Finance Bill

Cathy Jamieson Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

Again—I hope the record will pick that up—this is for investment managers, not hedge fund managers. That is the argument the hon. Gentleman is making, which is different from the argument we have heard from the Opposition on occasions. For example, in July last year, the Leader of the Opposition accused us of making a tax cut for hedge funds. In the shadow Chancellor’s response to the autumn statement in December last year—he gave a speech that many of us will remember for a long time—he called on the Government to reverse the tax cut for hedge funds. It appears that the Labour Front-Bench position is to accept that there is no tax cut for hedge funds. That, I suppose, is progress. [Interruption.] As the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun says, it is for investment managers, not hedge funds. She is still wrong, but she is perhaps less awry than she was. That is progress, and I hope that the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor will withdraw any suggestion of a tax cut for hedge funds. We will be looking out to see whether that features in any Labour party promotional material over the months ahead, but I am glad we have made progress on that front at least.

In conclusion, clause 107 supports the Government’s objective to create a more competitive tax system and will increase the attractiveness of the UK as a location for fund domicile. Amendment 67 would serve no useful purpose, given the information already made available about this measure. New clause 7 rectifies a minor omission from clause 105 and ensures that the reduction in the SDLT higher rate threshold to £500,000 operates as intended. I therefore move that new clause 7 be accepted and request that amendment 67 not be pressed.

[Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)]

Let me begin where the Minister left off, on new clause 7. It is worth noting that section 74 of the Finance Act 2003 provides SDLT relief for lessees of flats who collectively acquire the freehold of their block under rights afforded by the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 and the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993. The relief sets the rate of SDLT according to the consideration for the freehold divided by the number of flats, which brings the amount of SDLT paid by lessees more into line with what they might have paid had they been able to acquire the freehold of their flats separately. As the Minister said, such acquisitions are commonly undertaken by a company in which the lessees are shareholders. Under such circumstances, the 15%, higher rate SDLT charge in schedule 4A to the Finance Act 2003 will apply if the main consideration exceeds the higher rate threshold.

The Minister pointed out that clause 105 reduces the higher rate threshold from £2 million to £500,000 for transactions where the effective date is on or after 20 March 2014. However, clause 105 omitted to apply the reduction to the relief in schedule 74 to the Finance Act 2003, an omission that new clause 7 rectifies. It is welcome that the Minister has brought forward something to deal with that earlier omission and I will therefore not take issue with him on that at present.

Let me turn to amendment 67 and stamp duty reserve tax. I hope hon. Members will forgive me if I confess to having a sense of déjà vu, because it is not the first time we have debated this issue. Not only did we debate it in Committee, as the Minister acknowledged; we also debated it in last year’s Finance Bill. In fact, it is almost a year ago to the day that my esteemed colleague the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) was standing at this Dispatch Box trying, as I will be, to make the Government see sense and accept our call for a report to be published. [Interruption.] I think my hon. Friend is indicating that he failed on that occasion.

[James Duddridge]

You’re a better woman.

[Cathy Jamieson]

The hon. Gentleman says I am a better woman, but I have to confess that I was not able to persuade the Minister in Committee. However, as always, I am an optimist by nature, so I will venture forth today in the hope, even at this late stage, that the Government can be made to see the light and accept our call for a report to be published.

As I mentioned, it is almost a year ago to the day that my colleague the hon. Member for Nottingham East was standing at this Dispatch Box. It would be remiss of me not to remark briefly that, some 15 years ago to the day, I was in the Scottish Parliament for the formal opening of that august institution. If anyone had suggested to me then that 15 years later I would be standing at this Dispatch Box discussing stamp duty reserve tax, I might have fled and looked for something else to do. Who knows? It certainly was not something that was on my agenda at that point.

However, to return to the amendment, for the benefit of anyone who may have forgotten, amidst all the excitement of the last year, exactly what we were speaking about on that occasion, I want briefly to recap some of the key points from the debate. It is worth noting what our amendment 67 proposes. For those who are following this debate with avid interest, it asks the Government to insert at the end of clause 107, page 90, line 33 a new section 5A, stating:

“The Chancellor of the Exchequer shall, within six months of this Act receiving Royal Assent, publish and lay before the House of Commons a report setting out the impact of changes made to Schedule 19 of the Finance Act 1999 by this section.”

A new section 5B is then proposed:‘

“The report referred to in subsection (5A) must in particular consider…the impact on tax revenues;…the expected beneficiaries; and…a distributional analysis of the beneficiaries.”

I shall return to those issues in responding to the Minister’s points.

[Mr McKenzie]

Why does my hon. Friend think that the Government are so reluctant to produce this report if, indeed, they see the change as beneficial to all? We see this £160 million giveaway as being beneficial to only one particular group, and not our constituents.

[Cathy Jamieson]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I can only hazard a guess as to why the Government consistently refuse to look at producing any report or to accept any of the requests—quite reasonable requests—that we have brought forward, seeking further information, further transparency and these particular pieces of information. I am forced to conclude either that the work has not been done or that the Government, for whatever reason, do not wish to share those facts and figures with us. That is a pity because it would help hon. Members of all parties if this information were put forward. I shall come on to deal in a few moments with some of my hon. Friend’s other points, particularly regarding how his and my constituents will be affected.

As the Minister said, the Government new clause removes the stamp duty reserve tax charge for which fund managers are liable when investors sell or surrender their units in UK unit trust schemes or shares in UK open-ended investment companies. Some people have argued that SDRT could essentially be considered as some form of transaction tax—not a term that everybody would use, but it has certainly been argued in that context—currently levied at what seems to be a not unreasonable rate of 0.5%. This is the element that the Government propose to remove.

As I have indicated, our amendment would require the Chancellor to publish a report—I always try to be reasonable, fair minded and mild mannered in my requests to the Minister, as he knows from our many discussions in Committee—to show exactly who benefits and who would be left worse off through the abolition of SDRT on investments in those units trusts and OEICs. As I said in Committee, in these straitened times, hon. Members—as my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie) suggested—could be forgiven for assuming that such a generous tax break would fall to those who really need it, such as the millions of hard-working taxpayers who are £1,600 a year worse off under this Government than they were in 2010.

[Mr Gauke]

rose—

[Cathy Jamieson]

I will give way to the Minister, who I am sure will want to tell me what he is doing for those hard-working taxpayers.

[Mr Gauke]

The hon. Lady raises the question of who benefits, which will no doubt be a feature of our debate this afternoon. At this point, however, will she be clear and put it on the record that this is not a tax cut that is relevant to hedge funds?

--- Later in debate ---

[Cathy Jamieson]

As I said in Committee and as we have seen in some of the to-ing and fro-ing this afternoon, this tax cut relates to investment fund managers. I hope the Minister will listen very carefully to my points. As my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde and I have said, the families that, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, will be £978 a year worse off by the next election thanks to the Government’s tax and benefits changes will want to know exactly who benefits from this particular tax cut. I am sure that the Minister is now going to tell us how giving investment fund managers that tax cut will provide support and assistance for the hard-working families in my and my hon. Friend’s constituencies.

[Mr Gauke]

I have already set out how this tax cut will benefit those contributing towards their pension. I take it from the hon. Lady’s earlier answer to my intervention that she accepts that this is not a tax cut for hedge funds. Will she explain precisely what the Leader of the Opposition was on about when on 10 July 2013 he told the Prime Minister in Prime Minister’s Question Time that there was a £145 million tax cut for “hedge funds”? The Leader of the Opposition was wrong, was he not?

[Cathy Jamieson]

I am going to come on to the issue of who benefits, but I noticed that, once again, the Minister was not able to say how this particular tax cut proposed by the Government is going to benefit our constituents.

Let me deal with the Government’s tax impact note, which provides some information, saying that the chief beneficiaries of this particular initiative will be the 100 UK fund managers who control 2,500 investment schemes. Hon. Members would doubtless be very concerned if they thought that the overall health of the UK’s investment industry was somehow at risk, which is why the initiative was brought forward. One might think that it was somewhat ailing if it was deserving of a tax cut amounting to, as my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde said, £160 million a year. However, if we look at the reality of the industry, we could readily say that it is in pretty good health, raising the question of whether the industry really needs the Government’s help, which could more usefully be put to assisting those hard-working families feeling the squeeze as a result of Government policy.

According to the Investment Management Association, as of January 2014, its members managed over £4.8 billion in the UK on the basis of OEIC funds alone and around £4.5 trillion overall. The association also tells us:

“UK assets under management and funds under management are at record levels, and the UK retains its position as the second largest asset management centre in the world after the US.”

It could well be argued, therefore, that the UK’s investment industry is doing okay— without the intervention or assistance of the Government.

[Simon Kirby (Brighton, Kemptown) (Con)]

rose—

[Cathy Jamieson]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman if he will tell me how this particular tax cut benefits my constituents and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde.

[Simon Kirby]

I have been listening carefully to the points the hon. Lady is attempting to make. I still do not understand, however, whether hedge fund managers will benefit from this change; it seems quite clear that they will not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Cathy Jamieson]

If the Government, of course, were to produce the report requested in this mild-mannered, sensible and reasonable amendment, we would perhaps have more information on who would benefit—exactly what amendment 67 calls for.

[Mr Gauke]

The hon. Lady always puts forward her proposals very reasonably, but I have to tell her that there is no need for a report on this issue. Schedule 19 stamp duty reserve tax is not paid by hedge funds, so abolishing schedule 19 SDRT does not benefit hedge funds. Does she accept the point that this has nothing to do with hedge funds?

[Cathy Jamieson]

I want to move on to discuss further who exactly it does benefit, which is the crucial point. We sometimes hear from the industry that there is some kind of existential threat presented by people moving to Luxembourg, Switzerland or wherever else, but it seems that despite all that, the industry is, as I said, in pretty good health.

One of the things that worry Opposition Members is that the only people about whom the Government seem to be genuinely concerned are those who are already wealthy and privileged. They have cut the top rate of income tax for those earning more than £150,000 per annum—we discussed that earlier, so I shall not say more about it at this stage—and, as bank bonuses rise again, they continue to oppose our proposal for a bank bonus tax to help young people back into work. They have failed to balance the books, as they promised to do, yet it seems that they can still find £160 million a year for those who may not need it as much as others.

[Mr McKenzie]

Is it not typical of the Government that they can find that £160 million while telling our constituents that times are still hard and they must tighten their belts? The cost of living is driving many of them to despair.

[Cathy Jamieson]

Once again, my hon. Friend has made a very valid point. As he says, many of our constituents in the real world are at the point of despair. VAT has risen, tax credits have been cut, and wages have not kept pace. As my hon. Friend knows very well from his own area, many people are on zero-hours contracts, or are working fewer hours than they would like. Furthermore, the bedroom tax—which we have debated on numerous occasions, and which has been mentioned earlier today—is still having an impact on many people throughout the country.

While all that is happening—and while our constituents are continually coming to our surgeries and contacting us in other ways to tell us about the problems in their lives and how difficult it is to make ends meet—the Government still cling to the notion that the much vaunted recovery is benefiting everyone. I must tell the Minister—I am sure that he has heard similar comments even from Members on his own Benches—that those benefits are not being felt by most of my constituents, and I suspect that they are not being felt by most of the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde, whose seat is not far from mine.

I could not swear to this, but I strongly suspect that if I asked my constituents what one policy would really improve their quality of life and living standards, they would not be queuing up to tell me that the answer was tax cuts for investment funds. I may be wrong, and I have no doubt that the Government would advance a different argument. Perhaps they would argue that the removal of SDRT for unit trusts and OEICs will produce a fair and proportionate tax rate which will create jobs, revitalise communities and rejuvenate local economies, for that certainly seems to be what they are trying to claim. During last year’s debate, the then Financial Secretary to the Treasury implied that it would create more jobs in regional economies by encouraging investment funds to move to the United Kingdom. What concerned us at the time was the fact that there was scant evidence to back up any of that, and, I cannot, try as I may, find any additional supporting evidence in the tax information impact note attached to this year’s Bill.

In Committee, the Minister told us a wonderfully heart-warming story—to which he has referred again today—about a 22-year-old investor who would benefit from the Government’s changes to the tune of some £4,600. At that time, I questioned whether this was a real 22-year-old who had been found by the Government Actuary’s Department—where from, I do not know. Perhaps the Minister now knows whether it was a real live 22-year-old. In any event, I was interested in the notion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr McKenzie]

My hon. Friend has described a number of desperate scenarios with which the Government could help to deal, but they have chosen the desperate scenario of a fund that has grown by 6.5% for the last four years and is worth trillions of pounds, and have decided to give this particular desperate fund an extra £160 million.

[Cathy Jamieson]

As I said earlier, one thing that the Government could do and have consistently refused to do would help thousands of people throughout the country: they could abolish the hated bedroom tax. They could also accept our proposal for a tax on bankers’ bonuses, and adopt our properly designed programme to get young people back into work and give them the start that they want. Until we get young people into work, ensure that they have adequate housing and ensure that they can have a decent quality of life, the majority will not have an opportunity to think about saving from one year to the next, let alone trying to invest for the longer term. In Committee, I asked whether it was only me—or only Opposition Members—who held this view. My hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) made a powerful speech in which, like my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde, he described the reality of what was happening to young people in his constituency.

I have looked at the tax information impact note again, in search of further details of that 22-year-old’s story, but I can find nothing that explains how such people will benefit. The only reference to benefits for investors was this rather disappointing revelation:

“This measure could improve returns on investments (including pensions) but would otherwise have no impacts on individuals or households.”

I do not yet see how the measure can benefit the people we are trying to represent.

I am sure that we would all like to hear the next chapter in the 22-year-old’s life story, and if the Minister has any more information to illustrate the fact that he is just the kind of person who stands to benefit from this measure, I am genuinely willing to hear it. However, in the absence of any such information, I shall return to the subject of amendment 67.

Our amendment invites the Government to lay out clearly and transparently exactly who will benefit from this policy and by how much. In Committee my hon. Friends expressed on a number of occasions the view that this is just another tax break for the Government’s friends in the City. While it does look like that, we are open to giving the Government the chance to prove otherwise. That is why our amendment asks the Treasury to publish the costs to the Exchequer in order to ensure that a list of beneficiaries and a distributional analysis for the abolition of stamp duty reserve tax are put into the public domain. That way we will be able to see all the facts as to who the Government are really concerned about.

Of course, if the Government do not agree to our amendment, we will be forced to conclude that this is just another tax cut for the wealthy, just as we suspected all along. We would also have to conclude, in the absence of any information to the contrary, that any claims of jobs created in regional economies are about as robust as the Prime Minister’s stance on Europe has been, and we would have to look a lot harder to try and find something in this which would create jobs, as seems to have been suggested on previous occasions, because I cannot for the life of me see how that stacks up. If we really want to tackle some of the regional imbalances, let us look at some of the announcements that have been made today, in terms of the reports put forward by the Opposition, about how we can create more wealth and look to ensure that power and resources are devolved to some of our cities and we tackle the issues around infrastructure in the regions.

In the light of the response when we tabled this amendment in Committee, I have to say that I am not at all confident that the Government are going to agree to provide us with the transparency we so urgently need. Again, if we look back to what was said in Committee, we find that the Government were not particularly transparent in terms of the information we were given, because, along with the story of the 22-year-old, speakers on the Government side were keen to stress that, because it is fund investors as opposed to fund managers who will benefit from the removal of SDRT, it would greatly boost investment. Again we have to question whether any increased investment would directly benefit those investment fund managers. Hon. Members were also very helpful in trying to enumerate how many people are currently employed by the industry, but try as they might, they failed, as did the tax information and impact note, to detail that important point about how many jobs would be created by the abolition of SDRT.

We also heard that the tax as it currently operates is

“an uncompetitive charge that puts UK-domiciled funds at a disadvantage to funds domiciled elsewhere”.––[Official Report, Finance Public Bill Committee, 10 June 2014; c. 412.]

That does not square with the idea that the UK investment management industry is doing so well that it is the second largest in the world, beaten only by the US.

I want to draw to a conclusion soon because I put quite a number of questions to the Minister in Committee and it would be useful for us to give him some time to respond to them, as he was not necessarily able to do so in Committee. It is important that we give him the chance again today, therefore. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the Minister is continuing to steadfastly—albeit politely—refuse to countenance our amendment for two reasons. First, he seems to be suggesting that the information requested has already been covered by the tax information and impact note, which, as I hope I have outlined, it does not seem to me to do in any clear and transparent way. The other argument that came up in Committee is that it would be difficult and it would perhaps take longer than six months to do. I am sure—and I am sure the Minister will understand this—that should he wish it to be so, he would be able to utilise all the capacity of the Government to overcome any difficulties, and indeed to ensure more information and a report were brought forward, and I am sure he would also be able to use his good offices to have his Government provide us with considerably more information than is currently contained in the tax information and impact note. It would also be helpful if the Minister could give us more information in his winding-up speech as to why he thinks it would not be possible to do this within a six-month deadline, as we have asked in our amendment.

In conclusion, this is all about priorities. The Government’s measures will reduce Exchequer revenues by more than £800 million over the course of the next five years if this particular measure goes ahead. That funding could be used in a variety of ways, and the Government have to be held responsible for the choices they make. Our amendment simply asks them to undertake that assessment and put the information in the public domain, so that we can see who benefits from this initiative and how it would benefit the wider public. The Government have not made that case; they have not shown how the measure would have an impact on our constituents—for the most part they seem to suggest it would not have any impact on them—and they have not answered the questions put previously about job creation and the impact on the regional economies.

Let me therefore remind the Minister of some of the questions we posed in Committee—I am sure other Members will wish to contribute, but he will also want to answer these in his summing up. The Investment Management Association is saying that the industry is doing very well, so why are the Government handing this tax break to the industry? What evidence can the Minister provide to us, even at this late stage, to suggest that the measure will have a positive impact on the UK economy and, in particular, the jobs market? Unless my memory fails me, he has not so far been able to give me a concrete number on the jobs he expects to be created or any more information about the regional benefits that have been referred to. Can he do that now? It would be helpful if he could do that and if he could set out all that information today. In those circumstances, perhaps I would consider whether our amendment was necessary. I suspect that he will not be able to give that information and will not be able to provide the clarity and transparency we seek, so I strongly suspect that when the time comes, I will seek to press my amendment to a vote.

[Mr Gauke]

It is a pleasure to respond to this short debate. The hon. Lady has an admirable ability to make unreasonable requests in a very reasonable way, and it falls to me once again to decline her offer, as Treasury Ministers have done in the past when a review or report is sought from them during a Finance Bill debate.

Let me quickly try to address some of the points raised, the first of which relates to the impact on the industry, the competitiveness argument and what we can do to assess that. It is worth pointing out that this measure came into effect only on 30 March, and it will take longer than six months for evidence of how the benefits of the change are accruing to investors to become available. So the report requested in amendment 67 will not adequately be able to do justice to that question.

Another area we have debated on a number of occasions is who benefits from this measure, and I will return to our little engagement on hedge funds. It is worth pointing out that the National Association of Pension Funds, the Association of British Insurers and the Investment Management Association stated their disagreement with the Labour party’s position and its policy proposal last year to reintroduce the schedule 19 charge. They say it would

“impose a £145 million annual cost on the ordinary savers, investors and pensioners, who are the beneficiaries of its abolition.”

That would weaken the UK’s competitiveness as a place for funds to be domiciled. If we are competitive in this sector, we will have more growth and more jobs. Let us be clear that this is not about jobs in the City of London—not that there is anything wrong with jobs in the City of London. The fund management industry directly employs 30,000 people throughout the United Kingdom, and about a half of those jobs are linked to fund domiciles. The jobs are located in many, if not all, the regions and nations of the United Kingdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Cathy Jamieson]

rose—

[Mr Gauke]

I hope that the hon. Lady will share that view.

[Cathy Jamieson]

Of course I recognise the value and the range of those jobs. Will the Minister tell us exactly what assessment the Government have done on the risk of reintroducing the measure, or indeed on the risk associated with producing a report? Surely he will want to investigate fully the number of jobs that he seems to think might be lost if our measure went ahead.

[Mr Gauke]

The hon. Lady puts her finger on an important word, which is “risk”. Yes, a number of jobs are involved. Some 30,000 people are employed in this industry in the UK. About 10,000 jobs are located in regions and nations such as Scotland, the north-west of England and the west midlands. If we have an uncompetitive tax system in the UK, that sector will suffer. There will be a threat to those jobs. We want to see an expanding and thriving sector, but there is a lot of competition from other jurisdictions in which funds can be domiciled. If we do not compete in the sector, we run the risk of losing those jobs.

There is not only the issue of the industry itself and the jobs that can be encouraged and protected in this country if we have a competitive tax regime, but the underlying point that it is the investors who indirectly bear the burden of this tax. That means that contributors to pension schemes—people in auto-enrolment schemes—will receive less in their pension if this tax remains in place. That is something that we should all seek to address. If we want policies that will be good for jobs and good for savers, then abolishing schedule 19 is a good policy. But what do we get from Labour? We get it embarking on a process to reinstate the policy because it misunderstands it. It thought that it was something to do with hedge funds. After it was explained to Labour Members—I have to say that it has been explained to them time and again—they refused to abandon it. I do not know whether it is still their policy to reverse this, or whether they are calling for a report. As I understand it, it is still the policy of the Opposition to reintroduce this tax.

[Cathy Jamieson]

indicated assent.

[Mr Gauke]

The hon. Lady is nodding her head. I will take that as an acceptance, even though, as we have heard, this is a policy that her colleagues and those higher up in her party appear to misunderstand.