Finance Bill

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Kirsty Blackman

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I start by telling the House of the sad death of my predecessor, Frank Doran, who was the MP for Aberdeen North and other Aberdeen seats during a career of about 30 years in Parliament. Mr Doran was incredibly well respected across the House. People who worked with him will remember him and will have respected his work. He was a principled man. He helped a lot of people who are now my constituents, and they often talk fondly about him. In particular, he worked incredibly hard in the aftermath of the Piper Alpha tragedy; he did a huge amount of work on that. Our thoughts are with his wife Joan, his family, and his friends and colleagues from across the House. I pass on the Scottish National party’s condolences to his family.

I do not want to talk at length about offshore trusts. The SNP has consistently been critical of the situation around non-domiciled individuals and offshore trusts and of the complicated nature of the UK tax code. It is regularly said that the tax code used to be a book but now someone would need a van to cart it around. The problem with that is the potential for loopholes. In addition, the more complicated it is, the more difficult it is for people to comply and for Government agencies to ensure compliance. We have raised those issues.

The right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) talked about not conflating tax dodging with non-doms. I am not attempting to do that, but the more complicated the tax code is, the greater the likelihood of loopholes that people can exploit. We have concerns about that; we raised them last year in the context of the Criminal Finances Act 2017 and we will continue to raise our concerns around non-domicileds and offshore trusts more generally.

There are occasional suggestions from Conservative Back Benchers that we move the UK towards being some sort of tax haven, post Brexit. We completely reject that, as do some in the Conservative party.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Is the hon. Lady saying that she would not like people in Britain to enjoy lower taxes, if they were possible?

[Kirsty Blackman]

I was talking about tax havens; I think people have a good understanding of the difference between a tax haven and a country with lower taxes. It is completely reasonable to say, as individuals across the House do, that if we want excellent public services that best serve our population, we need a tax system in which people pay for those excellent public services. I am not in any way trying to dodge that; I think that we should have a tax system that ensures that we have excellent public services.

[Charlie Elphicke]

Does the hon. Lady not see the opportunity with Brexit to stop large businesses using European laws to game our tax system, and instead to get them to pay a fair share of taxes and give the hard- working people of modern Britain a tax cut?

[Kirsty Blackman]

As for the opportunity with Brexit, Scotland will be £30 billion worse off as a result of it. My city will be the worst off place in the UK outside the City of London—that is according to work done by London School of Economics and Political Science on the cost of Brexit; it is not a biased point of view. I do not see positive outcomes for the UK from Brexit. On the tax code, I want to make it clear that we reject moving towards a tax haven Britain and anything that could increase the number of loopholes. We are pleased about the Government’s anti-avoidance changes; we would like them to go further, but that will always be the case, and we will always say that to the Government. We are pleased that they are making positive moves, and pleased with some of their anti-avoidance measures. I agreed with almost everything that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd), said about non-domiciled people and offshore trusts. We will support the Labour party if it pushes new clause 1 to a vote.

Economy and Jobs

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Kirsty Blackman

Thursday 29th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kirsty Blackman]

I am going to make some progress.

Nothing in the Queen’s Speech or in the fiscal or monetary policy direction will alleviate the problems people are facing. We demand that in order to stimulate growth the UK Government invest in infrastructure and public services—not just in Northern Ireland, but across the nations of the UK. This morning, the Institute of Government released a report that said that

“weak processes are leading to the wrong projects and contested decisions, wasting both government time and taxpayer money.”

The UK Government need to improve the systems in place to make infrastructure decisions so that the right ones are prioritised.

We demand that the UK Government properly secure the rights of EU nationals. Given that those who choose to live here unarguably contribute to reducing the deficit, reducing immigration will hit the public purse. The lack of access to workers will also cause issues for many industries—I know that the Chancellor is pretty onside with that argument.

[Charlie Elphicke]

My concern, and I think that of many of us on the Government Benches, is that a massive increase in public sector debt will cause interest rates to rise, which will then put pressure on families who have too much household debt. That is why it is really important that we act with fiscal prudence—to keep interest rates down.

[Kirsty Blackman]

What we are proposing is not a massive increase in public sector debt, but targeted public sector spend in order to increase economic growth.

We demand that the UK Government put in place a proper living wage—a living wage that people can actually live on, not a pretendy living wage. We also demand that the living wage is in place for those aged 18 and above, not just for those who are over 25.