Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Desmond Swayne and Kevin Hollinrake

Thursday 2nd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kinds words. It is always a pleasure to work with him and his colleagues. It is our intention that the legislation will clear both Houses by July, although obviously not all of these things are within our gift. Should that be the case, as we fully expect it to be, the convictions will be quashed in July and compensation redress will be paid from August.

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

3. What progress she has made on helping businesses to reach her target level of exports.

Draft National Minimum Wage (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2024

Debate between Desmond Swayne and Kevin Hollinrake

Monday 18th March 2024 General Committees

[Kevin Hollinrake]

There has been a significant decrease in the number of people in absolute poverty—millions of people since 2010 and 400,000 fewer children in absolute poverty, which we all welcome. As I said before, in pushing the national living wage as high as we have done, we are putting burdens on businesses. We want to ensure that we strike a balance, and that is our concern with this. We always take into account the concerns of employers as well as workers.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

I entirely accept the point the Minister makes with respect to the definition of poverty, but the hon. Member for Glasgow South West makes a fair point in drawing attention to the number of people, particularly those employed by Government, who are claiming benefits notwithstanding being paid the minimum wage. It behoves Government to make some analysis of the extent to which the taxpayer is subsidising low wages, albeit one of the principal concerns drawn to my attention by small businesses is every increase in the minimum wage.

I accept that this is a very difficult equation to have to deal with, but I have always suspected that the former Chairman of the Work and Pensions Committee, Frank Field, was right in his assumption that universal credit, like tax credits before it, was actually just subsidising a low-wage economy that would not otherwise exist. There are clearly costs that are not worth incurring here.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My right hon. Friend is right to say that part of the rationale behind the national living wage is to ensure that wages that employers pay are not being subsidised. The total cost of the welfare system is around £303 billion, some of which is a result of the issue he raised. To me, that is wrong and that is one of the reasons why we would like to see the national living wage increased. Nevertheless, we do not want to see that at the detriment of jobs in our economy.

There is still a balance to be struck on making sure people have the opportunity for predictable hours. That is covered in the legislation we have introduced. I understand that the policy of the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston is that anybody who has been in work for 12 weeks and is on a contract can request those hours in terms of as a permanent position. I think that is the policy that the Opposition are going to introduce. It will be interesting to see what impact that will have on employers, particularly employers of seasonal workers.

There is a balance to be struck between business and workers. I point out that there are 4.2 million more jobs in our economy than there were in 2010. That is a huge success story. There are 1.2 million fewer people unemployed and looking for work. That is a huge achievement. Some of the policies that Labour always tend to bring forward end up costing jobs. Every single time we have had a Labour Government, unemployment is higher at the end of their term than it was at the start.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Desmond Swayne and Kevin Hollinrake

Thursday 30th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question and he is absolutely right to say that some local authorities see parking charges as potential revenue raisers, but this is in effect a tax on business. Local authorities can, of course, make charges where appropriate, but they should only cover the cost of maintaining those car parks; they should not be a punitive tax on businesses.

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

There are streets in the west end of this city, important to our economy, that would certainly benefit from the ability of tourists to reclaim VAT, aren’t there?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My right hon. Friend raises an important point that this Department has looked at carefully. We are concerned about the impact of the withdrawal of that tax concession on businesses, not just for these businesses themselves, but for the other businesses that rely on foreign visitors—I am talking about hoteliers, restauranteurs and so on. We are keen to look at this matter. The Chancellor committed in his autumn statement to review the evidence to see what impact this was having. We will look at that with great interest and make our views known strongly to the Exchequer.

Assisted Dying

Debate between Desmond Swayne and Kevin Hollinrake

Monday 4th July 2022 Westminster Hall

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

My father’s last six months were horrible and frightful. Yes, I did want him to die more quickly, to end his suffering. However, he did not. He wanted to come home. I would therefore not change the law.

We have heard much about the polling, but the fact is there is nothing new there. Ever since we started polling on this question, there have been large majorities in favour of changing the law, so there is nothing new in that phenomenon. However, a poll is not an argument. The Association for Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland believes that the polling is driven by reports in our newspapers of the awful deaths that some people experience, without giving proper consideration to the advances in palliative care and the fact that many people with terminal illnesses die a peaceful death with their family around them. It is not as if that case is presented fairly and equally.

We have also been told that the medical profession is changing its view, with the Royal College of Physicians changing its position from being against assisted dying. I understand that in a vote by its members, 43% voted to retain its opposition to the proposals, 31% wanted to support assisted dying and only 25% wanted to adopt a neutral position. The Royal College of Physicians is now in the absurd position of having adopted the position that was voted for by the fewest of its members.

We have also heard about the impact on palliative care. Obviously, there is a difference of views. However, I have sat in this Palace and heard clinicians from Canada tell us in terms that palliative care budgets were being squeezed to provide for the new service of assisted dying.

We have to be clear on both the implications for the medical profession—the way the nature of the medical profession will change when doctors can bring death as well as life—and the scale, which my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) touched on. My figures are rather different from his. I understand that about 400 people a year take their own lives in this country as a consequence of a terminal diagnosis. I understand that if we were like Holland, the figure for deaths assisted by the medical profession would be 21,000, taking account of the different size of population and all the rest. As many as one in six deaths in Holland may be accounted for by deaths assisted by the medical profession. Once we normalise that as a way of death, I think we would definitely dealing with dangers—

[Steve McCabe in the Chair]

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Clearly, it would depend on how we drafted any legislation brought forward, but my right hon. Friend mentioned 16%—in Oregon, 0.7% of deaths are through assisted dying. It depends on us.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

I was speaking about the Dutch figures, not Oregon, but my hon. Friend is right that it depends on us.

I last debated this issue at Durham University earlier this year against Baroness Meacher. She wanted to confine the debate clearly and specifically to the terms that she had set out in her Bill, with all the provisions and the safeguards, such as that it has to be within six months of the end of life prognosis and all the rest. Unfortunately, she was rather undermined by the seconder of her motion, who was a psychiatrist and, I understood, represented an organisation called My Life, My Death, My Choice. There was no question that this was a service that should be available for us all at whatever stage of our lives. Once we open the door and go down that road, it is a one-way street. We have certainly seen that in the evidence from Canada.

Income tax (charge)

Debate between Desmond Swayne and Kevin Hollinrake

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Yes, definitely. That will level up in the process, but we have to get private sector involvement. It is the private sector that creates jobs, not the public sector. That is a means to an end in terms of transport spending. We have to get the private sector to move into these areas, start up and scale up or expand their businesses.

I primarily want to talk about covid-19. We are talking about levelling up. If we are not careful with this, there will be levelling down, because the coronavirus will have a huge impact. We cannot even contemplate the size of the impact that this could have on our economy and business sector. This could be an existential crisis for hundreds of thousands of businesses. It is huge.

The situation is so fluid, but we need to give people confidence—and we are getting there—that we will support them through this crisis. I was heartened by the Chancellor talking at the Dispatch Box about what he has done so far and what he will do in future if that is not enough. He has spoken this afternoon about a massively enhanced package, and that is exactly what we need, because the scale of this is huge. Capital Economics does not give the rosiest outlook in its forecast of the economic situation in the UK. It predicts that there could be a 15% drop in gross domestic product within a three-month period. If we compare that with the great financial crash, we saw a 6% reduction in GDP over a few years from 2008.

We need to say to businesses and consumers—and if we do not, it will cost us the amount anyway—what the German Finance Minister said a week ago: that, as far as possible, no company should get into existential trouble and no job should be lost as a result of this crisis. That is the message we need to get out. Macron has said the same thing, with a €300 billion guarantee that no firm will go bust due to social distancing.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

That is an admirable ambition to have and I do hope that the Government accept that ambition, but be in no doubt that we have, in effect, closed down the hospitality industry and public entertainment, and that will require the Government to pay those wages.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. One of the difficulties with the announcement last night was that it was not brought forward with a package of remediation or mitigation. I think that has come today, and clarity of that is very welcome.

We are going to need to pump hundreds of billions of pounds—not the odd billion, £5 billion or £10 billion—into the economy. I think the Chancellor has announced today £330 billion-worth of loans for the business sector, which is absolutely right, with £25,000 for businesses that are not insured for losses from business interruption, plus business rates holidays and three-month mortgage holidays, which is also absolutely right. If we talk about this in terms of hundreds of billions of pounds, the natural question is: where are we going to get that money from? This is a time when we have to set aside the fiscal rules. We will be paying for this anyway, in lost jobs and businesses, redundancy payments and reductions in tax receipts, if we do not put a huge fiscal stimulus into the system right now, so I welcome the measures from the Chancellor.

We need a few things in addition. We saw in 2008 that banks did not support businesses through that financial crisis—there is no doubt about it; in fact, quite the opposite. We need a commitment from the banks, UK Finance and the Treasury that they will continue to cash-flow businesses for as much as they need until they get through this period. To make sure that they do that, we should introduce emergency legislation to bring SME loans and financing commercial loans within the regulatory perimeter. That would mean that banks would have to have the oversight of the Financial Conduct Authority, and indeed of Members in this place, if they did not do the right thing through that period.