Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Richard Burgon

Tuesday 9th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

8. What recent steps he has taken to ensure fairness in the application of the tax system.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

20. What recent steps he has taken to ensure fairness in the application of the tax system.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Victoria Atkins)]

It is right that everyone contributes to sustainable public finances, and the Government are ensuring that those with the broadest shoulders pay their fair share. The spring Budget took steps to tackle avoidance and to improve the ability of His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to collect tax debts. That is alongside taking millions out of tax altogether by consistently raising personal tax allowances. An average of more than £3,300 of assistance per household in the UK has been provided for help with the cost of living over this year and last.

Transport for London Bill [Lords]: Revival

Debate between Daniel Zeichner and Richard Burgon

Monday 16th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I hear Conservative Members saying, from sedentary positions, that these are spurious points. I must tell them that for the hundreds of people who marched through my city of Cambridge at the weekend, it is not a spurious point that people cannot afford to live in our great cities. It is not a minor point in terms of our future economic prosperity either, because unless people can afford to live in our great cities, that future prosperity is not assured, for Cambridge or for London. These things really matter.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the lack of concern shown by Conservative Members for the consequences of the Bill may be explained by the fact that, during Prime Minister’s Question Time a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister said that an appropriate price for a starter home was up to £450,000?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman was not in the Chamber when I made it very clear that we were not discussing housing. We are discussing Transport for London, and housing is tangential to that. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) is absolutely in order when he is talking about clause 5.