment.

That brings me to my next point, which, again, reflects my genuine concern about the Government’s proposals. To make up for the inadequate funding that the Government know they are providing, they are looking to cut corners and, I fear, to drive down quality. Against the advice of parents, providers and childcare experts, the Government are proposing to amend the ratio for two-year-old children from one adult for four children to one adult for five children. I wonder whether the Prime Minister or the Chancellor has ever tried looking after four two-year-olds, but add another into that mix and it does not get any easier. Significant investment is required in training to enable staff to manage that larger workload. Furthermore, comparing us with other countries that have much higher regulatory and training standards for their early years education staff is just a false comparison.

I urge every Member to listen to parents such as the Steepers, who, tragically, lost their son while he was at nursery. They brought a petition to Parliament to raise awareness of the danger of increasing the ratios, because they are desperate that no parent will ever face the same pain. Nobody supports a reduction in childcare quality or safety, but many warn that that is what these changes will bring. The risk is as well that it will only compound the current challenges in the early years workforce, who are leaving in their droves. Seventy five per cent. of nursery and pre-school staff have said that they are likely to leave the sector if their childcare provider increases the ratios. They are already underpaid and under pressure. Adding another child into the mix will only tip them over the edge. That will not help the Government’s target of finding 39,000 extra childcare staff to meet the needs of the new provision. That explains the delay in bringing it in, because the Government face a mammoth task to build up the workforce.

The only attempt I can see to tackle this—other than reducing the ratios, which people have said and I believe will have the opposite effect—is giving bonuses to prospective childminders. Here is the deal: if someone signs up as an individual, as people have for many years, they will get a bonus from the Government of £600. However, if they sign up with a private childcare agency, of which there are currently six in the country, all listed with hyperlinks to their websites on the Government website, they will get a double bonus of £1,200.

I asked the Prime Minister why the Government are driving people to go through an agency rather than sign up directly with their local authority. The answer I got was:

“I think it is a reflection of the fact that it is through intermediaries, so there are additional costs.”

That rather sums up how backward this policy is; there is £10 million allocated to it, and we could get two for the price of one if we cut out the middleman. Why the Government are doubling bonuses for people who sign up with agencies, I do not know. The Prime Minister has promised to write to me with answers and I eagerly await his response.

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[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), because I wholeheartedly support the principle of getting more parents into work and, importantly, we both became Members of Parliament at a similar time, when we both had small children. There is a clear understanding that the childcare system in this country has been dysfunctional and unaffordable for too long. I was a Minister in a Government who developed the policy of tax-free childcare, and we wanted to simplify it. I think she made some important references to simplification and making childcare much more accessible to and practical for parents—we need that.

I say that because our country and our economic prosperity are built not on the foundations of government, high taxes and regulations, but on the ingenuity of the human spirit and the British public going out to work and contributing. That is effectively what we need to be doing. Our economic strength comes from the entrepreneurial spirit of businesses—obviously, I say that as an Essex MP—and from the nation’s wealth creators: our army of hard-working businesses. I come from a small business background myself—people know that I have worked overseas and all the rest of it. That is what builds economic foundations and protects us, allowing us to weather economic hard times.

We must recognise, of course, that we have seen economic hard times—certainly in my decade in this place—and we are not out of the woods; we have high levels of inflation. We also have challenges in the banking system, which could have long-term repercussions. We want to get the economy growing, and for the Government to meet their pledge to grow the economy, create more better-paid jobs—we all believe in better-paid jobs—halve inflation and reduce the national debt, we need businesses such as those in Essex. My hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury is a Suffolk MP, and I am adding the entrepreneurial eastern region. We have to give people the bandwidth to invest. We need them to feel confident about the strength of our economy and that businesses will do a great deal to invest.

Of course, Governments do not create jobs—we need to recognise that—but they can help to generate growth. That is why we need the right economic foundations, fiscal framework and supply-side reforms—about which we do not talk enough—to encourage free enterprise. So many of us in this place are old enough to remember that that was the approach that lifted our country out of the economic doldrums in the 1980s. As I said in the Budget debate, there are many positives in the Budget, but there is a strong sense among the business community that the Budget and the Bill could have gone further, and that we need to think about future-proofing where we as a country go on the economy and, as many of my hon. Friends have said, about addressing the high tax burden, which curtails our economic freedoms.

I could make many references to one great Conservative, the late Baroness Thatcher, who said:

“Our challenge is to create the kind of economic background which enables private initiative and private enterprise to flourish for the benefit of the consumer, employee, the pensioner, and society as a whole.”

For me, those are the basic tests by which we should judge a Budget and a Finance Bill. Do they support private investment and enterprise? Do they ensure that we are internationally competitive? Do they help households and businesses by giving them economic freedoms?

I will touch on some measures that have already been mentioned. On the rise in corporation tax, there are measures to provide more relief, which can be welcomed, but I do not believe in increasing taxes and then providing relief to compensate for them. Too many risks come with relief. It can create complexities in the tax system, and small businesses in Essex will have to employ armies of lawyers, tax accountants and specialists. I just disagree with that; I do not think it is right, as I said in the Budget debate. I believe that we need a simplified tax code underpinned by lower taxes. We have been talking about that for years in this House but we struggle to deliver it. Of course, businesses are frustrated by that because they are the ones that have to pay the costs of it. Entrepreneurs and small businesses are subject to more regulatory costs and more restrictions, which stifles innovation. We need to do much more in that space.

The OECD minimum rate of corporation tax is a hugely complex change to our tax system that has so far progressed with very limited scrutiny, I am afraid. Given the extent of the 159 clauses, that scrutiny may happen in Committee, as colleagues have said. I hope the Minister can assure me that the time allocated to those clauses in Committee will reflect their complexity, and that key sections will be considered by the whole House, because we are deeply concerned about the impact of the change on the UK’s economic future. I have concerns about the administrative costs of those measures for businesses. We need to look at the change in more detail, given that businesses are already paying above the 15% tax rate. That is of great concern.

[Bob Stewart]

Small businesses in my constituency are complaining hugely about the fact that they will have to employ more and more accountancy hours in order to do their work. It is a real problem because it costs them more and more money.

[Priti Patel]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that brings me to a point that I hope the Minister will seek to address. The Government’s impact assessment suggests that the costs could be around £13 million initially, and then an additional £8 million annually to maintain. This is a total underestimation. When the lawyers, tax accountants and everything else—the layer cake—is included, the cost will be phenomenal. For example, the insurance sector believes that its compliance costs will increase by a minimum of 20% to 25%. Others say the increase could be as high as 40%. These are business costs—I do not need to spell them out any further.

To quote the Government, the effectiveness of the policy

“depends on a high degree of consistency of the implementation in different jurisdictions”.

It has already been said this afternoon that although we are pressing on with implementation, other countries are not. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) said, the EU has granted many member states the right to delay for up to six years. The US is not going to implement it at all. We know exactly what the White House and the US House Committee on Ways and Means have said. If the UK progresses ahead, how high a degree of consistency can we expect elsewhere? In America, the House Committee on Ways and Means is threatening retaliatory measures against any countries that attempt to collect additional taxes from US corporates. We need to understand the implications across Government, because this is about not just the Treasury but the Department for Business and Trade. What impact will the Bill have on the prospects of a UK-US trade deal?

Finally, we are legislating before a final international agreement has been reached. As we know, negotiations are ongoing in respect of several measures, not least the infamous international dispute resolution, which seems to have plagued most Government policy in many other areas. We are signing up to a deal when we do not know whether it will be so loosely policed that China and other countries can game it without thinking about the wider implications. I know that the Minister will pick up these points, and I thank the Front-Bench team and the Chancellor for their strong engagement on all these issues.

I wish briefly to touch on the point that has been made about the Office of Tax Simplification. Much more work needs to be done in this policy area. At the end of the day, it applies to issues such as personal taxation rates. We on this side of the House are Conservatives and believe in allowing people to keep more of what they earn, and we trust them to make more informed choices about how they spend their money. Notwithstanding not just this Finance Bill but previous ones, it is fair to say that since 2010 we have lifted many of the lowest-paid out of income tax by increasing the tax-free allowance to £12,570. We should be proud of that. It has doubled under us and, along with the introduction of the national living wage, we have helped those on low incomes, which is absolutely the right thing to do.

The previous Finance Act that we passed froze the tax-free allowances and respective tax bands until 2028. I want to see so much more done in this policy area to give people more freedoms and to let them keep more of the income they earn, rather than having the state continuously robbing Peter to pay Paul and then reallocating so much public money in difference schemes.

We now face a real problem with fiscal drag that we have to address. Middle-income earners have already faced the impact of fiscal drag, with little change in the 40% higher-rate threshold in recent years. We also know that in 1990-91 there were 1.7 million higher-rate income tax payers out of 26.1 million, which was less than 7% of all earners. Now there are 5.5 million higher-rate income tax payers out of 34 million, which is 16% of all earners. As Members can work out, over the past 30 years we have gone from one in every 14 income tax payers paying the higher rate to one in every six. That is very significant, so this is one area that I would say to the Government, to Treasury Ministers and to the Prime Minister has to be kept under review.

To conclude, I encourage Government Front Benchers to drive forward everything that will promote free enterprise and to look at good tax cuts that will really help people, including those who, quite frankly, are struggling: low-income earners in particular, but also small businesses around the country. This is not just about the large corporates, but those that employ people in our communities. Those businesses are the backbone of our communities and our societies, and if we do more of that, we will have stronger economic freedoms to grow our economy and make our country more prosperous again.

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[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

I wanted to start by saying a few words about the late Baroness Betty Boothroyd, because I think I may be the only Member currently in the Chamber who was here when she was Speaker. She was an extraordinary, indomitable, wonderful, tough and completely terrifying person to a new young MP—one of the 101 Labour women elected in 1997. She smashed her way through every glass ceiling that ever stopped her. She was a working-class woman, proud of her roots and of who she was, and she would let nothing get in her way.

Betty led a very different House of Commons. When you came here in the morning, you did not know what time the House would go on to in the evening. You would be terrified to get one of the invites to her many social occasions; you had to be sure you had the appropriate outfit on the back of your door in case she did invite you. Woe betide anyone who did not respond to her invites within 48 hours, because the invite would be promptly withdrawn. I do not know whether it is apocryphal, but rumour had it that she stood at the door of her social evenings and watched you come in, and if you were not appropriately dressed, you were asked to leave.

I have one last story about Betty. It was an extraordinary time in 1997, and we were all invited by Queen Elizabeth to go to Buckingham Palace. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Dame Rosie Winterton) recalls it, but we arrived terrified. I walked into a room and I saw Betty Boothroyd. I knew that I knew her, so I could talk to her. At that point, another Labour MP who is no longer in this House turned to the Duke of Edinburgh and asked him to take a photograph of me, Betty and himself. I thought I was going to die—at least, I thought I was going to stop breathing. Everybody was silent, until Betty opened her arms and sprang into a rousing chorus of “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square”, while one of the Duke’s aides took him away so that he would no longer be offended. She was a character, and we all came along behind on her coattails.

Just because Betty achieved, it does not mean that everybody could achieve. We know that the number of working mothers in our economy is in decline in the 21st century. At a time when we know that we need more people in the workforce, mothers are not entering it because they cannot afford to do so, even if they want to carry on working to develop their skills, they hope for a better career in the future or they simply need the money.

Something that makes all of our constituents cynical about politicians and Government is when much is promised and little is delivered. When my friend Natasha and her husband Pete were watching the Budget, hoping for help with childcare costs for their two-year-old son Noah, they found none. They pay more in childcare than they pay on their mortgage. There will be many women who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) said, find nothing in these proposals that is going to assist them, because they really click in in September 2024 and September 2025. We could cynically ask whether those dates have been arrived at because they will be after the general election and the current Chancellor may not have to deliver on the promises.

More worryingly, the Sutton Trust has found that only 20% of the poorest third of families will benefit from the proposals. Those are the women and the families who need to work to improve their chances. We all agree that working is the best way out of poverty, or at least that it should be. In September 2024, there will be 1,369,000 children between the ages of nine months and two years. This scheme benefits only 600,000 of them, and more—729,000 of them—will have no benefit from these proposals.

However, it is not just the mums and the families who are going to have a problem. The nurseries—the providers themselves—already have problems. We know that 5,400 nurseries have closed since 2021, because they simply could not make up for the increasing cost of gas, electricity and staffing or for the fact that the current free hours are not free to the provider. It costs about £7.49 an hour to keep a child in a nursery, but that is only subsidised to the tune of £5.50 by the Government’s plan. Promises have been made that the difference will be made up to prevent more nurseries from closing.

The money offered by the Government for the current proposal is £240 million, but the Women’s Budget Group says it will cost £1.8 billion, and that famously Trotskyist organisation the CBI reckons it will cost £1.6 billion. The Women’s Budget Group believes that the total cost in September 2025 will be £9.4 billion. The amount paid by the Government will be £4.2 billion, so it will need more than half as much again to make the scheme work. We are either going to collapse the nurseries that currently exist because they will not have anybody to cross-subsidise with, or the places will not be there for those children.

It is not about the mums and it is not about the nursery, so is it about the staffing? Our childcare works on the back of very young women being paid very little. One in eight of the staff in our nurseries is paid £5 an hour because they are too young for the national living wage. That is how nurseries manage to keep going.

[Bob Stewart]

I entirely endorse what the hon. Lady says. A lot of nurseries in my constituency are coming to me saying, “The people we employ are just not getting enough money and we can’t afford to give them more. Please, please help.”

[Siobhain McDonagh]

I completely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. I am sure that, like me, he gets emails from parents who are absolutely desperate because nurseries are closing at short notice and no alternatives are available. We think we have a problem in outer London, but the problem in Newcastle is even tougher.

Some 90,700 staff have left the profession since 2018. The Women’s Budget Group—we thank it for all its efforts in getting these details—believes that for the Government to meet their plan, they need 38,000 more childminders and nursery workers. That does not happen by magic. It requires intervention. It requires the intervention of the businesses, but also the intervention of Government. We know, and we have known for years, that children benefit from the most well-qualified and well-trained staff. Well-qualified and well-trained staff need to be paid properly. Childcare should not be the service that is provided on the back of the least well educated and the least well paid.

Critical Benchmarks (References and Administrators’ Liability) Bill [Lords]

Bob Stewart Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 18th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a precise figure. However, in my remarks now and further on, I will give an explanation of those that are excluded and therefore necessitate the creation of this synthetic rate. If he would just bear with me, I will get to the point, and he should feel free to intervene subsequently if he is not satisfied.

The Bill builds on the provisions of the Financial Services Act 2021, as I mentioned a moment ago. This provided the FCA with the powers to effectively oversee the cessation of a critical benchmark in a manner that protects consumers and minimises disruption to financial markets. If I may, I would like to take a few minutes to put the Bill into context.

LIBOR seeks to measure the cost that banks pay to borrow from each other in different currencies and over various time periods. It is calculated using data submitted by a panel of large banks to LIBOR’s administrator, which is the ICE Benchmark Administration. It is referenced in approximately $300 trillion of contracts globally. It is used in a huge volume and variety of contracts, including in derivatives markets, mortgages, consumer loans, structured products, money market instruments and fixed income products. For example, a simple loan contract may say that the interest payable is LIBOR plus 2%. In this example, LIBOR represents the cost to the lender of getting access to the money to lend it out, and the 2% represents the additional risk to the lender associated with making the loan.

Back in 2012, it emerged that LIBOR was being manipulated for financial gain. Following the subsequent Wheatley review, LIBOR came under the regulatory jurisdiction of the FCA in 2013. That led to significant improvements to the regulation and governance of LIBOR. However, in 2014 the G20’s Financial Stability Board, known as the FSB—not to be confused with the Federation of Small Businesses—declared that the continued use of such rates, including LIBOR, represented a potentially serious source of systemic risk. The FSB said that financial markets should voluntarily transition towards the use of more robust and sustainable alternatives. It reached that conclusion due to the structural decline in banks borrowing from each other through the unsecured wholesale lending market. That has meant in turn that LIBOR has become more and more reliant on expert judgments, rather than based on real transaction data. In other words, the market that this systemically important benchmark seeks to measure increasingly no longer exists, which underscores the fundamental need to transition away from LIBOR.

Since the FSB’s recommendation, the Government, the FCA and the Bank of England have worked together to support a market-led transition away from use of the LIBOR benchmark. Primarily, they have encouraged contract holders voluntarily to move to robust alternatives, in accordance with guidance from the FCA and the Bank of England, before the end of the year. At the end of the year, LIBOR’s panel banks will stop making the submissions to the administrator on which LIBOR is based. At that point it will therefore become unrepresentative, and the administrator will cease publishing in any setting where the FCA has not required continued publication using the synthetic methodology. The vast majority of contracts are expected to have transitioned away from LIBOR before that happens. For example, it is estimated that 97% of all sterling LIBOR referencing derivatives will have transitioned by the end of the year.

Despite extensive work and progress, there remains a category of contracts that face significant contractual barriers to moving away from LIBOR by the end of the year, and measures in the Financial Services Act 2021 sought to provide a safety net for those so-called tough legacy contracts. Through the Act, the Government granted the FCA powers to designate a critical benchmark as unrepresentative, if it determines that the benchmark is, or is at risk of becoming, unrepresentative—in other words, that it no longer accurately represents what it seeks to measure—and that it is not possible or desirable to restore its representativeness. The Act also provided the FCA with powers to compel the administrator of such a designated benchmark to continue to publish it for a temporary period of up to 10 years, to prohibit new use of the benchmark, and to require the administrator to change how the benchmark is calculated.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I thank my very good friend the Minister for allowing me to intervene. He understands all this, and I understand some of it, but not much. I speak, however, as someone who is concerned. If we are moving away from LIBOR, is such a move likely to result in a greater cost to those who wish to borrow money?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

The programme motion we approved a short time ago allocated up to six hours for this process. As I look around the Chamber, Madam Deputy Speaker, I feel that span of time may prove adequate for our purposes today, but one cannot be sure.

I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation of the Bill and for the briefing he arranged prior to today’s debate. I am also grateful to the FCA for the briefing on the Bill that I requested a week or so ago.

As the Minister said, we all know the background to the desire to move away from LIBOR as a benchmark for financial contracts. A decade or so ago, a scandal of LIBOR manipulation was uncovered, whereby traders who submitted estimates of borrowing rates were manipulating the submissions for the benefit of the institutions they worked for, and indeed for themselves and the accounts they managed. That left financial markets subject to corruption for private gain.

Not surprisingly, in the wake of that there were inquiries, including a major cross-party one in this House on which I served. It opened the door to wider cultural issues in banking about risk and reward, and asked the question: for whose benefit exactly were those institutions being run? It also provided the spectacle of the chief executives of some of the banks, some of the highest paid people in the world, claiming, one after another, that they did not know what was going on in their organisations until they first learned about it through the newspapers.

In the wake of all that, regulators around the world agreed to move away from a benchmark based on supposed expert judgments, to benchmarks based on actual trades. However, that move away from LIBOR has been more difficult than first thought, because of the volume and the endurance of the contracts involved. As the Minister mentioned, it is thought that there are some $300 trillion-worth of contracts based on that benchmark. Some of those will not be transferred to new benchmarks by the deadline set at the end of this year, and that is where the Bill comes in.

Clause 1 seeks to ensure continuity between LIBOR and its successor for contracts which have not managed to move to a new benchmark by the end of the year. There was an exchange during the Minister’s speech, between him and the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant), where the question was asked: how much are we talking about here? In the debates in the other place on the Bill, the figure of about £450 billion was, I believe, mentioned as the worth of such outstanding contracts. If that estimate is correct, then there are still very substantial contracts that could be affected by the switch.

The Bill empowers the FCA to produce a new benchmark, to be called synthetic LIBOR, which, as the Minister said, will be regarded as LIBOR for the purposes of the contracts involved. That will run alongside the Bank of England’s new benchmark, called SONIA—sterling overnight index average. If SONIA is the daughter of LIBOR, then synthetic LIBOR can be regarded as the ghost of LIBOR. The Bill sees the two walking together, travelling side by side.

In both the public debates on the Bill and at briefings from the FCA, it has been estimated that, in terms of what it would mean as an actual interest rate, synthetic LIBOR will be about 12 basis points higher than actual LIBOR now. My first question for the Minister, therefore, is why should synthetic LIBOR be set at 12 basis points higher than actual LIBOR and what will that mean for the contracts involved?

[Bob Stewart]

Forgive me for intervening yet again, but, for the normal person, does synthetic LIBOR and 12 basis points mean a 12% increase on what he or she might pay?

[Mr McFadden]

No, it does not mean that. It means just over one-tenth of 1%, as there are 100 basis points in 1%.

Twelve basis points, or just over a tenth of 1%, might not sound like a huge margin, but when we are talking about contracts worth up to £450 billion, small differences in rates can add up to a lot of money. To illustrate that, let us consider the position of mortgage holders. There are an estimated 200,000 mortgages based on LIBOR. My next question to the Minister is why have those mortgages not moved away from LIBOR in the years since the regulator encouraged contracts to do so? What has left them stuck on LIBOR before the approaching deadline of the end of the year? Will the move to synthetic LIBOR mean that these mortgages will pay rates of 12 basis points higher than if the move had not taken place?

The FCA published a Q&A on these matters earlier this week, which stated that

“there may be a small increase in your mortgage payment in January 2022 compared with your mortgage payment in December 2021.”

It looks as though a payment rise is on the way for those 200,000 mortgages. That, of course, comes alongside a very live debate in the Monetary Policy Committee about changes to the Bank rate. Does the Minister think that those who hold mortgages based on LIBOR, which, in the buy-to-let sector, means about one in 20 mortgages—that is not an insignificant proportion—realise that that change, which was flagged by the FCA the other day, is coming as a result of the Bill? Have the Treasury or the FCA estimated what the total cost of that might be to UK mortgage holders?

That brings us to the potential for legal action over the changes envisaged in the Bill. That is the difference between this proposal and what the Minister referred to as changes in the Bank rate, because this change is being brought about through legislative action whereas Bank rate changes are as a result of a decision by the Monetary Policy Committee. The question of legal action arises because if contracting parties have agreed a contract on the basis of one benchmark, might they take legal action if the move to a new benchmark ends up costing them more?

As I understand it, proposed new article 23FA(6) in clause 1 attempts to close off the possibility of legal action as a result of a contract moving from LIBOR to synthetic LIBOR—the ghost of LIBOR—which, in this example, would close the door on any potential legal action from disgruntled mortgage holders. I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed that that is the correct interpretation of proposed new article 23FA(6). To make this matter even more complex, proposed new article 23FA(7) in clause 1 leaves open the possibility of legal action, as long as the basis for it is not action taken under clause 1 of this Bill—that is, it is not simply the move from LIBOR to another benchmark authorised by the FCA. Again, I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed that my understanding of that is correct.

In the equivalent American legislation—LIBOR is used all around the world—there is what is known as a safe harbour provision: a mechanism to prevent contracting parties from engaging in legal action as a result of these changes. Will the Minister explain why the Government rejected that option for the UK? What is the difference between the restrictions in proposed new article 23FA(6) in clause 1 and the safe harbour legislation that has been put on the statute book in the United States?

Clause 2 also deals with legal action. It insulates from legal action the administrators of benchmarks, who in this case will work on behalf of the FCA, who, in turn, will work on behalf from Parliament, assuming that the Bill is passed. We can see the logic of insulating a public agency from legal action if it is carrying out a duty that stems directly from legislation, but the same clause states that it does not remove liability entirely—for example, over the exercise of discretion or timing of the publication of a benchmark. Will the Minister explain to the House, under clause 2, just how insulated from legal action are the FCA and the administrators that are authorised as a result of the Bill?

Underlying all that is the question of why we need this legislation at all. Around a year ago, the Minister and I spent many a happy hour debating the Financial Services Act, both on the Floor of the House and in Committee. That Act, as we will both fondly remember, authorised the publication of the alternative benchmarks in the first place, so why, after our spending all those happy hours putting that Act through Parliament, have the Government concluded that they have to return with further legislation? What was it about the Financial Services Act that left the picture incomplete? How do we know that this is the last piece of the jigsaw and that the Treasury will not have to come back a third time to fill in other potential gaps?

There is also the important issue of the timescale or longevity of these measures. They are being sold by the Government as a transitionary process—a bridge from LIBOR to a world without LIBOR—but, as long as they are in place, we have SONIA, LIBOR’s replacement, operating alongside the ghost of LIBOR in the form of synthetic LIBOR. Is all this just kicking the can down the road or do the Government really have an exit plan for these tough legacy contracts? If they have not been able to move these contracts away from LIBOR now, when, for years, the regulators have been flagging that they should do so, why does the Minister think that they will move away from the ghost of LIBOR?

It is now almost a decade since the original scandal of LIBOR rate manipulation was uncovered. The Financial Services Act, which gives rise to the powers that we are debating, talked about a transitional period of up to 10 years while this new alternative benchmark might run alongside others that have succeeded LIBOR, so it is conceivable that it could take the best part of 20 years to go from the uncovering of the original scandal to the final move away from LIBOR. What is the likelihood that the Minister, who has been very long-serving in his post, or his successor will have to come back to the House with more legislation on this matter because, even after all that length of time, it is not enough to wind down all the contracts that we are talking about?

We will not oppose the Bill today because we understand that continuity of contracts is in the public interest, but it is not clear to us how temporary a regime this is. I would be very grateful if the Minister could respond on exactly why this legislation was needed in the first place and how long it may last, and to the other questions that I have put to him this afternoon.

Finance Bill

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I absolutely agree. Any businessperson starts off on the premise that they have responsibilities not just to their shareholders, but to their customers and other stakeholders.

Due to the scale of the problem and the lack of country-by-country reporting, it is difficult to establish exactly what some of these companies are making in the UK, but let us look at Google as an example. In 2018, Google turned over $137 billion and had net revenues— so a profit—of $31 billion. The whole organisation internationally works on a profit margin of about 22%. The company turned over around $10 billion in the UK in the same year, and makes about $2.2 billion of profit from UK activities each year. If we applied 19% corporation tax to that amount, we would come up with a figure of £420 million in corporation tax that Google should have paid. It actually paid £67 million that year. This is happening on a huge scale and is multiplied by many other companies.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I thank my good and hon. Friend for allowing me to speak. This confuses me. I would have thought that very clever tax inspectors could visit these international companies. Surely these companies cannot disguise the money that they are sending out of the country. Surely we have methods of checking that, and, from that, we can devise a way of actually taxing them. It seems to me, from what I can gather from this debate, that these companies seem able to spirit money away with magic dust or something, and I am sure that that cannot be so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to be called to speak in this debate and make a few short comments. None of us can accept the argument that tax is boring, because it is not boring. Tax is a necessity: it is necessary for building a recovery and it is necessary for helping others. On the earlier earlier about the help we can give to other countries through DFID—and through the new Department and the new Minister who will have this responsibility—I am very much in support of helping out countries in other parts of the world where we need to be.

I want to speak to new clauses 5 and 33 and amendments 18 and 19 in relation to the digital services tax. I work with my local high street to attempt to see businesses reopen and not shut their doors, and a large part of my efforts over this last period of time as an elected representative, along with others, has been to help point them towards the dual concept of online sales as well as a high street presence. I suppose many of those shops have a small online presence but some do not, and I am very keen to work with the Government—here at Westminster, but also the Northern Ireland Assembly, including my own colleague and friend, the Economy Minister—to ensure that the opportunity of having an online business or increasing online business is there to help.

For many, the ability to make ends meet strictly on the high street has been curtailed owing to lack of footfall and to more people learning to shop online during the crisis, when that was all they could do. Others have referred to us—indeed, I think it was Margaret Thatcher who referred to us—as a nation of shopkeepers. I have to make a confession that my mum and dad were shopkeepers. From a very early age, I can recall that we owned a shop—the post office—in Clady outside Strabane.

[Bob Stewart]

I thought it was Napoleon who said we were a nation of shopkeepers—or perhaps it was Hitler. It was one of those people. I am not sure it was the hon. Gentleman’s mum or dad, or uncle.

[Jim Shannon]

I think I said it was Margaret Thatcher—as far as I am aware, it was neither of the other two. It was said by our former Prime Minister, who led this country for a long period, and I am pleased to put that on the record.

When my family moved to the east of the Province, to Ballywalter, my mum and dad continued as shopkeepers. We were the first people to have one of the grocery stores in our village of Ballywalter, and this was at the start of the chain stores, the supermarket chains and so on. So, again, I am pleased to be associated with those comments.

As things stand, it is clear that although our online businesses will be paying the appropriate tax, it is not the case that there is regulation of all digital services globally. It is unfair that international firms benefit so vastly from reliefs that our own people are unable to access. As right hon. and hon. Members have said, it is time we made such firms accountable for their tax regimes and ensured that the money they earn in this country stays here, so that we can build our own economy and pay some of the debts that have been accumulated in these past few months.

For too long, we have been trying to reach an international reasoning on this, but that has not been accomplished. The Government have said that they would disapply the digital services tax if an appropriate global solution was successfully agreed and implemented. That remains their position, and it is a logical one. It is right that if we cannot get our internationally accepted, one-size-fits-all approach, we should cut our cloth to suit. The sheer scale of the possible income underlines the importance of putting measures in place. We must make sure we have accountability in the tax process, including for those who shift their money overseas, for whatever reasons and using whatever methods.

The House of Commons Library briefing outlined the Government’s belief that if they implemented the UK’s digital services tax, it could raise more than £400 million a year by 2021-22, which is not too far away. If that could be done, it would help balance the books and it would help our Government, who have allocated moneys during the covid-19 crisis, to ensure that we could pay back some of that debt. This is absolutely worthy of work and consideration in this place. Understandably, it is difficult to be accurate about the worth of this tax, but even half of that estimate, £200 million, could change policing in our communities, building relationships and confidence. Those moneys could be used for the purposes for which tax is used; they could make expensive, life-changing drugs, such as Orkambi, readily available at all trusts. Given my role as my party’s health spokesperson, and as someone who has been involved in the rare diseases groups here at Westminster and, in a former life, at the Northern Ireland Assembly, I know how just how important it is to have those drugs available for rare diseases, and revenue is the way that that happens. We can and should make the difference. This money can and will make a difference, and, in lieu of international agreement, it is right and proper that we go ahead with this legislation.

Loan Charge 2019: Sir Amyas Morse Review

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an extraordinarily powerful point in his own skilful way. I say this back to him: his group took that evidence before the added economic stress of the coronavirus. Many of the individuals affected will be contractors. They will be people who perhaps have no rights at the moment and certainly no way of finding the money to meet the demands on them. Even small sums of money will bring enormous pressure to bear on the individual. So he is right: this is not some vague and abstract tax issue. This is about people’s lives. That is why I was pleased when the Government launched the Amyas Morse review into the policy, and in December, he published a detailed report. I commend him for his heroic attempt to find a compromise, because that is really what he did. The facts and the conclusions are a little different, and that is because he was trying to find a compromise. However, when it comes to matters of natural justice, I am afraid that a compromise is nowhere near enough. Such a detailed review deserves detailed scrutiny, and I am going to spend a small amount of time looking at his central findings.

Sir Amyas recommended a December 2010 cut-off date for the loan charge. All loans before that date will be out of the loan charge scope. In a piece for The House magazine some time ago I referred to that as arbitrary, and Sir Amyas responded. He said:

“It is not an ‘arbitrary’ date. It is the date from which the Finance Act 2011 ensured that tax was charged on income paid through loan schemes.”

But that simply did not make sense, even in its own terms. The Finance Act was not law in December 2010; it was simply draft legislation. It was not passed for another eight months—until July 2011. HMRC does not, or certainly should not, take its instruction from draft legislation. It certainly should not take it from press releases, which was what actually went out on that day. It takes its instruction from settled law—and the words “settled law” matter.

Sir Amyas went on to argue in his piece that, once the 2011 Act was passed,

“tax should have been understood as being due from that point.”

But even in 2011 the law was far from clear after the Government suffered a series of defeats in the courts.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

My constituents just do not have any extra money—they have used it all up each year. After 2010, they were continually told by financial experts and the companies they were contracted to, “All is well—carry on.” Suddenly in 2017, they faced a massive bill, and they just cannot cope.

[Mr Davis]

I am talking about how we got to that position. I will come on to talk about the financial status of these people, but my hon. Friend is right: these are not rich people.

HMRC, which has claimed that this is clear law, lost the Dextra Accessories Ltd and Sempra Metals Ltd cases in 2002 and 2008 respectively, when the courts specifically rejected the idea that the loans could be subject to income tax. HMRC then lost a case in 2012 and again in 2014, demonstrating that the 2011 legislation had not clarified the law to the satisfaction of the courts. That is a key point—it was not a question of it not being to our satisfaction or our constituents’ satisfaction, but it was not to the satisfaction of the courts. The fact that HMRC lost twice and then won twice tells us that even experienced, highly informed judges spending a great deal of time studying these cases found it a difficult issue to resolve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). I am delighted to say that on this occasion I agree with every word he said. It is the nature of this debate that it has brought those on all sides together. For people who normally are not necessarily in total agreement on economic and tax affairs, this has brought us together. That is for the reason the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) gave: it is about natural justice.

I set up the loan charge APPG last year, and I think it has become a group that illustrates the way in which the House has come together. We now have 227 members. My co-chairs are the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) and the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning). I should say that he wanted to be here today, but he has a family issue that has kept him away.

Not only do we represent colleagues from across the House, but I believe we have gone about our business in a pretty professional way, with the support of the Loan Charge Action Group as our secretariat. We have produced reports in the past, and as a group we have reviewed the Morse review itself and published our response. That follows two witness sessions, where we had tax experts and loan charge victims. We have received more written evidence, and we have built on our previous work. This 63-page report, published today, has 17 key findings on the Morse review and it makes 19 recommendations.

I have been on a number of all-party groups during my time in the House, as I am sure you have, Mr Deputy Speaker, and it is relatively unusual for an APPG to do such a thorough and detailed report in such a short time. If I have one disagreement with the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden it is that I wish he had given us a little bit more time to do our work before this debate, although I am really pleased that we have got this debate. I hope the Minister, whatever he says from the Dispatch Box in response to this debate, will undertake to read the APPG’s report and to respond to it.

When the Morse review was set up, we welcomed it; it is what we had been seeking. We had meetings with Sir Amyas, and we gave him a huge amount of material. It is fair to say—I put this on record on behalf of the APPG—that we welcome many aspects of his report. He talks about how unusual the loan charge is and how unique it is in respect of how it overrides statutory time limits, which are meant to protect the individual taxpayer, and how it looks back over 20 years. What an astonishing piece of legislation to put forward.

The report has a number of good recommendations. For example, it says that if the loan charge continues, after 10 years of repayment any remaining liability should be written off if the taxpayer has earnings of less than £30,000. One would have thought that that was a reasonable recommendation, even if the Government want to stand by the loan charge, but they have rejected it. The Government rejected even that relatively modest recommendation.

I would have thought that Her Majesty’s Treasury and HMRC would have agreed with all the recommendations, in the spirit of the Morse review, but they have not. They have rejected some in full and some in part, and they interpret some in a way that is clearly not intended by the Morse review. For example, one group of taxpayers about whom I have been most worried is those who have had closed tax years—in other words, their tax affairs, properly given to HMRC with all the relevant material and back-up, had been accepted and the tax year had been closed. There can be no doubt that going back to such a year is complete and utter retrospection, yet the Government are still seeking to apply the loan charge to those years. They have narrowed in a most outrageous way the way we consider the concept of a closed tax year.

I am really unhappy with the way that the Government have responded to the Morse review itself, but the review does have a big flaw at its heart. Because the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden set out that flaw in detail, I do not need to speak for so long. In essence, Morse says that the law that was passed in 2011 in respect of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003, and particularly part 7A, made it clear. Now, the right hon. Gentleman showed that it did not make it clear, even for those people directly linked to it, because of the timings that he set out.

In specific detail, the expert witnesses whom we saw in the APPG made it clear that that legislation covered only some of the schemes to which the loan charge applies—those schemes that involved employees who were being paid via a third party—but completely omitted entire existing schemes that involve the self-employed, companies and loans paid directly to employees. There can be no doubt that the legislation on which Morse was relying does not apply to many people, because they are just not covered by that legislation. It is not a question of debate; it is just a fact.

At the time, experts looked at the legislation and responded in the way that one would expect: they looked at what the legislation said and changed their advice accordingly. Indeed, HMRC’s advice was based on what was actually in the Act, surprisingly enough. There is a 2016 technical note to which our report refers and in which HMRC specifically says that that is what the legislation said.

I find it quite extraordinary that successive Ministers have tried to defend this double-talk from HMRC. As the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden said, no court rulings in any way interpreted legislation in the way that the Morse review does. I have a huge amount of respect for Sir Amyas Morse, but on this point he is entirely wrong. I do not read all the tax literature, but the tax experts who have contacted us are really clear that Morse is getting the legislation, as it was understood the time, completely wrong.

[Bob Stewart]

When the right hon. Gentleman took evidence from people who are subject to the loan charge, did he receive any evidence to the effect that their chartered accountants or financial analysts since 2010 had told them—the people they were being paid by—that they were in real danger and had better change the way in which they paid their taxes?

[Sir Edward Davey]

We took no such evidence and no such evidence was proffered to us. It might exist out there, but we have certainly not seen it.

I do not want to detain the House any longer, as I have made my core point. The whole reason why this has been such a big issue and has united the House is that the loan charge is retrospective, and that is unfair and wrong. We have to defend individual taxpayers, even if we think they might have been ill-advised in the first place. We have to defend the law. Why do we meet in this House? Why do we pass laws, unless we come back here and say, “Government—you’re breaking the law”, and hold them to account for that? That is our constitutional job, and I thank right hon. and hon. Members from across the House for doing their duty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

In 2018, when a group of constituents first came to my surgery to complain about their treatment by HMRC, I was not particularly sympathetic—they were talking about loan schemes, of course. After all, why should a group of people use schemes to pay less tax than the rest of us? If they do not pay their fair share, others have to make it up, or so I thought. I was actually too harsh, not because people should not pay their fair share of tax, but because I did not understand the circumstances until they explained their predicament.

First, the people I met were clearly not out to defraud the system. They did not look or sound like petty criminals. They were normal, decent and honest. Some explained that they did not even have a choice, as we have heard: either they used a loan scheme or they would not be employed by the company or, in some cases, the state.

Secondly, as self-employed individuals, they were often contracted to different entities. Nobody but themselves, from what they earned, put aside anything for pensions, sick leave, paid holidays or, indeed, guaranteed employment. They were much less secure than someone with a permanent job.

In the interest of being quick, I have four requests of the Minister. First, I would like to see the retrospective nature of the charge removed up until July 2017, when the Finance (No. 2) Act 2017 was introduced. That makes sense to everyone.

Secondly, if that is not possible, the Government should revisit the settlement terms, which are hugely punitive. We have just heard the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Allan Dorans) say how punitive they are, and I would like to see a radical reduction in extortionate interest rate charges and inheritance tax demands.

Thirdly, we would all find it distasteful for the Government to send out settlement terms using words that imply people have deliberately broken the law—they did not. HMRC allowed the use of loan schemes every year. It sent the tax returns back, and people thought they were doing right.

Finally, I see no reason why loan charge repayments should not be delayed by a year, rather like IR35, in response to the health crisis we are all facing. So many people are worried enough at the moment. Give them a break—give them another 12 months.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Dowd]

Precisely—before the right hon. Gentleman was a Member, although not much before, I imagine.

[Bob Stewart]

It might be dangerous to intervene here, but I am quite sure that a lot of these financial analysts and chartered accounts honestly thought they were doing the right thing and everything was legal. They acted in good faith. I do not suppose that all of them were slightly dodgy.

[Peter Dowd]

Well, that is a view. The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) talked about how something that looks too good to be true is too good to be true. People have to take that on board when they become in involved in such schemes, as lots of people have, right across the spectrum, from those who are pretty wealthy all the way down to people who earn quite small sums.

It is the responsibility of this House to ensure that people are treated fairly. I do not want to get into the argument about whether HMRC has treated people fairly or unfairly. I accept in good faith what Members have said today about how their constituents have been treated. That has to be set in the context of the issue of HMRC’s resources. A third of its staff have gone since cuts in 2005 and later in 2010. Any increases in the cash amounts available to HMRC for its running have, in effect, been blocked. That is a factor that we must take into account as well.

The primary issue here is whether the enablers—the people everybody has talked about today—are getting away scot-free. I suspect that the Minister will tell us the extent of the Government’s and HMRC’s action to tackle these enablers, but I suspect that it will not be enough and the Government will have to sharpen up their footwork.

Whether HMRC has been aggressive is, again, a moot point. However, we know some of the enablers have also been incredibly aggressive. The Rangers FC issue trundled on for the best part of 13 years, with enablers—the accountants and lawyers—taking it right to the line and beyond, so let us not pretend there was not aggression from those who were attempting to push and push the boundaries, hence the reason for commensurate potential retrospective legislation.

I do not want to take much time, and everything has already been said today. It is important not just that the letter of the report and all its recommendations are put in place, but that the spirit of the report in relation to closed cases and so on is taken into account, and specifically the recommendation for a £30,000, 10-year limit, which the Government rejected.

The Government should have a word—I put it as gently as that—with HMRC about people’s perception of how it has behaved. It is important for Ministers to get that view across to HMRC. As the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) said, it is about balance. We need balance in dealing with this matter, and I hope the Government can get that balance right.

Coronavirus: Employment Support

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is important that the Government do whatever it takes in these circumstances. He raises a number of specific points. He will be familiar with the changes we have made in terms of access to statutory sick pay and eligibility starting much sooner; that commenced from 13 March. He will be aware that, to make that easier, there is now no need to have a GP note. He makes number of points on universal credit and changing the eligibility there. Advances are available online; the minimum income floor has been temporarily released. He also makes a number of points about freelancers and the self-employed, which the Government are clear about.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the universal basic income. The Government are looking at that, but the question whether it will help the most affected most urgently is one we have to consider. Many of us in this House, for example, would not require such support. We have to ensure that we target it at the most vulnerable.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I have had a lot of emails on this subject, so may I ask the Minister again how the Government are going to support freelancers and the self-employed? They are desperately worried.

[John Glen]

My hon. and gallant Friend is right to raise that. We have changed the rules on access to employment support allowance and sick pay. It will depend on individual circumstances. We have also released funds to local authorities for hardship relief. Further advice on that will be given tomorrow by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Lloyds, HBOS and the Cranston Review

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, although that is not a model I am familiar with. Class actions are definitely opportunities that are not well exploited the UK because of our legal system. I would be keen to talk to him further about that approach.

Within our system we have the Financial Ombudsman Service, which does not necessarily have the best reputation, although I know the hon. Gentleman is talking about something different. It is a problem that whoever is overseeing cases has to be competent and have the right understanding, because there are complex cases that take into account issues around complicated banking products. We have to ensure that the calibre of arbitration or adjudication is at the right level—I will say more about that shortly. We certainly need reform. Moving forward, we think we have a good solution, but we need to continue to improve on that.

This is not just about Lloyds. There are a number of other redress schemes for banking malpractice and mistreatment that have already been conducted by relevant banks. Banks were the principal arbiters of deciding how much compensation people were allowed to have relating to the interest rate swaps schemes and interest rate hedging products, many of which had a devastating effect on businesses. The debates that we have had about the Royal Bank of Scotland, over the past months and years, have raised similar problems about the mistreatment of small businesses. There are problems with their review process and with others, as other hon. Members have said.

I will describe cases that put that into perspective. The first person to write to me about a business banking dispute was Jon Welsby from Filey, when I first became a Member of Parliament. He showed me a huge file of evidence about his business, but the dispute came down to quite a simple problem. He had been sold a swap by Lloyds bank—they were sold by many different banks—that had had a devastating effect on the interest rates he had to pay. The amount he had to pay rose from about £5,000 a month to £17,000—perversely, as interest rates fell, as that was the way swaps worked. He was given direct losses, but he was not assessed as being due any consequential losses by the bank-led review. He was able to gather together the resources to take his claim to court. It was a £10 million claim, although I am not clear exactly how much he received, as he settled out of court. He was able to settle the claim, whereas most people cannot get the money together to take their claim to court. He had had his claim assessed by the bank and was not happy with it, but because he had the money to get to court, it was settled for a much higher figure. It cannot be right that the only people accessing justice are those with the wherewithal to get to court. Given that imbalance of power, people would need millions of pounds to take a bank to court. It is simply unfair.

The constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), Dean D’Eye, came to us about the RBS Global Restructuring Group scheme. He had a property development business and loans to the value of around 60%. He never missed a payment to RBS. He was sold a swap, which damaged his business, but the key moment came when money from a property sale he had made, to add cash flow to his current account, was taken away by the bank and used to reduce debt. According to Mr D’Eye, that broke the agreement and had a devastating impact on his business.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

It did not just affect Dean D’Eye but it deeply affected his father, who was almost bankrupted and lost his home.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Absolutely, and we see that time and time again. It is not just about businesses or jobs—although clearly businesses and jobs are lost—but about the effect on people’s lives. I understand that as a business person myself. My business has been my life. If somebody had taken my business away from me in those circumstances, I do not know how I would have coped.

The Minister may say that many cases are not proven or that the banks may write with various reasons why claims are wrong. That is why we do not put the APPG forward as an arbiter of whether the customer or the bank is right in such cases. We do not think the APPG, the victims or the banks should play that role; it must be somebody entirely independent. As I have said before, we recommended a tribunal approach to solving this imbalance of power. What my hon. Friend the Minister has managed to bring about is something new, called the Business Banking Resolution Service, which we think is a great step forward. We in the APPG have been working with the BBRS for the past year. It will mean that we can look at historical cases and at cases going forward, and at larger businesses too. It is absolutely the right thing, and we believe that the method of adjudication is good.

Our concern is, of course, as I have discussed with the Minister on many occasions, that that approach excludes people who have been through other independent bank-led reviews, which we think is wrong. We think the banks should look at such cases again where there is material evidence that something has not been settled fairly, but with the BBRS as a fallback. We think that is fair, and that should go for all victims of all bank-led remediation schemes who feel there is still a case to answer.

We also think there are other issues that need to be dealt with within the Lloyds Bank Review, certainly on eligibility. The review had very tight restrictions on eligibility: the victim had to have dealt directly with one of the two people convicted of the direct fraud, Lynden Scourfield or Mark Dobson. We think that is an unfair restriction. Lloyds has made ex gratia payments—I think £65,000 in total—that are only allocated to certain people who have been through that scheme or are assessed as being appropriate to go through that scheme, which, again, we think is unfair. Lloyds should look again at that.

We see a lot of people now putting their cases forward for the Business Banking Resolution Services. Our constituents who have these kinds of problem can put their cases forward, and we urge them to do so, but when they do, while their cases are being assessed, we think the bank should declare a moratorium or a stay of proceedings on any cases going through that process.

To conclude, we see this as a crucial opportunity, not only for Lloyds to get this right now, but for the wider business-banking relationship. We are very grateful to the Minister for the steps he has taken, both in appointing Sir Ross Cranston and on the Business Banking Resolution Service. We very much thank Sir Ross Cranston for his excellent work. We see this as a crucial opportunity to restore confidence in the free market system, to ensure that individual victims have access to justice and compensation and to improve the appetite for SMEs to borrow, start businesses and grow them, thereby giving a timely boost to UK plc. Let us ensure that we do not waste the opportunity.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Hollobone. I, too, pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake). Obviously, in this role, I have shadow Ministers shadowing my every move, but I also have my hon. Friend, who has spoken up very effectively on these issues over the past 25 months. We have had a constructive dialogue on many matters, and I look forward to addressing the points he and others have made in my response.

It has been just over a year since I announced that Lloyds would commission a review into the Griggs compensation scheme, which is another stepping stone in Lloyds’ journey to right the wrongs of the past and rebuild trust with their business customers. From the outset, I was clear that if the findings of the review were to hold up to scrutiny, the person overseeing it must be truly independent. I was therefore delighted by the appointment of Sir Ross Cranston, a former Labour Member of Parliament who was Solicitor General between 1998 and 2001 and is a professor of law at the London School of Economics, a Queen’s counsel, and a retired High Court judge. I met him on two occasions to check on progress, between May and when purdah commenced. That was not to influence him regarding the particular conduct, but to encourage him to look at this issue as thoroughly as possible.

Sir Ross found that the Griggs compensation scheme had serious shortcomings, as has been expressed fully in this debate, and that it did not achieve the stated purpose of delivering fair and reasonable compensation offers. Assessments of direct and consequential loss were too adversarial and legalistic, which was unfair and unreasonable for the customers it was designed to support. Sir Ross also found several other inconsistencies, along with a general lack of clarity underpinning the scheme, while the bank’s failure to communicate with customers in a transparent manner caused further unnecessary confusion.

Sir Ross found that some elements of the compensation scheme were good. For example, Lloyds provided generous legal assistance and wrote off some customer debts, as well as paying substantial distress and inconvenience redress. Nevertheless, the overriding conclusions were hugely disappointing, and Sir Ross has made it clear that Lloyds has more work to do to achieve the stated aims of its original compensation scheme.

The most substantial of Sir Ross’s recommendations is that customer claims for direct and consequential loss must be reassessed, and Lloyds is working with customers and relevant parties to agree the details of this process. I know that representatives of Lloyds have been mentioned in this debate, and I have been given assurances that they are eager to get on with things. That could be through the new Business Banking Resolution Service, which has been referred to in today’s debate, or through an equivalent scheme that is committed to achieving the same rigorous outcomes. Either way, it is pretty clear to me that these cases must be considered by an independent body in a transparent manner.

There has been work on this issue by the all-party parliamentary group on fair business, with support from Heather Buchanan, who was mentioned earlier, and the SME Alliance. I also know that Sir Ross Cranston himself is engaged in this process, which must continue, and must be thorough and rigorous.

Sir Ross has also recommended that Lloyds make payments to cover the debts of customers who repaid or refinanced loans, as well as releasing customers from certain aspects of their settlement agreements. It is vital that Lloyds now implements the recommendations as quickly as possible and continues to support customers as they navigate this process. I will follow progress closely and I expect to be regularly updated; I have made that clear.

I turn now to some of the points made by hon. Members throughout the debate this afternoon. The hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), who is no longer in her place, asked whether all reviews should be tested against Sir Ross’s methodology. I will just say this: I think that all banks have a responsibility to reflect on the findings of the Cranston review and consider whether their own redress schemes achieved fair and reasonable outcomes for customers. Obviously, people have different interpretations, but the Cranston review is a wake-up call to banks to examine whether the appropriate transparent processes have been followed. That should happen now.

[Bob Stewart]

Will the Minister give way?

[John Glen]

I will just make my next point, then I will give way to my hon. Friend.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton asked about the appropriateness of the Financial Conduct Authority carrying out a review under the senior managers and certification regime. As he will know, the FCA is operationally independent of Government and it is for the FCA to consider whether there is sufficient evidence for such an investigation.

I know that we have spoken previously about Dame Linda Dobbs’s investigation, which has been ongoing for a considerable amount of time. That really needs to come to a conclusion; we need to see the results of that investigation. However, I cannot say more than that, because it is a matter for the FCA to consider. Now I am very happy to give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart).

[Bob Stewart]

I thank the Minister for giving way; he is an honourable and decent man. However, what shocks me most about all of this is that some banks are not acting decently and honourably. That really worries me; they should do that naturally. They are a bastion of our society, just as business is.

[John Glen]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, which goes to the core of this matter. The Cranston review points to the fact that we now have a higher bar of expectations in terms of how these redress schemes should be operated in a transparent way. He has spoken in this debate and previously about the distress that has been caused to his constituents, and many other Members have also made points during this debate.

The wider banking industry has a responsibility to reflect on the review’s findings and act accordingly, so I welcome the banking industry’s commitment to creating a new scheme to address unresolved historic complaints from small and medium-sized enterprises that have not been through a formal independent process, and to address future complaints made by slightly larger SMEs that are just outside the remit of the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Cross-border Trade and Accounting

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Luke Graham]

Is the Minister on his feet?

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

He is going for a drink.

[Luke Graham]

I hope it is whisky; we will be here for a while.

Accountants can help us with some of our biggest social and environmental challenges. In the current context, with Brexit on the horizon, I thought this debate would be useful, and later in my speech I shall come to the issues relating to trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.

Let me give a little background on accounting systems—the non-accountants in the room can tune in now, because this is the exciting bit. Accounting has come a long way since it was established centuries ago: we had the evolution of double-entry bookkeeping from the original ledgers; we then had some base computing in the 19th century, and then more into the 20th century; and we now have the far more advanced accounting systems that we use today. During my previous life, before I entered the House, I was lucky enough to use a range of different systems, on which I shall touch in just a minute.

One of the Government’s greatest advances in the use of accounting systems to help on the domestic front was the Making Tax Digital scheme. Unfortunately, like many others, I was greatly upset by the fact that the Government had to defer some of their plans to make tax digital because of the advent of Brexit and the consumption of Government time by Brexit preparations. Making tax digital and using accounting systems, whether for small or large businesses, is important because it makes us more efficient and more productive, and it can lead to better decision making for companies right across the United Kingdom. That is vital.

Whether someone is a single trader in Portsmouth, working for the global manager in Edinburgh, or working for a large multinational in London, accounting systems can really give them the transparency of data that they need. They are also environmentally friendly, because as accounting systems develop, we are able to move away from paper receipts and invoices and towards electronic records, which makes interactions between individual companies, customers and suppliers far easier, more efficient and more effective. As a result, the real benefit will be for the entire country, because not only will companies grow, but it will contribute to our productivity and thus our GDP.

Another important point is that as companies are developing, intangibles and intangible assets are becoming more and more important in their valuation. In fact, just a few years ago it was recognised that around 80% of the value of the S&P 500 is in intangible assets rather than tangible assets. That is why the development of accounting systems is so important: we need to be able not only to capture the value of our physical assets, and use the traditional accounting fair-value methods to make sure that those assets are held at the right value, but to look at new methods of valuing intangibles, because the intangibles of brands and, to a certain extent, intellectual property, along with other new technological advancements, mean that it is increasingly the case that less and less of companies’ value is being captured on our stock exchanges, and that obviously has an impact on the prices that are traded and the returns that can be made by companies and customers throughout the country.

As I said earlier, a number of systems have come into the accounting sphere that can help smaller businesses to improve and be more effective. One of them is Xero and another is QuickBooks, and there is also Oracle for large companies. I should say, for the sake of fairness, that plenty of other accounting systems are available. The point of these systems is to make sure that, from the base transaction and from the base-level accounts receivable and accounts payable systems, right the way up to the highest-level strategic decision making, managers and users of the information have the correct information —the one source of truth—and that there is consistency in the data right the way through the organisation. That is for the benefit not just of the actual company, but of HMRC and our Government. The better the records we receive, the more accurate the accounts are and the more accurately we can calculate the tax take for those companies as well. Obviously, it is always a good thing that not only should taxes be low, but companies and individuals pay the taxes that they do indeed owe.

In the current context, as we move between accounting systems, I would like to apply some of this to the discussions that we have been having on Northern Ireland. The reason why I take this leap—some might see it that way—is that many of the accounting systems that are imported now are connected to HMRC to help companies and individuals file their tax returns. They are also connected to HMRC for the purpose of VAT filing. As we know with Northern Ireland, VAT and customs have been a key issue in the new withdrawal agreement, and I will explore that a little bit more—hopefully with help from my colleague from Northern Ireland.

[Luke Graham]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is quite right. There is a number of those accounting systems, but there is also a number of other systems and structures in place in Northern Ireland. I have to be honest about this. Although I have engaged with some of his colleagues on this over the past two years, many Members in this House and the broader public are still ignorant of the matter. It would, I think, be to the benefit of the House if some of these issues were explored in greater detail and in greater depth, so that Members can make more educated decisions, especially when we are working on such controversial issues as withdrawal from the EU, and as we start mapping out our future trading relationship with Europe. As he will recognise, this will also be important when we have new free trade agreements with other countries around the world—whether they are the rollover agreements that are coming across from the EU or, indeed, new trade agreements such as those with the United States of America. I will touch on that matter in just a moment.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I thank my good friend for allowing me to intervene on him. Let me follow up on the point from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). Presumably, this digital accounting system will not just be routed into HMRC for tax purposes, but could quite easily be pushed sideways to the Border Force. What we are actually talking about is minimising the paperwork for crossing a border, and that is terribly important.

[Luke Graham]

My hon. Friend is almost making me skip over certain parts of my speech, so I appreciate his intervention. He is quite right. One of the key systems that is currently used is the VAT information exchange system. Under the current withdrawal agreement proposals, it will still be open to Northern Ireland. At the moment, I am not sure whether it will be open to other parts of the United Kingdom, but I recommend that it should be. Through that system, companies and member states are able to co-ordinate VAT returns. It also enables the simplification of those VAT returns between different member states. There have been concerns about the system, certainly in the area of fraud, especially when parts are moving between different areas of member states, but the system is still a good one and will be open to Northern Ireland. That is one of the very good things that is contained within the withdrawal agreement as it stands at the moment.

I did have one question on the issue of VAT. Although VIES will be available to Northern Ireland, as I have said, will it be available to the rest of the UK? Furthermore, one point that I would like someone to explain—it may not be the Financial Secretary to the Treasury today, but certainly I hope that it comes out in further debates—is related to the terms found in the withdrawal agreement when it talks about Northern Ireland being outside EU law in relation to VAT, but also about EU VAT law being applicable in Northern Ireland. Greater transparency in the details around this issue and also in the details around the application of the customs code would help a great deal for debates in this House, which inevitably will take place when, hopefully, we return here in December.

Therefore, as I have said, there are a number of systems available. What is even better is that private business and enterprise are catching up with some of these systems and complementing them. As I mentioned earlier, the evolution of accounting systems that are used by some of these smaller companies and larger companies can then obviously work with systems such as VIES, which means that Government, customers and suppliers can all work together to make sure that there is more efficient and effective record keeping, better tax collection and— hopefully—better revenues and profits for all those involved. As I said, I would love to get some more clarification either from the Treasury Minister himself or from a Brexit Minister in the near future.

This is not just an issue for the United Kingdom and the EU. I had the great fortune to work in China and the United States before I came to this place, and was able to see some of their tax collection and accounting systems in progress. China is an enormous country of over 1 billion people, but a significant amount of accounting records are still kept in paper format—this was back in 2008, so some of the new software was not available then—and everything is signed off by an original chop. For those who do not know, that is a traditional stamp. A record, fapiao or receipt needs a traditional ink chop to be recognised for accounting purposes; multiply that by over 1 billion people, and it becomes more of an issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Graham]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The Minister will be well versed in some of the reports and debates on Making Tax Digital. A lot of these barriers were articulated at that time. One key area will be costs. Sometimes the cost of pieces of accounting software is very low, perhaps a couple of hundred pounds or so, but for a small company it is still an additional cost. The other obstacle that customers and companies will face is knowledge of the accounting software. Even in a large multinational business, many of the executives on the board, and many of the managers, have no knowledge of their accounting system. They are only focused on simple outputs and do not necessarily know what is underneath the bonnet. With modern cars, as we all know, that often leads to more costly and more complicated servicing when the time comes. That is great news for finance directors but not such great news for operational directors.

[Bob Stewart]

In the nicest way, I think that my hon. Friend is such a know-all on this subject that he has just talked himself into becoming a junior or even a middle-ranking Brexit Minister after the election.

[Luke Graham]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention—I think. As my record will show, I am very much in favour of more international co-operation, and I hope that we will be doing that when we come back.

Accounting systems can really help with cross-border trade, from small companies to large multinationals. As I hope I have laid out in this short speech, they have been used in places such as Northern Ireland, and they can be discussed in some of our debates when, hopefully, we return to this place. It will be useful for the Government to use some of these systems as they negotiate new trade with other countries all around the world. The Government are very fond of saying that they want a global Britain and that our exit from the EU will allow us to expand over new horizons. I therefore hope that after this speech and the debate that follows, the Minister realises that it may well be accountants who have the key to that global Britain.

Summer Adjournment

Bob Stewart Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

It is a great honour to follow the hon. Member for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick). In Stafford, we, too, have the issue with county lines, which our police force is going after at the moment. I accompanied police on a raid just two weeks ago, when they managed to seize a considerable quantity of drugs, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. A lot more has to be done.

I want to start by talking about development, particularly unauthorised development. Later today, with your permission and your favour, Mr Speaker, I shall present a petition that I should have presented on Monday. It is about authorised development in Penkridge that should not have been authorised. The council and local people objected to it, but because, on a technicality, the council had slipped below the five-year land supply for a short period, the developer claimed that the council was in breach and that this totally unnecessary and unwanted development should therefore go through. We must listen more to local people on things such as this, not just have a tick-box exercise and permit developments that are long term and not wanted. This is in an area where we are building more than twice the national average in terms of housing. This is not about nimbyism at all.

I also want to point out the importance of the quality of new housing. Many of the new houses that are being built are not up to standard, and it is vital that that should be tackled, but not only that—we should go further, including with insulation. We should ensure that all new houses are built to the highest possible energy saving standards; that they have, where possible, integrated solar; that they have car charging points; and that they have the highest quality insulation.

My local hospital, County Hospital, has had its difficulties over the years, but I want to praise the work that it has done such that, in most weeks, more than 95% of people are seen, admitted, treated or discharged within four hours. That is one of the best records in the country and the hospital deserves great credit for that, but it is under consultation at the moment, and one of the issues is, again, the future of our emergency department. However, I am glad that the trust has made it clear that that department is secure. It has my absolute support in that. I will not tolerate the downgrading in any way, shape or form of the emergency department.

However, the stand-alone maternity department is at more risk. The reason is that people are not using it. This is one of those “use it or lose it” cases. I urge all those in my area who are talking with their patients—pregnant women—to say, “Look, there is this alternative.” Clearly, it has to be a safe alternative, which I fully understand, but I want that stand-alone maternity unit—

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I know Stafford quite well. If those people are not using the unit, where are they going?

[Jeremy Lefroy]

Most women will be going to a consultant-led unit in Stoke, Wolverhampton or Walsall. I understand that, and they may have received advice from their GP on the issue—this has to be clinically led—but I very much value the stand-alone unit in Stafford and want it to continue.

We also have a problem with shortage of general practitioners in Stafford. In fact, there is a shortage across the country, so I welcome the new medical schools that are being opened. I am delighted that my wife, who is a GP, was up in Sunderland this week giving some training at the new medical school, which is about to be opened. I welcome the ones that are going to be opened in Chelmsford and other places.

I want to raise a few other issues, such as visas, including for foreign spouses and partners. Many people have come to my surgery with real problems in getting visas, including visas to visit, let alone visas for residence, and those issues need to be looked at more sympathetically, as does the issue of visas for visitors from Africa. Last week, the hon. Members for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) and for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) and I published a report on the difficulties that African visitors have in getting visas. These are Government officials and business people. I had one case recently involving the headmaster of a school in Ghana who was coming to visit his brother for a couple of weeks—a very distinguished man. Of course he does not want to stay in this country—he would much rather go back and teach his students in Ghana—but it has taken ages and he still does not have that visa. We must, must do better and I urge all Members to read the report that we jointly produced.

Turning to business, this is a minor matter, although not so minor for those affected by it—bailiffs. The behaviour of bailiffs has been considered by the House and new rules have been put in place. However, there is also the matter of fees. Sometimes, fees go up enormously—exponentially—over time. We should look at capping bailiff fees. I understand that bailiffs are necessary; their role is important in enforcing payment of debt, but it must be carried out in a reasonable manner.

We also need to look at the infrastructure for charging electric vehicles. We talk about needing to move to electric transportation. Quite frankly, the charging infrastructure is very poor. It is getting better, although not nearly fast enough, but the grid is simply not there to support it, nor is the generating capacity. I have asked questions about this in the past. I believe that we are too complacent. If we are to move to electric vehicles fast—we are making them in the west midlands and in Sunderland—we need the infrastructure to support that.

Finally, two issues. First, I welcome the start, after about 30 years of discussion, of the African continental free trade area. This will be tremendous for the African continent, but also for all those such as the United Kingdom who wish to trade and invest far more with our friends and neighbours across the Mediterranean in Africa.

Secondly, I have recently had the pleasure of being appointed to the Environmental Audit Committee. We have heard that Natural England is grossly underfunded and cannot do the work that needs to be done on all these fantastic sites of special scientific interest, so I ask the Treasury to look carefully at restoring the funding that has been cut from Natural England.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith), who raised an important issue that affects constituents across the country.

Before we rise for the summer recess with a spring in our step after the zinging performance by our excellent new Prime Minister, I wish to raise a number of issues for the Government to think about over the summer and for us to concentrate on.

During questions to the Leader of the House, I raised the consultation that is under way across a number of areas in London on Transport for London building high-density, multi-storey housing on car parks attached to stations. That will dramatically reduce the number of car parking spaces available at the terminus of every single line in London and affect commuters right across the south-east who drive to a station, leave their car and use public transport to travel in. Equally, there is a concern that the properties that will be built will be rabbit hutches and will become the slums of the future, causing further problems.

[Bob Stewart]

Building is taking place on railway car parks in my constituency. That is pushing people out on to other local roads and clogging them up even more.

[Bob Blackman]

I thank my hon. Friend; that is clearly another impact.

That leads me to my next issue, which is the bus consultations that are going on in London. The proposals will increase the speed at which buses move around London, but reduce the continuity of service between buses and stations. Residents in my constituency will have to change buses twice to reach Northwick Park station, whereas currently they can get on one bus and reach the station on public transport. That is absurd.

I have raised before at questions to the Leader of the House the impact of the illegal occupation by Travellers of areas in my constituency. We had—I use my words carefully—an illegal occupation on Stanmore Lodge. They were then evicted and moved to Stanmore marsh, which once again is public land. They were removed from there and moved to Canons Park. They then moved to Hatch End and then Whitchurch playing fields. Harrow Council and the police worked quickly to remove them, but we need new laws that prevent illegal occupation from taking place. It is not only the illegal occupation that has an impact, but the clear-up costs after these people have left. That is left to the council tax payer to pick up, which is clearly grossly unfair.

We have a new Chancellor who, in a previous role in government, was very helpful to the victims of the Equitable Life scandal, but there is still unfinished business. The people who were scammed by Equitable Life are still owed £2.6 billion. I hope that the Chancellor will live up to his word and honour the Government’s commitment to fund in full the settlement for those individuals.

I have raised the Vagrancy Act before. It is a disgrace that this country still has on the statute book the Vagrancy Act 1824, which criminalises people for being homeless. People should be helped into housing, not arrested because they have nowhere to live. I hope that the new Government will take action to remove it from the statute book and to ensure that prompt and proper action is taken against aggressive street begging, which is a real problem in this country.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), who is no longer in his place, has spoken about leasehold reform. The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee has produced an excellent report—well, I was party to it and to the evidence—and we had a debate in this Chamber on the need for the reform of leasehold. The Government must take that up quickly and deliver.

There is also the challenge of financing local government, on which the HCLG Committee will publish a report shortly. We need to reform the financing of local government, because it is suffering from a lack of finance and a crisis in the provision of services. The basis on which any finance is provided to local government across the country is unfair, so reform is necessary.

I am delighted that shortly before my right hon. Friend the previous Prime Minister left office, the Government released the long-awaited prevention report, which contains action on smoking and obesity and a number of other measures. I am, as many people know, the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health, as well as an avid anti-smoker. We have to ensure that we become a smoke-free society as quickly as possible. At the moment, the ambition is too slow and we have to speed up the process. We can use the taxation system to discourage people from smoking and put a levy on the tobacco companies, which make millions of pounds of profit from a drug that kills people who use it in the way they intend. The burden on the national health service and smoking cessation services could be paid for by that levy if we were bold enough to implement it.

I attended the recent rally in Ashraf in Albania with my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) and I hosted a meeting in this place on human rights in Iran, at which one of the guest speakers was Richard Ratcliffe. I have said previously in the House what an honourable man he is in his suffering. He has been deprived of having his wife beside him and his child is not able to share family life, but he is diligent in trying to ensure that his wife is released from prison and returned to her family. Given the situation arising in the Gulf, we need to make every effort possible, but the reality is that what we need is regime change in Iran and the end of the theocracy.

What is going on in Sri Lanka right now for the Muslim minority is a disgrace. Those people need protection and they need support from this Government. I trust that our new Foreign Secretary will provide it.

As we rise for the summer, some people may be going on holiday. On Monday, I shall be assembling my work experience team of students, who will find out what it is really like to be an MP during the vacation. I look forward to that and to assisting—