Oral Answers to Questions

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very reasonable point, and sets out a range of issues. The Government will be looking into this, and I will liaise with my colleagues in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to ensure that they are focusing on all the dimensions of the problem that he has outlined.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

T6. The Chancellor has been more creative and accommodating than his equivalents in any other jurisdiction. Setting aside the question of fairness, how practical is it to use historical tax data to try to impute a wage equivalent for the self-employed?

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments. It is certainly possible to use those historical returns. They are a year and a half out of date, so they will be necessarily imperfect. They also do not provide an easy way to distinguish between those who are deserving of support and whose incomes are being affected by what is happening, and those who are much wealthier and whose incomes are potentially increasing currently, but they do provide a basis and a universe to look at.