Ways and Means

Charlie Elphicke Excerpts

Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Wednesday 6th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

The answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is that that is precisely what this Bill will be achieving. We will be putting an end to permanent non-dom status, so that those who are “deemed domicile” are treated on the same basis for taxation purposes as other residents in our country. Let me gently remind him that his party was in government for 13 years and very little happened then on the issues to which he now professes objection. So we should not be taking too many lessons from Labour on the issue of non-doms.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend recall, as I do, that for the best part of a decade the Labour party kept saying every year that it would do something about non-doms and then did nothing whatsoever because it was so into the prawn cocktail circuit and pandering to big business, and that Labour only ever took any action when it was humiliated by our previous Chancellor, George Osborne, when he was in opposition? Does my right hon. Friend also agree that this Government have been leading the way consistently on making sure that a fair share of tax is paid by non-doms and others?

[Mel Stride]

My hon. Friend is entirely right about that. We currently raise £7 billion a year from non-domiciled individuals, which is £1 billion more than was the case a decade ago. The provisions in this Bill will ensure that we raise a further £1.6 billion over the next five years, so this Government are serious about this issue and are acting on it.

Other clauses will legislate for the changes we have announced to the dividend allowance, reducing the differential between taxation of different individuals, and to the money purchase annual allowance for those who have accessed their pensions under the flexibilities that this Government have provided.

Finally, these resolutions provide for the Finance Bill to legislate for the Making Tax Digital programme.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

I noted the Minister’s comment that there is no change in policy. From that statement it is clear that the Government have learned absolutely nothing from the result of the general election, which is a terrible shame. The Opposition welcome the Government finally laying before the House the Ways and Means resolutions, which will comprise the so-called “summer” Finance Bill, but the clue is supposed to be in the name. I find it rather odd, as I am sure many of my parliamentary colleagues do, that we stand here in early September debating a summer Finance Bill that was expected to be introduced and passed before the summer recess. Alas, it was not.

I recall the Minister’s predecessor standing at the Dispatch Box only four and a half months ago assuring the House that if the Government were returned, they would immediately bring forward measures dropped from the previous Finance Bill due to lack of parliamentary time. However, they have an excuse for the procrastination: it is called chaos. We have a chaotic Government, chaotically stumbling from crisis to crisis, not knowing one part of their anatomy from another. After the election, we returned to a zombie Parliament where little in the way of business was put forward to be debated in the House. Mr Speaker referred today to the whole question of the scrutiny that we are supposed to be doing, but the Government are not putting anything forward for us to scrutinise.

Not only is the Prime Minister one of the walking dead, but she wants Parliament to join her. On a number of occasions, my colleagues and I wrote to the Treasury to ascertain the date for the Finance Bill. In addition, the issue was raised twice in business questions and the Chancellor was asked about it in Treasury questions, all to no avail and no answer. It was the fifth amendment approach to answering questions. It was only in the waning hours, as Members packed up before the House rose for summer recess, that the Government were forced to publish the date for the Bill’s return.

I know the Treasury lost two Ministers in the election—to rework Oscar Wilde’s observation, losing one Minister is a misfortune, but to lose both looks like carelessness—but surely the country cannot simply hang around because the Government are in meltdown. The Government are making an art form out of uncertainty. We have uncertainty about Brexit, uncertainty about the country’s finances, as the resolutions indicate, and now uncertainty about the Prime Minister’s job prospects. The only certainty we have is the inability of this vacuous, hapless Government to govern with any scintilla of competence or compassion.

The Government had five weeks after the general election to introduce measures dropped from the previous Finance Bill and bring certainty to taxpayers and businesses. Many of those businesses have already undertaken the administrative and financial burden of ensuring that they meet the stipulations of the measures included in the Ways and Means resolutions being debated today. The Minister could have brought forward the resolutions and published the Bill before the House rose for summer recess. That would have allowed Members and the businesses and taxpayers affected time to read through the proposals and examine them thoroughly. Instead, the Government have cynically restricted the debate by scheduling the Second Reading of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill for tomorrow.

Next week, the Minister intends to push ahead with the Second Reading of the Finance Bill only four days after its publication, with the explanatory notes being published on the day of Second Reading. Once again, the Chancellor and the Treasury are deliberately shying away from the parliamentary scrutiny that we should be having on these resolutions. This is a time of great political and economic uncertainty, and the measures included in the resolutions do little to address the problems at hand. The global economy is on the move, while Britain under the Tories is being left behind. The resolutions are defined more by what is not in them than what is. There is nothing about investment, nothing about productivity and nothing about public services—much ado about nothing.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Will the shadow Minister give the House his view on the points made by his Back-Bench colleague the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) on the landfill tax question?

[Peter Dowd]

I would not proffer advice to my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham, because he is an expert on that issue, but I will listen clearly to what he says. Unlike the Government, I listen to my colleagues on the Back Benches.

We need only look across the channel to see that every European economy outgrew Britain in the GDP figures for the first quarter. Our productivity rate remains one of the worst in the G7 and is lower than it was 10 years ago. Real wages continue to fall behind inflation. More than ever, we need bold and radical solutions to stimulate growth, raise productivity and encourage investment in our economy. None of the resolutions before us will do that. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury has made that point. Rather than focusing on balancing the budget or tackling our growing debt to GDP ratio, we have a Chancellor who spent the summer in the witness protection programme, rearing his head only to brief against his boss when the coast was clear and the Prime Minister was abroad.

The measures before the House represent the Government’s failure to take the opportunity to begin seriously to tackle the challenges that our economy and country face. For example, it is clear that the Tories have no answers on how to raise productivity and no answers on how to tackle the growing inequality in pay. We are now experiencing the longest period of wage stagnation for 150 years, with nurses having to demonstrate in Parliament Square to make their point. The Tories have no answers when it comes to creating an economy that works for the many and not just for a privileged few.