Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

We look to put in place measures to support all sectors and all types of housing. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to say that private rented housing is a really important sector. However, I am sure that she agrees that we have to be careful about some of the proposals on rent controls that float around, which would be damaging for the private rented sector.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

13. What assessment he has made of the effect of recent trends in the value of the pound on the economy; and if he will make a statement.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Philip Hammond)]

The Government do not comment on currency movements and we do not target an exchange rate, but I will tell the House that the pound has spiked in the last few minutes while the Prime Minister has been speaking. The vote to leave the EU has obviously caused some uncertainty in the movements of financial markets. More generally, the fundamentals of our economy over the last couple of years have been strong.

[Mr Speaker]

I think what the Chancellor means is that he does not comment on currency movements unless he does.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

But is it not the case that No. 10’s office briefed that the pound would fall as a result of the Prime Minister’s remarks today? Did it do that in a cynical attempt to get the soundbite that the Chancellor has just sought to achieve?

[Mr Hammond]

I draw a distinction between providing the House with information and commenting on that information—I would not dream of doing the latter. The other thing I would not dream of commenting on is any operations that No. 10 might undertake, which are well beyond my pay grade.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Public R and D funding will take two principal forms. There will be further funding to the science base in our universities, and there will be funding through Innovate UK, which is accessible by companies to support innovation. We already have an excellent base in basic science. What we need to do now is to up our game in innovation and the application of that science.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

T7. A feature of the modern gig economy is that more and more people are sticking together mini jobs, in most of which they earn below the national insurance threshold. HMRC manages to add together that money to tax it, but it does not manage to add together that money to make sure that those people have pensions. What is the Treasury going to do to make sure that older women, in particular, get access to pensions when they have mini jobs?

[Jane Ellison]

The right hon. Lady and I have recently spoken about this issue, and as she knows, there has been some work done to look at the broader issue. It is complicated, but I undertake to look at it again and respond to her. Of course, some of the broader aspects of the gig economy will be covered during the Taylor review.

Concentrix: Tax Credit Claimants

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the performance of Concentrix in dealing with tax credit claimants.

This is the first time that I have spoken in a debate in this Chamber that you have chaired, Mr Nuttall, and I look forward to it.

Just hours after I successfully persuaded the House of Commons Backbench Business Committee to table this debate, Concentrix’s contract was ended. I called for this debate because the company has bullied people who depend on tax credits and targeted single mothers, many of whom have had their tax credits stopped without fair notice. Concentrix is paid by results, which means that it has a financial incentive to stop payments. Its decisions are frequently made on the basis of wrong information, and people who depend on tax credits to make ends meet have been left without funds for weeks while errors have been corrected, causing hardship for them and their children.

I thought that this debate would focus on those shocking failures, and that I would use the time to share how the lives of my constituents, and the constituents of many Members here, have been made miserable by the cavalier way in which Concentrix has used the flimsiest of excuses to end tax credit claims, and by its shocking customer service, which has left claimants hanging on to telephone calls for hours without resolution. However, since then, there have been many parliamentary opportunities to highlight such stories. I am glad that the pressure from me and other MPs has led the tax authorities to end Concentrix’s contract. I am particularly glad that the National Audit Office is to look into its operation. As a former member of the Public Accounts Committee, I am confident that the NAO will get to the bottom of whether Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs or Concentrix is responsible. I think it possible that we have sometimes blamed the company when we ought to have blamed the Government.

[Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Concentrix took the approach of stopping payments without warning. Many single mothers in my constituency have told me that they discovered that their payments had stopped only by checking their bank accounts. Does she agree that HMRC should not have given Concentrix the authority to stop payments, and that the process must stop?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I think that the best thing that we can do with this debate is ensure that lessons are learned from this failure, and that the whole Government act on them. It is time to get answers from the Treasury about the extent to which it, rather than Concentrix, is responsible for the failure.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend has done a great service in securing this debate. I had a problem, to say the least, over Christmas with a family who had no income for about eight weeks. We spent most of the Christmas period trying to get that family some money. Does she not agree that these matters should not be farmed out to private companies? They are far too sensitive. The Government should have another look at this, and the responsibility should be taken in-house. It should also be noted that HMRC has taken on another 30 staff; that is one heck of a cost as well. Another company that should be investigated is Capita, which is doing exactly the same thing because it has been set targets.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

My hon. Friend is right that we need to work out what Government should do. I will deal with that point later, but it is clear that part of the problem with Concentrix is that if people were notified, they often did not believe what they were told, because the Treasury insisted that Concentrix use its own branding on the letters, so people got letters from some company asking for extensive data. I would have treated that as phishing and thought, “This is someone trying to scam me.”

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this debate. She is absolutely right that we need to learn the lessons from this mess. Many of my constituents have been left in utter financial disarray by having been left for a time with no income. Does she share my belief that we need reassurances from the Minister that the Government will take every step necessary to sort out this shambles and help those who have been left in a mess?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Indeed. Not only that, but the Government ought to ensure that it does not happen again. There is a risk that it could, not just in the Treasury but in other Departments. The reason why I persisted with this debate after the Treasury abandoned the contract is that I believe that this is an opportunity to learn lessons that should be spread throughout Government.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is right to point out that this is not just a failure of practice by Concentrix but a policy failure by Government. The deliberate intention of the contract was clearly to target single parents, on the basis of assumptions that they were living with a partner and not reporting it. That is an acute, intimate and sensitive issue, and it is important in such cases that practice is handled with great care. There is absolutely no evidence of such care. This is returning to the attitude that single women bringing up children must not be respectable and need to be investigated. Surely that is something that the Government need to rethink and re-learn.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It was a gendered contract, and the Government did not stop to think—or maybe they did think about it, and thought that women in such circumstances should be blamed. All Members here will know that their constituents feel harassed, scared and pinned up as targets as a result of how things have been done. It is not acceptable in a civilised society to treat mothers in that manner, and it is mothers who have been treated badly.

[Catherine McKinnell]

I agree that the majority of my constituents who have been in touch are single mothers, but single fathers have also been affected. One constituent who came to me looks after two children and works 16 hours a week, and he received no money for six weeks. Ultimately, it is the children in those households who suffer. The Government must ensure that this does not happen again.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One consequence for a number of children is that they have lost their entitlement to free school meals, so they have suffered doubly as a result of what has happened to them.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady is being extremely generous in giving way, and we are all grateful to her. I had a case in which a single mother was accused of living with a former tenant who had moved out in 2014. Does the right hon. Lady not agree that although issues must be investigated, to do so on the basis of allegation, without evidence, and to stop payment, is not really a satisfactory way for Concentrix or anyone else to operate?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I will try to make some progress, so that he can see what I want to say about that kind of issue. Decisions were certainly made on the basis of inadequate evidence, in a way that I believe was actually illegal under the Tax Credits Act 2002, and should not have been permitted.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I am trying to make progress, but I will give way once more.

[Ms Eagle]

My right hon. Friend is being extraordinarily generous. I have had many cases in which precisely that has happened. Single mothers in Wallasey have been accused of living with a previous tenant in a house that they happened to rent at a particular time—allegations so absurd that they had not even thought of them. Their benefits have often been stopped for weeks and weeks, and they have had no access at all to funding, which has forced many of them to go to food banks. What kind of Government allows that to happen?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

My hon. Friend is right that we need to focus on the responsibility of the Government, because that is what we Members of Parliament can most influence. The first lesson for the Government is that payment-by-results contracts should be avoided. Concentrix staff were under pressure to perform—we are told that they were expected to open 40 to 50 new investigations a day—so they regularly proceeded on totally flimsy evidence.

I spoke to Concentrix about the source of the evidence it received, because I could not really believe that a company would proceed on the basis of such information —“Somebody else once rented this flat”, “The electoral register has this person on it”, “Someone has had their post sent to this address,” and so on. The director of Concentrix told me:

“HMRC provide Concentrix with the claimant cases that they believe qualify for review.”

So the source of the evidence is HMRC. He continued:

“These cases are selected by HMRC based on its own internal system which flags where there may be the potential for fraud or error. There were 1,497,000 cases provided from the Authority based on their initial assessment of risk or error and fraud.

Concentrix subsequently runs a further series of checks to substantiate the potential risk of fraud and error and to refine the list of cases that are then checked. In the latest campaign, Concentrix deselected 80% of the cases originally provided to us by HMRC. This means we contacted 324,000 and the remaining 1,173,000 were not worked by Concentrix.”

According to him, HMRC even pressed Concentrix to investigate cases in which it could not name the alleged co-resident.

We have been blaming Concentrix for using flimsy evidence when I think that the source of that flimsy evidence is actually HMRC. My first question to the Minister is: where is the so-called evidence sourced from? Is it the Post Office, credit agencies or out-of-date electoral registers? Is it true that the Treasury pressed Concentrix to pursue cases with so little data that the alleged co-resident’s name was not even known? When tax credit claimants were written to about the investigation of their case, the alleged co-resident was not named in that letter. Many of my constituents have said, “How can I prove a negative?”. Of course, if they had got through on the telephone, they would have been told the alleged co-resident’s name, but getting through on the telephone was not straightforward, as we all know.

I remind the Minister that section 16 of the Tax Credits Act 2002 gives the power to amend or terminate an award where there are reasonable grounds for believing that an award is wrong or that there is no entitlement. It also gives the power to request information or evidence where there are grounds for believing that the award might be wrong. That law is clear. It was confirmed in an Upper Tribunal judgment by Judge Wikeley that the burden of proof for stopping a tax credit award lies with HMRC, but that was reversed in these cases: the authorities proceeded to close claims without reasonable grounds that they could evidence. They demanded excessive evidence from applicants who sought to disprove allegations that they had claimed the wrong amount for childcare or were living with an unnamed partner.

[Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)]

I raised the important question of Concentrix back in February. One of my vulnerable constituents, a single mother of three, was put on trial and lost her tax credits for six weeks over Christmas, only to be informed that she had no case to answer. I ask the right hon. Lady to join me not only in condemning the practices of Concentrix, which she is doing more than capably, but in calling on the Government to renounce this terrible, abhorrent practice entirely.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The point is that if we do not manage to get answers from the Minister, we will end this contract but will be walking into the risk of future contracts making the same kind of mistakes, including targeting single mums in a way most of us find completely unacceptable, and breaching the law that provides the power to end benefits and so on. This situation really is not tolerable, and it is up to us to ensure that it never happens again in any aspect of Government administration.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for raising this important issue. I, too, have constituency cases with which I could regale this Chamber. Does she agree that there is a fundamental danger in a model that has a private organisation, which is accountable to its owners and has a duty to make profits for them, providing a public service, where the accountability must be to the public and the first duty must be to provide the public with a full and proper service?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The hon. Gentleman is right. Civil servants are trained to conform with the law. How can Ministers ensure, in this contract or in any future contracts, that there is not a parallel reinterpretation of the law by a private company? When the Minister was informed about the Wikeley judgment, as I hope he was, what did he do to ensure that all future decisions would conform to the law? Civil servants are generally trained in a culture where the law is the guide to how they work; I am concerned that Concentrix staff were not operating within such a culture. There is a real risk of letting out similar contracts in future that do not operate within such a culture.

[Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)]

Does the right hon. Lady agree that the problem is not just with this contract but with all results-based contracts in which there is essentially a commission? Atos was under a similar contract and we all know the terrible damage it did to sick and disabled people. Although it is welcome that we are ending the Concentrix contract in May 2017, the UK Government now need to stop all such contracts and fundamentally review the entire process.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The hon. Gentleman is right that we should stop such contracts, but we also need to find out the extent to which there has been a failure of policy underlying the Concentrix contract. I agree that the very nature of the contract—having a private company asking for those details—was inappropriate. So was the payment-by-results aspect, for example, and the fact that when the company was under pressure there was no way of bringing in civil servants to help by answering the telephone and so on. Such problems are inherent in that kind of contract, but some of the difficulties must have been created by the way the Treasury and HMRC operated. They provided the company with totally flimsy evidence and suggested it should be investigated. In effect, they ran a campaign against parents who were doing the terribly difficult job of bringing children up on their own. We should be ashamed of ourselves for targeting that group of people, who are resilient but in some ways vulnerable. The job of broader society is to help them in their task of bringing up the next generation.

Many claimants received a letter requiring council tax records, a year’s worth of bank statements, pay slips, childcare costs, divorce papers and household bills. Many people, as I would have done, treated such requests from a private company as probably a phishing exercise by a fraudster. Those people discovered within 30 days that their conclusion was an expensive mistake: their tax credits were stopped. All my constituents who had their tax credits stopped eventually had them restored.

I stress that it happened eventually. It was often after hours on the telephone and the intervention of my staff. Those hours on mobile phones cost an enormous amount for some of these people, who at the time had no money to speak of apart from the meagre wages they earned from their part-time jobs.

[Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for securing this important debate. My constituent’s tax credits were stopped erroneously. She was down to her last £5 and was told to send in documents by recorded delivery. She had to decide whether to feed her children or send the documents. The Government really must rethink their policy and respond to such people, so that we know it will never happen again.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The problem is that the Minister and his civil servants cannot imagine what it is like for someone to have to choose between feeding their son or daughter and posting an important letter that will get next month’s money in. They cannot imagine a parent having so little money that that is the choice they face. When people’s tax credits were stopped, they were eventually restored. Although they can get additional bank charges and so on paid back—I have managed that on behalf of constituents—they often cannot redeem their credit history, which makes the rest of their life more expensive, so there are serious long-term consequences.

[Kate Green]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government should reconsider the situation wherein, in the face of error by Concentrix, my constituents were asked to apply for a mandatory reconsideration of the decision? That is disgraceful. The fault was not theirs.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Indeed, and if we look at the figures for mandatory reconsideration we can see that it is overwhelmingly decided that our constituents were in the right and the decision makers in the wrong.

It is striking that the process was also expensive for those who complied. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) pointed out, sending precious documents by registered post costs money, as do printing inks. People also have to pay fees to have documents reissued. Yet in every case HMRC had initially decided that the application was justified. We are not talking about initial applications for tax credits; we are speaking on behalf of people who are trying to continue to receive them. The burden of proof has to be on HMRC.

[Catherine McKinnell]

My right hon. Friend is making a vital point. Several of my constituents were asked by HMRC to prove a negative—something that was not, in fact, the case—and had no way of doing so. Some of the people they were accused of living with were not alive.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Indeed. There is an important principle in the UK’s administrative law that public authorities act on the basis of evidence and law, and that if they dispute someone’s claim, they should have a good reason. The HMRC charter says that people have a right to be treated as honest. Well, the lone parents who were targeted did not feel that they had that right. Nearly a third of claimants applied for a mandatory reassessment, and they were overwhelmingly successful. Will the Minister guarantee that in future the Government will put acting legally before getting money out of citizens who do not have any? That is the question at the heart of this debate: illegal action has screwed money —excuse my language—out of citizens and damaged their ability to do their main job, which is to look after their families.

HMRC implies that the reason for dropping the contract is a sudden decline in the level of customer service, in particular the backlog of 200,000 incomplete cases and the terrible performance of Concentrix’s telephone service. Concentrix responded by saying that the case numbers were far above predicted rates. In August this year, they were nearly five times the forecast rates, which were developed by HMRC. One contributor to the backlog was HMRC’s automatically terminating 45,000 cases—guess when? In the week beginning 8 August. Where do mums and dads go in that week? They go on holiday, because it is the only time they can take their children on holiday, because otherwise they are at school. The Government have form when it comes to sending out such letters and starting consultations at the beginning of August. If the Minister can say that one of the things he is going to do is ensure that this nastiness in August will end, I think we would all be pleased to hear it.

Why were the predictions of the number of cases so brutally wrong? Why was the letter sent out on 8 August to terminate all those cases on the grounds that they had not fulfilled their information returns? In management terms, it would be more sensible to spread such a policy across the year, so that when someone does not respond to an information return they get a notice at the time. I do not believe that all the cases were started in August. I do not believe that thousands and thousands of people made their first tax credit application in the week beginning 8 August, yet so many of their cases were terminated in that week, causing extreme chaos in a situation that was already brutally chaotic.

It seems to me that the discovery of a service failure just after I sought this debate and just after the Department was called before the Work and Pensions Committee does not bear looking at. A cursory look at Mumsnet web chats, at the Child Poverty Action Group’s advice logs or at all the letters that the Minister and civil servants have received from MPs would have made it clear that the company’s performance has been unacceptable for a long time. Will the Minister ensure that any new contracts with private companies will permit a swift end if performance is substandard and ensure that the Government get information about the standards that are achieved in a timely fashion?

The current contract states that if Concentrix delivers less than 97% accuracy, its commission will be reduced, but I have discovered that in this case accuracy does not mean making the right payments to the right people; it means jumping through the hoops devised by HMRC. Let us have a real definition of accuracy, which is that the right payments should go to the right people and should not go to the wrong people. We all accept that people should not be paid tax credits wrongly, but accuracy must be judged on the real results, not on some process that is extremely burdensome.

I am concerned about the fact that, as my hon. Friends have said, the burden has particularly hit women and mums. What equality impact assessment was done at the start of the contract? We know that David Cameron called such assessments “bureaucratic nonsense”, but it seems to me that this issue is crying out for one, because someone should have thought about the fact that mums would be targeted. Of course, some dads were drawn into the net, and I am not denigrating their experience in any way, but it is not acceptable for Government policy to lay a particular burden on mothers in such circumstances.

[Angela Crawley]

Does the right hon. Lady agree that the UK Government have prioritised austerity measures? More than 80% of women have been adversely affected by this austerity-driven Government’s welfare reforms and cuts.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Not only are more women affected than men, but they are affected by more costs than men. Four fifths of the savings that the Government have made through their so-called austerity programme have been contributed by women. One thing for which I was really proud of the previous Labour Government was that they increased the amount of resource that went into women’s purses compared with men’s wallets. Through measures such as child tax credits, they dealt with maternal poverty pretty effectively. The current Government are doing their jolly best to reverse that progress.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful speech. However, this is not just about mums, important as they are; it is about the impact on their children. My constituent Sinead is a single parent. She went from receiving £122 child tax credit to absolute zero. She is paying off a crisis loan and that is impacting on her relationship and her ability to be a great parent to her five-month-old child. There is also Caroline, whose two children are in nursery. She is thinking of quitting her job because she cannot now pay the nursery fees. This issue is having an impact on children as well as mothers.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Indeed, for most of the victims of this situation, there has also been a significant effect on their self-confidence and on their reputation. Some get these letters at very stressful times in their lives—following a difficult divorce, while they are trying hard to separate themselves from a violent partner or after childbirth. The behaviour of Concentrix just added to their stress.

[Christina Rees]

My right hon. Friend has been very generous in giving way. She talked about the burden of proof. One woman claimant in my Neath constituency came in to see me because her payments had been stopped, as she had not replied to a letter that she had not received and there were no follow-up letters. Where does the burden of proof lie there?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The law is clear that the burden of proof lies with the Government and they need to have a proper reason to believe these things. As we know, however, many of the reasons why investigations were initiated were not what any court would describe as proper. That is a fundamental problem.

The Government announcement of the termination of the contract sought to reassure

“customers who have had their tax credits stopped that we will prioritise their cases, and make sure that they are processed as quickly as possible.”

That was a nice thought, was it not? However, Concentrix has informed me that, just on mandatory reconsideration cases, which were returned to HMRC on 19 September, nothing at all was done until 3 October. So not only is Concentrix operating on the basis of really flimsy information; it is also telling lies to Parliament and to the Government, because I do not consider that to be prioritising cases and making sure they are processed “as quickly as possible.”

I hope the Minister will answer the specific points that I have raised. This contract has been something that, frankly, we should all be ashamed of. The way that we have treated the mums and dads on low pay who are bringing up the next generation has been shameful. And actually, although I asked for this debate about the performance of Concentrix, the responsibility for this situation fundamentally lies with the Treasury and HMRC. The process is clear. Again, I quote Concentrix:

“Whilst the initial decision to halt an individual’s tax credit claim may, at the end of the process, prove to have been unnecessary”—

it did not feel “unnecessary” to the victims—

“the process is set by HMRC. Whether it is Concentrix managing this process or HMRC directly, the same hurdles and challenges are experienced because of the information held by HMRC at the outset.”

It seems to me that this goes to the heart of the Government’s use of information about citizens. The Government have a responsibility to assist citizens in giving them the information they require in order to assess their entitlement to something such as tax credits. The Government did that at the beginning of a tax credit claim, but their process for doing that as a tax credit claim continues is fundamentally flawed, and those flaws were made worse by the way that Concentrix operated.

I come to the conclusion that there are certain tasks that the Government simply should not delegate to a private company or to anyone else, and the collection of taxes and the issuing of tax credits is one of them. I hope that this will be the last experiment in that vein. I want to pay my taxes to the Government; I do not want to pay taxes to some company that I do not understand. Equally, I want to receive tax credits therefrom.

In future, no policy that has a disproportionate impact on women, especially those struggling to bring up a family, should be tolerated by the Government. I hope that the Minister will say that when things like this are contemplated in the future, Ministers will consider which groups in society will be disproportionately affected by their policies, in order to ensure that they do not continue to target women in the way that, frankly, this Government have throughout their existence.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I thank the Minister for that response. This is probably my first experience of leading a debate in which everybody apart from the Minister has agreed with one another. I thank all hon. Members who contributed.

I am particularly concerned about the Minister’s account—I know he is not the Minister responsible, but I hope he will pass this on to the Financial Secretary—which implies that this is just a recent phenomenon, because it is not. It has existed for a long time; it is not just a recent failure. I also do not accept that Concentrix should be wholly blamed. I note that the Minister said it is up to Concentrix to choose which information to use. I would like him to write to me after this debate to tell me whether it is true that HMRC pressed Concentrix to use data on cases in which it was not even able to name the claimed partner. That shows that HMRC is responsible for this oppression of women. The Minister did not note in his response the concern expressed by many Members that this is a gendered policy—

[Mr David Nuttall (in the Chair)]

Order.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I agree with my hon. Friend on both points. First, I think that there is an enormous amount of exciting news in the black country, with businesses there growing and creating jobs, and more investment is coming into the part of the country he represents so well. Secondly, I think that economic growth would be at risk if we left the European Union. We have today heard warnings from the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the head of Hitachi and the head of the World Trade Organisation, all telling us that there is a real economic risk for the UK if we vote to leave.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

What assessment has the Chancellor made of the impact on the British economy of overcrowding in airports in London and the south-east, and how much will further delay cost us?

[Mr Osborne]

It is absolutely clear that we need additional runway capacity in the south-east of England. That is what the Davies report suggested. Of course, the Government now need to come forward with a conclusion to that report, but we wanted to address the issue of air quality. When we raised that issue, some people asked whether it was necessary to look into it. If we look at the debates in the mayoral contest over the past few months, we see that air quality is an important issue to get right. We are close to finishing that work, and then we will report back on the Davies commission and future airport capacity.

Small Businesses: Tax Reporting

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Oliver Dowden]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. As I alluded to earlier, a lot of press coverage has suggested that this requirement amounts to quarterly tax returns. Whatever reservations we may have, it is pretty clear that it does not amount to that. I would welcome the Minister’s explicit assurance about that.

Another concern raised by petitioners was that they would not have the software or skills to produce the required information. I would welcome a commitment to proper availability of information, software and, where necessary, training for small businesses. We all know the difficulties of getting in contact with HMRC by telephone, so I ask the Government to look at ways to ensure that such information is readily and easily available.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I am struck that among those who are self-employed, the greatest growth has been in the over-50s. About a year ago, Saga produced a report that said that they were something like 25% of the growth, but it did not point out that those people are overwhelmingly women who have built a microbusiness and many of them do not have the skills to follow up on such requirements. Indeed, earlier this morning, I was talking to a self-employed woman—a physical trainer—in her 30s who said, “What? Do we have to do this every time? I can’t possibly afford an accountant. My business isn’t big enough to do that.” Many women do not have the skills needed to do that effectively, so will the hon. Gentleman press the Minister to ensure that they get the training that they need?

Domestic Politically Exposed Persons: Money Laundering Rules

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

It is a great honour and privilege to have secured tonight’s debate. I note that it follows on from the proceeds of crime debate, so it is both appropriate and timely.

It is a truism that international money laundering is a serious crime, and the UK Government are right to want to both persecute and prosecute those responsible. The legislation contained in both the third money laundering directive and the soon-to-be-introduced fourth directive is wide in its scope and is being aggressively applied by the banks. Although my debate deals specifically with politically exposed persons, my concerns can be more widely read across to the many law-abiding professional people in this country who are experiencing difficulties with their bank or in opening a new bank account.

In setting out the scene for tonight’s debate, I thought it would be helpful if I defined what a politically exposed person is in relation to the Money Laundering Regulations 2007. The regulations transpose the third money laundering directive into UK law. I will quote from the 2005 report of Joint Money Laundering Steering Group. This is a direct quote from its guidance:

“Senior political figure is a senior figure in the executive, legislative, administrative, military or judicial branches of a government (elected or non-elected), a senior figure of a major political party, or a senior executive of a government-owned corporation. It includes any corporate entity, partnership or trust relationship that has been established by, or for the benefit of, a senior political figure.

Immediate family typically includes the person’s parents, siblings, spouse, children, in-laws, grandparents and grandchildren where this can be ascertained.

Close associate typically includes a person who is widely and publicly known to maintain a close relationship with the senior political figure and includes a person who is in a position to conduct substantial domestic and international financial transactions on his or her behalf.”

Those definitions are reflected in the Money Laundering Regulations 2007, which were introduced pursuant to the third money laundering directive 2005. Importantly, however, although banks are choosing to apply the legislation to holders of domestic UK office, these people are specifically excluded from its scope.

Schedule 2 to the Money Laundering Regulations 2007 defines a PEP as being an individual, including their immediate family members or associates

“who is or has, at any time in the preceding year, been entrusted with a prominent public function by:

(i) a state other than the United Kingdom;

(ii) a Community institution; or (iii) an international body.”

It therefore specifically excludes Members of Parliament serving in the United Kingdom Parliament. In addition, the Joint Money Laundering Steering Group guidance for the UK financial sector states that the definition of a PEP used by banks

“only applies to those holding…a position in a state outside the UK”.

However, UK banks have consciously chosen to adopt a broader definition of a PEP, which also includes customers who hold political office within the UK. Banks argue that this is desirable in advance of the introduction of the fourth money laundering directive, due to come into force in 2017, which, unless amended, will apply to domestic politically exposed persons.

The rules around money laundering are a mess. I know this; the Government know this; the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee knows this; and the principals of many small and medium-sized businesses in my constituency and in others know this. The position of the UK banking sector, in its aggressive application of money laundering rules to domestic politicians, to their extended families and—I now fear—more widely to many of our law-abiding constituents, is known, in banking parlance, as de-risking.

What are the practical consequences of de-risking? In regards to the teenage children of MPs, it amounts to intrusive demands for information. One 18-year-old was recently contacted by her bank demanding that she produce personal information or face losing her banking facilities. This demand included information about her occupation, her employer’s name and address, details of any residential addresses she used and how much time she had spent at each address and information about regular sources of funds, such as income, student loans and funds from her parents.

A Back-Bench colleague, who agreed to be interviewed by his bank, was required to answer questions about his account dating back 25 years. This colleague is yet to turn 50.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

The regulations have affected me, as a Back-Bench Opposition MP. I have been involved in family charitable trusts where my fellow trustees have said, “Please Fiona, you can’t play a role in this philanthropic enterprise. Setting it up would be too complicated because you’re a politically exposed person.”

[Mr Walker]

The right hon. Lady’s timing is prescient, because I was about to say that some colleagues had been denied places as charity trustees or board members, simply because the charity could not deal with the financial compliance required to make the offer of the voluntary position worth while. These colleagues want to give their time and experience for free.

Another example of heavy-handedness concerns colleagues who retain a link with their professional practices. De-risking by banks means colleagues are struggling to open company bank accounts, often despite being required to do this by their own professional regulator, in order to look after and protect client moneys. In another case, a colleague’s 81-year-old father was summoned for an interview by his bank to verify his details and sources of wealth, despite his having been with the bank for more than 50 years.

Other colleagues have been asked to provide details of their parents’ financial assets, such as property, share and cash holdings. A son-in-law of a Back-Bench MP who owns his own business was recently informed that he had been identified as a politically exposed person and was required to provide details of his business’s transactions, as well as information about his personal account. In a similar vein, a Back-Bench MP’s son was required to provide information about his wife and details about her parents—his in-laws.

The actions of banks are, at best, highly intrusive and, at worst, in danger of restricting the ability of honest people, such as sons, daughters, brothers and sisters, to raise the money required to invest in and grow their business.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Harriett Baldwin)]

I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) on securing the debate. His speech featured both the clarity and the oratory that regularly win him awards as a parliamentarian.

My hon. Friend has raised an issue that I know has caused a great deal of frustration and anger with our banks, particularly when not just we but our families, by association, experience the same difficulties. I am grateful to him for putting a range of examples on the record, because I regularly inform my officials and the bank representatives whom I meet that my ears are bent every time I go into the Tea Room or the Lobbies, and now they will know that I am not exaggerating. I hear Members’ frustration loud and clear, and I assure them that, along with my right hon. Friend the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise, who is present, I am keen to enhance the action that we are already taking to deal with this example of red tape. I shall return to that subject shortly, but let me begin by setting out the broader context of our anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regime, of which the issue of domestic politically exposed persons is just one part.

This year will see the most comprehensive review ever of our regime to deal with illicit finance. At a global level we are taking action to improve our response to the threats of organised crime, international corruption and new and evolving forms of terrorism. As the Prime Minister set out in Singapore last year, that is exactly why he will be hosting a major anti-corruption summit in the UK this May.

The Government are also committed to securing the hard-won growth in our economy. In order to maintain this momentum, we need to create a business environment that fosters innovation and investment and that is supported, not hindered, by regulation. That is why it is so important to get the regulatory regime right, and why we are carrying out a red tape review of our current anti money laundering regime, seeking views from the private sector on areas of the regime that it finds unnecessarily burdensome. The aim of this is to help us to fine-tune our legislation so that we have an effective regime that works for our country. That review will report in the coming months, and I look forward to working with my colleague the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise and to receiving the analysis.

I turn now to the specific issue of domestic PEPs. I recognise that this is the key concern of the debate, and that it is a concern not only of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne but of many others in this House and the other place. As he states, the current global rules on anti-money laundering require that, in cases of high risk, banks and regulated businesses carry out enhanced due diligence on all PEPs—that is, those individuals entrusted with a prominent public function, be it politicians, high-ranking members of the military, senior members of the judiciary or others. Indeed, I myself got caught by this when I held an account with an American firm. There is solid reasoning behind this when it comes to PEPs outside the European Union, because political corruption is something we have seen time and again across the world on a truly astonishing scale.

Let me give three examples. The first is the James Ibori case. He was a state governor in Nigeria from 1999 to 2007. In that time he stole tens of millions of pounds of public money. With an official salary of £10,000 he was somehow able to buy a £2.2 million house in Hampstead, one in Regent’s Park, a house in Dorset and a flat in St John’s Wood, and it was not just Ibori himself who was ultimately convicted and imprisoned: so was his sister, as well as other associates including his UK solicitor. That is because they conspired with Ibori to conceal the origins of his wealth through a complex web of transactions and shell companies.

Another striking example is that of the former Secretary for Transport and Public Works of Macau. He was convicted of 40 counts of corruption and 13 counts of money laundering and sentenced to 27 years’ imprisonment. Since then the UK alone has recovered over £28 million of his corrupt assets and returned them to Macau.

Another example is that of the late Frederick Chiluba. He was Zambian President between 1991 and 2001. On 4 May 2007 he was found guilty of stealing $46 million of assets in a civil case in the Royal Courts of Justice, and used UK-based solicitors to launder money. In 2008 it was reported that about $60 million had been recovered by the Zambian authorities.

There is therefore a reason that we treat foreign PEPs differently under the existing regulations, and that is why families and close associates are also looked at in more detail.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

All the examples the Minister has cited are of people who had some Executive power. How can Opposition legislators be regarded as having Executive power? I certainly do not feel as though I have any.

[Harriett Baldwin]

The right hon. Lady is right to highlight that, and I will be coming on to it. Clearly the degree of risk in terms of political engagement will vary not only by country, which is one factor that needs to be taken into account, but also with reference to the role of the individual.

We have heard how the regime works currently, but we have also heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne that the regime will be changing in the coming year. The overarching framework is set at a global level by the Financial Action Task Force, which is a collection of 36 countries, including the US and Australia. It includes both domestic and foreign politically exposed persons in its standards. The motivation for these global standards is that in many countries domestic PEPs actually present a higher risk than foreign PEPs, and so one person’s domestic PEP is another person’s foreign PEP. The level of risk is not the same for all countries or all individuals, as has been pointed out, which is why the risk-based approach set out in the standards is crucial.

Of course the UK supports a risk-based approach across the EU to identify and deal with PEPs, especially domestic ones. That is why we were supportive of the fourth anti-money laundering directive, which enacts these global standards. We are now faced with transposing the EU directive into UK law by June 2017, and it will extend the regime so that domestic PEPs will also be subject to enhanced due diligence across the board. Despite the fact that the new regime does not come into effect until next year, I know that some banks—we have heard some examples and some names today—particularly international ones, have already chosen to implement these changes. They are very much applying a one-size-fits-all process, as we have seen in the examples we have heard this evening. I know that for some individuals affected this has caused enormous frustration.

Let me be clear: this change should not prevent any Member of this House, or any other individual in this category, from gaining or maintaining a UK bank account. We are looking at exactly how we can encourage the banks to implement these measures domestically in the most risk-based manner possible. My officials discuss this issue with their international partners on a regular basis, and we are seeking views on this as part of our public consultation on the updated money laundering regulations and how we transpose the fourth anti-money laundering directive into UK law. I am already regularly raising this issue with not only the banks but the regulator.

I have already mentioned the red tape review of our current anti-money laundering regime, and today’s debate is helpful in that context. I know this is an issue of significant concern in this House, as we have heard clearly this evening, so I will report back to hon. Members as this work develops over the coming months. My goal is to have a banking system that is hostile to illicit finance and to terrorists, but which allows ordinary law-abiding and law-making citizens to move easily from one bank to another for better rates and better service. This debate has been very valuable for getting on the record the heavy-handed way in which banks are already applying these new rules. I would like to reassure my hon. Friend, and all other colleagues, that I am on his side, and I am grateful to him for bringing this issue to the House’s attention.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin]

I welcome my hon. Friend to the Chamber. He clearly brings a wealth of experience in this area, and he is right to highlight the fact that people who rent out a room can receive the first £4,250 tax-free. I note the point that he has made. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer is sitting beside me and he will no doubt take that as a Budget submission and consider it as part of that process.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Following on from that question, one aspect of the tax gap that everyone admits is part of the problem is the collection of tax on rental properties. Will the Minister confirm that there will be a Treasury study on how to deal with the tax gap on rental properties, in order to find out how big it is and how we can challenge it?

[Harriett Baldwin]

The right hon. Lady is right to highlight that point. It is important to recognise that although the first £4,250 of rent is covered by the allowance, once it goes above that level it becomes taxable income. HMRC is constantly looking at ways in which it can improve the collection rate in that area.

The Economy

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for calling me early in this debate and for selecting the Liberal Democrat amendment in my name and those of my hon. Friends.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) on delivering a flawless maiden speech, and I thank the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) for delivering such a gracious speech, particularly given that he has not had much practice over the last nine years when it comes to delivering a speech from the Back Benches.

I want to speak briefly about a couple of matters that are mentioned in our amendment. First, I want to try to clarify the reason for the Conservative party’s opposition to the Human Rights Act. I think that it boils down to just two issues: foreign prisoners and prisoner voting. Members will know that the Home Secretary famously tried to kick-start her own leadership bandwagon with a Tory conference speech in which she promised to deport an illegal migrant whose removal was said to have been blocked by the courts on the basis of article 8 of the European convention on human rights, which concerns the right to a family life. She said:

“We all know the stories about the Human Rights Act...about the illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because, and I am not making this up, he had a pet cat.”

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

She was making it up.

[Tom Brake]

Hold on. “But”, we are told,

“a spokesman for the Judicial Office at the Royal Courts of Justice, which issues statements on behalf of senior judges, said the pet had ‘had nothing to do with’ the judgement allowing the man to stay.”

So, unfortunately, it was just that: a story about the Human Rights Act—a story which just happened not to be true. If there are other aspects of the Act that the Government want to get rid of, such as the right to life or the right to privacy, I think we are entitled to know that, but at present there is no real clarity about the nature of their concerns.

I am sorry that the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) is no longer in the Chamber. I do not agree with him that it makes no difference how much a party spends on its campaign, particularly if there are ways of spending that get around the constituency spending limits, but I do agree with what he said about the European convention:

“I personally think it is unthinkable to leave the European convention on human rights…It is the way we uphold the values we strive for which are the rule of law, individual liberty, justice for all, regardless of gender. The convention is the bedrock of that.”

I also agree with the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) that the European Court of Human Rights is,

“on a daily basis, producing decisions of great importance in improving human rights in Europe which are inevitably ignored here because they tend to concern countries in eastern Europe”.

I agree with those respected Conservative politicians that scrapping the Human Rights Act and leaving the convention would be a disaster for the United Kingdom’s credibility. It would send countries such as Belarus and Russia the message that it is possible to take or leave, or pick and choose, human rights as if they were favourite dishes on a Chinese restaurant menu.

Let me now say something about the snoopers charter, which clearly has business implications. Start-up businesses would be required to collect and store data in a way that would not be in their interests. As we know, David Anderson has been examining the current surveillance and intercept laws. He handed a report to the Prime Minister on 6 May. I wonder whether the Government had time to take it into account when they presented their proposals for an investigatory powers Bill. We need to see what is in that Bill, and we also need an explanation of why the United Kingdom Government are proceeding with proposals that the Americans have just rejected. The Americans have no mandatory communications data retention requirement for communication service providers, and I think we need to know why this country has such a requirement. Do the Government believe that the Americans are putting the lives of their civilians at risk?

I fear that the new report by Sir Nigel Sheinwald may well not be released, but I urge the Government to make a copy available to the public, even if it has to be redacted. It is quite possible that the report will show that there is no need for a snoopers charter, and that an international treaty could be used instead, allowing countries to agree to release data if required to do so by the security services.

Finally, let me touch briefly on the issue of the right to buy. During the general election campaign, there was clear agreement that we needed to build more homes, but I am afraid that the Government’s proposals are very unlikely to achieve that. When asked about the right to buy, the Mayor of London said that it was

“obviously one of the issues…that it would be potentially extremely costly to this body”,

meaning the Greater London Assembly. He added:

“We would have to make up the difference. Housing associations are private bodies, as we all know. It would involve massive subsidies.”

However, in a tweet—I think that he was tweeting as the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip rather than as Mayor—he said that the right to buy was a very good policy, and that the Conservatives’ proposals were

“a good way of ensuring it is funded.”

We need some clarity, but I suppose that those with two jobs often have to contradict themselves, and that is obviously what the Mayor has had to do.

Time does not allow me to touch on other matters, such as the Liberal Democrats’ free childcare and tax threshold. I should love to have an opportunity to discuss them on another occasion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer). One of the few things I like about this new Parliament is the sight of more women on all the Benches around us.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) reminded us, the Queen promised last Wednesday that the Government would adopt a one-nation approach, yet in practice this Government’s approach to the economy has divided our nation. What brings a nation together? A sense of fair play, underpinned, in my view, by universal human rights, and a sense that everyone can depend on good public services when they need them. We can be united by confidence in a fair tax system and spending that is efficient, where our money is not wasted. When I was a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I was constantly struck by how many voters watched our hearings, praising my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) for her determined defence of the taxpayer’s pound. Their enthusiasm showed that when we in Parliament stop the Government wasting citizens’ hard-earned money, they are not in the least turned off by politics.

But politicians must be scrupulously honest about what we do. The plan to make it illegal to increase taxes looks like a rhetorical device. What is the penalty going to be? Will the Chancellor go to jail if, for example, he increases VAT on books to equalise the treatment of electronic reading material and printed books? The trumpeted plans to exempt the lowest paid from any form of income tax are an example of a policy that divides rather than unites. It has been dressed up as help to the low paid, but every study shows that the majority of the benefit goes to families in the top half of earners, whose tax bill as a share of their income will fall further than that of the poorer half of the community.

My objection to this policy is that it divides society, separating us into givers and takers—those who pay into the system and those who take out—breeding a culture of blame and suspicion. Of course, we all pay tax. We all pay VAT when we buy things, but the greatest proportion of tax, and often the most resented, is income tax. It is fairer than other taxes, all of which take up more of the household budgets of the poorest people than of those who are wealthier. Paying tax, as we too often fail to remind citizens, is a symptom of social solidarity. It is our subscription to civilised society where we can all enjoy public parks, send our children to schools where they have an equal chance to learn, and have a health service we can rely on when we are ill. One of the defining characteristics of Britain is a strong sense of fair play, but if no one explains the unfair consequences of plans to change tax thresholds, the one-nation label that the Government claim will camouflage this unfairness.

I represent a successful town. It attracts inward investment to the United Kingdom. It is an immigrant town. Slough residents are aspirational, work hard and generate wealth. It is the third most productive town in the United Kingdom, contributing approximately £8 billion to the national economy—double the UK average. However, that growth generates losers as well as winners. In our local housing market, rising prices push up GDP figures while the rest of the economy drags, and as a result home owners see their assets grow while everyone else spends unsustainable proportions of their income on rent or on struggling to buy.

The plans to sell off housing association properties at a discount—properties that are already occupied by secure tenants—is a gross example of taking assets available to the many people who have housing need, destroying the legacy of philanthropists and mutual aid societies who created those housing associations, and giving those assets to a few sitting tenants who can raise a mortgage. That is the Conservative way—to take from the many and give to the few.

GDP does not tell us how the benefits of growth are distributed—who wins within the population and who loses. Some people get no financial benefit at all. It is estimated that unpaid childcare contributes nearly three quarters of GDP. Carers of ill and disabled relatives save more than the entire spend of the national health service. Yet UK workers who are employed and paid now receive only half of GDP, whereas in 1976 the figure was two thirds. That rate of decline is unmatched by any developed economy or any other industrialised economy. The employees’ share of the economic pie is now the lowest ever recorded and it will keep decreasing because of this Government’s plans to cut in-work benefits. Other countries, most notably Scandinavian countries, have worker representatives on company boards so that meaningful discussions about sharing corporate wealth can take place. Sharing wealth equitably should be part of corporate social responsibility, and those eschewing it should not be given taxpayer-funded contracts.

I urge the Government to match their one-nation rhetoric with action. If they do, we could have an economy where hard work is well rewarded, whether it is work by a mum bringing up babies or a banker borrowing and lending. If everyone is confident that their aspiration will be rewarded, they will do as my constituents do: invest in their skills, work hard and grow our whole nation’s economy.

VAT on e-books

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Leadsom]

Yes, I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point, and I will come on to it if he will bear with me.

EU VAT law allows member states to implement reduced rates of VAT of no less than 5% for certain goods and services, listed in annexe III of the VAT directive, at the discretion of member states. One of those reliefs relates to the supply of books on all physical means of support, newspapers and periodicals, other than material wholly or predominantly devoted to advertising. Although that may sound like it includes e-books, article 98(2) of the VAT directive specifically excludes electronically supplied services from the reduced rates in annexe III. That means that the UK charges the standard rate of VAT, 20%, on e-books and the zero rate of VAT on physical books.

As hon. Members will be aware, the UK’s e-books market is a growing one. Therefore, it is not clear that it is in need of a stimulus in the form of a reduced VAT rate. Between 2011 and 2012, e-book sales in the UK increased from £138 million to £261 million, so at a time when the Government are working to tackle the economy’s problems head-on and deliver a recovery that works for all, it is not clear that we should offer fiscal support for such a rapidly expanding industry.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

How many e-books are currently subject to UK rates of VAT and how many are subject to, for example, Luxembourg rates?

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady will forgive me—I do not have those specific breakdowns to hand, but I will happily write to her on that point. I apologise for that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The jobs being created by Dyson at Malmesbury are excellent news. Many people will know Dyson’s products, but its facility at Malmesbury, which I have visited, is fantastic. We went to James Dyson to ask how we could replicate some of that success elsewhere in our economy. He came forward with proposals—which became our innovation and catapult centres—to bring applied science to commercial success. We are building on the success of Dyson, not just for the people my hon. Friend represents, but for the whole country.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

How often have the Chancellor and his colleagues referred to the long-term economic plan during this Question Time? Is it because the shorter-term economic plan that he announced in 2010, allegedly to get rid of the deficit and reduce the debt by next year, has failed and he is instead adopting something much closer to the two-term offer that Labour proposed?

[Mr Osborne]

I have not been keeping count of how many times the long-term economic plan has been mentioned, but the hon. Lady has just added two more to the total. That long-term economic plan is reducing the deficit, which is due to be down by a half this year, seeing the creation of 1.5 million jobs in our economy and supporting the growing economy, as we have seen in the GDP numbers today.