Xinjiang: Forced Labour

Debate between Dominic Raab and Shabana Mahmood

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab) [V]]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. The measures announced today are welcome, but they do not sufficiently address the genocide against the Uyghur people and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang. I noted with deep dismay his remarks about the amendment to the Trade Bill regarding China, which many other Members will wish to support. Will the Foreign Secretary at least acknowledge that efforts to allow UK judges to provide expert input and make preliminary determinations on genocide is, in the absence of any other viable legal option, the only legal route to hold the Chinese Government to account and the only viable opportunity in a legal forum to call their actions by their proper name: “genocide”?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the hon. Lady and respect the passion and commitment with which she speaks. Of course I do not think the amendment she refers to would hold China to account for the awful human rights violations that she and I rightly deplore.

What we have sought to do today—and we will continue to do so—is take the targeted measures that will have an effect and an impact on the conduct that we want to stop by preventing people from profiting from it or financially supporting it. I think that is the right approach. Of course, we keep other measures in reserve, such as Magnitsky sanctions, but I do not think that the proposal that the hon. Lady has referred to would advance the cause of accountability in any meaningful sense at all.

Stamp Duty (Housing Market)

Debate between Dominic Raab and Shabana Mahmood

Thursday 4th September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) on securing this important debate. She was right that the matter of stamp duty has not been debated very much from a principled position; we have had a number of debates in proceedings on Finance Bills about technical changes that the Government have introduced to stamp duty, particularly on the annual tax on enveloped dwellings, but we have only rarely discussed the issue in the manner that we have today. Her securing of this debate has allowed some important issues to be raised.

The hon. Lady said that she hoped that we could move away from politics. I am not sure about that, as taxation and tax issues are perhaps politics in its purest form, but I accept her point about partisanship in our approach to this debate. People across the country, in constituencies of Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat Members alike, are all affected in various ways by stamp duty and the rising cost of housing. Her argument about the impact in London and the south-east on people on more modest incomes was particularly well made.

The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) and other Members discussed the slab structure that is a particularly problematic feature of this tax. Many commentators have called for reform of that structure. He also raised our mansion tax policy, so I hope you will forgive me, Mr Betts, if I take a moment to clarify the details of our proposals.

I make no apology for our policy to levy a mansion tax on properties worth £2 million or more. Let me be clear: only properties worth over £2 million would be affected by our proposals and that limit would be raised each year, either in line with the overall rate of inflation or—and there is a strong case for this—in line with the rise in house prices, to make sure that more modest properties were not brought into the scope of the tax.

[Mr Raab]

I thank the hon. Lady for that clarification, although there are serious questions about the amount of revenue that a Labour Government would be able to raise. Will the indexation be linked to local house prices or overall house prices? Although the threshold for the tax would rise superficially, there would still be a real risk of the arbitrary geographical unevenness that hon. Members have talked about.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I have received submissions from various experts on the matter and we are looking at it very closely. We are clear about our start position. We do not want more modest properties to be brought into the mansion tax regime, and we are looking carefully at the details of our ultimate policy to ensure that that does not happen. I have had conversations with people about the issue, but I cannot tell him today what we will ultimately be able to take forward.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention. She is right. I have received representations about the slab structure, as, I am sure, has the Minister. It is one feature of stamp duty that causes particular consternation, as we have heard from all hon. Members who have spoken in the debate today. I cannot make a manifesto commitment today, but I will make it clear later in my speech that we are alive to the issues raised today and that we are looking at them carefully.

I was pleased that the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) made a customary reference to the Laffer curve. I feel that these debates are not quite what they should be if there is not at least one reference to the Laffer curve. I was pleased that he was able to make that point.

I acknowledge the passionate views of hon. Members in this debate. There has been a vigorous campaign on the issue. I suspect that many hon. Members are less concerned about what I have to say about Labour policy and more concerned about what the Minister might do ahead of the autumn statement on 3 December. We saw a similar vigorous campaign ahead of the Budget earlier this year. In the lead up to that Budget, the expectation was that there might be a doubling of the threshold to £250,000 and the introduction of a stamp duty tax credit system, but the Government did not ultimately go down that path. I suspect we are seeing a similar build-up of lobbying for the Government to do something in the autumn statement.

[Mr Raab]

Does the hon. Lady agree with the comments by the deputy Labour leader that the middle classes should pay more tax, and is that something that will feed into Labour policies on the mansion tax and stamp duty?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I think the point that the deputy leader was making was about progressive taxation and the argument that those who are wealthier should pay more. That is the thinking behind our mansion tax policy. His Government have presided over more people being brought into the 40p tax band, for example, and he could ask his Minister about that today.

Stamp duty is a matter of growing concern to the public and a significant burden on people wanting to buy a new home, particularly first-time buyers. I acknowledge the strength of feeling among hon. Members and throughout the country, but I am not in a position to make a spending commitment via this debate. Stamp duty brings in a large and growing amount of revenue, and any policy change in this area would have to be fully funded. Our start point as an incoming Labour Government in 2015 would be the current Government’s spending plans for 2015-16 and any change to that spending round would have to be fully funded. That has been the thinking behind the policies we have unveiled. They are all fully funded and primarily involve switching from one area of spend to another to deal with some of our child care priorities and other measures.

The difficult financial position that an incoming Labour Government in 2015 would inherit means that we would have to make some difficult choices. Given that, our focus has been wider reform of the housing market and how it might stimulate greater home ownership. In particular, the problem of housing supply has become acute in the past few years and is causing many problems, such as people having to rely on the bank of mum and dad and home ownership occurring much later in life. The hon. Member for St Albans made a point about that, and it is true.

We are seeing the biggest housing crisis in a generation and we are not building even half the homes we need to keep up with demand. The shortage of decent homes has much wider social and economic costs and we heard about some of those relating to inflexibility in the labour market, as well as the impact on people in overcrowded homes and the impact on children’s health and educational outcomes.

What can we do to build more homes? That must be the centre point of getting more sense and fairness into our housing market. We supported the Help to Buy scheme, but we would have preferred a scheme that focused more on first-time buyers. Our policy shows that the Government have simply not understood that boosting demand without boosting supply risks putting prices out of reach of the very families and young people we particularly want to help to get on the housing ladder. That is why we have committed ourselves to building 200,000 homes a year by 2020. That is probably not enough, and we should build many more than that, but it is an ambitious start point. We currently have a housing commission, led by Sir Michael Lyons, which is looking at a detailed road map, so that we may be able to deliver our vision.

--- Later in debate ---

[Shabana Mahmood]

I disagree with the hon. Lady. I think that it is right to set targets and ambitions, and it is right that we look to such experts to help us to get to that position. We are looking partly at the expense of land and the housing market in different parts of the country. We will discuss those issues in greater detail as we get closer to producing our manifesto.

[Mr Raab]

I understand the shadow Minister’s caution, but she slated the coalition’s record even though if we compare the average number of affordable homes built each year, we see that it was some 31,000 under Labour and it jumped to 48,000 under the coalition. She slated that record, despite its being so much better than Labour’s, yet when asked a number of times what a Labour Government would do to spur the supply of housing, there is absolutely nothing that can be said within a year of an election. Does she understand that that totally undermines her criticism of the current Government’s supply-side record, but also any confidence that anyone could have that a Labour Government would make any difference in this area?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I make this point about the last Labour Government as well as the current Government. No Government have built anywhere near enough homes to ensure that supply keeps up with demand. That is why we are in this position with the housing market. I cannot pre-empt some of the proposals under discussion in the Lyons commission, but I am sure that we will return to the debate when we unveil what our road map towards the pledge of 200,000 homes a year looks like.

As I have said, given the very constrained financial circumstances and the difficult choices that have to be made, we have focused our energies on measures to increase supply. We did also put forward to the Government back in 2012—I am sure that the Minister remembers—a proposal for the Government to implement immediately. It was about using the sums raised by the sale of the 4G spectrum towards getting more homes built and towards a stamp duty holiday of two years for first-time buyers. That measure could have been taken forward by the Government. It might not have helped the constituency of the hon. Member for St Albans, but it would have helped first-time buyers looking at properties below the £250,000 threshold.

Changing the thresholds and providing holidays was something that we looked at and implemented towards the end of our term in office as we sought to stimulate the market post the financial crash. These are issues that we have considered, in the context of a stamp duty holiday for first-time buyers, in this Parliament. They are issues that we continue to receive representations on and continue to look at very closely. As I have said, I am not in a position to make any commitments today, but I suspect that the commitment that Government Members are looking for is from the Minister, who may or may not indulge them when he responds.