Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Christine Jardine and Antony Higginbotham

Committee stage & Committee of the Whole House (Day 2)
Tuesday 20th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD) [V]]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and to follow the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake).

I welcome the action that the Government are finally taking against the promoters of tax-avoidance schemes. My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I will be supporting new clause 29, which would require the Government to review the impact of provisions relating to tax avoidance and publish regular reports that set out the findings. We will also support amendment 77, which would cause the promoters of abusive tax-avoidance schemes to be treated as acting dishonestly for the purposes of criminal prosecution for tax offences, without dishonesty having to be proved separately by the prosecution. We believe that the measures we are considering are what the Government should have been doing earlier. The promoters of abusive tax-avoidance schemes have deprived the public purse of millions of pounds and defrauded countless people who thought that their services and the advice offered were legitimate.

The action being taken now comes too late for so many victims of these schemes who had no intention to do anything unlawful or to evade taxes and have already been unfairly penalised. Liberal Democrats are committed to clamping down on tax avoidance, but the retrospective nature of the loan charge is causing uncertainty and financial hardship to ordinary working families, most of whom acted in good faith. Thousands of IT support professionals, social workers, teachers, cleaners and nurses—all of whom acted in good faith, based on professional financial advice that what they were doing was legal—now face immense pressure, which is impacting on their mental health and causing serious financial hardship, which will only be magnified by the economic consequences of covid-19.

Meanwhile, online tech giants and international corporations have been avoiding tax for years but have not been clamped down on in the same way, even internationally. With the load charge, the Government are going after nurses and teachers. Like many other right hon. and hon. Members in this place, I have a number of constituents who find themselves in exactly the position that I have described, facing retrospective taxation since HMRC changed its rules in 2017. One constituent whom I have been representing has attempted to correspond with HMRC on anomalies in the settlement agreement policies, but to no avail. Although he is categorised as fully compliant and not liable for the loan charge and pre-2010 loans, he is not being refunded any settlements that include pre-2010 amounts. The fully compliant are not benefiting from the pre-2010 amendments, while other categories are.

As I have said, we undoubtedly need to clamp down on tax avoidance—the deliberate evasion of taxes—but we should be clamping down on those who promoted it, not on those who took advice believing that it was lawful. The Chancellor must also go further than his recent decision merely to limit, in the Budget, the retrospective element of the charge to 2010; he must end the retrospective application of the rules altogether so that nobody who fell victim to such schemes before 2017 should be unfairly penalised. The Government must also further re-examine IR35.

I shall end my speech there, but it is important that we recognise that the steps that we must back today should have come before us much earlier.

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), but I must pick up on one of her points. She indicated that the Government had done nothing to crack down on online companies, but the evidence shows that the Government took action to ensure that if we buy something from an online marketplace such as eBay, Wish or Alibaba, the seller charges VAT. That was a significant source of lost income for the Exchequer.

It is right for Opposition Members to raise the Panama papers, because they highlighted to the general public—to residents up and down the country—the actions of a small number of tax-avoidance advisers and very wealthy individuals who did not want to pay their fair share. I think it is right that we should look at that in the context of the action that the Government have taken.