Ed Balls
Main Page: Ed Balls (Labour (Co-op) - Morley and Outwood)Department Debates - View all Ed Balls's debates with the HM Treasury
Fuel Prices and the Cost of Living
Ed Balls Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Justine Greening
Listening to the Opposition is stunning. The outgoing Chief Secretary’s message to the incoming Government was that there was no money left. Worse than that, the previous Government had pre-planned increases, which were due to come in now, as the hon. Lady just pointed out. The bottom line is that it is outrageous for the Labour party to cry crocodile tears about tax increases that it had planned—it is disingenuous in the extreme, and shows that it has no credibility and no leadership on the issues that matter to people, such as motoring, which we are debating today. The audacity of the motion is stunning.
Let me turn—as I was about to—to the Opposition’s proposal to cut VAT on fuel. [Interruption.] The shadow Chancellor is hectoring from a sedentary position, and I think the reason is that he is worried that we are about to talk about his policy—a policy that unravelled within hours of his announcing it. He has come late to the debate on motoring. Obviously he spent many years being driven around in a Government car that the taxpayer paid for. I understand that it was reported in the papers that he used to use it for journeys of just 100 yards. Perhaps he was not aware at that point of how much it cost people to fill up their cars, but perhaps he knows now, and perhaps that is why he has suddenly realised that this is an issue, as we did in opposition. He has come to this debate late, but his policy-making suggestions are, to put it bluntly, illegal under EU law.
It is quite an achievement to make a proposal along those lines. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) , the shadow Chancellor is quite wrong to say that we can reverse the VAT rise on fuel, because doing so would be illegal under the EU VAT directive. However, if the right hon. Gentleman thinks that the UK operates under a different VAT directive, perhaps he would like to intervene on me right now. [Interruption.] I think we have established that there is only one EU VAT directive, and his proposal is illegal under that directive. The other big flaw in his argument—[Interruption.] Does he want to intervene?
Ed Balls
When we have only one reduced rate, but Italy, France and Poland have three reduced rates, and when the French President secured a VAT rate cut for French restaurants, is the hon. Lady really saying that she is going to hide behind European law and fail to stand up for the British motorist? Is that really what she is saying?
Justine Greening
There is only one party failing to stand up for the British motorist, and it is the Labour party. Let me outline precisely why France was able to get a reduced VAT rate on—
Justine Greening
There is no point the right hon. Gentleman asking a question and then getting excited about the fact that I might answer it.
Justine Greening
If the right hon. Gentleman just calms down for a second, I will answer him; if he then wants to intervene on me, he can do so. However, if he is that desperate to get in on this debate, perhaps he should have opened it instead of his hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle).
The right hon. Gentleman is right to point out that across Europe different products have different VAT rates. Some are exempt from VAT, some have a zero rate, some have a reduced rate and some have a standard rate. Indeed, he should be well aware of that because he was an economic adviser at the Treasury the last time the negotiations that he referred to started. In fact, they took six years. He mentioned President Sarkozy’s determination to secure a reduced VAT rate for restaurants, which is indeed what he did. However, in that renegotiation of the rules governing which products would be in which categories and which would no longer have standard VAT rates, I am not aware of the UK Government at any stage pressing for anything other than the standard rate to apply to road fuel. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman can confirm that: yes or no?
Ed Balls
At no point did we apply for a special reduced VAT rate for road fuel, and the reason was that we never raised VAT on fuel. The people who have raised VAT are this Government. Can the Minister confirm that it is entirely in her gift and that of the Chancellor, who is not here, and the Chief Secretary, who has not turned up either, to apply for a derogation to reverse their mistaken increase in VAT? They have not done so and will not, but they could if they wanted to stand up for the British motorist.
Justine Greening
I do not think the right hon. Gentleman even believes that himself. The bottom line is that he wants—[Interruption.] The shadow Chief Secretary says that we need to take action now, but he wants us to embark on a process that took six to seven years the last time it happened. How is that taking action now?
Let me tell the House on which items the rate was changed. Here are a few of the products and services to which a reduced VAT rate is now applied in other countries:
“minor repairing of bicycles, shoes and leather goods, clothing and household linen”.
Window cleaning was also one, and hairdressing was another. The Government at that time—a Government of whom the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) was part—did not seek to add road fuel to that list. He says that that was because the previous Government never raised VAT on fuel. That is not strictly true, of course: they reduced it, but then put it back up again, as we have heard. The other reason was that, year on year—and, in the final stages, month on month—they were consistently raising fuel duty, so they had no need to use VAT as a tool. They were getting plenty of additional tax from the motorist.
Justine Greening
Absolutely none, so all this is nothing more than political opportunism in advance of the Budget, and it is incredibly poor quality opportunism too, because the Opposition have made a proposal that is impossible to implement and is utterly flawed in every respect.
Justine Greening
No, sorry.
The other reason why the Opposition’s proposal is flawed is that they say in their motion that they would pay for the proposal with receipts from the bank levy. The first thing to say about that is that we introduced a bank levy—something that Labour never managed to do—but, secondly, we brought forward the rate at which it would fully kick in early, because the banks were doing better and therefore could afford it. The money is a one-off additional revenue stream that we are getting a year earlier, but the Opposition are so economically illiterate that they want to use it to fund a long-term, permanent tax reduction on fuel. Looking at their faces, I do not think they necessarily realise that yet, so as well as their proposal being illegal, their figures do not add up.
To finalise my comments, it is only this Government who are serious about helping British motorists. We tasked the Office for Budget Responsibility with investigating the impact of oil price fluctuations on the economy and we are actively considering proposals for a fair fuel stabiliser.
Justine Greening
No, I will not.
Motorists deserve better than a VAT proposal on fuel that everyone knows is completely unrealistic and unworkable. It is disingenuous of the Opposition to suggest it, and it is unaffordable, given the economic mess that we inherited. They want a derogation that would be unsuccessful and take six to seven years to implement. We are talking about taking action to tackle the cost of living now. That is the choice facing the House today. At the end of the day, we all know that this motion is just a smokescreen, and that the Opposition have no plans whatever to tackle the deficit. Yet again, they have missed a chance to be credible on the economy. Yet again, they have failed to show any leadership on their solutions to the big problems facing Britain today. I sincerely hope that the House will vote against their motion, because it is one of the lowest-quality and most disingenuous motions that we have debated on the Floor of the House recently.