Oral Answers to Questions
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Danny Alexander
It is disappointing to hear that members of the Scottish Government have refused to meet the hon. Lady to discuss the help they could provide to her constituents. This Government’s actions—the youth contract, in particular—will be of significant importance to many young people in her constituency. In particular, there are the additional jobs subsidies available to businesses to take on young unemployed people in her constituency. I hope she will welcome that and promote it to businesses in her area.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Tomorrow, the European Commission will publish its proposed 2013 budget. Will Her Majesty’s Government do everything they can to ensure that there is no increase in that budget? More importantly, will they use their veto on the multi-annual framework to ensure that there is no increase?
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend makes an important point. At a time when Governments across Europe are making difficult decisions to curb spending, it is completely unacceptable for the Commission to propose an inflation-busting increase in its budget and the medium-term financial framework. The Government will work with their allies to tackle those issues.
Finance (No. 4) Bill
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Rachel Reeves
Government Members would do well to look to Churchill rather than to their current leaders when deciding how to vote today.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Winston Churchill, a very great man, took us back on to the gold standard as Chancellor. If we were to follow every proposal of Winston Churchill’s as Chancellor, we would find it very difficult to run the economy.
Rachel Reeves
I thank the hon. Gentleman. His constituents have had a hard time in the past few days. Older people will be hit by the changes to pensioners’ tax allowances, and of course the pasty industry in Cornwall and the south-west will be hit hard, so there is a double hit for his region.
We need to remember the situation that most pensioners face. They do not have ways of making up for a loss of income by going out and finding work. That is what it means to be retired. They are therefore particularly vulnerable to rises in the cost of living and to unanticipated changes in their financial circumstances. The Office of Tax Simplification report notes that the current age-related allowance was
“introduced to reflect potentially higher costs of living of older people.”
That was why Winston Churchill introduced it in 1925. As the OTS has stated:
“Older people can struggle to meet living costs. They are often on a fixed income once they have retired, or perhaps on a declining income in real terms where flat annuities have been purchased”.
Finance (No. 4) Bill
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Rachel Reeves
Between 1997 and 2007 this country’s debt ratio fell from 42.5% to 36% of GDP, so the debt burden fell; in 2007, our debt-to-GDP ratio was lower than when we came to power in 1997.
What hope did the Chief Secretary and the Chancellor offer in this Budget for the future of our economy? The answer is precious little. The Government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility predicts another year of low growth ahead; it predicts just 0.8% growth in 2012, followed by 2% growth in 2013. That is well below what was promised when the Government took office. According to this morning’s forecasts from the Ernst and Young ITEM—Independent Treasury Economic Model—club, even those dire outlooks now seem optimistic. Ernst and Young predicts just 0.4% growth for 2012, followed by 1.5% growth the year after. Meanwhile, on any prediction, including the Government’s, we will still have at least 2 million unemployed people by the end of this Parliament.
Even those figures conceal deeper failures and more disturbing trends. Some may remember the Chancellor’s promise of a new economic model for Britain, based on lower levels of borrowing, and higher levels of saving and investment. In reality, the promised renaissance of business investment has been repeatedly postponed. An 8% increase in investment was promised for 2011, but investment actually fell by 2%. A further 10% increase was predicted for this year, but an increase of less than 1% is now forecast. The role of investment in driving growth for future years has been significantly revised down, too. Ernst and Young said this morning that business spending
“has picked up nicely in the US”
but that UK plcs remain “extremely reluctant” to invest. It continues:
“Consequently, the economy is bleeding cash into company coffers at an alarming rate…This haemorrhage is sapping the strength of the economy, keeping it on the critical list.”
They are not my words, but those of the Ernst and Young ITEM club.
Meanwhile, figures from the OBR reveal that the Government have increasingly become reliant on household consumption for their growth forecasts. That consumption is not being financed by growth in real disposable incomes, which, as I said, have stagnated and which the OBR confirms are set to stagnate for at least another two years. The household consumption growth is being funded by a fall in savings every year from now until 2016 and by a rise in total personal debt of almost 50% over the next few years; it will reach a staggering total of £2.12 trillion by the end of this Parliament.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
If the hon. Lady is so doubtful about an increase in consumption leading to economic growth, why does she advocate a cut in VAT, which would serve only one purpose: to increase consumption growth?
Rachel Reeves
The point I am making is that the consumption growth forecast for this Parliament is being funded by increased indebtedness. A VAT reduction would boost the spending power of households without their having to take on extra debt. With incomes stagnating and, in many cases, falling, many families are resorting to taking on more debt because they cannot afford to make ends meet—that is the point I am making. That is why a reduction in VAT would help put money into the pockets of ordinary families, who are struggling so much with rising gas, electricity, train, bus and petrol prices.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth). So far, this has been a low-key debate, but I suspect that when the people directly affected by the Bill receive their tax demands, they will write to us in large numbers.
I will concentrate my remarks on clause 8 and schedule 1, which relate to the higher rate child benefit charge. I raised this issue in an Adjournment debate. I am grateful to the Exchequer Secretary, whom I am pleased to see in his place, as the Government have given some ground and have responded to some of the concerns expressed in that debate and more widely, but I remain concerned that we will find ourselves with a lot of aggrieved constituents who will not be persuaded that the proposals in the Bill are fair and equitable.
For example, a single parent earning £60,000 a year will lose all their child benefit, whereas next door there may be two people each earning £40,000 and they will retain their child benefit. Constituents say to me—perhaps this happens to you, too, Madam Deputy Speaker—that they resent the fact that the house next door is almost identical to theirs and yet is in a different band for community charge or, as it is now called—[Interruption.] It is not the poll tax; it is the council tax. If they resent a difference of £100 or £200 in their council tax compared with that of their next-door neighbour, how resentful will they be when they find that they are losing child benefit, which could run into thousands of pounds per annum, as a result of being a single-income family earning more than £60,000, whereas the people next door, who are earning a lot more, are retaining their child benefit? Obviously, such people would not have the same costs associated with earning their income as a single parent family, who would normally have to rely on child care to enable them to make their income high enough to pay the full amount—more than £60,000. So I do not see how this new system will ever be fair or be seen to be fair by the people who will be affected by it.
Today the Government are launching their consultation paper on plain packaging for tobacco products. Some wags are saying that that is promoted by the Treasury, because it will give the Treasury more room on the back of the fag packet to write down its latest policy announcements. I do not know whether or not that is correct, but the proposals in clause 8 and schedule 1 smack of policies conceived if not on the back of a fag packet, certainly on the back of an envelope. We know now that the proposal to take child benefit away from higher-rate tax payers was made at the Conservative party conference in 2010, at very short notice. It was then decided by the Chancellor that it would not be possible to take child benefit away from those with children aged between 16 and 18.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Does my hon. Friend agree that, in principle, it is right that we should not tax people highly then to give them back universal benefits? Does he agree that we want to get away from a system where everyone gets benefits and then has to pay more tax just to get them?
Mr Chope
I agree with my hon. Friend that there is a lot to be said for simplification and stopping the churning effect. The late Lord Joseph was a great campaigner on these issues, and other Conservatives in the past have campaigned to simplify the tax system, which is the avowed intent of this Government. I also think it right to recognise in the tax system that when people have equivalent incomes, those with children have higher costs than those without children. If we are to recognise families in the tax system, one way is to have what used to be a child allowance, which is now incorporated into the child benefit.
If parents have higher costs, why should they start to pay tax at the same level of income as somebody who is not a parent and does not have those higher costs? That is where I disagree with the Government on this policy, which I do not think is fair or consistent. When it has been justified by the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Exchequer Secretary, they have argued that it is wrong that people who earn £20,000 or £30,000 a year pay for the child benefit of people like my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). The answer to that is that neither my hon. Friend nor other people are being subsidised in that way by other taxpayers, because, as the Exchequer Secretary confirmed in a written answer to me just before the recess, somebody would have to have 10 children and be on the threshold of higher-rate tax before they started to receive more child benefit than they were paying out in tax. The Government deploy a specious argument when they say that someone on £20,000 or £30,000 a year is paying for my hon. Friend’s child benefit.
Stephen Williams
Yes. I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention. When I met representatives of the Federation of Small Businesses, they were particularly keen that that measure should be introduced in the Budget and they are no doubt very pleased that the Government have responded to their representations and those made by hon. Members, such as my hon. Friend, on its behalf.
The anti-avoidance measures in the Budget and the Bill are also very much welcomed by the Liberal Democrats, particularly the consultation on introducing a general anti-avoidance and anti-abuse role based on the paper prepared for the Treasury by Graham Aaronson. We will need to wait until the next Finance Bill to see how that pans out. There are also specific anti-avoidance measures in the Bill, such as those to tackle the use of envelope schemes by corporate bodies and unincorporated bodies to acquire properties while avoiding stamp duty. That abuse was overlooked for far too long by the previous Administration and I am delighted that the coalition Government are tackling it head on.
Other more controversial potential abuses are being tackled in the Bill through the limits on tax reliefs that individuals are able to claim. Before the Budget, the Deputy Prime Minister talked about a tycoon tax. Across the Atlantic, President Obama has been talking about a minimum rate of tax, such as 30%, that US citizens should be expected to pay, and Warren Buffett has been making very similar points. We have many reliefs available in our tax code in this country to encourage enterprise, such as the enterprise management incentive scheme, the enterprise investment scheme and the venture capital schemes of which, in my life before 2005, I used to help many businesses and entrepreneurs to take advantage.
The Bill provides another relief, the seed enterprise investment relief, but all the reliefs available at the moment are capped. They are limited as regards both time and the amount that can be put into them, and therefore the amount of tax relief—whether it is on income tax or capital gains tax—that a wealthy individual might be able to obtain. That leaves various uncapped reliefs that are available under our tax code for income tax losses, loan interest and, of course, philanthropy, which is where a lot of the controversy has come about in recent weeks.
From the outset, it is right to say that the extension of restrictions and caps on reliefs, whether they are on gifts to charity or loss reliefs, is entirely logical. When restrictions are imposed on existing reliefs, such as gift aid, the Government and the Treasury must take greater care than when they are imposing reliefs from the outset for a new scheme, such as the seed scheme. The Government and the Chancellor have already said that they intend to work very closely with the charitable sector on the introduction of the restriction on gift aid, and I hope that that will lead to a measure that meets the Government’s objectives of protecting our tax base while ensuring that philanthropy can continue.
It is important, however, to say that, contrary to much of the coverage that we have read about and that constituents have written to us about, the restriction on reliefs is not the same as the abolition of reliefs. The phrase “charities tax”, which has been bandied around the Chamber this afternoon, has left hanging in the air the implication that the Government are somehow withdrawing tax relief from philanthropic activities altogether. That is simply not true. An individual will still be able to donate and receive tax relief on the higher of £50,000 or a quarter of their annual income. Some of us might dream of this, given the salaries that we are on, but if we had an annual income of £1 million, we could still donate £250,000 to charity while receiving full tax relief. I understand from figures that I have seen from the Charities Aid Foundation that the median donation that our constituents make is about £11 a year, so very few people will be affected by what the Government have proposed. It is right that such details should be closely considered by the Treasury and by all of us, as parliamentarians, to ensure that they work.
There are various things that the Government could do. The limits are annual and perhaps they could consider rolling up the annual limits. If you, Mr Deputy Speaker, were to win £1 million on the lottery, you would not be able to donate an amount to charity under the Bill’s provisions while getting tax relief and while, more importantly, the charity got the gift aid matching relief, too. That would be an absurd anomaly and I am sure that it was not intentional.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend talks about someone winning £1 million on the national lottery but a £1 million win on the national lottery is not taxable; one ought not to get tax relief on a gain that is not taxable.
Stephen Williams
I am trying to think whether my hon. Friend has caught me out on a provision, but I am not sure that he has. The reason there has to be a £50,000 limit on relief is that most people who give large amounts of money do so out of their accumulated wealth and their asset base, which may have come from a lottery win or from an inheritance. It is likely to be a one-off event in their life when they receive a large amount of money and philanthropically decide to give much of it away. It would be absurd if the charity was not able to claim higher rate income tax relief if the individual who received that one-off legacy or windfall gain was not able to claim gift relief.
Charlie Elphicke
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for anticipating the next part of my speech, but let me first give some more examples.
Google revenues in the UK were £2.15 billion in 2010. Estimated UK profit was £700 million. How much tax should have been paid? Google should have paid around £180 million, but how much did it pay? It declared a loss of £22 million.
Charlie Elphicke
My hon. Friend makes a fair point. The companies would answer that they did pay the tax required by law, but my response is like the one given by their lordships in, I believe, the Aberdeen case some years ago. Their lordships said that a man is under no obligation to allow the taxman to put a greater shovel in his stores than he must by law, but my argument is that tax law should allow the taxman to put his shovel into stores so that people pay a fair and just share of taxation.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Can we be clear that the problem is the law and not the avoidance—the avoidance is legal, but the law may be wrong?
Charlie Elphicke
The law requires change. The avoidance might be legal, but HMRC is understood to be investigating a number of those companies. Because of taxpayer confidentiality, we will not know for sure until such time as a case comes before a court.
Let us take the case of eBay. Tax of some £50 million should have been paid on UK profits before avoidance, but eBay actually paid £3.4 million. Facebook should have paid £14 million, but actually paid £400,000. That level of avoidance is unacceptable. This poisoned legacy—the total failure to reform our tax system—left to us by the previous Labour Government is unacceptable. I might, if I am generous, put it down to their obsession with pursuing the prawn cocktail circuit for so many years, in the fear that if they took on business and ensured that it paid its fair share of tax, they would be less friendly with business and have less credibility.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to have this opportunity to speak in favour of the Finance Bill, which shows the wisdom of the Government on the key point of reducing the deficit. That was what the Government came into office to do. They set out a course to do that, and they are following it bravely and boldly. It is the essential part of the policy the Government are pursuing.
Nia Griffith
Why, therefore, has £150 billion had to be borrowed, and how can the hon. Gentleman measure that as a success?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Very simply, because £150 billion extra has not got to be borrowed. Forecasts of what may happen are fundamentally unreliable. In a large economy, no efforts to forecast a small percentage of growth that there may or may not be have been successful. In the history of economic forecasts both in this country and across the world, there is one thing of which we can always be certain: that they are wrong and that the outcome will be different. This extra £150 billion that is proposed is based on a theoretical level of growth that was never going to be achieved, and that was never able to be achieved.
Owen Smith
Does the hon. Gentleman therefore agree that it is equally uncertain that the revenue to be lost as a result of the change in the 50p rate will be just £100 million, as his Treasury colleagues contend?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, because I think the reduction from 50p to 45p will, in fact, raise revenue. I think the estimates are far too unambitious and that, actually, there will be an opportunity for the Government to go further in future. I am extremely encouraged that the Treasury is producing reports on what is the best level of higher rate tax.
On that point, the Government have yet again been right, brave and bold. It is, of course, marginally politically embarrassing in an age of austerity, when we are all in it together, to cut the higher rate of tax, but it is right to do so if that raises more tax for the country—it is right if that allows the Government to spend on the priorities that both they and the British people have. Yes, there may be unpleasant headlines and we may be mobbed up by the hon. Ladies and hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition Benches, but it was the right thing to do. Time will show that the 45p rate will end up raising more revenue, because rich people can leave the country and not pay tax, can decline drawing dividends from their companies and not pay tax, and can postpone taking revenue and not pay tax. It has been shown time and again that reducing rates results in higher rates of total income. The Government were right to introduce this measure, therefore.
Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that those who do not look at these dynamic effects of tax changes will always over-estimate the amount that a tax rise will generate, and therefore will always leave the nation’s finances in a mess, as amply demonstrated by the Labour party’s record?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend is absolutely spot-on, because every single socialist Government this country has ever had have always left the country in a financial mess, as they believe that by squeezing the rich until the pips squeak they can get more revenue, when history shows that they cannot.
The success of the Government’s fiscal plan is shown day in, day out by the bond market. Interest rates on our 10-year gilts are just about 2%. When we look abroad—when we look to the continent—we see how quickly those rates can deteriorate for countries in which the markets lose confidence. The greatest tribute to this Government’s economic policy is what has been happening in the bond market.
We must thank our Liberal friends for another great measure in this Finance Bill: the raising of thresholds. That has, quite rightly, been adopted by Conservatives. It is sensible that people should not pay tax when they are on benefits. The higher the threshold can be raised so that we avoid this merry-go-round of tax and benefits, the better.
Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point about thresholds. Does he share my pleasure in the fact that the majority of people benefiting from that threshold being raised are women, many of them working part time?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
That is a tremendously important point, because we have heard some complaints that couples, where both are working, are particular beneficiaries. But I think that that is great; I think that where the husband and wife are both going out to work, one of them is a relatively low earner and the whole family income benefits, that is good for men, women and probably their children, too. So this is absolutely the right policy.
In addition, we have cut corporation tax, a pro-business policy. We saw how well Ireland did by cutting corporation tax—[[Hon. Members: “It went bust!”] The reason Ireland went bust was not its low corporation tax. The reason Ireland went bust was because it joined the euro, a policy of which a lot of Labour Members were all in favour. Ireland’s corporation tax was behind it becoming a very successful economy and attracting companies to go there to do business. We want to do the same and I am glad that the Government have so much ambition to continue reducing corporation tax, to the benefit of the nation.
When we look at these great and bold things that have been done—getting the deficit under control, lowering the top rate of tax, raising thresholds and lowering corporation tax—we see that big, important measures have been taken. Yet what is the Budget criticised for? What is the Finance Bill criticised for? The answer is pasties. I have to say that the VAT levels charged are required to raise revenue and they include all sorts of funny things and they exclude some odd ones, too. Many of us will remember all the fuss there was about whether Jaffa cakes were cakes or biscuits, and whether, as a cake, they were exempt or whether, as a biscuit, they had VAT paid on them.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would mind reflecting on the situation of the Greggs Foundation, in the north-east of England, which puts significant money, through charitable donations, into youth services and children’s breakfast clubs. If the pasty tax hits home and Greggs’ profits fall—we have already seen a significant reduction in the share price—those charitable donations may dry up. Is that a concern of his?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
That is rather contorted logic. Saying that one aspect of the activities of a big and thriving business has a slightly higher rate of tax and so the business will suddenly not be able to give any money to charity is a leap in logic so great that it can be ignored in this case. However, I did wish to discuss the point about charitable giving, because that is one of the biggest sticks that has been used to bash this Finance Bill and the Budget with.
Charlie Elphicke
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is odd that fish and chips should be subject to VAT but pasties should not? The sausage and egg McMuffin that I sometimes enjoy is subject to VAT, as is my Domino’s pizza and the Indian takeaway I enjoy from the Milaad Tandoori in Deal, but sausage rolls are not. Is that situation not unfair, as it subsidises pasties and sausage rolls?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I agree with my hon. Friend that VAT is a tax of immense complexity. However, it is an essential tax for the revenue-raising that this country needs and it has to include in it things that all of us like and would rather not be taxed. Equally, it will include things that some of us do not like, do not particularly wish to eat and do not mind how heavily taxed they are. If I am put the question, I would choose a sausage roll over a pasty, but I know that others have different views.
I also want to mention briefly the freezing of the threshold about which the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) spoke interestingly. Again, the Government were right. Because the big step is being taken to raise thresholds altogether, it makes absolute sense, at no cash cost to any current pensioner, to freeze this level and allow it to even out so that we have one threshold. Every time we have variance in tax levels, be they rates or thresholds, we simply employ more people at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, we have a more expensive cost of collection and we fail to achieve the objective of simplicity across the tax system.
This has been a great Budget and I wish to finish by speaking briefly about this terrible question of tax avoidance. I agreed with my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) when he cited that notable judge with his phrase about allowing the taxman to take the biggest shovel. If people avoid tax, that is legal because we, as Parliament, have allowed them to do so. The following clauses in part 1 of the Bill allow legal tax avoidance: 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 38, 39, 40 and 44. All those clauses in the first 50 allow tax avoidance of which the Government approve. We will all approve of some of them, because they allow MPs £30,000 tax free when they leave Parliament, allow cars that must be made secure because people are at risk to be tax free and allow people in particular situations and circumstances to pay less tax than they would in normal circumstances. The enterprise initiatives under clauses 38, 39 and 40 allow investment that the Government want to encourage. Those are all examples of tax avoidance that is liked by the Government.
We have to be fair to taxpayers. We can only expect them to follow the law of the land as it is written—the black letter law of the land. We cannot expect taxpayers to look at their affairs and say that the Government might like them, if they are feeling kind, to pay more tax than they are being asked for. None of us has an obligation to do that and it is wrong and dangerous to elide tax avoidance and tax evasion.
Barry Gardiner
Does the hon. Gentleman therefore disagree with the Chancellor, who said on Budget day that he wanted the approach to be applied not simply according to the black letter of the law, as the hon. Gentleman puts it, but according to the spirit of the law?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I do not believe that the law has a spirit; that is unduly philosophical for my view of tax law. Tax law is what Parliament passes and I have grave doubts about a general anti-avoidance principle. I do not think that we can reasonably expect people to pay tax on the basis of what Parliament might want, as they can only do it on the basis of what Parliament has passed into law. To undermine that is to undermine the rule of law on which we all depend, and it is fundamentally unjust to elide tax avoidance and tax evasion.
Although I know that I have unlimited time and that people are gathering for the excitement that the winding-up speeches hold in store, let me reiterate that this is a great Budget and a good Finance Bill. The criticisms have been fundamentally trivial but the basic point is that we will have—as Tories always have and as they always have had when they have come in after Labour Governments—sound money.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
What a pleasure it is to follow that barnstorming speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), which is one of many powerful speeches that we have heard from Opposition Members. There have also been some interesting speeches from Government Members, which I will come to in a moment.
People used to say that Budgets from Tory Chancellors, and Tory Chancellors themselves, were cruel but competent. After this Budget, they do not say that any longer. Opposition Members do not say it and nor do Government Members. We have heard quite a bit of criticism of the Budget, but little praise for it. Over the past few weeks, as the chicanery at the heart of the Chancellor’s Budget has been exposed, line by line, clause by clause, in the newspapers and in this House, the scales have fallen from the eyes of people across this country, and especially from the eyes of the people who were kidded into voting Conservative at the last election; from the eyes of the people who thought that the Chancellor was an astute political strategist and a smart steward for the economy; from the eyes of the people who thought that the NHS was safe in the hands of the Conservatives; from the eyes of the people who bought the balderdash about the big society; and from the eyes of voters in my constituency and constituencies like it across the country who heard that, apparently, we were all in it together.
That myth has been wholly debunked over the past couple of weeks, and in the speeches of my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth), my hon. Friends the Members for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown), for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell), for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) and for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire), my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) and, of course, my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw, we have heard it exposed once more today. They have exposed the black hole at the heart of the Bill where there ought to be measures for growth. The price for that black hole will be paid for by working people across this country. They have exposed the ludicrous, unthought-through, ill-judged measures, whether on pasties or caravans, that have been rightly and roundly mocked in the press.
Government Members have also made significant and challenging speeches. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), with his characteristic candour, pointed out the lack of growth measures in the Bill and bemoaned the fact that the Chancellor has not done more to deliver growth and to stop the economy flatlining. The hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) exposed the perversity at the heart of the changes in clause 8, which relate to child benefit. The hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) gave a particularly good dissection of the madness of the pasty tax and the caravan tax. Those Government Members know that they no longer have a Chancellor whom they can trust to run the economy or to take charge of their party in the future, because in this Budget he presided over a slow-motion car crash.
With the tax on pasties, grannygate, the conservatory tax, VAT on caravans and the charity charge, this is not a Budget to boost growth or a Budget for any particular sector of our economy, except for the headline writers. They are the ones who have been waving their Order Papers and who continue to celebrate this Budget—the gift that keeps on giving.
Only this morning, we heard the Exchequer Secretary trying to justify the proposed changes on charitable giving and the 25% cap on tax relief. He did so by revealing that a handful of people in this country who earn more than £1 million and more than £10 million succeed in dodging paying their tax. There is no news in that. One would have thought that a competent Government who understood what they were doing would have realised that the flipside of that argument was to reveal that more than 75% of higher rate taxpayers—those paying 40% and 50%—do pay all of their taxes.
Members do not need to believe my words about that, or even examine the Treasury’s own analysis that reveals it. They simply need to read what the BBC’s economics editor Robert Peston said today. He pointed out that more than 73% of people earning more than £250,000 had been paying the 40p and 50p rates. Even among people earning between £5 million and £10 million, 70% or 80% paid the full rate. What does that mean? According to the economics editor of the BBC, it
“implies that many tens of thousands of people were (and are) paying the 50% tax rate, and were unable to dodge it. To state the bloomin’ obvious, all of those people were given a very lovely tax cut in the budget.”
It must surely have occurred to a competent Chancellor that he would be exposed by such analysis.
Owen Smith
I will in a moment, because the hon. Gentleman has some interesting perspectives on the value of the 50p rate.
One would have thought that a competent Chancellor, or perhaps some of his Ministers, would have spotted that if such data were put into the public domain, some of us might realise not only that the 50p rate garnered £1 billion in the last year, as has now been confirmed, but that it was going to bring us £3 billion to £4 billion a year steadily, not the £100 million figure that the Government are suggesting using smoke and mirrors.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Even though the economics editor of the BBC says it, it does not necessarily mean it is so. The hon. Gentleman does not know what income people would have been able to draw but decided not to because it would be liable to the 50p rate. People with large incomes can decide not to take them. All that is known is that they paid the right rate on the income that they took.
Owen Smith
All that we know is what is written on page 52 of the review by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs of the 50p rate, in table A2. It states in black and white that £3 billion a year will be forgone as a result of the changes, not the £100 million figure that is arrived at with smoke and mirrors about the taxable income elasticity calculation that Treasury Ministers signed off. What does the Office for Budget Responsibility say about that? As the hon. Gentleman said, it says that there is huge uncertainty about that calculation. We contend that we should rely on the absolute numbers, as revealed this morning—that £1 billion was raised from the 50p rate last year, not the nonsense £100 million figure.
That situation reveals the priorities of the Government, who are taking £3 billion from pensioners. On average, £83 is being taken from them, and £285 is being taken from those turning 65 this year, to pay for a tax cut of an average of £40,000 for 14,000 millionaires. That is the Government’s priority. We cannot pretend to understand it, but it is unfortunately the priority that working people will pay for.
Amendment of the Law
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am extremely grateful for that substantial promotion in my class standing. Will the hon. Gentleman explain why, when tax rates were cut in 1979 and again by Nigel Lawson, that led to more revenue coming in? This point has been ignored by the Labour party.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Just before the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) resumes his speech, I want to make sure that he meant North East Somerset.
Budget Leak Inquiry
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Mr Speaker
Order. There is extensive interest in this subject, which I am keen to accommodate, but that requires brevity, a great example of which can now be provided by Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
I wonder whether my hon. Friend notices the incongruity of those who oppose openness in the Budget but were all in favour of it in terms of risk registers. Does he agree that the criticism is either muddled or synthetic?
Remuneration of EU Staff
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Miss Smith
I certainly agree that everybody associated with European institutions needs to show restraint at this time, as I think the debate will show in some detail, so I very much welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention. He will be reassured that alongside the measures I have already laid out, we intend to pursue the modernisation of EU institutions, in order to help them become more effective, and to encourage a better geographical spread of EU officials from across member states.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), is the Minister aware that the European Court of Justice has ruled that sufficient circumstances did not exist for abandoning the pay rise proposed in 2009? It has therefore been judge in its own cause, abandoning one of the founding principles of natural justice.
Miss Smith
My hon. Friend makes a further fine point, as he frequently does. By failing to restrain the budget, the Commission is almost, metaphorically speaking, acting as judge and jury in its own case, deciding the matter in a way that could clearly be said to be self-serving. My hon. Friends will all be pleased to hear that reform of the staff regulations is extremely important in the next multi-annual financial framework, because it is there that we can control administrative expenditure year in, year out.
The House is aware that we need to promote budgetary restraint at every opportunity. That is the UK’s top priority. That means that we need to ensure that the EU budget contributes to domestic fiscal consolidation. The Prime Minister has stated, jointly with his EU counterparts, that the maximum acceptable expenditure increase through the next financial perspective is a real freeze in payments. To deliver this, we want very substantial reductions in many areas of EU spending, compared to the Commission’s proposals, including on salaries, pensions and benefits, as well as discretionary administrative spending, such as buildings policy and IT. The EU cannot continue to insulate itself from cuts at the expense of UK taxpayers.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
The exemption clause states:
“If there is a serious and sudden deterioration in the economic and social situation within the Community, assessed in the light of objective data supplied for this purpose by the Commission, the latter shall submit appropriate proposals on which the Council shall act in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 283 of the EC Treaty”,
which has subsequently changed. The EU has decided that there has never been such an exception, even though we have been through the most extraordinary economic crisis in the past few years.
Yesterday, European Committee B discussed a Commission document that states:
“EU economic growth is faltering. In the euro area, this is exacerbated by the sovereign debt crisis and fragilities in the banking sector. These have created a dangerous feedback loop.”
The Commission says that the economy faces a crisis and that it is in a “dangerous feedback loop” but that there is no reason on earth why it should consider the salaries that it and others who work within EU institutions are paid.
The Minister has said that the economic situation in this country is serious enough for a freeze in public pay, and we know that the EU prescription for Greece and other countries that face economic crisis is austerity and pay cuts, but when it comes to the EU institutions, the situation is different—they say there is no real crisis or problem, and no exceptional circumstances, and that they must therefore carry on regardless. Can that possibly be a proper, moral or respectable way for an international body to proceed?
What can the Government do about it? So far, they have rightly pointed out to the Commission that they think the circumstances are exceptional and have tried to persuade it to change the basis for raising salaries, but the Commission has refused, with the backing of the European Court of Justice, which I shall come to in a moment.
The Government could, however, take another action. Under article 336 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, Governments are entitled to change the employment terms of people employed by EU institutions. If those terms are changed, the exceptional circumstances clause could be removed or changed—the whole basis for pay increases could be changed. That is where the Government ought to start. They should say to other member states that the employment terms and conditions no longer apply and are no longer relevant for the circumstances that we face. They can do so even if the Commission objects—that is in the treaty.
On the Court, in 2009 the Council instructed the Commission to use the exceptional circumstances clause. The Commission took the council to court and won the judgment of the EU in case C-40/10. The Court held that exceptional circumstances did not exist, and therefore overrode what the Council had done and reinstated the Commission’s proposals, which was interesting. When I raised the point with a lawyer, and said, “Well, what about the judges themselves? How are they paid?” the lawyer said, “It is inconceivable—inconceivable!—that the judges themselves could be beneficiaries of the scheme on which they had ruled.” I said, “It may be inconceivable, but is it possible to find out?”
A parliamentary answer from Lord Malloch-Brown, the then Foreign Office Minister, to a question from Lord Lester of Herne Hill, was helpful in that regard. Lord Malloch-Brown states:
“The terms and conditions for judges and advocates-general of the European Court of Justice…are set out in European Communities staff regulations.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 18 June 2008; Vol. 702, c. WA166.]
The staff regulations are subject to the system whereby the terms and conditions may be changed in exceptional circumstances. I therefore looked at the regulations, thinking once again that it surely cannot be true that the EU—an institution that might not be liked and loved by many, but that is thought to understand basic principles of justice—has a situation in which judges decide on their own pay rise.
I therefore looked through “Title 1: General provisions”, article 1(21)(73)(96), which sounds very scientific. The provision states:
“These Staff Regulations shall apply to officials of the Communities.”
The document goes on to state:
“For the purposes of these Staff Regulations, ‘official of the Communities’ means any person who has been appointed, as provided for in these Staff Regulations, to an established post on the staff of one of the institutions of the Communities”.
The next step was to check what exactly are the institutions of the EU, because I still could not believe that there was such an affront to justice within the EU. I would have been very surprised had the European Court of Justice turned out to be such an institution, but when I looked at article 13 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, I found that the Court of Justice of the European Union, as it is properly called, is indeed one of the institutions of the EU. And yet according to the Commission, the Court’s judges had ruled so clearly that exceptional circumstances did not exist.
Stephen Phillips
I may or may not be the lawyer who described the idea that judges could be beneficiaries of a scheme on which they had ruled idea as “inconceivable”, but does my hon. Friend agree that if true, far from being inconceivable, it is utterly disgraceful?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend, because he gave me time to find the right quotation in my papers, which shows that he is even wiser and more helpful than I had thought. The Commission says that the Court found, in paragraph 74 of its judgment, that an extraordinary situation did not exist, and that it must enable
“account to be taken of the consequences of a deterioration in the economic and social situation which is both serious and sudden…under the normal method”.
The decision was that the economic and social situation was not serious and sudden enough.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the situation he has so clearly described is just one example of how incestuous the EU system has become? One layer perpetuates and supports the other. If we are to get to grips with such arrangements, the only thing the Government can do is make it clear that we will not continue to finance them?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I have great sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman says. We ought to start thinking about withholding money. I have long had doubts about how the EU works and the ratchet, but I had the idea that the judges—though they may have a political objective, though they may be in favour of a federal Europe, and though they may push the law to the most extreme point to make the case for a federal European state—would not break basic principles of natural justice. The principle is “nemo iudex in causa sua”—a famous principle judged on and upheld in this country for centuries, and not just in this country—but abrogated in the EU.
I am glad to say, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the requirement not to be rude about judges applies only to judges in this country. It does not apply to judges in the EU, so let me be rude about them. Let me indulge in the floccinaucinihilipilification of EU judges and quote from the book of Amos about them:
“For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.”
Those are the judges of the EU. Her Majesty’s Government are right to stand up to them. They do not deserve their money and it is iniquitous that they have allowed themselves to be judges in their own cause. It is a breach of justice; it ought to be criminal.
Financial Services Bill
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) for being so brief. I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
We should welcome the great reform that is restoring the Governor of the Bank of England’s eyebrow to its rightful place in bank regulation. It is, quite seriously, an important thing to be doing, as banks will see by the supercilious movements of Sir Mervyn King’s brows when they are doing things wrong. That has been a useful test in the past. More important is the FPC, which will have a very wide-ranging role in ensuring stability, and I wonder to what extent the Government have considered how that role will interact with that of the Monetary Policy Committee. One of the risks through the early years of this century was interest rates remaining very low because of an apparently low inflation background, and that was probably a mistake because of the growth in China and its import effects, with very high domestic and asset price inflation. Could the FPC have overruled the MPC on interest rates if it had viewed that as a serious risk? I wonder whether Her Majesty’s Government might consider giving a broader set of instructions to the MPC to allow it to co-operate with the FPC’s wider role.
The other important aspect of the FPC’s role will be its working with international regulators and having proper flexibility, particularly with bank capitalisation rates. Europe is going for very high rates as the economy is turning down and that is quite wrong. We probably need low bank capitalisation rates now and high ones in a boom. It is important that the FPC should have that flexibility to adjust bank capitalisation rates for this economy. Just as we set our own monetary policy because we have our own currency, so we should set our own regulatory framework, suited both to our monetary policy and to the risks we are taking, and what is happening in Europe might cause problems for the FPC in dealing with that.
Overall, the FPC of course has an impossible task, because the credit cycle will wax and wane over the next century, whatever we set up. We can go back to the tulip mania and the South Sea bubble and so on; these things always happen and people always warn of them. Dr Peter Warburton warned in 1999 of the coming credit crisis, saying that central banks of the world had
“inadvertently created the potential for widespread debt defaults and economic disintegration on an epic scale.”
Economists were warning of the crisis, but people did not take any notice. The FPC will have to be very robust and Cassandra-like to be able to say, “There is a bubble; we must prick it.” When the FPC is set up, one of the first bubbles it might have to deal with will be in the gilt market, because a 2% gilt yield, without a gold standard, is an historic low for yield since the 1890s and is something that many would consider a bubble. We must bear in mind that indexed gilt links were producing a negative return about a fortnight ago. Will the FPC have the courage to say to the Government, “We think your own Government stock is in a bubble”?
I want to speak briefly about the Financial Services Authority, which regulates me, and to say a very little about it, which is that it is very expensive. I encourage the Treasury to take its fees into the Treasury and fund the new body from the Treasury. The FSA is asking for a 15% increase in its budget this year in order, among other things, to increase pay by 3.5%. No other arm of government is doing that and it is why hypothecated taxation and fees are fundamentally bad. It would be better to go through the Treasury. I also happen to think that the FSA is rather arbitrary in its rules—but you have been kind in calling me, Mr Speaker, and I know that we must have the wind-ups.
Connecting Europe Facility
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Chris Leslie
I hope that I am not striking a lecturing tone. I am simply imploring the Government to pull their finger out and do something about economic growth in the UK and Europe. I am making the point that what happens in Europe affects our economy. The regulatory debate did indeed go on for many years. The Minister himself called for deregulation and light-touch approaches across the City and elsewhere. We have to get regulation issues correct, and we all have lessons to learn from what went wrong in that regulatory debate. We have admitted that mistakes were made, but I am still waiting for the Minister to accept that he too made poor decisions in calling for deregulation, particularly in financial services.
Nothing in the Government’s motion seeks to steer the Commission towards a more activist role in boosting and stimulating European economies, particularly in the short term. There is no sense that the Government are seeking to influence this connecting Europe facility in order to re-phase capital investment and bring real help now to an economy on the brink. One-dimensional collective austerity, as advocated by our Government—and also, unfortunately, by the Germans and others—makes it harder to get deficits down, not easier to reduce public debt.
Hon. Members do not have to take my word for it. Six days ago, the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s, after downgrading the status of some eurozone nations, stated that
“a reform process based on a pillar of fiscal austerity alone risks becoming self-defeating, as domestic demand falls in line with consumers’ rising concerns about job security and disposable incomes, eroding national tax revenues”.
Even the credit rating agencies are now worried about the lack of growth in the European economy and about whether the eurozone has the right strategy for building its way out of the fiscal hole in which it finds itself.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Given that we are net contributors to the EU budget, which puts a great burden on our taxpayers, will the hon. Gentleman explain how building a railway in Romania would help the UK economy?
Chris Leslie
It is important that the European Commission, and the eurozone in particular, focus on getting economic growth. My simple point is that it is not happening. An austerity-only approach is being taken, but it is not working, just as it is not working in this country. Of course we have to ensure that we reduce the proposed budget increases—we do not disagree with that—but there are ways to stimulate an economy within that envelope, including through a phased approach towards the European spending review process. That is my point. It is the glaring omission from the Government’s plans so far.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
What is even worse is that the EU, when it has spent our money, then has the cheek to fine people for failing to fly the European flag. The way in which it wastes British taxpayers’ money is absolutely disgraceful.
Mr Bone
Of course my hon. Friend makes eminent sense, as always.
There is something even more worrying about this situation: all these billions of pounds are going into the European Union but it cannot even get its auditors to give it a clean bill of health—the accounts are rejected year after year. We would not give money to any other organisation—in this country—that did not have audited accounts.
Taxation Freedom Day Bill
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Mr Nuttall
There is a great need for simplification of our tax system and a flat tax might well have a part to play in that.
Mark Twain is often attributed with the quotation that the only two certainties in life are death and taxes, and throughout the ages Governments have always cast around for things to tax. Over the years, we have had window taxes, beard taxes and brick taxes. I particularly like—only because it will give me the chance to mention that great son of Bury, Sir Robert Peel—the glass tax that was introduced in 1746, in the reign of King George II. At that time, glass was sold by weight and manufacturers responded to the tax by producing smaller and more highly decorated objects, often with hollow stems, which are today known as excise glasses. If anyone has ever wondered why the crystal glassmaking industry flourished in Cork and Waterford, it was because in 1780 the Government granted Ireland free trade in glass, which continued until 1825, when the tax in Ireland was restored. That led to a gradual decline in the industry until the glass tax was finally abolished by that great son of Bury, Sir Robert Peel, and his Government in 1845.
The complexity of today’s tax legislation is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that Pythagoras’s theorem can be set out in 31 words—I was told it was 24, but when I counted there were 31—the Lord’s prayer contains 66, the 10 commandments contain 179, the US declaration of independence contains 1,300 and the entire United States constitution, with all 27 amendments, apparently contains 7,818, but to get to grips with the United Kingdom’s tax system, one would have to purchase several weighty volumes such as Tolley’s tax manuals, setting one back several hundred pounds.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Is it, however, shorter than the acquis communautaire?
Rachel Reeves
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would agree, though, that there would be costs associated with the legislation, the statutory instrument, and civil servants’ time. I wonder why hon. Members want more legislation when presumably they really want less legislation and less money spent on civil servants and so on.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The hon. Lady has converted me. I always thought that Palmerston was right when he said that the House of Commons would eventually run out of things to legislate on. It is a thoroughly good idea that we should run out of things to legislate on and not legislate for everything we feel like. For once, I have been converted by a Labour Front Bencher.
Rachel Reeves
I am not sure whether to celebrate that, but this does seem to me to be a strange thing to want to have a piece of legislation on.
European Budgets 2014 to 2020
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams). I am tempted to say that there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repenteth than over the 99 who are not in need of repentance.
I have very little time, so I shall address the veto briefly. It is crucial to be clear that there is a veto on the multi-annual financial framework, which applies from 2014, but not on the annual budgets between then and now. The Government are therefore in a very strong negotiating position for that framework but not necessarily for the annual budgets. They are also in a very strong negotiating position regarding the own resources issue, which is also subject to the veto.
I must confess that I rejoiced at the Minister’s speech because we have been hearing for the first time since 1997 a proper and solid view on how we should interact with our European friends and neighbours. However, there is one issue to which I should like to alert Her Majesty’s Government. The budget is drawn up in euros and we have to be careful about what currency that might actually be in the lifetime of the budget. It is of concern to me that the euro might collapse between now and the end of the budget, and that if it were to be a German euro it could be substantially higher in sterling terms than the current euro. We ought therefore to get some acknowledgement of the currency risk in any budget negotiations so that we can protect our position in sterling. That really is a crucial point.
I want to mention own resources, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) said, they are not own resources. As Margaret Thatcher once said, it is our money, and we must not let the EU get at our money if we need it for our own purposes.
Finally, as time is short and you want me to wind up, Mr Deputy Speaker, let me mention the financial transactions tax. This is the work of the devil and it must be opposed. We have heard a lot of wishy-washy stuff about “If we get global agreement.” Well, thank God for Lee Kuan Yew, because I think we can be confident that the good people of Singapore will say no to this awful nonsense. A financial transactions tax would not tax invisible, non-existent people: it would fall on the citizens and subjects of the United Kingdom. We must oppose it. We must be robust in opposing it and we must not let the European Union get its grubby little hands on it.