Finance Bill

Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Stewart Hosie

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Catherine McKinnell]

The proposition risks ringing of that. It lacks an ethical approach, given that it trades people’s rights for £2,000 of shares. More than that, it flies in the face of what we know to be true about productivity and engagement. We know that engaging a work force and building their trust makes businesses more successful. Sarah Jackson, chief executive of Working Families, says:

“It also flies in the face of everything we know about productivity and employee engagement. Treat your employees well, give them the flexibility they need, and you will be rewarded by highly motivated and high performing employees.”

The proposal we are discussing goes in completely the opposite direction, undermining the rights of employees and buying them off with shares that could carry a lot of risk for them. It is no wonder that so few businesses have taken up the offer.

[Stewart Hosie]

That is the key point, is it not? Share schemes and share option schemes are fantastic incentives in their own right. That is what should be promoted, not the link with the withdrawal of rights, which is absurd and preposterous.

Finance Bill

Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Stewart Hosie

Monday 1st July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie]

The hon. Lady is asking whether the GAAR is too narrow. It is designed to squeeze out tax advantage through abusive means. The advantages include

“relief or increased relief from tax…repayment or increased repayment of tax…avoidance or reduction of a charge to tax or an assessment…avoidance of a possible assessment…deferral of a payment of tax or advancement of a repayment”

and

“avoidance of an obligation to deduct or account for tax.”

What else could she add to widen that if she thinks it is too narrow?

[Catherine McKinnell]

The hon. Gentleman makes a helpful point. One would question to what extent the Government can rely on their general anti-abuse rule when they still have to invoke targeted anti-abuse rules, many of which we debated in Committee. Yet the GAAR is supposed to provide reassurance in relation to these matters. Will the Minister clarify exactly how it will work? As the hon. Gentleman says, there is much debate about whether it is too general or too narrow—too general to be effective or too focused on what could be deemed by a reasonable person to be egregious behaviour, and therefore arguably too narrow. I would be interested to hear the Minister explain exactly how the GAAR will work in reality.

The Minister will be aware of the concerns raised in Committee about how the GAAR’s effectiveness will be reviewed. Our amendment calling for an evaluation to be held two years post-implementation was dismissed on the grounds that it would be impractical. At what stage does the Minister think it would be practical to conduct a post-implementation review, given that this is one of the Government’s main tools to tackle tax avoidance? At what point does he think it would be appropriate to consider whether the GAAR needs to be strengthened by, for example, a penalty regime? He has said that it will be kept under review, so it would be extremely helpful if he could provide details of the time scales involved.

One of the most widely held concerns about the GAAR is that it simply does not deal with many of the issues about which members of the public in particular are understandably angry with regard to corporation tax avoidance. The Minister has said that the Government have never sought to give the impression that they will deal with these issues, but many people feel that when they raise concerns about corporate tax avoidance the Government give the impression that their general anti-abuse rule will somehow deal with them.

We believe that the Government could and should use this Finance Bill to go much further on tax avoidance and on increasing tax transparency in particular. We have presented the Government with many opportunities to put their money where their mouth is and to take action now.

I was pleasantly surprised to read in The Guardian on Friday that the Minister voiced his intention to take firm action on this issue—the Minister is looking at me blankly; I am not sure whether he reads The Guardian—during last week’s Back-Bench business debate on multinational companies and UK corporation tax avoidance. I usually pay attention to everything the Minister says, but I confess that Friday’s revelation passed me by. Given his reported new-found enthusiasm for tackling the issue head on, the Opposition would like to take this final opportunity, through new clause 12, to persuade the Minister and Government Members to use this year’s Finance Bill to demonstrate a commitment to increasing tax transparency and to cracking down on tax avoidance both here and abroad. It is unfortunate that the Liberal Democrat Benches are devoid of Liberal Democrat Members, because this is their opportunity finally to walk the walk on this issue, given that they have been very good at talking the talk on it for so many years.

The nub of the issue is this: there has been a monumental breakdown in public confidence in the corporation taxation system and it is clear that the era of tax secrecy should end. At a time of austerity around the world, when people have lost or are losing their jobs and are seeing their services cut and the cost of living rising while the value of their wages does not, they are rightly angry when they see the complex and extraordinary lengths to which multinational companies may go in order to avoid paying their fair share of tax in the countries where their profits are actually being generated. People, including more than 1 million supporters of the IF campaign, are equally furious that aggressive tax avoidance activity is reducing the ability of developing countries to tackle the issue effectively and contributing to their failure to combat hunger and invest in the vital infrastructure that we take for granted. As the OECD estimates, these countries lose three times more through tax avoidance than they receive in aid every year.

The Opposition believe that rather than simply calling on the OECD

“to develop a common template for country-by-country reporting”,

which the G8 has said it will do, we should actively work with our G8 partners to ensure that all multinationals, regardless of sector, are required to publish a single, easily comparable statement on the amount of tax that they pay in each country in which they operate. That needs to be introduced as a matter of urgency.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Stewart Hosie

Thursday 18th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Catherine McKinnell]

HMRC’s report, “The Exchequer effect of the 50 per cent additional rate of income tax”, but I will go into that in more detail in due course.

The Prime Minister went on record and said in this Chamber that the 50p tax rate was cut because it did not raise any money—the Minister seems to have just made the same assertion—but page 39 of HMRC’s report makes it clear that it resulted in a yield of about £1.1 billion, which is hardly a sum to ignore in these straitened financial times. However, what stands out most from HMRC’s assessment—this point was also raised when we debated last year’s Finance Bill—is the number of times that the words “uncertain” and “uncertainty” appear; I nearly lost count, but it is a staggering 30 times. The Chancellor decided to give a tax cut to his millionaire pals before we had a clear picture of the impact of the 50p rate.

That is not just the view of the Opposition. Robert Chote, chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility, stated:

“This is a judgement based on not even a full year’s data, based in terms of how people have responded to the 50p rate, in particular in terms of those self assessment tax-payers.”

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said:

“By giving out £3 billion to well-off people who pay 50p tax…the Government is banking on a very, very uncertain amount of people changing their behaviour and paying more tax as a result of the fact that you’re taxing them…There is a lot of uncertainty, a lot of risk on this estimate.”

In its report on the 2012 Budget, the Treasury Committee concluded:

“The costs and benefits of reducing the additional tax rate to 45p are both highly uncertain, and could be significantly more or less than the cost included in the Budget. We recommend that HMRC publish in due course a comprehensive assessment of the effect on the Exchequer of the new 45p rate.”

We agree. We need a full and proper assessment of what effect the top rate tax cut has had on tax receipts and we need to be sure that the Government continue to estimate what the gain would be if the additional rate were returned to 50%. We need, as the IFS has previously suggested, to get a clear understanding of whether the short-run response to this tax cut has been symmetric to the introduction of the 50p rate. Will people continue to use the avoidance techniques that the Government clearly believe they employed to avoid the 50p rate, or will some or all of that activity come to an end as a result of the new 45p rate? The Government should commit to our amendment’s request for such a review, if they genuinely seek to maximise revenue to the Exchequer and not to give a tax break to their millionaire friends.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady is making a good case, particularly on the uncertainty about the reduced revenue yield, but even if the Government and the Red Book are correct and the loss of yield will be only £540 million over the next five years, I am sure she will agree that if £540 million is going spare it would be better to invest it in productive capacity for the future, rather than simply give it away in a tax cut that proves that we are not all in this together.

[Catherine McKinnell]

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely strong point, and one that I have made repeatedly. This might seem like small change to the Chancellor, but it could make a very big difference to some of the people affected by his failing economic plan.

I am sure, given the concerns recently expressed by apparently senior Liberal Democrats, that Lib Dem Members will join us in calling for a commitment from their Conservative colleagues in the Government. Indeed, only last month a member of the Liberal Democrat tax working group stated:

“While the Treasury’s own figures about the 50p are highly questionable, the politics of cutting tax for the very rich make no sense; there is no reason why a 50p rate shouldn’t be part of a solution for tough times.”

Tax Fairness

Debate between Catherine McKinnell and Stewart Hosie

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Catherine McKinnell]

We have made Labour’s approach clear. We have said that we would like to fund a 10p tax rate for the lowest earners. We have not specified that that is what the Government should do with this; we have said that it should be used to fund a tax cut for those on low and middle incomes. So if the Liberal Democrats want to support us in the Lobby, they can then pressure the Government to use that money in any way they see fit.

So let me remind the House of the context of today’s debate. Many of our constituents are struggling to make ends meet, due to a combination of under-employment, stagnating wages, rising food, fuel and child care costs, and of course the Government’s hike on VAT. Our constituents will be further hit by a £6.7 billion cut in working-age benefits and tax credits over the next four years. [Interruption.] The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster)—the Liberal Democrat Minister—is groaning but that is the reality for many families up and down the country. At the same time, we read of hundreds of bankers at different financial institutions, including one owned by the state, earning more than £1 million per year. We have a Chancellor seeking but failing to use his ever-diminishing influence in Europe to fight against proposals to limit bankers’ bonuses to “just a year’s salary”. We have a coalition Government who will give the 13,000 people in this country earning more than £1 million a year a tax cut of £100,000 next month. No wonder people are angry and no wonder our economy is not growing when ordinary people cannot afford to spend and invest. We—or, more accurately, the Prime Minister—heard only last week from the OBR that fiscal consolidation measures have reduced economic growth over the past couple of years.

[Stewart Hosie]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that the tax cut for millionaires is dreadfully unfair, but can she explain why, when the Labour party had the chance, it failed to oppose the tax cut for millionaires?

[Catherine McKinnell]

These arguments have been rehearsed many times and we have made clear our absolute opposition to cutting the top rate of tax at this time while slapping charges on the poorest in society. No wonder the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) has spoken of the Government’s need to neutralise claims that they cut taxes for the rich.

Let us look at the Opposition motion, because I think the Liberal Democrats are dancing on the head of a pin when they say that they cannot support it. It calls for the introduction of a charge on properties worth more than £2 million, a mansion tax that the Liberal Democrats have estimated would raise £2 billion. We say that it could be used to fund a 10p tax band of up to £1,000, benefiting 25 million basic rate taxpayers to the tune of £100. We believe that Liberal Democrat Members should put aside their loyalty to the Conservatives and vote in favour of a principle—the principle of tax fairness at a time when so little of it is in evidence from this Government.

How could the Liberal Democrats do otherwise? Only last month, they made the introduction of a mansion tax the centrepiece of their Eastleigh by-election campaign. Recent media appearances have certainly suggested that they will support the principle, with the Business Secretary declaring that if the Opposition motion

“is purely a statement of support for the principle of a mansion tax I’m sure my colleagues would want to support it.”

Asked again at the weekend which part of the Opposition motion he disagreed with, the Liberal Democrat president, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), replied, “None of it.” The former leader, the right hon. Lord Ashdown, declared that it would be “weird” if the Liberal Democrats voted against it. He is not the first person to call Liberal Democrats weird, but they have the opportunity to put that right today and to get on the road to normality by supporting their own policy.

Only yesterday, the hon. Member for Bristol West—I shall mention him one last time—said of the Opposition motion,

“I could have written it myself”,

yet today he complains that we have stolen his party’s policy. If such childishness gets in the way of the Liberal Democrats supporting their own policy in the Lobby, members of the public will be baffled and extremely disappointed.