Budget Resolutions

David Davis Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford). Although I may disagree with much of what he says, he always speaks with compassion, commitment and belief, and that is important in this place.

Unlike the Opposition, I took pleasure in the optimism and cheerfulness of the Chancellor’s presentation—something has obviously rubbed off from next door in that respect—which was because he was able to announce any number of increases in spending, from the national health service to local infrastructure and from R&D to the numeracy multiplier in education. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) pointed out, the Chancellor was able to do that because of a Treasury re-forecast for the growth rate—a Treasury error.

When people have heard the number of Budgets that I have, they come to realise that finding £20 billion down the back of the sofa is not unusual. In this case it was £44 billion, but the Chancellor’s predecessor but one found £20 billion in his last Budget. That arises because the Treasury, the OBR and the Bank of England are all very bad at forecasting; they generally get it right within about £20 billion but not much closer.

The first thing I will say about the Budget strategy we are talking about today is that we have to make allowance for it being £20 billion out. The key point in that is the growth rate. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham pointed out in his brilliant speech, the key to the whole strategy must be growth—private sector growth—without which we cannot pay for anything. That is what I will briefly focus on today; given his speech I can do it more quickly that I might otherwise have.

Before I get to that, the overhang of debt that arises from the covid crisis, which is £400 billion of borrowing or thereabouts, is crucial to the broad economic strategy. We have not seen that scale of debt since after each world war, and the approach should be the same. In essence, we should create war bonds that are paid off over 50 to 75 years. Both sets of war bonds were paid off in the last decade or so, which gives us a measure of how long was taken over it.

In the 1920s, when Winston Churchill was Chancellor, he consolidated the war debt on a 4% basis when our Bank rate was 4.5%. The Bank rate today is barely above 0%—0.1%—so now is the time to do that. If we are worried about the £27 billion cost of each 1% increase in interest rates, we should lock it up as quickly as we can so that we can sterilise it from our future decisions about spending and growth. That is key.

The Chancellor says that he aims to broadly balance the books by 2023. Given the error margin in our forecast, he ought to say 2025 and base balancing the books on growth. To that end, the area where I disagree with the Government’s strategy is on the level of income tax, national insurance contributions and taxation generally which, in my view, is likely to raise significantly less money than the Treasury spreadsheet tells them. The simple truth is that the increase in NICs will undoubtedly depress growth and employment and, as a result, depress the tax take.

Similarly, the freeze in the income tax personal allowance will have a big effect on the poorer families who we care about and who matter to us—that goes to the point about levelling up that the hon. Member for Eltham made. It will have a big effect on consumption and, as a result, a big effect on growth. There is a real issue there. My view, like that of Nigel Lawson, who I think is one of the Chancellor’s heroes, is that cutting tax rates leads to more growth, more investment, more employment and, as a result, more tax take. That is, essentially, the normal Conservative strategy.

The other element of the Budget strategy is based on higher wages—not just raising the living wage, but the whole wage bill—with which we all agree, but that can be done only if we increase productivity. Again, we come back to a tax issue. Notwithstanding the arguments about the bank sector, we are talking about increasing corporation tax. Of course there are a lot of offsets for investment, but I am afraid that when investors are deciding which country to invest in, they take the headline rate of corporation tax into account.

We may be the best in the G7, but when someone is looking at whether to invest in Great Britain or the United Kingdom, they are not looking at the G7 but at Ireland or the Netherlands as comparators. Those places have significantly lower corporation tax rates than we do, which is important because, as well as trade, investment is the key to productivity. As a result, we should look hard at reducing that tax. I hold no brief for the individual capitalists involved; it is simply a question of where the money will go and whether we need it here, and the answer is yes.

It is really very simple. The route to maintaining a growth rate higher than 1.3%, which is in the Red Book, for a few years is lower taxes and more investment and, as a result, more employment. The level of 1.3% applies because of demographic factors, which we cannot change. We cannot change the demographics that we face. We can do very little—we can attract research, investment and talent—but we will not materially change them. Tax cuts, however, will increase investment and productivity rates. That is the key to a successful strategy.

0.7% Official Development Assistance Target

David Davis Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of the 0.7% official development assistance target.

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Mr Speaker, yesterday you made one of the strongest statements that I have heard from the Chair in more than 30 years, and you made it clear that the House should receive from the Government a meaningful vote. Naturally, in accordance with what you have said, we do not seek to divide the House on the motion today. We seek the meaningful vote that will enable the House to decide whether the Government can break our promise and arguably our law.

I see that my right hon. and hon. Friends and I are described as rebels. It is the Government who are rebelling against their clear and indisputable commitments. Who are these so-called rebels? A short perusal of yesterday’s Order Paper shows that we have among our number eight Select Committee Chairs, four distinguished former Select Committee Chairs, 16 former Ministers, 12 Privy Counsellors and four knights of the realm. From the new intake, my hon. Friends the Members for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt), for Bury South (Christian Wakeford), for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) and for Keighley (Robbie Moore), along with others who have recently arrived in this House, have shown great courage and determination in the face of the possibility of being tarred and feathered by the Government Whips Office.

We are also supported by every former Prime Minister and, I believe, by every former leader of all four major political parties. Over the weekend, the Archbishop of Canterbury said:

“The foreign aid cut is indefensible…Let us…pray”

that it is reversed

“and that our unconscionable broken promise to the world’s poorest people is put right.”

All four distinguished current or former Chairs of the Public Accounts Committee who are in the House support our cause. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) describes himself as the last Thatcherite on the Government Benches.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

Cheek!

[Mr Mitchell]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) might possibly wish to disagree there. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough said:

“There is no public accounting justification for slashing budgets by 80% in this way. It is like telling the builder before he finishes your garden wall that you won’t pay at the end. Cancelling projects overseas is just a waste of taxpayers’ money when we should be providing long-term stability for schools, clinics and clean water projects.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I will be brief. The arguments for the moral case that we are arguing today should be clear to anybody who has listened to the discussions of the last few days, weeks and months. The Government’s arguments on financial grounds are clearly wrong. This is a rounding error in the national accounts. The Treasury cannot forecast the economy to within £4 billion each year, so how can it account on that basis for this judgment?

I heard that the reason is political; that it is a judgment that the working class of the northern red wall seats do not like foreign aid. Well, I have defended a blue brick in that red wall for 33 years, and I can tell the House that that is wrong. The simple truth is that if we said to someone in one of those seats, “Do you want to spend money on the Ethiopian Spice Girls?” they would say that no, they would rather spend it on a local school or on cutting poverty in Barnsley or whatever it may be.

However, if we asked them the proper question—the real question—they would give us the real, British, generous answer. If we said, “Do you want to act to prevent children dying from dirty water?”, 76% would say yes. If we said the same about starvation, about the same number would say yes. If we said, “Do you want to act to prevent an emergency in a crisis?”, 92% would say yes, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) mentioned. Some 92% of all British citizens would want their money spent on that. What would they think of the 60% cut in the contribution to Yemen, the most difficult emergency in the world today? Or South Sudan? Or the Democratic Republic of Congo? Or Syria? These decisions have consequences, and they are just as smart as we are; they will see those consequences, too.

In the Sahel, 270,000 people a year get life-saving medical support, and that is going to be cancelled this year. That is interesting, because we are also sending 200 British soldiers to the Sahel to help suppress terrorism, and what will this do for that? This will be a recruiting sergeant for terrorism in the Sahel. This is actually acting against our interests and against our soldiers’ interests, and we should remember that when we are doing our accounting sums. Bear in mind that this will not just be poverty; it will be poverty that will be blamed on the west by the people acting against us in the Sahel.

The Minister claimed that the actions he has outlined are in our national interest. While in the long run doing the morally right thing is what is always in our national interest, this is not the right thing. It is the morally wrong decision for the world, and it is the practically wrong decision for our country.

Finance Bill

David Davis Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 24th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Abena Oppong-Asare]

I rise to speak to new clauses 2 and 24, tabled by the Leader of the Opposition, other hon. and right hon. Friends and myself.

New clause 2 draws attention to the announcement made by the Chancellor in 2019, when he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, on implementing a non-resident stamp duty surcharge at 3%. As hon. Members will have noted, the Finance Bill introduces a non-resident surcharge at 2% rather than 3%. In Committee, I asked the Minister why the Government had watered down that commitment; I do not believe I have received an answer. We believe that this means that the Government will lose out on about £52 million a year in revenue, which they said they would have spent on tackling homelessness and rough sleeping. Perhaps the Minister could use his closing speech to clear up any confusion. Why have the Government moved from a 3% to 2% non-resident surcharge, and what assessment has been made of the impact on tax revenues and the housing market?

I turn to new clause 24. In Committee of the whole House, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (James Murray) asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to explain whether the Government will meet their own deadline of introducing legislation to set up a register of overseas entities by 2021. The Minister’s response was that

“the Government plan to introduce the Bill in due course.”—[Official Report, 20 April 2021; Vol. 692, c. 914.]

Since that debate in Committee of the whole House, we have had the Queen’s Speech—the Government’s opportunity to lay out their legislative plans for the year ahead. I listened carefully to that speech and read the accompanying notes, but I heard no mention of the registration of overseas entities Bill.

It is now more than five years since David Cameron first announced proposals to introduce a beneficial ownership register for UK property owned by overseas companies and legal entities. Since then, we have had more announcements, consultations and draft Bills, but still no indication from the Government of when they intend to introduce this vital piece of legislation. The failure to include it in this year’s Queen’s Speech means that it is now beyond doubt that the Government will miss their 2021 deadline.

It is worth considering what that means more broadly. First, let us look at the scale of the problem. In 2014, the National Crime Agency received around 14,000 reports of transactions that were believed to involve illicit activity. By 2020, that had risen to over 62,000 reports. Of course, the true scale of the problem is extremely hard to quantify, given the lengths that individuals and organisations go to hide their illegal activities.

In 2019, Transparency International UK said:

“The London property market is highly vulnerable to corrupt wealth flowing into it.”

Its analysis found that since 2008, £100 billion of properties have been bought in London alone by overseas companies in secrecy jurisdictions and high-risk corruption countries—both indicators for illicit wealth. In 2017, it identified that 160 properties worth over £4 billion were purchased by high-corruption risk individuals. The tidal wave of dirty money is poisoning the housing market for ordinary people. There is growing evidence that the purchase of UK property to launder illicit finance from abroad has a direct impact on housing prices. As Transparency International UK—among others—has shown, attempts to clamp down on corruption around the world have led to a rise in property prices here as illicit finance flows into the UK market to avoid detection in its home country.

This is not just about luxury properties. There is a ripple effect, where activity at the top causes a rise in prices throughout the market. As demand outstrips supply in high-value areas, buyers look out to more affordable places. This leads to a cycle of rising housing prices—my hon. Friends know this story very well. Illicit finance also distorts the supply of housing as developers increasingly focus on luxury property targeted at international investors, who have no intention of living in the properties. So dirty money, from crime and corruption abroad, is pricing people out of their local communities in cities across the country.

This has a direct effect on the housing crisis. The Government know this, of course. They have committed to act and set up a register of beneficial ownership for UK property owned by overseas entities. This would let the disinfectant of sunlight into the murky world of high-end property bought by shell companies and overseas bodies. As the Government stated:

“It is intended to act as a deterrent to those who would seek to hide and launder the proceeds of bribery, corruption and organised crime in land in the UK.”

The fact the Government are aware of the problem but are still failing to act is inexplicable.

Our new clause 24 requires the Government to review how the Registration of Overseas Entities Bill could work alongside the non-resident surcharge to mitigate the housing crisis. But what we really need is for the Government to introduce this Bill as soon as possible and begin the process of implementing this important legislation. I will end by paying tribute to the Members from across the House who have campaigned on this issue relentlessly. I know they will share our disappointment that the Government are still not taking the action that we all agree is needed. I urge the Government to correct this wrong and get on with doing what they have committed to do.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I rise to speak to amendments 32 to 34 and new clause 31 tabled in my name and those of other right hon. and hon. Members. The Government’s historic IR35 policy has dated from long before this Minister was in his office. Far from rationalising the collection of tax from contractors, it has created and has now unwittingly extended a wild west of umbrella companies that operate without regulation and where malpractice is rife. This malpractice has seen contractors forced to operate through non-compliant umbrella companies that maximise their profits by using sleight-of-hand tactics. This includes: misrepresenting tax thresholds; skimming off pension contributions and other payments such as the apprenticeship levy; forcing contractors to opt out of their rights as agency workers; and withholding billions in holiday pay that is legally due.

The Government policy to date has triggered the increased proliferation of mini umbrella companies. BBC Radio 4’s “File on 4” found that 48,000 of these companies had been created in the past five years. The fact that policies in this area are flawed is proven beyond doubt by the fact that HMRC is having to de-register 22,000 of these umbrella companies. The frauds involved here cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds every year in lost tax, but as well as that, the boom of these non-compliant companies means that legitimate umbrella firms are being run out of business by them. The illegitimate umbrella companies making most of their profits through appropriating funds through tax scams, withholding holiday pay, skimming from the apprenticeship levy and the like are driving those honest firms out of business. There exist comparison websites for contractors to see which umbrella company they can do best with, and of course the ones that look best to them are the ones that make them money through illegitimate mechanisms.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that some well overdue changes to Companies House’s approach would be very welcome, and that the Government are taking an awful long time to get round to it?

[Mr Davis]

I have a lot of sympathy with what the hon. Lady says. There are many ways to attack the issue; I will mention one or two, including my proposals to build in some changes to that effect. There are many ways to make sure that these scams cannot happen, but we need to undertake some of them. To pick an example that I was not going to cite, we understand that something like 40,000 Filipino employees have been taken on as cheap frontmen for these companies as directors. Those sorts of things do not serve our economy or the contractors well.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Is there not also a responsibility on the Government as a client to insert in the contracts with their main contractors a clause stating that if such practices are found within their supply chain, they will not be considered for future contracts? The Government could do that quite rapidly, quite apart from HMRC catching up with what is going on.

[Mr Davis]

The right hon. Gentleman is right. The first phase of IR35 was about contractors for Government, so the whole wild west that I have described was actually created for public services.

To come back to my point about illegitimate contractors forcing the legitimate ones out of business, it is quite understandable that ordinary contractors will be attracted to a scheme that seems to offer them the best terms, yet they will be unaware that in doing so they risk unwittingly entering unintentional tax avoidance schemes. That is one of the problems that troubles me most.

These contractors, remember, are not fat cats, big bankers or city slickers. They are hard-working, decent people such as locum nurses and supply teachers—contractors whose work is vital. To take up the right hon. Gentleman’s point, the FT reported that NHS locum workers returning during the height of the pandemic were targeted by firms mis-selling these schemes. Ordinary and comparatively low-paid workers do not have the advantage of expensive tax advisers. They cannot be expected to navigate the minefield of extremely complex tax law if we allow these predators to play unfettered within it.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Does not the situation get even worse once these tax avoidance schemes have been identified and shown to be illegal? It is very often the people who were conned into operating with umbrella companies who are penalised, while the umbrella companies walk away with no investigation and there is no means of holding them to account.

[Mr Davis]

That is entirely right. Indeed, one of the flaws that HMRC exhibits is that although it very often has real-time information on the issues, it acts only much later. That doubles or quadruples the problem for the ordinary person who is effectively a victim of these schemes, who suddenly finds years later that they have vast sums to meet—and, indeed, the shame of being held up as a tax avoider, if not evader.

The Government should take action to clean up this wild west, for example by providing guidance and templates for the preferred model of working. This is not so difficult. Why cannot we lay out a template for ordinary contractors and legitimate umbrella companies that says, “This is how you should do it, and this is what we expect”? Failing that, my amendments give the Government and Parliament three clear and simple options.

Ideally, the Government will take note and enact new clause 31. It would review—it does not require law to do this—the whole operation of umbrella companies and off-payroll working. For me, that is the de minimis position. My preferred option is that the Government should introduce regulation into this problematic sector to clear up some of the most egregious aspects, including mis-selling and malpractice. They should require—this deals with the Companies Act point to some extent, but it is the simplest way of doing it—umbrella companies to meet five strict requirements: they should pay all holiday pay due; maintain all employment rights; ban kickbacks to third parties; end the skimming off of excess profits through sleight-of-hand tactics; and, finally, ensure that the worker himself has no material interest in the umbrella company. That would not deal with the propriety issues of the Companies Act, but it would deal with the main, most socially damaging aspects of the wild west we have now.

Better Jobs and a Fair Deal at Work

David Davis Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

When I saw that I was number 7a on the call list, I thought perhaps I was the first reserve for my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown); I did not realise that I had promotion rights too, so thank you for that, Madam Deputy Speaker.

One of the effects of the shock of the pandemic, along with other geopolitical changes, is that after 50 years of global trade liberalisation, the world is facing a long period of aggressive mercantilism, and we have to deal with that. The Government are to be congratulated on their ambitious agenda, including record increases in research spending, which has not been mentioned today, the employment drive, the freeport programme, the campaign for ambitious free trade agreements and the bold infrastructure plans. On the non-economic front, I also welcome the excellent proposals to guarantee free speech on campuses. However, I have serious concerns about several aspects of the Queen’s Speech.

[Mr Mitchell]

Do those concerns include the issue of the 0.7%, on which my right hon. Friend and I have not always agreed in the past?

[Mr Davis]

My right hon. Friend is quite right: I opposed the increase to 0.7% because I thought that it was too fast and that it would encourage inefficiency, but, once you are at 0.7%, reducing it will lead to the loss of lives, so I absolutely agree with him on that.

The most important of the domestic issues that concerns me is the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. The Bill reverses the reforms that we put in place in 2017 after the scandal of the treatment of Paul Gambaccini, who was on police bail for well over a year before not being charged. Even now, after that reform, far too many suspects are still bailed for years on end. I currently have a case in front of me where an individual has spent five and a half years on bail without an end in sight. This is crippling to an individual’s life—it is like a loose house arrest—and the National Crime Agency shows zero understanding of the cruel damage that is being done to a person’s life by its ridiculously slow investigation. The Bill, as it stands, will make those problems worse by relaxing the current restrictions on police bail. I give notice to the Government that I will aim to amend the Bill.

The Bill also contains a proposal for the mass collection of data under the auspices of preventing and reducing serious violence. Here we have the Government countenancing pre-crime, and to deal with pre-crime, they have to have someone’s medical data, health data and education data—there is no restriction on it. It imposes a duty on an array of authorities, including health providers, to share data with the police. We know from history, including from when people have their phone confiscated, that once the police have this data, getting them to delete it and give it back is the devil’s own job. Indeed, it is near impossible; anybody who has tried it knows that. We are talking here about massively enhancing the powers of the state or an agent of the state to collect as much data on as many individuals as they see fit. I want to see that restricted.

I am concerned about the threat to the right of protest, which this country has enshrined in our national fabric for over 800 years—the right to peaceful demonstration. The Home Secretary promised me from the Dispatch Box that we will be incredibly careful to protect that fundamental right. However, I am afraid that the wording of the Bill, as it stands, simply does not do that. It needs reform and I will endeavour to ensure that it is put right.

Finally, my name, along with that of the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), is on the amendment to the Queen’s Speech that calls on the Government to obey the law in areas where the courts have ruled that they are acting illegally. There are a number of cases where the Government have not done what they have been told to by the courts three or four years ago. Many of these cases affect the rights of children. Rule of law is not a theoretical constitutional concept. It affects lives and living standards of bereaved adults and deprived children.

We should, as a Conservative party and a Conservative Government, stand up for the rule of law, even when it is inconvenient and when the Treasury finds it unpleasant because it has to pay out a few hundred million pounds. This Conservative Government should limit the power of the state rather than enlarge it, celebrate freedom rather than curtail it, and operate under the law rather than under ministerial fiat. I hope that this Parliament and all the parties will hold the Government to that. Otherwise, we will risk betraying the ideals of the country that we live in.

Spending Review 2020 and OBR Forecast

David Davis Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for welcoming the £900 million in Barnett funding for Northern Ireland. He will be pleased to know that we have had productive conversations about fixing some technical baseline issues for the budgeting as well, which I know will be welcomed by the Executive.

With regard to pay, we are protecting those who earn less than the UK median salary. Whichever part of the public sector they work in, if someone earns less than £24,000, they will receive the £250. It is the right approach to provide that support to those with lower-than-average earnings.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I lend my support to everything said by the Father of the House. Covid-19 means that the Chancellor’s strategy is broken into three phases: first, as we are doing now, spending everything necessary to stop the economy collapsing, which he is doing successfully; secondly, essentially from next spring, doing everything possible to maximise growth and recovery in the economy; and thirdly, after that, when things get on to an even keel, returning to conventional economics. Does he agree that the enormous deficit inevitably created in the first and second phases of the strategy needs to be financed in a similar way to major incidents such as wars, with very long-term bonds, not destructive short-term taxes?

[Rishi Sunak]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his comments. I would distinguish between two things. The borrowing that we are carrying out this year, which is, as he knows, at a peacetime high, is financed through the gilt markets. He will be pleased to know that we push as much as we can to the long end of the curve relative to our international peers; the average maturity of our debt stock is about 14 or 15 years, which is almost double the average of the G7. He is right that we should do that. I would differentiate that from an ongoing structural deficit, which is with us for many years. As he said, our first priority coming out of this will be to get growth going again.

Covid-19: Disparate Impact

David Davis Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank the hon. Lady for her questions. She is absolutely right to mention older people, who are the most disproportionately impacted group. Someone who is over 70 or 80 is 80 times more likely to have the disease, whereas someone from an ethnic minority background is between 1.2 and 1.8 times more likely to have it. We must keep this in perspective, and we are looking at everybody who is impacted and vulnerable in whatever way.

The hon. Lady asks about money we are spending on adult health and social care. We are spending an unprecedented amount in the pandemic. We have targeted as much money as we possibly can to all the groups we believe need it. It may not be exactly what people asked for, but we are looking at decisions in the round to ensure that we are covering all groups.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con) [V]]

I congratulate the Minister on a comprehensive report. She has clearly done a great job of identifying the numerous factors that exacerbate the problem and acting rapidly on them. However, of the first 26 doctors in the national health service to die of covid-19, 25 were from minority ethnic backgrounds. Those doctors will have been comparatively well paid, so poverty cannot be the full explanation.

Vitamin D deficiency is prevalent across virtually all the groups who suffer disproportionately from covid-19, from the elderly to the obese, diabetics and ethnic minority communities. Today’s review considers only two studies on vitamin D and does not consider a huge range of new evidence that has come out in the last couple of months that shows powerful links. Will the Minister commit as her colleagues at the Department of Health and Social Care have done and look at the latest evidence on this matter?

[Kemi Badenoch]

It was the number of ethnic minority doctors who died right at the beginning of the pandemic that alerted us to this issue. We did look across a range of issues to see why that was the case. I remind my right hon. Friend about occupational exposure, which we believe is the biggest cause, and those doctors were the most exposed, probably doing the shifts right before we knew what was going on and catching the virus. We looked at vitamin D. The SAGE report from 23 September shows that it looked at vitamin D studies to see if it had had an effect and did not find any relationship.

We have found that there is a small residual risk, and I am looking at the interaction between comorbidities and occupational exposure, which we think provides the explanation. We had a second literature review and stakeholder engagement report where many people talked about their experiences of systemic racism—I asked the Race Disparity Unit specifically to look at that—but the findings were that systemic racism did not explain that. For example, when we take into account comorbidities, Bangladeshi women and white women have the same rates of mortality. Systemic racism also does not explain the differences between groups, such as black Africans and black Caribbeans. If it was systemic racism, we would expect the figures to match and they do not.

There is still quite a lot going on as we look at the socioeconomic and geographical factors, occupational exposure, population density, household composition and pre-existing health conditions. We will continue to do this work. Remember that this is the first report, not the last, and the review will be ongoing.

Finance Bill

David Davis Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st July 2020 Commons Chamber

It is for those reasons that we believe that the yardstick by which the Bill should be judged, and the focus of next week’s statement, must be jobs. Having supported the economy this far, we cannot stop now. It is moments like this for which Governments exist. We need not only the capital spending but the investment in people to help the country through it. That is what the country is looking for now from its Government, and that is why we tabled the new clause.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I rise to speak to the amendments and new clauses tabled in my name and the names of other Members of this House. They include new clause 31 and the consequential amendments relating to the loan charge legislation, and amendment 20 and the consequential amendments relating to the application of the so-called IR35 regulations, which deal with off-payroll taxation arrangements.

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden). I am even older than him: I can remember discussions across the table in my household about the means test when I was too young to understand it.

When I first spoke in this House about the loan charge arrangements, I quoted the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court who once said that the power to tax is the power to destroy. That description could be used of both the policies that I wish to talk about today. The loan charge destroys lives. To date, at least seven people have taken their own lives as a result of this unfair and retrospective policy—and I will use that word “retrospective” over and over again, even though HMRC fails to recognise it. For many ordinary, decent people, including locum nurses, teachers and contractors—ordinary folk, not big City bankers—who were misled by their employers in many cases, the loan charge has robbed them of their peace of mind, their self-respect and, in some cases, their lives. Some 39% of them have considered suicide, 49% could lose their homes and 71% could face bankruptcy.

New clause 31 would simply stop the Government pursuing any employees who were innocent parties who did not know that what they were doing was illegal and who believed they were acting correctly and in good faith. Yesterday, when I spoke on immigration, I had to deal with a briefing from the Government supposedly rebutting the lines in my proposed amendment, and I have the same again today. A disgraceful and frankly wrong briefing has been handed out by the Government describing what they thought we were saying. I will not go into details, but I hope that others will have time to do so. I will simply say that HMRC seems to have forgotten that in English law you are innocent until proven guilty. It is about time we followed that principle with respect to the loan charge.

[Sir Edward Davey]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, I am the second name on new clause 31, and he will note from the amendment paper that 54 hon. and right hon. Members have signed it. That is more than any other amendment before the House today, and the only one that comes close to it is another amendment on the loan charge. Does he not think that that is a signal that the House wants to divide on new clause 31, and that whatever the Front Benchers think, the Back Benchers who have signed new clause 31 want a vote?

[Mr Davis]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point, but he should make it to the Speaker rather than me, as he well knows. He has been a Member nearly as long as I have.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Forgive me; I might have missed the reason why are we are not going to be able to divide on new clause 31, but I would be grateful if you could explain it to me. I have today become the longest serving Member for Reigate since the Great Reform Act, so I might have missed one or two things that are going on, but I would be obliged if you could tell me why we are not going to have the opportunity to divide on new clause 31.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the hon. Member for his point of order, but I think we have to wait until the end of the debate before these decisions are made.

[Mr Davis]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I shall move on to the other issue that I want to discuss today.

Amendment 20 would delay the imposition of the IR35 rules from 2021 until April 2023. It is very unlikely that the economic crisis we are facing will be over by April 2021, and attempting to implement IR35 will cost jobs and do serious economic damage. A few months ago, the powerful Cross-Bench House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee wrote a report on IR35, and much of what I am going to say involves quotations from that report. I will start with this:

“It is right that everyone should pay their fair share of tax. But the evidence that we heard over the course of our inquiry suggests that the IR35 rules—the government’s framework to tackle tax avoidance by those in ‘disguised employment’—have never worked satisfactorily, throughout the whole of their 20-year history. We therefore conclude that this framework is flawed.”

It is right not to impose unnecessary burdens on business at a time like this. I agree with a great deal of what the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East had to say about the importance of preserving—and, indeed, not destroying—employment in the current circumstances. This goes right to the issue of IR 35. The report states that

“the government made this decision after considering the issue too narrowly, in terms of its tax take. It has severely underestimated the costs to business of implementing the changes…And it did not analyse sufficiently the unintended behavioural consequences of the proposed reforms or their wider potential impact on the labour market, and on the gig economy in particular.”

Many contractors in the coming years will be left in an “undesirable halfway house”. They do not enjoy the rights that come with employment, yet they are considered employees for tax purposes. In short, IR35 will create “zero-rights employees”. I am saying this directly to Labour Members, because the idea that a Government action can create a class of employee with zero rights is an issue close to their hearts. Such employees have no rights under employment law but under tax law they are employees.

The Lords Committee called on the Government to commission an independent review to devise a better implementation of the scheme. I think that is exactly right, which is why I want to see another two years before we implement whatever the decision is. We need that time to understand precisely what the effect of our new policy will be.

It would be a disaster if, in the context of the economic crisis and the growing gig economy, the Government accidentally created that class of zero-rights employees with no holidays, no sick pay, no pension, no redundancy —no employment rights whatsoever. We must stop that happening either accidentally or deliberately, and on that basis I ask the House to support amendment 20.

[Alison Thewliss]

I am glad to follow the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), who set out well the impact that the loan charge has had on many people’s mental health and wellbeing. Many of them will be watching the House tonight.

The implementation of the loan charge has been a disgrace. Our new clause 1 would force the Treasury to come clean on its unfairness and would require a review of the impact of the scheme. That reflects the limitations of Finance Bill amendments, but given the freedom of information revelations released yesterday by the all-party parliamentary group on the loan charge, suggesting that there was too cosy a relationship between Government officials and the staff working on the independent Morse review, looking again at this whole shambles seems appropriate.

It remains a scandal that tax professionals advise their clients to use such loopholes. It is important that people pay their fair share for the public services we all use, and the UK Government must pursue the organisations and individuals who facilitated these loans. An independent review should be carried out of the advice given. As I said in Committee, those who trade in the business of loopholes are surely looking for the next thing to come along, so coming down on those scheme promoters now would prevent future loss to the Treasury.

There is widespread concern that HMRC has failed to work constructively with those seeking a loan charge repayment plan, with concerns that some may face bankruptcy and homelessness. I thought the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden laid that out quite well. He mentioned the seven people who sadly took their own lives.

We continue to call on the UK Government to review the implementation of this policy, and our new clause 1 would force them to publish one within six months, including on the fairness with which HMRC has implemented the policy and whether it has provided reasonable flexibility on repayment plans, with the aim of avoiding business failures and individual bankruptcies.

My hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) tabled early-day motion 296 to welcome the publication of Sir Amyas Morse’s loan charge review and the fact that, through this Bill, the UK Government would amend relevant legislation such that loans made before 2010 would no longer be subject to the loan charge. The motion also welcomes the fact that the self-assessment deadline has been delayed until 30 September 2020.

Initial analysis suggests that more than 30,000 individuals will benefit from those and related measures, but a pause in the policy is still necessary to assure MPs that HMRC is working constructively with those who are seeking a reasonable repayment plan—one that recoups the unpaid tax while avoiding the unacceptable risks that people face. If HMRC cannot deliver on that, an independent arbitration scheme should be used.

We on the SNP Benches support the cross-party amendment 55 and new clause 31, which, as the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) pointed out, has 54 names to it and would provide that a prior settlement with HMRC could be unwound unless the worker failed to account for a pre-2016-17 tax liability in his or her return deliberately, despite knowing that the loan should have been included as income.

It is disappointing to hear that there may be no vote on new clause 31, given how many signatories there are to it and the lobbying we have all had. People watching this debate at home will not understand why. Since we are trading FDR quotes, we should note that he said: “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”

The Tories have failed to address our concerns about IR35, which is why we tabled amendment 16 to scrap it. Instead of pressing ahead with the discredited IR35 in the Bill, the Government should take the advice of the House of Lords—that is not something I often say, but they should; they should pause this policy and go back to the drawing board. It seems evident that the UK Government have not learned from their previous experience in the public sector and are ploughing on regardless.

On a process issue, we maintain that it was not acceptable that the Government introduced all this through a deeply contentious 45-minute money resolution debate instead of going through the full scrutiny of the Budget process. We have been against IR35 since the start, and these proposals would introduce a new group of zero-hours employees, paying full taxes without the associated employment rights—something that should give us all pause for thought. People working in our constituencies in a huge range of jobs should be entitled to those employment rights.

Under the present economic circumstances, it is wrong to place new and unfair taxes on firms. Contractors are particularly liable to be struggling at this point—not least those who are part of the 3 million people excluded from the UK Government’s support schemes. I pay tribute to ExcludedUK and all those who have sought to highlight this issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Hammond]

I am not very good at holding my breath, so I certainly shall not try it now—but probably people do not want me to expend much more breath in my remarks tonight.

I must say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden that my problem is with part of what his new clause does. I absolutely accept the premise, as everybody in this House must, that people are innocent until proven guilty. However, and I do not know whether this has really been addressed so far, his new paragraph 1(c)(1A)(c) says that condition 1 is that

“P knew that the loan or quasi loan should have been accounted for as income in the relevant year.”

There is a fundamental problem with that, in that anyone could say they did not know that, and how do we prove it? The clear problem is that, much as I support the intent of what he is trying to do, the effect of what he seeks would be to create a precedent that seems to me to take away the basis of the UK tax system, because I might say to someone, “We both know that we should not be paying tax on this and therefore we can proceed on that premise.” The precedent that that sets is a major problem for gathering tax.

[Mr David Davis]

If my hon. Friend thinks that this is the precedent, he should go back to the Finance Act 2008, which gives HMRC a 20-year assessment period in which it can assess whether the taxpayer participated in a transaction knowing that it was part of an arrangement attempting to bring about loss of tax. That is precisely what it says.

[Sir Edward Davey]

It is on the statute book.

[Mr Davis]

Yes, it is on the statute book. The precedent is there.

[Stephen Hammond]

The precedent that I am looking at is very clear that there seems to be an issue with the whole tax system.

Finance Bill (Ways and Means)

David Davis Excerpts

Ways and Means resolution & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 19th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

In the light of the impact that coronavirus is having across all sectors of the economy, the Government have rightly committed, in the motion, to postponing the planned reforms to IR35, but only until next April. The effects of the pandemic are going to be felt for considerably longer than one year. On this basis, in April next year self-employed contractors will be hit with unnecessary costs, confusion and uncertainty, just as many of them are getting back on their feet after the coronavirus has wreaked havoc across the economy. It is the self-employed and small businesses that make up the beating heart of our economy, and they will power the recovery of our economy out of this crisis.

The IR35 rules, as the Minister said, have long applied to the public sector. This is about applying them across the private sector. In that light, they were studied by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee in a report referred to by the shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury. The report stated that the rules

“have never worked satisfactorily, throughout the whole of their 20-year history. We therefore conclude that this framework is flawed.”

The report found a system riddled with unfairness and unintended consequences and called for a wide-scale independent review—not just a few research reports, Financial Secretary—focused on how the reforms would affect the wider labour market and the costs that would be forced on businesses. The Lords Committee said that IR35 had the effect of reducing contractors to

“an undesirable ‘halfway house’: they do not enjoy the rights that come with employment, yet they are considerably employees for tax purposes. In short, they are ‘zero-rights employees’”.

That is, zero-rights employees effectively created by the state.

The Lords recommended that the Government adopt the Taylor review proposals, which we as a Government promised to do years ago, as they offer the best long-term alternative solution to the off-payroll rules and provide an opportunity to consider tax, rights and risk together, as they should be. Despite what the Financial Secretary said, however, the Treasury has neither the time nor the capacity for a wholesale review right now. Therefore, the only sensible course of action is to pause these reforms and take the time to properly review the impact they will have on the self-employed. So, I will vote for this motion today, if we have the opportunity, but only in the expectation that will be back here in nine months’ time to do all this again.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call Alison Thewliss, who is asked to speak for no more than five minutes.

Covid-19

David Davis Excerpts

Monday 11th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con) [V]]

It is always a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). May I commend in the strongest possible terms the speech that has just been made by the Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), who has given the best analysis I have heard today of the mistakes we have made? While I am at it, I also commend the Chairman of the Health and Social Care Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), who made a similarly incisive speech earlier.

We should be honest: most of the western nations have handled this crisis badly. They have made mistakes, mostly in being late to control the virus—not all of them; some are different. For example, Greece, perhaps surprisingly, has controlled it much better than many of the others. It has about 15 deaths per million of the population versus us at about 477 at the moment. Those mistakes have cost thousands, if not tens of thousands of lives. A primary mistake, as pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells, was the failure to test, track, trace and contain from the very beginning.

I would like to speak, in the brief time I have, about what we did once the disease took hold, because I think there are also potential mistakes there. The Government adopted a slogan—“protect the NHS, save lives”—which we all, including myself, took to enthusiastically and enthusiastically signed up to. My question for the Minister when she winds up is: did the strategy we pursued in good faith to protect the national health service exacerbate, in some respects, the death rate?

In addition to the lockdown, we did four things to protect the NHS and to protect it from being overwhelmed by the pressure on it. First off, we asked people with the illness to self-isolate at home and come to hospital only when the symptoms got really bad. When they did exactly this—exactly the same thing—in New York City, some of the doctors noticed that the patients were arriving in emergency too late, frankly, to be rescued. Their disease had advanced too fast, although they could have been cured earlier. My first question is: did that strategy cost lives?

The second question is: we applied triage on the basis of the so-called frailty index so that people who got a poor score on the frailty index were simply put on palliative care, again partly to protect intensive care unit capacity, so did that strategy cost lives? Two Members—my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith)—have already raised the question of care homes. We discharged patients from hospital early, when some of them still had this disease, into care homes, with the consequences that we have heard in graphic terms already. Did that strategy cost lives?

The final thing we did to protect capacity was that we cancelled operations for other illnesses—cancer and other illnesses—and that almost undoubtedly cost lives. We can see it in the excess mortality rates. Indeed, Britain holds the highest place in Europe, equal with Spain I am afraid, for the highest excess mortality over this period, so the combined effect of these strategies has to be looked at very carefully indeed. Bear in mind that throughout this time our intensive care unit capacity was used only to 81%. That is normal for this time of year. The Nightingale hospitals stood almost empty, and now only 30% of ICU capacity is being taken up by covid-19 patients. Did we get this balance wrong? Did we, at the cost of lives, just give ourselves empty beds, rather than doing the best thing for the patients the NHS is there to look after? That is not the fault of the staff of the NHS; it is a question of whether the strategy was the wrong one to pursue once we were where we were.

I finish by coming back to the point made by the Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee. The best way to protect both the NHS and the lives of our citizens is the approach taken by other countries, and that is to use testing, tracking and tracing to isolate the illness as well as to bring it down. The Prime Minister talked about the R number; that is just an average. The R number in my constituency, a rural area, is lower than that for a care home. We must put all the resources—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. We have to leave it there, I am sorry. I remind everybody that the wind-ups are not tonight but at the conclusion of the debate tomorrow.

Coronavirus Bill

David Davis Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 23rd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I rise merely to refer to the issue of the timing and the length of the Bill. As Members will know, the Minister said in the previous debate that the Government were tabling a new clause that would allow the Bill to be on the statute book for two years but with an opportunity after six months to vote on whether the temporary measures in it should remain. I urge the Minister to look carefully at that new clause, because I think it is defective. New clause 19 states clearly:

“‘relevant temporary provision’” means any provision of this Act—

(a) which is not listed in section (2) (provisions not subject to expiry)”

I cannot find that section anywhere, so I do not think that the new clause works in law. I may be completely wrong—I may have missed something—and if so, I hope the Minister can enlighten me. I do not think there is any conspiracy here; it may just be that something has been missed.

Like the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), my anxiety from the start has been that two years is a long time to have such draconian measures on the statute book and that to have them on the statute book without a moment when the House, rather than Ministers, can decide to switch individual measures on or off is quite problematic. The Government have already used the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 to table statutory instruments to close pubs, restaurants, casino, spas, gyms and so on. That secondary legislation still has to go through the House under the 1984 Act, and the Commons and the Lords have to vote in favour of it within 28 days of it being tabled.

Likewise, if the Government had gone down the route of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, they would have needed to come back to Parliament every 30 days for each of the individual powers that they presented under that Act, and if the House chose not to allow those powers to remain, the Government would not be able to continue using them. In addition, the 2004 Act makes it clear that if Parliament is adjourned for more than four days, or even if it is prorogued, the Speaker and the monarch have to summon Parliament.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman may be coming to this, but there is one other element: putting this in primary legislation rather than secondary takes it out of the purview of the courts., so here we have one of the heaviest-duty Acts we have seen post war prevented from undergoing judicial review in the interests of citizens.

[Chris Bryant]

I agree, and I do not understand why the Government have gone in this direction. I have been told in several private meetings that it is because they believe that the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 can only be used when they do not know that something is coming down the line, but I think the definition of an “emergency” in section 19 of the 2004 Act would allow for every single thing that we are considering.

I tabled an amendment, and I must apologise to the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard), because it is entirely my fault that, by accident, his name ended up on my amendment. I am terribly sorry. If the Government Whips want to beat anybody up, they should beat me up. There is a serious point here, which is that if the Government are going to take draconian powers and give themselves the power to switch them on and off, that should come back to Parliament more frequently even than is allowed for in the Government’s amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

Personally, I would prefer the time period to be shorter. I would prefer Government Ministers not to be switching powers on and off, because that will lead to them being more queried by the nation at large. I prefer something more like a three-month period when they have these powers, with regular review by the House, but I am not going to die in a ditch. There are no ditches here. I laud the Government for the movement that they have made, but they may still need to move some way further. It may be that they need to amend their own amendment when it goes to the House of Lords.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I rise to speak specifically to amendment 6, in my name and those of others, and to the Government amendment.

The Secretary of State himself said that the Bill has an astonishing range of powers: from forced quarantine to cancelling elections; and from allowing single doctors to section people to reducing parliamentary oversight of intelligence gathering. That is just a taster, but there is much, much more. The Opposition Health spokesman described it as having a draconian impact on many basic freedoms. As the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has just said, many, if not all, of those powers are actually to be found in two pre-existing Acts. The Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984—the year 1984 is ironic—was designed for exactly the position we are in now: dealing with pandemics and epidemics. It was amended later, I think in 2008, to make it even more specific. The 1984 Act contains the vast majority of measures the Government need. As the hon. Gentleman said, it has been used already for the closure of pubs, restaurants and so on through secondary legislation.

The other Act is the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. As the hon. Gentleman said, the Government could have used that. The Government have argued, most recently last week at business questions, that this is the wrong sort of emergency—sort of like the wrong kind of snow—to fall under the remit of the Civil Contingencies Act. I have to tell the Government that they are plain wrong. I was here for the debates on the Civil Contingencies Act. I remember the arguments about what it would and would not apply to, and this is specifically the case. It is not just me. I am not a lawyer, but a number of public lawyers of my acquaintance think the Government are wrong. Most importantly—my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) alluded to this—we can call on an even greater authority. After business questions last week, I made a point of order to ask Mr Speaker if we could get the opinion of his counsel, Mr Daniel Greenberg. I will read the relevant paragraph to the House—it is only a couple of lines. He said:

“The 2004 Act (which I wrote), including the powers to make emergency provision under Part 2, is clearly capable of being applied to take measures in relation to coronavirus.”

The man who wrote the Act, the most authoritative source in this House, Mr Speaker’s Counsel, who is completely impartial, says that the Government are wrong, they could have used the Civil Contingencies Act.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

Further to my right hon. Friend’s point, when the pandemic influenza Bill was drafted—I spoke about it on Second Reading—it was agreed that if specific circumstances at the time meant the freestanding Bill, on which the Coronavirus Bill is based, was not able to be brought forward to the House, clauses could very easily be converted into regulations under part 2 of the Civil Contingencies Act. I remember those discussions very clearly from being in office at the time. My right hon. Friend has a point.

[Mr Davis]

I am glad to get my hon. Friend’s support. He has always been assiduous in these matters and he is right on that point. A reasonable person might say, “Well, the logical argument surely is that if all the powers are identical to ones that exist already, what am I complaining about?” That is a reasonable question. The reason is that the Bill loses many of the checks and balances in the preceding emergency legislation.

I was not quite here for the 1984 legislation, but I was for the later ones, and those of us who put these things through the House fought hard and long to get the proper restrictions on Government power and the proper requirements to bring the legislation back to the House so that the House could approve it. The requirements are all in there, including it having to be cleared in seven days, us having to be recalled in five days if we are in recess and it having to be done through secondary legislation, which makes it capable of judicial review. I know that the Government do not like judicial review, but nowhere is it more important than when the Government exercise powers at the expense of citizens and the courts have to step in.

As the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, the six-monthly review that the Government have conceded is an important concession, but only if the House can amend or strike out. Anything else puts the House in the position of having to vote for a Bill that might be horrific in one part because the other three parts are essential—not likeable, not pleasant, not beneficial, but essential—for fighting this real threat.

Do not get me wrong: coronavirus is a real threat. I have made these arguments over the years when the House has considered similar legislation relating to terrorism. We are facing 10 to 100 times the death rate in one year than the death rate from terrorism in 10 years. Of course there is a real threat, but we will be put in a position of saying either we take the whole Bill—three-quarters vital and one quarter horrible—or we strike down something that is vital for protecting the public. That is the position that this House has been in over the 30 years—I am looking straight at the Leader of the Opposition now, because he and I were in the same Lobby time and again—when counter-terrorism regulations were put through on a rubber stamp precisely to protect the public. That is why Labour Members—if they will forgive me for giving them advice—should be pressing for an amendable approval at six months.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

We have already said that.

[Mr Davis]

Good, excellent. I am glad Opposition Members are learning. Having an amendable approval at six months makes things completely different, because it means the House can say, “We need to prune this. We need to reduce the size of this legislation.”

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend join me in calling on the Opposition also to adopt his amendment putting a sunset on this Bill of one year, not two?

[Mr Davis]

I will come to that in a moment.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I confirm that I said in the Second Reading wind-up—I confirm it again—that with the six-monthly votes at six, 12 and 18 months, which are already in the Government amendment, it would be helpful if the Government confirmed that those votable motions are also amendable. If they are amendable, it covers the point being made by the right hon. Gentleman that part of the legislation could then be switched off, but not all of it.

[Mr Davis]

I am now glad that I teased the hon. Gentleman, because it got something very useful on the record. If I may pick up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), it is why I tabled amendment 6, which recognises that the Government need these new powers and that parliamentary counsel have created a 320-page Bill in what sounds like a matter of days—in truth, they did it in an astonishingly short amount of time. They have done it at a time, however, when scientific evidence is, to put it mildly, fragile and likely to change. It has changed already in the past two weeks and is likely to change again as different tests, different vaccines and so on become available. Scientific evidence will change. Economic analysis of future outcomes is unbelievably uncertain and the societal effects are completely unknown. The Bill is guaranteed to have flaws, even with the best draftsmen in the world.

Amendment 6 therefore proposes that instead of the sunset being two years, which anyway is too long, it would be one year. We invite the Government to write a new Bill in nine months. If they think the Bill is perfect in nine months, put it back again and we will put it through again, but this time, with three months for the House to consider it. Remember, the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 took a whole year to go through both Houses, so with three months we would have proper democratic approval of the process.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. There will, of course, be many things that we learn, not just things we need to take out of the Bill but critical measures that we need to put in, so flexible legislation will be essential as we go through the emergency and learn things.

[Mr Davis]

I agree. I think the Government have done a pretty good job so far in the face of unbelievably difficult judgments and decisions. The Americans talk about drinking from a fire hose, which is how every Minister in this Government must feel because of the information and problems arriving on their desk every day.

The right hon. Gentleman is right that there will be changes in the science and in the economics. We will also know, frankly, what worked and what did not work in the previous nine months. If we then allow Parliament three months to scrutinise it, we will get good, solid law that is well supported on both sides of the House. We will have the sort of debate we have had today, which has been one of the better debates I have heard in years because both sides are committed to the same cause.

Finally, I recommend that colleagues read the report on this Bill published at lunchtime today by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of the House of Lords. That expert Committee considers our legislation and makes recommendations to the other House, and it is led by Lord Blencathra—those who have been here a long time may remember him as David Maclean, a tough, no-nonsense Security Minister at the Home Office. The Committee’s analysis is very clear and very straightforward, and it is not a libertarian fantasy. This is the conclusion, the last five lines of a five-page report:

“We anticipate that the House may well wish to press the Minister for an explanation about why the expiry date was not set at one year, thereby enabling the Government to exercise the powers needed in the immediate future while allowing a further bill to be introduced and subject to parliamentary scrutiny in slower time.”

A House of Lords Committee has arrived at exactly the same conclusion on this Bill as my amendment proposes.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I rise to speak, ostensibly, to amendments 2 to 4 and new clause 4, in my name and in the names of my hon. and right hon. Friends.

This is certainly no criticism of the Public Bill Office, which has worked extraordinarily well under huge pressure, nor of Ministers or, indeed, of officials working under tremendous pressure, but in the past hour and a half, as the Opposition spokesperson, I have been presented with 60 pages covering 61 Government amendments, and there are also 27 Opposition amendments. It is clear that I will not be able to cover every single item in my remarks, but I will try to refer—[Interruption.] Not this early in the evening, but who knows? I will try to cover the amendments thematically, referring to them when it would be helpful to the House.

Amendments 2 to 4 relate to the Bill’s emergency powers, which I will deal with first because the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) mentioned them and I want to make our position absolutely clear. New clause 4 would place a duty on the Government to support the basic means of living—food, water, clothing, income and housing—by employing all available statutory and prerogative powers.

Those two themes may be separate on the amendment paper, but they go hand in hand. The public health emergency and the restrictions on freedom must be accompanied by the strongest possible financial measures to ensure people still have the means to get by. I make it clear that I do not intend to divide the House on any of these amendments this evening, but I hope the Government will listen to my points.

The second world war emergency legislation required renewal every year, and the emergency coronavirus legislation in Ireland is subject to six-monthly renewal. We need safeguards. Often, the issue with this type of legislation, which is understandably done in haste, is not so much the intended consequences as the unintended consequences. That is important because there are vulnerable people across our society whose lives are going to change and who will need protection.

The Bill is subject to the European convention on human rights and does not exclude judicial review; there is no ouster clause in it. These are very important safeguards, and we need more. I welcome the Government’s concession on six-monthly review. I have listened carefully to a number of speeches, and I, like many others, would like it to have been even more frequent, but I accept that that is a reasonable compromise. There are some issues on which I would like reassurance from the Minister, though. First, it is clear that that is subject to a vote in both Houses, but the point made by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden is crucial: if it is simply an unamendable motion, the House is left with the choice of take it or leave it on everything. It could be that we think four fifths of the Bill is achieving its intended purpose and one fifth is not, but we would have to keep everything operational. If the Minister can confirm that the motion will be amendable, so we can make clear which bits we want to switch off, that would make a significant difference. Even if she gave that as a verbal assurance, it would be a step forward that might increase the degree of consensus across the House. I am not saying that everyone would be satisfied, but it would help us to move forward on the basis of consensus.

As I read the Government amendment, there is a carve-out in relation to devolved matters. Will the Minister make the position clear? If this House switched off powers, would they be automatically switched off for the devolved institutions; or if a power was switched on by the devolved institutions, would they then have the power to switch it off when they saw fit? In those parts of England without formal regional devolution, would it be it switched off automatically for those areas?

More widely, we have to ensure that the measures are temporary and that hard-won rights are not lost forever. In that respect, I want to focus on a number of groups in our society. First, amendments 68 to 71 deal with children with special educational needs and disabilities. I would like more reassurance from the Government. The Bill clearly removes disabled people’s rights to social care and support, and the duty to meet children’s educational requirements is changed to a reasonable endeavours duty. Many hon. and right hon. Members will have received expressions of concern about that. I thank the all-party group on this for raising it over the weekend.

Of course there is a need for flexibility. There will be a need to redeploy staff, and we all understand that, but reassurance is necessary. If we are removing the rights in the Children and Families Act 2014, for example, could consideration be given to the proposal in the amendments to change “reasonable endeavours” to “all practical steps” to ensure that our duty to some of our most vulnerable and youngest people is met?

There is also deep concern in the care sector, to which amendments 57 to 63 and new clause 29 apply. Most statutory duties relating to social care are being suspended under schedule 11. Local authorities will only have to provide services deemed necessary to prevent breaches of people’s human rights. That is clearly not the vision of social care that anyone in this House had in mind when the Care Act 2014 was passed. Of course, the Bill does not prevent local authorities from providing higher levels of care, but there is no longer any duty to carry out assessments or involve user input in care delivery, and local authorities will no longer have to assess the needs of carers. Those are sweeping changes that may reduce the level of support. Will the Government make it clear that they still expect care to be provided to the highest level possible in the circumstances, and that some sort of green light to cut back to the minimum is not provided for in the Bill? There are wider impacts. There are doctors, nurses, NHS staff and key workers who rely on social care for their family members. That new legal minimum level of support cannot become a default. We cannot have care packages automatically cut back to the minimum, and care levels should never be reduced too far or too fast.

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[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am always grateful for updates on the rolling news, so I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. This must be a rare example of a shadow Minister having called for something at the start of a debate and its having appeared before we have finished the debate. The Prime Minister is responsive on that if nothing else.

Even in this situation, proportionality and necessity still apply. It is clear that powers to detain potentially infectious people, including children in isolation facilities, will have to be implemented in a sensitive way. It is necessary to postpone elections, as set out in clause 57, but we still have to do all we can to maintain our democracy. I welcomed the Speaker’s statement setting out any moves we can make to vote in a different way and to operate in a far more digital and remote way than has been the case in the past.

Let me turn to new clause 4 and the issues it raises. Quite simply, if we are to ask people to sacrifice their freedom by staying at home and subjecting themselves to the measures set out by the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), their basic means of living must be catered for as well. There are some specific measures in the Bill, but I commend to the Minister amendments 74 to 78, on lowering the threshold for eligibility for statutory sick pay, and new clauses 32 to 34, on the extension of statutory sick pay to the self-employed and its uprating.

Before I move on to some of the other economic measures, particularly in the Government’s new amendment, let me refer to new clause 35. A number of right hon. and hon. Members from all parties have raised the issue of access to personal protective equipment. New clause 35 sets out the importance of that to the Opposition by defining it as part of the Minister’s role to make sure that that equipment is provided to everybody who needs it. That is the imperative that the Opposition put on that, and I hope the Government will do all they can to ensure that not one person in this country does not have the personal protective equipment that they need to keep us all safe.

[Mr David Davis]

To carry on in the context of rolling news referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker), one thing that we need to provide is good healthcare. The new NICE guidelines have just been published. The new guideline on critical care states that all patients with confirmed covid-19 must be assessed on the basis of “frailty” when healthcare professionals are making decisions about whether to admit a patient in need to critical care. That is being interpreted by a large number of mental health organisations as potentially excluding people with learning disability and so on. Will the hon. Gentleman make the point, on behalf of the Opposition, that we need equality of access to healthcare, as well as equality of access to all the things he has talked about?

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I certainly would not disagree with the right hon. Gentleman on equality of access to healthcare—he is absolutely right about that. I am getting worried about how many points I have agreed with him on in this debate, but I certainly agree with him on that.

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[Penny Mordaunt]

The hon. Gentleman might wish to say that some of the provisions cannot be applied. We do not wish to do that. The whole purpose of the Bill is that the bulk of the powers—apart from ones that are live at Royal Assent—are at the direction of either the devolved nations or the UK Government, to respond to a very dynamic situation. We do not wish to call on these powers. We only wish to use them in extreme cases. There are several that we think we will never use, particularly on food supply and so forth, but we need to allow that flexibility in what will be an incredibly unpredictable situation. The safeguards we have put in place will allow us to have that flexibility.

[Mr David Davis]

Let me give the Minister a straightforward, practical example. One element of the Bill allows the delay of the oversight of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. That is the case because we have 15 commissioners, only one of whom is younger than 70—that is the reasoning behind it. Were the Government to do something sensible, such as appoint 15 deputy commissioners, all under 70, this would no longer be required. But we have seen the Government before resisting attempts to improve accountability, and we know that that they may want to keep it in, whereas we may want to take it out. This is a precise example, so why can we not do that?

[Penny Mordaunt]

In his earlier remarks, my right hon. Friend was talking about things that we might wish to do in a year’s time and so forth. I do not think any of those things are being ruled out, but we think that extensive work has been done on this Bill, which is looking only at powers we know need to be enshrined in primary legislation, not at other issues, many of which have been raised by colleagues. I do not think those very practical options are removed from us by supporting this Bill today.

I also wish to emphasise another point, because in this Bill the Government are legislating for areas of devolved competence. I should highlight that the devolved Administrations could have legislated to create their own powers through their own primary legislation. However, they have agreed, given the urgency of the situation, that the UK Government should do it on their behalf. This Bill consequently engages the legislative consent motion process for all the devolved legislatures. The amendment in the name of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care requires the continued operation of certain key powers contained in the Bill to be reviewed every six months. Unless the UK Parliament consents to their continued operation, UK Ministers would be under an obligation to switch off the relevant powers by way of regulation.