Covid-19: Government Support for Business

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

Today we are having meetings to discern exactly what the data is showing and what interventions we need to make going forward.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

I think I am now the sixth Member to mention the coach sector, and I hope the Treasury is listening to hon. and right hon. Members in that regard. Robert Black’s of Brechin has contacted me to say that bookings have been disappearing like snow off a dyke since the omicron situation developed. I have also been contacted by The Townhouse in Arbroath, The Stag in Forfar and many others, and I am not taking my staff out on Friday because I am following advice. There are booking cancellations right across the board. It is an omicron support package that we need—where is it coming from?

[John Glen]

As I have said repeatedly, the Government are engaging across sectors. I recognise the depth and breadth of the impact of this variant, and we will look very carefully at what we need to do.

Conduct of the Right Hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

The feeling is mutual but I am defending the conduct of the Prime Minister, and the right hon. Gentleman knows that he has no answer to this large litany of achievement.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

The Minister accuses SNP Members of not having an answer. It is very interesting that the Minister is going through the Conservatives’ programme for Government and manifesto and is making some fairly ambitious claims about what has been achieved, but we are not debating that: we are debating the character of the Prime Minister. Will the Minister focus his remarks on that please?

[Michael Ellis]

The conduct of the Prime Minister is the subject of the debate, and the conduct of the Prime Minister is the maintenance and running of this Government and that is what he has been achieving.

Going back to the point on immigration, we have seen the tragic consequences in the recent incident off Calais and our thoughts are of course with the families and loved ones.

Government's Management of the Economy

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP) [V]]

Tory economic incompetence is a rich seam to mine and it is a challenge to do justice to the millions of marginalised workers and families up and down these islands who pay the price of Tory policies. The Chancellor borrowed £55.2 billion in May 2020, nine times more than in the previous May, and the highest monthly borrowing since records began. Indeed, we need to go back 50 years to find UK gross borrowing exceeding the size of the whole UK economy as it now does—and this is a Government who are trying to tell us that they have this under control? National debt of £2.1 trillion might not worry the millionaires in the Tory Cabinet, but the rest of us are horrified.

The Chancellor said last June that the best way to restore public finances is to open the economy and get people back to work. Well, we now know what an ill-fated risk calculation that was, to the UK’s great public health and economic cost, brought to bear on the population by a Chancellor seemingly more invested in his personal brand than judicious ministerial responsibility.

The Labour party will need to be careful with its criticisms, though. It inherited falling debt and a surplus in ’97, and took only two years to revert that into rising debt. The current tenant of No. 11 Downing Street is the latest in a long line from both UK parties seemingly more chancer than Chancellor. And let us not forget that, in 2010, Labour was planning devastating austerity cuts that it was very clear were going to be tougher and deeper than Margaret Thatcher’s in the 1980s. In this, UK politics is revealed as the worst ever Hobson’s choice.

Today’s Chancellor, mirroring Alistair Darling when he shored up the banks, presents himself as something of a benevolent genius for wheeling out the furlough scheme, conveniently forgetting that it represents a very standard fiscal intervention by any Government in a developed economy in times of crisis, and of course it is future generations, not he, who will be paying down the bill. The UK Chancellor, like most before him in my 48 years, is neither genius nor generous, and there are 3 million excluded who will testify to that, not to mention our pensioners, who, by 2016 figures, endure the worst state pensions in the developed world.

We must then consider the shameful UK economic growth of 2% over the last 10 years of this Government, which compares with figures of 6% in the US, 9% in the EU and Japan, and 7% in the G7. We see clearly the chickens of historical UK underinvestment in science, engineering and manufacturing coming home to roost—the legacy of Thatcher alive and well—and that is before the long-term negative effects of Brexit flow through. Since devolution, the UK’s growth in output languishes at 23.8%, while Scotland’s has risen by 33.7%, outpacing the outmoded UK and doing so despite the dead hand of the UK Treasury holding us back. It will not do so for much longer, for at independence, Scotland will retake our place on the international global stage and forge ahead with our independent, progressive and inclusive economic future.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Before I call Ben Everitt, may I just ask the remaining MPs participating remotely to look at the clock on the left or right hand side of their monitors, wherever it may be? If they cannot see that, please could they use an alternative device, because they will be cut off after three minutes.

Covid-19: Economy Update

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is important that we can look through this crisis to our economic recovery. I know that his area will play a starring role in helping to drive that recovery, whether that is through Grimsby or a free port in Immingham. I am pleased to say that we are making good progress on the free port process. I hope to announce the bidding process very soon, and look forward to receiving his local area’s application when the time is right.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

The nature of the Government’s interventions in this crisis are reactionary and there are significant gaps in the support. A principal casualty of those gaps are the 3 million excluded, who have had a devastating summer. The Chancellor has used the word “generous” over 20 times in this statement, so I urge him to advise me what support he will now give to the 3 million excluded. Will he do them the service not of telling us how he has supported other people, but of telling us what he will do for them?

[Rishi Sunak]

The circumstances of everyone who is self-employed will be different. It may well be that they own a business premises, which will benefit from business rates relief or a cash grant. It may well be that they have used the bounce back loan scheme, as over a million small businesses have. It may be that they are benefiting from the enhanced welfare system and the improvements to universal credit and the local housing allowance. Or it may be that they are the self-employed people who today will benefit from a doubling of the grant that I have announced, which will be up to over £3,700 this Christmas. This remains one of the most comprehensive packages of support for those who are self-employed anywhere in the world.

Productivity: Rural Areas

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

I guarantee I will. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. I am grateful to the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann) for bringing this debate.

Rural communities’ needs must have greater prominence in Government policy. We would do well to ensure that this debate provides traction for that ambition. Across the UK—especially in England and Northern Ireland, where the topography is literally more accommodating—rural populations and their needs as taxpayers and citizens, together with their economic contribution are too easily and routinely overlooked. That is an opportunity lost.

The City of London and North sea oil and gas were the powerhouses of the UK economy for nearly 30 years or so. From Caithness to Cornwall, if we removed the net economic output from rural communities across these isles, we would see one heck of a dent in the UK’s economy. Rural communities and economies need a far greater slice of the investment cake if they are to increase productivity. Resources are the end result; the means to that is a shift in perspective and central Government policy. Centralised institutions and Whitehall must react to this.

We need our great regional cities—whether Aberdeen, Belfast, Cardiff or Durham—to be reborn as regional hubs. This base must exploit their existing and manifest competitive advantages. These can then act as economic nodes for regional opportunity in a far more targeted way, supporting start-ups and peer support between businesses, and generating and cultivating the multiplier effect, which can spread growth, opportunity and prosperity out to landward areas.

In Scotland, great strides have been made to enable decentralised power much closer to the people, under devolution in Edinburgh. This has been replicated in Wales, Northern Ireland, London and the other mayoral assemblies in England. In an independent Scotland, it would be unforgivable to repeat the difficult-to-unwind centralisation mistakes of the UK. That sounds like a political point, but I would contend that it is a political science point. By any stretch of the imagination and by any international comparator, the UK is chronically over-centralised in London. That comes at a significant cost to the rest of these islands.

There is great concern regarding physical and digital connectivity. Both are extremely important. As the hon. Member for North Cornwall highlighted, without superfast broadband, the nicest hotel in the village would find it difficult to get custom and impossible to get repeat custom, and customer reviews would reflect that. I am afraid that superfast broadband is no longer a luxury add-on; it is absolutely essential for the hospitality industry. Without that, individual businesses are working with one hand tied behind their back, because there is nothing they can do about it. That requires significant public investment. Following that investment, there is a need to build a more sustainable model where economic activity and output creates the demand for a more market-led support for services and infrastructure.

The Scottish Government, where we have the powers, have in the “Programme for Government” put the rural economy at the heart of the agenda. We recognise the importance of diversity in the rural economy and we are committed to a range of measures to support that growth. The rural economy is a major source of growth in Scotland, with its economic contribution worth about £35 billion in gross value added. Figures from 2015 show it was 27% of Scotland’s economy. There are 67,000 jobs in Scotland in farming alone. The Scottish agriculture sector, which is no different to that in great swathes of England—not least Cornwall—is worth about £1.3 billion to our economy. Farming is at the heart of Scotland’s economy and has the potential to contribute to our national recovery from covid, as it does elsewhere.

It needs to be accepted that different challenges are faced by rural businesses. The Scottish Government are addressing those, including through a new place-based approach to integrate business support for rural micro-enterprises. As other hon. Members have said, it is really important to look at the aggregate effect. There are not massive companies in rural settings—that is not what characterises rural entrepreneurship. There are many different economic enterprises—often, as has been pointed out, in the same household—all contributing to a significant economic output.

I am grateful to have had an opportunity to contribute to the debate. I wish the hon. Member for North Cornwall every success in taking this issue forward with his colleagues in Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

I hesitate to give my right hon. Friend a history lesson, but he will recall that Ronald Reagan was a deep admirer of FDR and quite a heavy spender in his own right. Inheritance tax is paid on only one in 25 estates, and therefore it is not quite as large an issue in terms of the number of people affected as my right hon. Friend suggests. We take these issues very seriously and return to them recurrently at fiscal events.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

What steps he is taking to support the economy during the covid-19 outbreak.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)]

What steps he is taking to support the economy during the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rishi Sunak)]

The Government have taken unprecedented steps to keep as many people as possible in their existing jobs, support viable businesses to stay afloat and protect the incomes of the most vulnerable. We are now carefully and safely reopening our economy.

[Dave Doogan [V]]

I have previously raised the issue of the 3 million taxpayers being excluded from Government support with the Prime Minister, the First Secretary of State and the Leader of the House, all of whom have repeated details of the Government support provided to other groups. To be clear, it is understood that 2.6 million self-employed people were supported and 9 million people were furloughed. What remains an issue, though, is the 10% of the workforce who have received no meaningful support to help navigate covid. Specifically on the 3 million excluded, will the Chancellor provide an eleventh-hour lifeline such as that provided for the arts, or is he planning to cut 3 million workers adrift? It is one or the other, and it is now or never.

Coronavirus: Employment Support

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

The hon. Lady can absolutely take my assurance that we are working to absorb all ideas from across the House that can be actioned. I brought forward legislation previously in this House building a cross-party consensus, and we would seek to do so on this, too.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

The Minister is very keen to point out that he understands the frustration of Members and their constituents. Can I assist him by pointing out that it is no longer frustration, but desperation? What we need are not loans; we need grants. Businesses in Angus are asking me why they should take out a loan to provide incomes for people who cannot work, through no fault of their own. That looks dangerously like welfare, and delivering welfare is the responsibility of Government. When will the Government deliver?

[John Glen]

I understand the use of the word “desperation”—I recognise that, and that is why we are working urgently to have a package of measures, and extend that package of measures, so that there are a range of options to businesses of different sizes in different situations, based on their sector and the risks that they face.

Beer and Pub Taxation

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) for securing the debate. Is not it interesting that it is so well attended, and that we are all in such accord on one issue? I think it will be a long time before we find another one on which we are in such accord.

None of us has a monopoly on fantastic breweries and pubs in our constituencies, and that fact signifies the key importance of the issue. The debate, by my reckoning, focuses on two principal issues: one is the fairness of taxes that breweries and pubs face, and the disproportionate burden they must support; and the other is the value of pubs. To begin with the second issue, the pub, as many hon. Members have pointed out, is a venue for solidarity between members of communities—particularly small communities, or communities within larger conurbations. It is an opportunity for company for the isolated, and it provides opportunities for entrepreneurial advancement, whether artistic or in micro-brewing and other things. Notwithstanding any of those softer, more pastoral benefits that pubs generate for communities, they also generate £23.1 billion for the economy, which is not to be sniffed at either.

It seems to me there is something important for the Government to do. First, they need to admit that there is a problem. By the calculations of the Office for National Statistics, 11,000 pubs—23% of the entire estate—closed in the past 10 years. I think that we would all pretty much recognise that that signifies a problem that we need to deal with. We need to take a collective look at the burden of rates, VAT and duty on pubs. I am pleased that pubs in my constituency and elsewhere in Scotland benefit from the most competitive rates regime in these islands, but that is no help to anyone in England, Wales or Northern Ireland—so there is work to be done there.

I am not sure whether we should touch on the question of VAT, but we should touch on duty. In the research that I undertook to prepare for this speech, I could find only Ireland and Finland ahead of the UK, in the European context, for beer duty. I cannot speak for Finland, but I know that Ireland is also wrestling with a pub closure problem. A yawning gap between the price of on-sales and off-sales in the UK is feeding directly into the pressure on pubs. As many hon. Members have pointed out already, off-sales products are much more attached to the more harmful types of drinking—particularly lone drinking. Also, something that I believe is now popular with younger people is pre-loading before going out. I do not know anything about that, but it is definitely associated with problems of excessive consumption, leading to matters of public health concern, and to public order concern when things get a little out of control. If we do nothing else by coming here, I join colleagues in other parties in their pleas to the Minister to take a serious look at beer duty. I hope it will be reduced. Many of our brewers need that, and many pubs will not survive without it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Clarke]

I am a big fan of the Castle Eden brewery. As a fellow north-easterner, I used to pass it regularly. Treasury policy is to avoid precipitate cliff edges that distort behaviour. Clearly, I cannot pre-announce any of the findings of the review. There are a range of factors and representations that need to be borne in mind, but we will issue clarity to the sector in the next few weeks.

[Dave Doogan]

I appreciate what the Minister says about prior notice, but will he take a look at the disproportionate effect of tax on on-sales compared with off-sales? It is unsustainable, notwithstanding the issues of public health, public nuisance and community support.

[Mr Clarke]

I take the hon. Member’s point. Clearly, we want to support drinking in social settings such as the pub. It has clear societal benefits as well as business benefits, and the Treasury takes that into account.

The Treasury keeps all taxes under review and is deeply sensitive to the range of challenges facing the pub sector and brewery sector, which we are keen to support. The support of all hon. Members present is powerful, and it speaks to the fact that this is a decision we need to get right. I know that all hon. Members will keep us under close scrutiny about the decisions we make.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South for securing the debate. What has happened today is a great tribute to his leadership on these issues, and he deserves our thanks.