Budget Resolutions
Debate between George Kerevan and John Redwood
John Redwood
I do not think that the hon. Lady was listening to what I said. I asked whether we have too many of them, because we do not need quite so many to get it wrong; I think that we could be more economical in getting it wrong, if that is what they persist in doing. Certainly, the official forecasters completely missed the banking crash of 2008-09, which some of us did not miss. Then, of course, they got the Brexit impact completely wrong. The Scottish National party is redefining what it believed at the time of the remain campaign. I remember quite clearly it supporting a campaign that said, in terms, that those official forecasts were right—that confidence would be damaged, and therefore consumer expenditure would fall, whereas it has actually gone up very strongly. It said that investment would collapse, but it did not, because the demand was there, and companies need to meet it.
George Kerevan
I clearly remember being in the Treasury Committee when we interviewed the Chancellor, and clearly remember holding him to account for his bogus forecasts, which were clearly over the top, clearly bound to turn people off and clearly led to the wrong result on 23 June.
John Redwood
I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman shared my scepticism. I just wish that he had said rather more at the time when we were fighting the referendum campaign, because I do not remember him being on my side or making similarly helpful comments before people went to vote.
Section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993
Debate between George Kerevan and John Redwood(8 years, 8 months ago)
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John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I share the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) about page 19 and that is the main reason I have entered this debate. It is an unfair exposition on the opportunities and risks linked to our membership of the European Union and I do not think it accurately reflects what the OBR has been saying. I am pleased that the OBR has now spoken for itself and put on the record the important point that it does not believe that in the five-year forecast period, were we to leave, there would be a decline in economic output or activity. Like many forecasters, the OBR believes that the net impact would be quite small. Of course, in line with others it has said that there could be volatility in currency and asset price markets. All I would add is that there has been massive volatility in those markets in the years we have been a member of the EU, so it would be somewhat outrageous to claim that that would suddenly stop were we to leave the EU, but I cannot see that it is a particularly damning point.
My hon. Friend has gone on at some profound length about what is wrong with page 19. I hope Ministers will look again and realise that it is not a fair exposition of the OBR’s position. Linking the OBR’s position with Christine Lagarde’s comment, which is obviously a comment made for the “stay inside” campaign trail rather than for normal commentary purposes, gives a misleading impression.
I wish to make some more fundamental points about the figures and the document before us this evening. Let us start with why we are doing this at all. It is a completely pointless exercise, but it is legally required by the treaty and the framework of law under which we live. It is a great pity that in the renegotiation this, along with dozens of other things, was not sorted out because if, as the Minister says, the Government can ignore the advice and the policy laid down by the European Union to control the deficit and get the debt down, what is the point of the Government having to table 300 pages of carefully selected documentation, go through the surveillance procedure, on some occasions receive a report saying that their policy is not good enough or they are not converging in the way that the European Union wishes, and the Government then saying, “Well, fortunately, there is no penalty on us so we will ignore that”?
It is strange to belong to a club, accept the rules and then, when we do not like the rules, say, “Of course, we didn’t really want any of that and fortunately we have been opted out of the penalty bit of it.” It is a strange exercise. I suspect that the official machine of the Government, which goes on whoever is in office, is quite guided by all this. There is probably a wish on the part of officials to get the British Government policy and the figures closer to the convergence requirements. It is high time the European Union itself had an honest debate about the most pressing and most difficult target it has set—the target that all member states should keep their stock of debt to 60% of their national income.
Practically every member state is way above that, and some of them violate the target by having more than double the level set down by the European Union. Why does that body think it is sensible to persevere with a target that none of the member states wish to keep and none of them are trying to reach?
George Kerevan
May I add that the rule that sets the 60% target also states that member states in breach must have a rectification programme and bring their debt level, whatever it is, down by five percentage points a year, which this Government have significantly failed to do and significantly will fail to do for a long, long time?
John Redwood
All the Governments are failing to do that, and it is even more pressing and difficult for a country such as Greece, where the penalties do apply because it is in the euro scheme. Despite all the best efforts of the European leadership, the European Central Bank and others, and very cruel and difficult expenditure cuts that Members in this House would not have accepted for the United Kingdom, Greece is still miles off getting anywhere near the stock-of-debt target and it has struggled until recently to get down to the deficit target.
We need to ask fundamental questions of our European partners about why we go through this routine and what malign influence it has on some economies and some economic performances around the European Union, which should be a matter of common concern all the time we remain in that body. The Minister says this is not a new exercise and it is not much of a burden on the British state; it is just one of those things, and we send in figures that we produce for other purposes. That is not quite true. The introduction to the document clearly has to be written, the selection has to be made, it is clear throughout the document that it is written for domestic purposes and for the purpose of forwarding it to the European Union, and we try to produce figures that we would not otherwise produce in order to conform with the workings of the European Union.
Next, I would like to highlight the figure for the convergence criteria and the so-called treaty deficit on page 186 of the report. That shows that in 2016-17, if all goes well and these figures work out, for the first time in many years we will get below the 3% target to 2.9%. That makes my point: we would not have to calculate that treaty deficit, think that it was significant or use it as part of the guidance for the British economy if we were not signed up to this surveillance and management system within the European Union. The Minister has to bear it in mind that there is actually some subtle guidance in the European policy. I think that many of my constituents would find it quite surprising that we have to table 300 pages of detailed financial and economic information in order to comply, and that that is then put through a scrutiny and surveillance process.
The next figure that I would like to highlight is on page 156, which shows how much in “expenditure transfers” we have to make to the European Union institutions—in other words, how much money we send that we do not get back. We see that the November forecast for 2016-17 was £10.7 billion, which is a very considerable sum, and that the March forecast, just four months later, has gone up to £11.8 billion. Between the autumn statement and the current Budget there is an increase of £1.1 billion in next year’s expenditure transfers to the EU institutions.
That figure of £1.1 billion is very close to the figure that the Government had pencilled in for disability cuts. I do not know about you, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I would rather not have the disability cuts and not pay £1.1 billion extra to the European Union. Why can we not make those kinds of choices? The reason, of course, is that we are signed up to membership of an organisation that thinks it knows better than we do how to spend our own money. I think that people in the United Kingdom are getting very frustrated at being told that we have to be very careful about our priorities, only to discover, if they get guidance from these complex figures, that the European Union can take £1.1 billion extra off us for next year without a by-your-leave. That leaves us struggling to find that money when we try to make the Budget add up, ending up with options and choices that I am sure Ministers did not really want to make, and which Parliament, in its wisdom, has decided should not be made.
I draw the House’s attention to some very important figures on page 205 that the Government are sending to our European partners and masters about projected net migration into the United Kingdom. I was very happy to campaign with my right hon. and hon. Friends at the previous general election on a sensible and sensitive policy of controlled migration, wishing to get it down to the tens of thousands by the end of the Parliament. It was a very popular policy, because I think that people liked the idea that there would be a fair system offering sensible rules so that people could understand it before deciding whether or not to come to our country. Interestingly, the forecast that we are sending to the European Union shows that the level of migration will stay much higher than the Government’s target—it shows 256,000 in 2016, declining to 185,000 in 2021. There is also a further projection in which net migration stays considerably higher, actually above 250,000 in every year.
I think that matters, because the Government’s intentions are very clear: they would like to get net migration well below these forecast figures. Why, then, is the forecast so high? I think that it is very simple: the forecast is that high because the European continental economies, particularly in the south of our continent, are performing very badly and have created mass unemployment on an extremely worrying scale, so the UK, which has a more successful economic policy that is generating a lot of jobs, is acting as a magnet for people who are otherwise without hope of employment.
That policy is making it very difficult for the United Kingdom Government to hit their very popular target on migration. I hope that when this document is submitted Ministers will follow it up by pointing that out to the European Union and saying that they have a solemn promise to keep to the United Kingdom electors, who helped elect them to government, and that this set of EU policies, creating joblessness and therefore triggering a lot of foot-loose migration around the European Union, is making it very difficult to honour that promise.
It also leads us to worry about the quality of some of these forecasts, because I am sure that the Government wish to get the level down, but there is a great danger that the variant of a much higher level has been put in, because actually that is what they are afraid will happen. I hope the Minister will consider that when he replies and that if we are going to go through the process of submitting our homework on economic matters to the European Union to be marked—by sending it 300 pages of figures—we will also say to it, “You are making it impossible for us to meet our legitimate wish to create more jobs to mop up unemployment in our country and to get wages up, as we would like to, because your failing economic policies in many parts of the euro area are bringing a number of migrants into our country that makes it impossible for us to meet our targets.”
Those are just a few brief comments on an extremely complex set of documents and numbers, which show that, while we stay in this body, we need to engage much more and to get some change so that there is honesty in the targeting and an understanding of the damage that some of the targets and policies are creating. However, it will not be a surprise to hon. Members to learn that I think that the simplest thing would be for us to leave the European Union so that this is the last one of these documents we ever have to produce. We can then take control of our own money, banish austerity, spend the £10 billion on things that we want and leave the European Union free to get on with its political union, which is clearly what it will need to do to try to deal with the mass unemployment, the lack of cash transfers and the inadequacy of its regional policies.
I hope tonight’s debate will be of use to the general public and that they will understand that we can take back control, spend our own money, and have prosperity, not austerity. That is what we will get if we leave the European Union.
Energy Bill [Lords]
Debate between George Kerevan and John Redwood
John Redwood
I welcome the Bill because it attempts to deal with some of the damage that has accumulated in recent years as a result of the policies of the Labour Government, who neglected the need for more energy and security of supply, and some of the European Union’s interventions.
I welcome the cross-party attempts to breathe some life into the North sea industry, which has been crucial over many years. As many have pointed out, it is going through a troubled time and anything that can be done by the Oil and Gas Authority or directly by the Government is to be welcomed. For example, now is a good time to remove the petroleum revenue tax, which is a rather silly, unpleasant tax introduced by the Labour party for internal political reasons near the beginning of activities in the North sea. It yields no revenue at the moment, so it would be a good time to get rid of it to show that we want normal profit and revenue taxes, not super-taxes, on North sea activities when the good times return. I hope that the Chancellor will bear in mind the needs of the industry in his forthcoming Budget, because things could be done on tax to promote more investment against the background of a weak oil price, which is no great incentive for making new things happen.
I hope that the Bill will contribute towards taking security of supply seriously. The Government regularly tell us that they want our country to be secure—an aim that I hope is shared across the Chamber. An important way for a country to become more secure is through controlling its own energy resources. The United Kingdom is a relatively privileged country geographically, because it has substantial reserves of oil, gas and coal. We have recently discovered the likelihood of new gas reserves onshore, which should be available to exploit sensibly. We also have plenty of water around that allows us to have hydro-type renewables, which are genuinely renewable and continuously available, unlike the unreliable wind, about which we had a good debate earlier. As the Government go about implementing the Bill, I trust that they will have security of supply at the forefront of their mind.
George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)
Where does the security of supply lie in the Prime Minister flying to Paris to ask the French President to fund a nuclear power station that will supply 7% of our electricity, when France clearly will not do so?
John Redwood
That must be worked out between the contracting parties. I have not been urging them to do that, but I wish them well in whatever negotiations are under way. I accept that if they can find a way of producing relatively sensibly priced power on a continuous basis from a nuclear power station, that has all sorts of advantages for the security of supply. I assume that they will ensure that all the technology and the ability to control, repair and maintain the station will rest in the United Kingdom, because we can have true security only if we control the technology and have the industrial resources to be able to build and mend the facility being created. We must also bear that in mind for weapons procurement. If we want a secure country, we need an industry that can support it and is capable in adversity of seeing us through. We cannot rely on imports for everything, and we are already relying too much on imports in the crucial area of energy, so I hope the Bill will help us to stop thinking that we can automatically rely on French electricity and Russian gas indirectly through the European system.
George Kerevan
On that point, after France, the Chancellor of the Exchequer seems bent on handing over the entire British nuclear industry to China.
John Redwood
I trust not. I have not seen all the documents, but I am sure that we will see more of the detail in due course as and when more decisions are taken. If my right hon. Friend the Chancellor is negotiating such a deal, I urge him to ensure that we have control over and an understanding of the technology. I see from the nods from my Front-Bench team that that is exactly what they have in mind. A country does not have secure power if it is dependent on those abroad to maintain a power station and does not understand how to mend it, improve it or make it function at a crucial moment. Of course we need to probe to make sure that the Government are doing the right thing, but we get that security only if we control the technology.
Let me return to the point about security vis-à-vis imports and our own capability. We are becoming too dependent on imported power, and we have to remember that if our imports are to come from the European continent, that area is short of energy in general, and it has a policy to make energy scarce and very expensive. The west of the continent does not get on well with Mr Putin, yet indirectly it relies on his gas, and that is not a strong strategic position to be in. I want our country not to be in any way beholden indirectly to Putin’s gas or to the general network on the continent, which is clearly weakened by the necessity to have Russian supplies in the eastern part of the system. The UK, as an island nation, with access to such riches both onshore and offshore, and with the ability to generate more genuine renewables that are continuously available, should be able to have a secure supply and sufficient capacity in reserve when need arises.
We wish to be a greater industrial power than we are. We are the fifth largest economy in the world but we are very dependent on a very big service sector and our industrial sector has, under Governments of all persuasions in the past 30 years, shrunk as a proportion of it. We still have some great companies and some great technology but we need more of them and we need to broaden the industrial base. In order to have that capability in Britain, so that we can make our own power stations, generators and engines, we need to make sure that we have sufficient and cheap energy to fuel those factories, forges, facilities and blast furnaces.
We meet tonight against the backdrop of our steel industry gravely at risk. One of the main contributory factors to the risk to our steel industry is scarce and dear energy; there are also chronic problems with steel prices and Chinese competition now, but this began with an energy problem. We cannot hope to be one of the big world forces in energy-intensive industries if we do not have more plentiful energy at cheaper prices.
I wish the Bill and the Secretary of State well. The Government must have as their fundamental aim security of supply, because without secure energy a country is very limited in its foreign policy options and has to tailor its diplomacy accordingly. I see us becoming too dependent. We wish to correct our balance of payments, and getting into energy surplus would not only be a very good contribution to that aim, but would strengthen our diplomatic and political security. As we wish to reindustrialise, we need more and cheaper energy. We are not going to get that on a diet of wind farms and speculative renewable technologies that are not yet available, and are very expensive and difficult to scale up. We can get that affordable energy if we extract the oil, gas and coal, and process it in an environmentally friendly way to the extent that can be achieved, if we have more gas turbine power stations and more reliable baseload power stations. We are going to leave ourselves vulnerable and insecure if we depend on a combination of European imports and too many wind farms. I therefore say: may the OGA do well, may it find ways of bringing on stream the new reserves we are just discovering and may it find ways of extending the lives of the existing fields and of the pools of talent and expertise we have, particularly in Scotland, where we need them still.
Finance Bill
Debate between George Kerevan and John Redwood(9 years, 3 months ago)
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John Redwood
I think that we are now going rather wide of the amendment and the clause that we are meant to be debating. I wish to see a generous care system that is properly controlled and disciplined. If the hon. Lady has individual cases where people will be adversely affected unreasonably, I am sure that Ministers will be willing to look at them. The last thing I wish to see is unreasonable cuts affecting people who really need the money, but I also wish to see more work done—this is what the Government are doing—to promote the abilities of many people, including those she suggests are disabled, because many people have many abilities. This Government are about encouraging those abilities, helping people to do more for themselves and, where possible, to get into work so that they can lead more rewarding lives, and so that they can receive pay in addition to the benefit assistance for which they currently qualify. There is a complete policy there to promote better lives for everyone in society, and cutting income taxes is an important part of that, and promoting abilities and opportunities is another.
George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)
Does the right hon. Gentleman not recognise that there is a moral hazard to a degree in taxing insurance? There is a moral hazard that we recognise through the fact that 80% of activity in the insurance business is not taxed. Therefore, if we are increasing the tax burden on that 20% simply to raise revenue, it might be worth coming back and looking at the consequences.
John Redwood
That is very good advice, and that is exactly what this Committee is trying to do by highlighting the issue in a short but thorough debate.
I will now make some progress on the specific matters relating to insurance tax. It passes my first test, which is that if we have to increase a tax rate we must ensure that we get more revenue from it. It passes that test because the starting rate is sufficiently low, and the forecasts indicate that we will see a substantial increase in revenue as a result of the change.
The second question is what is its distributional effect. The hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South understandably made much of the cases that are the hardest, but overall I would imagine—the Minister may have some figures—that people who are better off will pay more of this tax than people who are not so well off, because a lot of it is insuring property and asset and businesses, and it will be the people with the most substantial assets and businesses who will pay rather more of that tax. It therefore meets a general test of fairness in the sense that it is progressive.
My one nervousness about that—I look forward to the Minister’s response on this—is over the issue of the young driver, which the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South raised. I think that we need to ensure that we have a very supportive package for young people generally, because they are finding it difficult to price themselves into housing, and they do not always get the rates of pay at the beginning of their careers that we would like to see them enjoy. It is very important that we keep cutting the income taxes at the lower end of income, especially for them, because they really need to keep everything they earn if their starting pay is not very good.
The biggest problem for the young driver, particularly the young male driver, is that the starting prices for insurance can be exceptionally high. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult for the very young male driver to get insured at all. We have to ask ourselves why that is. The main reason, of course, is that the young driver is perceived to be a bad risk by the insurance company. There is some evidence that the younger driver may, on average, have a worse record than the older driver, and that is why the premiums can be particularly high on younger people.
Perhaps the Government can help rather more, through and with the industry, to tackle the main problem, which is not the tax on the premium but the initial height of the premium. Some good work has been done in the industry to provide methods of reassurance that the young person will drive well and safely by means of technology in the car that monitors them, at their own request and with their agreement. That may be the price of their getting the lower premium. We need to look at how technology and support for good driving can be reinforced so that a young person is more readily insurable at a realistic price. Of course, if the young person behaved recklessly, that would become obvious and the arrangements would have to be changed, but there are ways in which this can be done.
Productivity
Debate between George Kerevan and John Redwood(9 years, 6 months ago)
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John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
The productivity puzzle can be understood and resolved. It is a combination of bad news and not such bad news. There was a sharp fall in productivity at the time of the crisis, because we lost a lot of very expensive output, a lot of people lost their jobs and the net result was a big fall. Since the crisis has hit, there has been a continued loss of top-end jobs in areas such as oil, financial services and banking, which score very well in terms of the way people compile productivity figures. An industry such as oil, which produces a lot of extremely valuable output and has a limited number of very well-paid people, gives an enormous boost to productivity, as we have learned today from Norway. We have just lived through a period when, through no fault of any of the three Governments who have been presiding over it, there has been a sharp decline in the output of oil—because it is now a very mature province—and a big fall in the oil price. That recent fall is down to market circumstance and to things happening well away from this country.
There was also a big loss of top-end jobs in banking and financial services. There will be mixed views in the House of Commons on the social value of those jobs, but they scored very well in the run-up to the crash. Some of those jobs have now gone altogether and some have gone to lower tax jurisdictions elsewhere. The bad news side of it accounts for the drop in productivity during the crisis and the slow growth since the crisis.
The better reason why our productivity is below that of some of our continental comparators is that we have gone for a model—I think and hope with the agreement of all parties—of having more people in employment and of creating conditions in which this economy can produce many more lower paid jobs in the hope that that will lead on to higher paid jobs and more output and activity, which is a better model than those people being out of work.
Let us look at the way the productivity figures are calculated. If a country sacks 10% of the least productive people in the economy, which is the kind of thing that the euro was doing to some of our competitor countries in euroland, it can be flattering for its productivity figures, because the least productive jobs go, and the productivity of the total country rises, but the country is a lot worse off, because it then has 10% of its workforce out of work who would otherwise have been in less productive jobs. It is the same in a business. The easiest way for a business with below-average productivity to get to average or above-average productivity is to close its worst factory, but that is not always the answer that people in this House would like.
George Kerevan
The right hon. Gentleman is making the best he can of a bad job. For instance, if we look at the share of research and development in gross domestic product in the UK, we see that it was down not just over the 1990s, when we had the last Conservative Government, but for the period from 2000 to 2007. R and D is a fundamental component of productivity and it is down. He cannot gainsay that.
John Redwood
One has to first understand a problem before one can address the problem. I think we are all in agreement on this issue. Would we like higher productivity? Yes, we would. Would we like more better paid jobs? Yes, we would, and that goes for Conservatives as much as any other party in this House—probably more than any other party in this House. We not only will the end—more high-paid jobs—but are prepared to take some of the decisions that Opposition parties always deny or query in order to allow those better paid jobs to be created.
Let me go on from the analysis. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will reflect on what I have said and understand that I have provided a good explanation of the path that productivity has taken since 2007, which is a matter of common concern but has some understandable things that we cannot address. For example, we cannot suddenly wish a lot more oil into Scotland, and that remains a fact. We will not be able suddenly to create all those high-end banking jobs. Some Opposition parties probably would not like them anyway. We are where we are. What we can do about productivity is to work away on those parts of the economy where the performance has been most disappointing.
Scotland Bill
Debate between George Kerevan and John Redwood(9 years, 6 months ago)
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John Redwood
Yes, it was a kind of early version of the banking crash, which also reminds us that Scottish banks can sometimes get into trouble, and that the Union’s insurance can be quite helpful to them.
George Kerevan
May I return the discussion to the here and now? I should like to clarify something that the right hon. Gentleman said, because I think I agree with him. Is he saying that there was a clear desire in the debate that took place in Scotland post-Smith for a fuller measure of complete domestic fiscal control within the UK, but that achieving it would require serious discussions about how it would work in Scotland and how it would affect the fiscal arrangements in the rest of the UK? Does he agree that it could be done reasonably quickly, but would require transitional arrangements? It cannot be done overnight, but it is the way to go. If we do not do this, we will end up having endless piecemeal discussions, which would produce more friction than light.
John Redwood
I am making an even more urgent point than that. I am saying that that discussion is going on in parallel with our debates on this Bill. I hope that its content will be shared with Members at some point, because it is a matter of great importance to the United Kingdom, to England, to Scotland and so forth. As I understand it, those taking part in the negotiations are up against these very issues. If, for example, too much independence is given to Scotland on spending patterns, would there be a Union guarantee to pay for it all? How would it be fair to other parts of the Union if Scotland could increase her spending without having to take responsibility for raising the money for it? If Scotland starts to raise more of her own money, how do we adjust the block grant? In the current negotiations, nobody is suggesting getting rid of the block grant and saying that Scotland can have all her own money and just spend her own money. I am not even sure that is what the SNP wants. Negotiation is going on about how far—[Interruption.] If the SNP genuinely wants all that, that is fine. We then have to have a serious discussion, before it could be agreed to, over the borrowing. I will call it “borrowing”; I do not think “black hole” is a terribly useful term.