European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Chris Leslie and Chris Bryant

Committee: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leslie]

Indeed, and there are good arguments for having independent provision of many of these assessments. We might feel that many regulatory activities currently undertaken by EU agencies need to be undertaken by our regulators here in the UK, rather than being brought into a Government departmental function, to give them that further arm’s-length independent status. I want to talk about some aspects of that shortly.

I want to make reference, too, to the Procedure Committee’s set of amendments that the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) and others have tabled to try to deal with what could be thousands of negative statutory instruments—orders by Ministers that do not automatically come up for a vote in the House of Commons. I totally respect the work of the Procedure Committee, and it is important that it has gone through this process, but I do not believe that the proposed committee would be an adequate safeguard. I do not believe that it would fulfil the concept of what a sifting committee ought to be.

We need a Committee of the House that can look through the hundreds of statutory instruments that are currently not for debate and be able to pick them out and bring them forward for an affirmative decision. The Procedure Committee’s amendments would not quite do that; they would simply create a committee able to voice its opinion about the designation of an order as a negative statutory instrument. That could be overruled or ignored by Ministers. Indeed, if a Minister were to designate such a negative statutory instrument as urgent, it would not even need to be referred to that committee. That is a pretty low threshold, and a pretty weak concession.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Is it my hon. Friend’s understanding that the committee would have an automatic Conservative party majority, because of the changes to Standing Orders?

[Mr Leslie]

I am not sure whether such a provision exists. Perhaps members of the Procedure Committee will have a view on that. I certainly think that that would be unfortunate.

[Mr Leslie]

That is true, but it deserves to be debated today as well. If we are creating a committee, it is perfectly legitimate to argue that we need to know whether it will have teeth and exercise bite, or whether it will be reluctant to do so. The question that my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) asked about its composition is perfectly reasonable.

[Chris Bryant]

For that matter, the Procedure Committee has regularly suggested changes to Standing Orders that the Government have refused to move forward. I have seen the right hon. Member for Broxbourne more furious than anyone else in the Chamber because the Government have refused to act on that, so it is inadequate to suggest that Standing Orders might make arrangements in this regard.

[Mr Leslie]

My hon. Friend’s point is well made. Again, it goes to show that if we are to assert ourselves as the House of Commons and create a committee to deal with this flood of negative statutory instruments, that needs to be done in a way that has teeth. We will debate the Bill and kick it around and it will go to the House of Lords, but we need to ensure that it has teeth when it comes back.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Chris Leslie and Chris Bryant

Committee: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Leslie]

I was trying my best to offer a hand of friendship across the Chamber and to say, “Let’s meet halfway and find a way of forging a consensus.” If the right hon. Lady wishes, there are other amendments today that ask for the charter of fundamental rights to be kept. I will certainly be voting for those, but she obviously knows that I would like to find a way, in the spirit of compromise, of reaching a consensus. I agree that a report is only a small step in that direction—hence the drafting of new clause 16—but I am massively impressed by her strength of commitment to the protection of rights in our country.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

One of the differences between the charter of fundamental rights and the European convention on human rights lies in article 8 of the charter, which relates to the protection of personal data. Is it not a particular irony that the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union relied on precisely that provision to sue the British Government?

[Mr Leslie]

It is probably time to elaborate on that example, because the Secretary of State—for it is he—sued the then Home Secretary, who hon. Members will know is now Prime Minister, to challenge the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 as being inconsistent with EU law. The Secretary of State himself used the argument in court that the charter of fundamental rights needed to be prayed in aid in that case. By the way, he was successful at that point in time.

Future Government Spending

Debate between Chris Leslie and Chris Bryant

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie]

Now we are coming to some of the issues. The hon. Gentleman feels that the Chancellor did not make an error when he promised back in 2010 that by now we would have no deficit and that it would all have been eradicated. The esteemed Chancellor of the Exchequer promised in his autumn statement that

“we will meet our fiscal mandate to eliminate the structural current budget deficit one year early, in 2014-15.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2010; Vol. 519, c. 532.]

That is the year we are in now. This is about the Government’s record for the past four and a half to five years.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris Leslie]

I will give way to my hon. Friend, whose constituents have been very much affected by the squeeze in living standards. He knows that it is the health of the economy and of the finances of working people across the country that determine the health of our public finances.

[Chris Bryant]

Will my hon. Friend explain to the hon. Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) and everyone else who seems to have forgotten that, in 2008, the massed ranks of the Conservative party supported Labour’s public spending plans, so they cannot now pretend that they were not in this as well?

[Chris Leslie]

It is amazing how quiet Conservative Members are on that particular point.

Multiannual Financial Framework

Debate between Chris Leslie and Chris Bryant

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Is not the truth of the matter that literally the only way in which we can ensure that we end up with a less than inflationary increase is by not announcing that we will use the veto and by ensuring that we negotiate all the way through to the end? It is a child who announces on the first day of negotiations that they are going to use the veto, because then the Commission gets its way.

[Chris Leslie]

My hon. Friend is entirely right, and that is why the Government do not get it. They need a negotiating strategy to get the best deal for the taxpayer. [Interruption.] The Minister laughs, and the Chancellor is next to him puppeting him along in his hilarity, but I say to the Chancellor that this is an incredibly serious issue. It is about taxpayers’ money, and incredibly large sums of it at that. [Interruption.]

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Chris Leslie and Chris Bryant

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I think that my hon. Friend is referring in particular to part 2 of schedule 19, which hangs off the clauses we are debating, and which contains a seven-step guide that actually has an extra step that does not apply in some cases. Is that not the most complicated way ever in legislation of determining a charge? Why does it need to be so complicated?

[Chris Leslie]

The Minister needs to answer that question. Hon. Members might care to turn to page 297 of the Bill. The steps might at first appear quite straightforward, but then we get to this odd provision in paragraph 7, with its proportions X, Y and Z of various different amounts and so on. I understand that that provision is triggered because the Treasury has to recoup retrospectively some of the money taken, since the Chancellor tweaked the levels of tax on 8 February and again in March. It therefore becomes incredibly complex and difficult to hold to account. The design of the bank levy has not been made easy by the Chancellor’s decisions.

[Chris Leslie]

As I said, the reason for the complexity is that all the variables in the design of the bank levy have to be amended because the Treasury wants to squash it around that figure of £2.5 billion or £2.6 billion of revenue. In other words, the whole of the bank levy is being driven by that particular sum, which is a very odd way of designing a tax.

[Chris Bryant]

In fact, there are not just one or even two different rates being introduced—which one might understand, given the difference between long term and short term—but 10, each of which will undoubtedly pay for thousands of accountants, as they crawl over what counts in each category. Surely that is nonsensical and an example of the kind of legislation that banks which might want to stay in this country will abhor.

[Chris Leslie]

Far be it from me to defend the poor banks in their compliance with the provisions, but obviously the more the compliance costs go up, the higher the likelihood that customers will end up footing the bill of taking on accountants to address the complexity of what should be a simple banking levy. Whether there are two rates or 10, however, all the rates in the bank levy are far too generous and far too low.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Leslie]

I do not know whether we have to hope that the Liberal Democrats will take strong action before that moment comes—I do not know whether that is an oxymoron—but the Government have dangled the prospect of a tax cut for only the very richest people. It is interesting that they are designing the Bill’s provisions to allow the potential avoidance of the 50p rate following what I considered to be a fairly positive change at European level to defer bonuses in an attempt to discourage short-term high-risk activities.

[Chris Bryant]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point and I disagree with what the Government are doing, but I suspect that he is wrong. I suspect that the Government will not obtain the tax take that they will need over the next few years. Because of the way in which they are managing the economy—because of the profound risks that they are taking with the economy—there is no chance that they will introduce tax cuts of any kind before the next general election unless they also engage in another massive round of cuts in public services.

[Chris Leslie]

However, the alacrity and, almost, relish with which the Government have introduced some of their spending cuts make me wonder whether their rewards for the bankers constitute a payback for the cover to get stuck into public investment in the way that they always wanted to do, and for which purpose many of them came into politics.

The bank levy is a weak response to the debts that banks owe the taxpayer. The Government say that they want a big society, but they are happy to see public investment shrink and rewards for banks grow, built on the backs of taxpayers. It is a big society if you are a banker, but a very small society if you are not. Our amendment would at least make the Government pause and reflect on their increasingly untenable position—we hear that they are good at pausing and reflecting—and I urge Members to support it.