Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Debbie Abrahams and Lord Tyrie

Wednesday 18th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tyrie]

I wonder where the hon. Gentleman represents.

Broadly speaking, the hon. Gentleman is right, although I wonder whether we needed quite as many changes to the North sea oil tax regime during this Parliament, particularly since we began it by announcing there would be stability for the medium term in the overall fiscal regime. It can be argued, however, that North sea oil is a special case, and not like the rest of the tax system. Frequent changes in the tax system nearly always have an economic cost in the bottom line for growth.

My colleagues on the Treasury Committee and I will collect as much evidence as possible on the Budget before Prorogation. We will hear from the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Chancellor. One measure that was effectively announced before the Budget is the extension of pension freedoms to those who already possess an annuity, and we will take evidence on that major change. Likewise, we will look at the savings measures that have just been announced, not least the savings allowance and the change to the structure of individual savings accounts. Both of those measures sound extremely significant, given that we must revive the savings culture. The Committee will ask about other measures that the Chancellor announced today, including making sure we can be confident that £3 billion will be made available by the tax avoidance measures, the North sea tax regime to which the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) referred, and of course the increase in the personal allowance. There is a great deal for the Committee to do in a short space of time before the election, and we will get on with it as best we can.

We will hear a lot more argument about who is better off. A key recommendation of the Committee in 2010 was that the Treasury and the Chancellor should be required to provide much more information about the distributional impact of tax and benefit changes—who wins and who loses—and, to their credit, they now provide much more detailed analysis at each Budget and autumn statement. For decades, successive Chancellors—my right hon. Friend’s predecessors—were very reluctant to provide that analysis, but they now do so. We will consider the published distributional analysis in the light of the debate, about which we have already heard, about who is better off and who is worse off. It is already clear from the data that almost everybody has borne some of the burden of austerity one way or another, but also that everybody has now almost certainly gained overall, and I will come on to that if I get the chance.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

In relation to the distributional analysis, is the hon. Gentleman concerned that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has quite clearly shown that the situation for families on the lowest incomes has worsened, and that the Equality Trust has said that £39 billion has been taken out of the economy as a result of such inequalities?

[Mr Tyrie]

An answer to that would need to be quite long and involved, but I invite the hon. Lady to come to our hearing with the IFS because that is a central issue. I am not at all sure that the IFS got it quite right on the basis of the published data. In any case, if I may say so, it did not quite say what she purports it to say.