Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Peter Dowd

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 12th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Peter Dowd]

“Regressive” and “Conservative Government” go in the same sentence pretty easily.

The Budget does not move us towards parity for mental health services. It does nothing to end the crisis in social care, to which the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) referred, or in children’s services. It gets worse as the days go on. The Budget was a continuation of austerity under anyone’s definition, and the Bill is a written testament to that broken promise.

[Charlie Elphicke]

As ever, the hon. Gentleman is very passionate. May I just take him back to the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake)? Will he support that generous and very sensible proposal? Does he think that that is the right way to go about things?

[Peter Dowd]

Look, we are always prepared to look at any idea, but we are trying to deal with the problem today. We are trying to deal now with the hundreds of thousands of elderly people who are not getting the service they are entitled to.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Dowd]

Actually, we set out our tax policies in “Funding Britain’s Future”, and I will send a signed copy to the hon. Lady for her to have a look at. Perhaps Government Members can have a tutorial with Sir Roger Scruton and tease out some of the issues.

On Brexit, yet again, we have seen the Government using our exit to hand themselves broad powers, indefinitely. This is a continuation of the theme that I described—of a Government’s demand for power, even though they are clueless about how to exercise it.

[Charlie Elphicke]

The whole House understands that the hon. Gentleman is very enthusiastic about raising the rates of taxes for richer people, but does he not remember that the experience of reducing the top rate of tax from 80% to 60%, and then from 60% to 40%, was that more money was brought into the Treasury on each occasion? Labour’s plans to increase taxes will mean less money for the Treasury and less money for the NHS.

[Peter Dowd]

International evidence does not show that, but let me give the hon. Gentleman a figure. The top 1% have received an increase in share of total income—from 5.7% in 1990 to 7.8% in 2016-17. That was identified by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Peter Dowd

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 11th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Dowd]

Let us have a general election and we will deliver on those promises.

On Brexit, there is no abating the deep divisions between warring Cabinet Ministers. Within a few hours of the ink drying on the joint statement between the Prime Minister and the European Commission and the agreement to move on to trade talks, we had the Environment Secretary contradicting the Prime Minister and briefing the press that unhappy leave voters can tear up any Brexit deal that is negotiated, while on the Sunday talk shows the Brexit Secretary undermined the Prime Minister further by downgrading the agreement reached to merely a “statement of intent”. Given that there is much talk of a divorce bill, perhaps I can take the matrimonial analogy a little further. Do people make proposals of marriage or simply statements of intent? Did the Brexit Secretary propose to his wife or make a statement of intent?

[Charlie Elphicke]

The hon. Gentleman’s talk of bills reminds me that the Labour party has made a massive number of pledges and wants to go on a borrowing binge, but 22 times it has failed to explain how it will fund those pledges. It has gone from “You don’t need a number” to “You can’t put a figure on it at the moment” to “It’s not difficult.” May I ask the question for the 23rd time and invite him to tell the House how Labour would pay for its plans?

[Peter Dowd]

With the greatest respect, I am not the hon. Gentleman’s research assistant. I refer him to Labour’s proposals in “Funding Britain’s Future”. I know that he can read, so I suggest that he should go and have a look at that document.

The Brexiteers in the Cabinet continue to undermine any attempts to progress the talks and compromise with our European partners. We had a bizarre scenario today—everyone telling the Prime Minister how wonderful she was. Last week she was a basket case, as far as I could tell, but this week she is a wonderful woman. The Brexiteers are happy to continue to create economic uncertainty to the detriment of businesses and workers alike.

Duties of Customs

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Peter Dowd

Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Dowd]

I will tell the right hon. Lady what we are in favour of: parliamentary scrutiny. It was John Bright who reportedly coined the phrase “the Mother of Parliaments”, which is completely alien to Conservative Members and, obviously, to the right hon. Lady. I suspect that he, along with many other Radical and Conservative parliamentarians, would be turning in his grave at the idea that a Government living on borrowed time have the arrogance, hubris and others would say bluster to treat Parliament in the fashion this Government are intent on doing.

Conservative Members have to ask themselves this question: did their constituents send them to this House to acquiesce is the systematic stripping away of parliamentary scrutiny, which is not in the national interest, or did they send them here to hold the Government to account, regardless of their party allegiance? The Minister should take seriously the concerns I have raised, as many others inside and outside the House have, about the fast and loose approach the Government are taking to parliamentary scrutiny.

[Charlie Elphicke]

The hon. Gentleman has not answered the incredibly important intervention made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry). Can I ask him a different question? Will he be supporting amendment (e), which is the unofficial Opposition amendment?

[Peter Dowd]

The fact of the matter is that we are not closing off options, which the Government seem to have a pathological obsession with doing.

I hope that, between now and Second Reading, the Government will consider the importance of comprehensive parliamentary oversight and pay attention to the concerns of this House in relation to this whole question.

Finance Bill

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Peter Dowd

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Dowd]

Proceedings on this Bill started in March, but we are now drawing to a close. The Bill’s progress was interrupted by the general election. Not much happened to it in the post-election period, but it was brought back in September, and now we are moving, to use the Minister’s phrase, towards the denouement of the debate.

To solve a problem, it is first important to recognise that there is a problem. I think that that sums up the debate surrounding the Government’s deemed domicile measures—the Government cannot see that there is a problem. Non-dom status is a hangover from the days of the British Empire. Non-dom tax status was introduced in 1799 to allow British colonialists with foreign property to shelter it from wartime taxes. These days, non-doms are individuals who live in the UK but claim to have a permanent home in another country. There is no statutory definition of a non-dom; the status depends on circumstantial evidence.

Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs says that 121,000 individuals claimed non-domiciled taxpayer status via their self-assessment returns in 2014-15. Non-domiciled UK-resident taxpayers accounted for about 85,000 of those individuals, and the remaining 35,000 or so were non-UK residents. Famous examples of non-doms include the directors of Lloyds, HSBC and RBS, the billionaire Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, the media baron Viscount Rothermere, and numerous footballers.

Non-doms are allowed to avoid tax on overseas investment income if that does not exceed £2,000 a year. All non-doms are required to pay income tax on their UK earnings, but they can avoid income tax and capital gains tax on assets held elsewhere as long as the amounts are not remitted to the UK. The Treasury’s proposals to reform non-dom status would mean that an individual who had been resident in the UK for 15 of the last 20 years would be considered UK-domiciled for the purposes of income tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

I am listening to the hon. Gentleman’s case with interest. I am curious why, in their first 12 years in power, the last Labour Government did nothing whatsoever about non-domiciled individuals, and then reacted reluctantly only when they were humiliated and forced to take action by the then Conservative Opposition. Why is he not praising the Conservative Government for taking further action on this matter?

[Peter Dowd]

If it takes a Labour Government to sort out a problem after more than 200 years, we will sort out the problem.

On paper, this idea seems to be reasonable and sensible —in fact, even progressive—until, metaphorically speaking, someone starts to scratch away at the very thin veneer. In reality, the Government have purposefully and deliberately exempted offshore trusts, thereby undermining their own reforms, even though offshore trusts have been identified by the OECD, the European Parliament and the International Monetary Fund as among the main vehicles for tax avoidance across the globe.

Finance Bill

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Peter Dowd

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Charlie Elphicke]

I am a bit perplexed by the hon. Gentleman’s comments about non-doms, because those of us with long memories will recall a long stretch under the Labour Government when each year they promised to do something about non-doms but then did nothing at all, until they were humiliated into action by the previous Chancellor. Our Government are now taking further action, but the Opposition are critical of that, whereas I would have thought they would be supportive.

[Peter Dowd]

I am afraid the hon. Gentleman’s memory is wrong about that, as are the memories of some Ministers, and I will come on to discuss that in a moment. This Finance Bill does little, if anything, to address the legitimate concerns raised in the IPPR report. On being provided with his speech last week, I suspect even the Financial Secretary asked—if only himself—whether he really had to present more worn out, tired platitudes that pass for Tory economic policy. He drew the short straw—a very short straw; in fact, he was the only one in the ballot. He was both the warm-up act and the main act. The Chief Secretary graced us with her presence for a short time and then went off with the Chancellor, calculator in hand, to work out how they will pay for all their U-turns.

Ways and Means

Debate between Charlie Elphicke and Peter Dowd

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

[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.