Finance Bill

Debate between Catherine West and David Davis

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 24th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that some well overdue changes to Companies House’s approach would be very welcome, and that the Government are taking an awful long time to get round to it?

[Mr Davis]

I have a lot of sympathy with what the hon. Lady says. There are many ways to attack the issue; I will mention one or two, including my proposals to build in some changes to that effect. There are many ways to make sure that these scams cannot happen, but we need to undertake some of them. To pick an example that I was not going to cite, we understand that something like 40,000 Filipino employees have been taken on as cheap frontmen for these companies as directors. Those sorts of things do not serve our economy or the contractors well.

EU Exit Negotiations

Debate between Catherine West and David Davis

Monday 13th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I made an undertaking to the House about a year and a half ago that I would be more polite than hon. Members have ever seen me in my comments about the Commission, and I will stick to that.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State often uses the words “creative”, “be creative” and “creativity”. Will he and his team come up with a more creative approach to settled status? It is upsetting many of my constituents, who have been resident for many decades and contributed an enormous amount. They feel that settled status suddenly puts them in a different arrangement. They entered with free movement and they feel they had a different treaty relationship, but now the rug is being pulled from under them. Please could he be creative?

[Mr Davis]

We have been quite creative so far. Many of those who have been here a long time are already permanent residents. One of the things the Italian Government persuaded me was worth doing is ensuring that people’s transition to the new permanent residence is completely frictionless, requiring no more than a photograph and a criminality check. We have given those who will still be making the application a two-year grace period beyond our departure, and we published a report last week to show that the process will be simple, straightforward and very cheap. Those things are designed to make people feel more secure, as I hope they do, because I reiterate that we value the contribution of the 3 million Europeans who are in this country today.