David Gauke
Main Page: David Gauke (Independent - South West Hertfordshire)Department Debates - View all David Gauke's debates with the HM Treasury
(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Chris Leslie
I hear what my hon. Friend says, but I am reluctant to extend compulsion in that regard. We should certainly encourage people to take out travel insurance and inform them of what might befall them should they not do so—they could be stranded abroad or find themselves without adequate medical or health cover, for example. I do not know whether hon. Members always remember to fill in their E111 forms when they travel to other countries in the European Union, but our constituents often do not. They can find themselves in significant jeopardy. In those circumstances, travel insurance is very useful.
Many people are employed in the insurance industry, and if there are disincentives against our constituents’ taking out decent, high-quality policies there will be an impact on the insurance sector and the financial services sector more widely. The financial services sector, including insurance, is one of the great industries of our country. It has been subject to a lot of criticism, and we can talk about that on another occasion, but it is important that we should not take steps that harm the products that we consume in this country and sell worldwide.
I conclude by reiterating to the Treasury the importance of assessing the impact of the insurance premium tax increase on our constituents and the Revenue. We do not know from the Red Book how the £455 million annual yield precisely breaks down between pensioners, young people and beyond. My right hon. Friend the shadow Chief Secretary says that the impact on pensioners will be significant and I take his word for that. That issue is a great worry. These are serious matters and I hope that the Treasury and other hon. Members will hear some of the points shared across both sides of the Chamber today.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
We have had a wide-ranging debate on clause 4 and the amendments tabled to it; I am sure, Mr Evans, that you want to hear its conclusion. I was grateful to hear the contribution made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), who highlighted the freedom given to Government Back Benchers in Committee debates. I hope that my remarks will persuade my hon. Friends not to make full use of that latitude. We shall see.
The amendments are concerned with the general impact of the rise in the standard rate of insurance premium tax, particularly in respect of its impact on personal health insurance and the motor industry. I will come to those issues in detail in due course. Before I do so, I propose to set before the Committee the reasons behind the course that we have chosen.
Reducing the deficit and ensuring economic recovery are the most urgent issues facing the UK and they are the Government’s top priority. In the words of the shadow Business Secretary, it is no good wishing the deficit away; it is only by acting quickly to tackle the deficit and restore confidence in the public finances that we will achieve economic growth. That has meant that we have had to take many tough decisions to ensure that everybody makes a fair contribution. Part of that contribution will come from increases to the standard and higher rates of IPT.
Clause 4 legislates for that by increasing the standard rate of IPT from 5% to 6% and the higher rate of IPT from 17.5% to 20%, both with effect from 4 January 2011. IPT is, of course, a tax on insurers, not on their customers; 80% of all the insurance sold in the UK is exempt from IPT. All long-term insurance, such as life insurance and pensions, is exempt from IPT. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) mentioned Conservative party policy on long-term insurance. If he is a little patient, I am sure that my right hon. and hon. Friends at the Department of Health will say more on the subject. I just underline the point that IPT is not levied on long-term insurance.
Mr Gauke
What I can say is that given how IPT is currently structured and where it is levied, it does not apply to long-term insurance; the conclusion to be drawn about something that falls within the definition of long-term insurance is fairly logical.
However, in respect of the types of insurance that are affected, insurers have the right to respond to the tax as they see fit. They are not obliged to pass on IPT through higher premiums. [Interruption.] We recognise that many insurers will pass it on to their customers through higher premiums, but I will not be dragged into the detail of the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie).
The question was asked whether further regulation should be imposed on insurers, making them display prominently how much is being paid in IPT. Unlike VAT, IPT is a tax on insurance, so there is no obligation to pass it on or to recover it for businesses. We do not think that that would be appropriate. Insurers are, of course, perfectly free to display the IPT rate on documentation, and many do so. Requiring them to do so, however, would be burdensome and unnecessary.
Mr Gauke
I am not denying that we expect the increase to be passed on predominantly to consumers; we expect that the bulk of it will be. The analysis of VAT, another indirect tax, shows that two thirds tends to be passed on straight away and that much of the rest is passed on over the following 12 months. However, it is not always possible to predict and it partly depends on the level of competition.
Gordon Banks
I just want to make a simple point. The Minister is saying that he expects consumers to pay twice—once through increased premiums and once through increased IPT. Does he find that acceptable?
Mr Gauke
That is not what I am saying. I am saying that the increase in insurance premium tax, which is payable by insurers, is likely to be passed on to consumers. We are not denying that; in simple terms, we need the money.
Even if the increases to the standard and higher rates of IPT are passed on in full, the impacts will be very modest, costing households less than 20p a week on average and businesses an average of less than 0.01% of annual turnover, even for smaller businesses.
Mr Kevan Jones
I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman has renewed his car insurance or household policy recently, but he will find that most insurance policies make it clear exactly how much tax is paid, so I do not think it is the case that they will withhold the increase and not pass it on to the consumer.
Mr Gauke
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for underlining an earlier point that I made—that it is not necessary to introduce regulation in this area. As I say, we anticipate that it will be passed on, but it is not mandatory. I am not denying that position.
Despite these modest impacts, the IPT rate increases will contribute more than £450 million a year to reducing the deficit. As I said, such decisions have been forced on us by the economic circumstances that the UK finds itself in, and they have not been taken lightly. We are confident, however, that this modest rise in IPT, which leaves the main rate of the tax significantly lower than that of many of our European competitors, is a means of raising much-needed revenue that will not have a significant impact on households, businesses or the insurance industry.
Mr Byrne
The Minister is making an argument about choices that are made in order to increase revenue, but I think the Committee is struggling to understand the reason for the increase in the standard rate of IPT. Other choices were available. Why have increases in cider duty been withdrawn, for example, while new taxes are being introduced on insurance?
Mr Gauke
The central point is that the country is in a very difficult position as regards the public finances. I hope that the shadow Chief Secretary is grateful for the fact that I have got this far through a speech without once referring to his letter. With another intervention, I may be tempted to do so. We have made a series of judgments. If he thinks that cider duty is the way to reduce the deficit, I suggest that he is somewhat mistaken.
Amendment 18 would exempt personal health insurance from the increase in the standard rate of IPT, and amendment 19 would do the same in relation to motor insurance. In effect, that would mean creating a new reduced rate of IPT that applied only to private medical insurance and motor insurance. Of course, the Government recognise the value of these types of insurance and, indeed, of insurance more generally.
I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch that we do not disapprove of people taking out private medical insurance—that is not something we wish to prohibit, either in law or by imposing enormous costs on it. In health policy, our focus is of course on improving the national health service, and we have this week set out important proposals on improving the quality of the health service and reducing expenditure on bureaucracy. We are also, as a Government, protecting the NHS from spending cuts, which is not, as I understand it, a policy endorsed by Labour. The purpose behind this tax increase is clearly to raise more revenue—it is not an attempt to try to dissuade people from taking out private health insurance.
Thomas Docherty
The Minister claims that the Government are protecting the NHS. Is he aware that all the health boards in Scotland have written to their employees to inform them that following the cuts that his Government are making, the NHS in Scotland will have significant job losses?
Mr Gauke
Of course health care in Scotland is a devolved matter, and you will not want me to digress on that, Mr Hoyle, but the fact is that health care spending will go up in real terms under this Government. That is not, as I understand it, a policy that is supported by the official Opposition.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend framed his policy in rather negative terms by saying that the Government did not disapprove of health insurance and did not want to prohibit or deter it. Can he be a bit more positive and say that it is their policy to try to encourage people to take responsibility for their own insurance, on similar lines to the Secretary of State for Transport saying that he wishes people to take responsibility for paying their own bus fares, despite their having bus passes, if they can afford so to do?
Mr Gauke
As a Government—I am sure that this is a principle that my hon. Friend would support—we believe in giving people choice, and that is what we will do. We have set out our policies in that context, and I am merely underlining this Government’s commitment to the national health service.
The combined effect of the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch would be to slow down fiscal consolidation. Through the Budget and this particular measure, the Government are trying to get our deficit under control, and slowing it down would not be an appropriate step.
Chris Leslie
Specifically in terms of the contribution to fiscal consolidation, how much of the yield from the increase in IPT will come from the motorist via car insurance?
Mr Gauke
If I may, I will provide a little more information breaking down the numbers in a moment or so, and we shall see whether that is specific enough for the hon. Gentleman.
Exempting motor insurance from the IPT rise would reduce revenue by £160 million a year, and exempting medical insurance would reduce it by a further £40 million. Taken together, those figures total £200 million—nearly £1 billion over the lifetime of the Parliament. That would leave us with quite a shortfall, and a couple of options. First, we could raise £1 billion from elsewhere. We have to be open about the fact that the purpose of the IPT rise is to raise revenue, and if we were to look to raise the outstanding £1 billion through IPT, that would mean increasing very considerably the rate of tax on the remaining classes of insurance. For reasons that I will set out, we do not think that that is the right way to go. The second option is to leave ourselves with £1 billion outstanding, which would leave us further away from plugging the deficit, with all the risks that that entails. We are certain that that is not the right way to go.
It has always been a principle of IPT that the tax applies to a relatively broad base of general insurance, with few exceptions. That broad base allows us to keep the standard rate of the tax low by international standards. Even at the new rate of 6%, the UK’s standard rate of IPT is far lower than in, say, Germany, where it is 18% for property and 19% for motor insurance, or France, where it is 9% for property and 18% for motor insurance. Narrowing the base of the tax through specific exemptions of the type that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch suggests would put that low rate at risk.
To respond to the perfectly fair question of the shadow Chief Secretary, the fact that we have announced the increase should not be taken as a signal that we intend to harmonise tax levels with those elsewhere. To quote what the shadow Chancellor used to say, we always keep taxes under review and it would be daft to rule things out, but this increase should not be taken as a signal of an ongoing programme of further increases.
We do not take any pleasure in introducing this tax rise, even though the reasons for it are clear. However, by keeping a broad base of tax within general insurance, we are able to raise revenue so as to cut the deficit, while keeping the increases at a level that will not have any significant impact on the number of people buying insurance.
Thomas Docherty
Has the Treasury done any work to enable it to hazard a guess as to how many people will not now take out motor or health insurance as a result of the rise?
Mr Gauke
We do not believe the rise will have a noticeable effect on the number of people taking out insurance, but I know that hon. Members are concerned about the impact of the IPT rises on households. I have already set out the average impact on households. Specifically in the case of the insurance covered by amendments 18 and 19, the IPT rate increase will add only about £6 a year to the average motor insurance premium, and for those who buy private medical insurance the rise will cost less than £10 a year on average. Consequently, it is difficult to make the case that the increase will prove much of a deterrent to people taking out motor insurance or private medical insurance. Consumers are well used to insurance premiums fluctuating, and the modest effects of the rise will not act as any significant deterrent.
Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
The Exchequer Secretary says that the rise will not be a deterrent, but it will certainly provide an incentive to people who pass the tax on to the consumer to increase charges over and above the amount in question and then blame the Government for it, as we have seen with so many other taxes.
Mr Gauke
Let us see what happens. I am not sure that the evidence necessarily supports that concern, but I am sure that if it happens the hon. Gentleman will come back to the House to highlight it. Many within the insurance industry have themselves acknowledged that the rises are very modest and will not have a significant impact on households or on the take-up of insurance.
Amendment 15 would make the IPT rise announced in Budget contingent on the publication of an assessment of the effect of the rate rise on consumers and the insurance industry. We believe it is unnecessary. I have set out fairly comprehensively in this debate the expected impact on households and businesses—in broad terms, that impact will be minimal.
I should also point out to hon. Members the considerable amount of information on the impact of the Budget that we have already put in the public domain. In particular, for the first time the Government have set out their analysis of the distributional impact on households of the Budget measures, including the IPT rate changes, in annex A of the Red Book. Separately, other organisations such as the Association of British Insurers have given estimates of the impact of the rise on households, which are very much in line with our own estimates. Naturally, the industry and consumers do not like the rises, and we do not like having to introduce them, but the industry accepts that they are going to happen and is preparing accordingly.
Finally, I wish to address amendment 48 which, as the shadow Chief Secretary said, is a probing amendment aimed at exploring the reasons for the rise and its impacts. He asked a specific question about the balance between the standard and higher rates. For 2010-11—Members should remember that the rate increases will occur in January 2011—the revenue raised will be £110 million from the standard rate and £5 million from the higher rate. For the following years, the higher rate will raise £25 million each year, with the balance made up from the standard rate, which in most years raises £450 million.
The shadow Chief Secretary also asked about the reason for the increase in the higher rate from 17.5% to 20%. As he correctly surmised, it is to do with value shifting and the fact that travel insurance is often sold with other products on which VAT is payable. A discrepancy between the IPT on travel insurance and other rates may create dangers of value shifting, and that is the reason for the proposal.
Mr Gauke
As I said earlier, the cost of my hon. Friend’s amendment to exempt motor insurance from the IPT rise would reduce revenue by £160 million a year, and exempting medical insurance would decrease revenue by a further £40 million a year. I hope that that is helpful.
The increase is necessary. It is an attempt to bring our deficit under control. We need to make some tough decisions, and that is one.
Mr Chope
I shall not get involved in that debate now, because I want to keep the focus on the narrow issues in my amendments. I am disappointed that the Minister did not respond to my concern—echoed by the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) and others—about the regressive nature of the insurance premium tax, especially on the motoring public. One suggestion I made was that instead of having a standard tax on insurance premiums, we could have an individual transaction tax so that every motorist would pay the same tax for his annual insurance premium.
Mr Gauke
My hon. Friend is right to return to this point, and I apologise for not responding to it in my earlier remarks. If we took that approach on a revenue-neutral basis, we would end up essentially with the same transaction tax level on a big and small car—whether a Bentley or a Skoda, we would have the same transaction tax. Is that what he is advocating? That itself would be regressive.
Mr Chope
I was not thinking about Bentleys versus Skodas; I was thinking about the student living in Liverpool trying to run a vehicle that is perhaps 10 or 15 years old and finding it hard to make ends meet, and about the person who might have several Bentleys in the garage covered under some collective insurance. I am concerned about those living in high-risk areas or who are in high-risk groups—because they are young drivers, for example—whose insurance premiums are significantly higher than those of, for example, the person whom my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) mentioned who is in their mid-50s and happens to own a Bentley. I do not think that, prima facie, that is fair. I was throwing out a challenge to my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary to see whether an individual transaction tax that is not related to the size of the premium might produce a fairer result. It seems as though it might not, but perhaps we can correspond on that so that we can take the matter forward.
We have covered a lot of ground in this debate, and I have already expressed my disappointment. The question now arises of whether we should seek to divide the Committee on the proposals. I live in hope—perhaps I am naive—that in due course we will get a better and more positive response from the coalition to questions of responsibility and encouraging people to do the right thing, and that it will send out those positive measures. To seek a Division would probably be counter-productive because, apart from anything else, I would have to pick one, rather than both, of my amendments, which would mean picking on one particular type of insurance premium tax as against another. I am not sure that that is necessarily in accordance with the will of the Committee, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Mr Gauke
I thank the shadow Minister for his words of support. It would be somewhat surprising if he did not support the measure, as I am sure that he would have introduced it had he been in our position.
Clause 8 relates to corporation tax avoidance involving de-recognition. The corporation tax rules on financial instruments broadly follow the treatment of profits and losses recognised in accounts drawn up under generally accepted accounting practice. That applies to most financial instruments, including loans and derivatives. However, in certain cases where the terms of an asset and a liability are closely related, accounting practice may mean that neither the income nor the expenses arising on them are included in the accounts. For example, a company may have issued preference shares on which the dividends payable equal the interest received. As the company is economically flat in such cases, accounting practice allows it to de-recognise both the income and expenses. However, for tax purposes, that gives rise to a mismatch. The income is taxable, while the dividends are not deductible.
Unfortunately, avoidance schemes have continually sought to exploit the practice of de-recognising income. In 2006, legislation was introduced to block such avoidance by overriding the de-recognition for tax purposes. It required that where certain conditions are met, taxable profits are to be computed as if there had been no de-recognition in the accounts. It was necessary to amend the original legislation in 2007 and 2009 to block new schemes. Previous action has protected something like between £100 million and £150 million. To answer the shadow Minister’s question, it is anticipated that the measures in the Bill will protect £150 million per annum.
It is worth making the point that in addition to blocking the latest schemes, the Government intend to remove the opportunity for new abuse. We will amend the anti-avoidance rule in question so that it works in a more wide-ranging manner. Such a rule will make it unnecessary repeatedly to block similar versions of what is essentially the same scheme, and will allow us to address the matter more completely. HMRC will issue a technical note on the subject shortly, with a view to us making the amendments in the Finance Bill 2011. Any such changes would be effective from a date to be announced in the autumn, following consultation on the details of the proposals.
I note your earlier guidance, Mr Evans, and I will not go into detail on the points that the shadow Minister made, but we continue to look at the issue, and the Government take anti-avoidance measures very seriously.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 8 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 5 agreed to.
Clauses 9 to 11 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.
Bill reported, without amendment.
Bill to be read the Third time tomorrow.