Budget Resolutions

James Cartlidge Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Thursday 1st November 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

The National House Building Council figures published today are very encouraging about the levels of building activity. We must build the homes our country needs, and we are firmly putting in place a number of steps and measures to help deliver on that. I know there is more to do, but we should recognise that progress is being made. We need to continue to see everyone building across the economy, because as a country we have failed to build enough homes over the decades under successive Governments. As a result, the most basic of needs—a place to call home—is out of reach for many, particularly our young people.

That is changing, thanks to this Government. Since 2010 we have delivered more than 1 million new homes and helped nearly half a million families get on to the housing ladder through Help to Buy and the right to buy, and we are taking action to ban the unjustified use of leaseholds on new homes, crack down on rogue landlords, ban unfair letting agent fees and cap deposits, and end rough sleeping for good.

We should contrast that with the record of the Labour party; not only did housing become more unaffordable under Labour, but under the current Labour leadership it has consistently voted against the reduction in stamp duty, which has helped more people get on to the housing ladder.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

A key part of the housing market is the second-hand market, of course. First-time buyers are now making a strong comeback because of the brave measures we took in relation to buy-to-let landlords—changing the stamp duty and the way we treat interest—which means that first-time buyers are now not only on a level playing field but in many parts of the country have the upper hand again.

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend highlights some of the important steps that have been taken and the impact that they are starting to have, but we know there is much more to do. We know that we need to be bolder and much more radical if we are to fix our broken housing market, make it fairer and match Harold Macmillan’s record by delivering the 300,000 homes a year that families and communities need. That ambition was set out back in 1951, and we will do it again.

This Budget does that and more. By building on the Chancellor’s commitment last year to a five-year, £44 billion housing programme, it reaffirms this Government’s commitment to restoring the dream of home ownership, most notably by securing the future of Help to Buy past 2021 and ensuring that the new scheme is targeted at first-time buyers, who need it most, and includes regional property price caps through to 2023. With most first-time buyers now exempt from paying stamp duty following last year’s Budget, benefiting more than 120,000 buyers so far, this year’s Budget went a step further by extending that relief to all first-time buyers of shared ownership properties worth up to £500,000 and making it retrospective. That is good news for anyone who aspires to own their own home.

Ultimately, however, there is no way we can help more families to get on to the housing ladder without getting Britain building and getting local authorities to play their part. That is why the Chancellor’s confirmation that we are removing the biggest barrier—the Government cap on how much councils can borrow to build more—is such a game changer. It will free up councils to deliver around 10,000 homes a year. It has been great to see how warmly this has been welcomed by councils up and down the country, and how ambitious they are about making the most of this opportunity to deliver the next generation of council housing. We are also supporting housing associations to deliver at scale and pace, with the Chancellor’s announcement of the next wave of deals with nine housing associations, worth £653 million, which will deliver a further 13,000 affordable housing starts by March 2022.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

As I was speaking about education, the hon. Gentleman must try harder, go to the back of the class and pay attention. Some £1.3 billion of cuts—

[James Cartlidge]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Gwynne]

No. Cuts will be hard-wired—[Interruption.]

[Andrew Gwynne]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

As I was saying, £1.3 billion of cuts next year are hard-wired into the system—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government can shake his head, but the statistics come from the Tory-led Local Government Association. The cuts will devastate councils that are already struggling. Austerity is certainly not over for local government. Councils were the first and perhaps the easiest target of the coalition Government, and they have had to endure some of the largest cuts across the public sector.

[James Cartlidge]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Gwynne]

No, I am going to make some progress.

After all, by cutting funding to councils, Ministers have shifted the blame on to councillors, including Conservative councillors. Councils of all political persuasions and none are now at breaking point. The effects of that on our communities are plain to see across the country. More than 500 children’s centres have shut down and 475 libraries have closed. Support for disabled children has been stripped away—for example, the transport that helped them to get to school to learn like their friends. Support for older people has been slashed, with 1.4 million older people now not getting the necessary help with essential tasks such as washing and dressing. Bus routes have been cut. Our roads are in disrepair, and before the Government laud the £420 million for potholes, I must point out the £1 billion backlog created by this Government’s cuts. Swimming pools, leisure centres and community spaces have closed. Bin collections have been reduced. Youth clubs have closed. Planning departments have been stripped out. Trading standards offices have been slashed, leaving more people at risk of fraud or dodgy goods. Streetlights have been turned off to save money.

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[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

As you return to your Chair, Mr Speaker, I return to the 1950s. There has been a lot of talk about austerity, but when our historians speak about austerity they focus not on public spending but on living standards and wages. In 1950, we spoke about the fact that there was rationing and people had low disposable incomes—we did not focus only on levels of public spending. Indeed, in 1950 we spent 6% of GDP on defence. The point is what is happening to living standards where it really matters.

Just before the Budget we heard the fantastic news that this country is now experiencing its fastest wage growth for almost a decade. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) chunters, but if she reads coverage of those wage statistics in The Guardian, she will see they have been analysed to see why that is happening. The conclusion is that it is due to competition between firms for workers—in other words, wage growth is coming from the unemployment miracle that we are delivering. Indeed, in the Budget the extra money that the Chancellor was able to deploy comes from the fact that the OBR has revised employment figures up for this country. That is not a magic money tree—that is literally the hard work of the British people paying off, and more tax revenue coming in to support higher spending.

In a country which, compared with other similar northern European countries, has not had as high an average GDP per head as it could have had, what can we do to sustain those higher wages in the years to come so that we can in turn sustain higher public spending in the only way possible? The answer is competitive taxes, so that we do not eat into people’s take-home pay, we have sensible levels of public spending, and above all, we keep borrowing and debt under control.

If we followed the Labour party we would decimate that growth in wages because taxes would surge, eating into take-home pay. Investment would fall as businesses would be less confident if faced with a return to ’70s-era socialism. Above all, my biggest problem with what Labour Members offer with their increase in debt is that if they push up public spending as they promise, yes, public spending austerity will fade briefly, but it will return as we go from feast to famine, as we have done so many times before through boom and bust. What will happen to austerity? It will be forced on the next generation with higher debt. That is a gutless and cowardly approach to public finances. The right approach is sensible, prudent, conservative economics, based on markets and a sensible balance between low taxes and targeted public expenditure on priorities such as the NHS, and that is why I will be voting for the Budget tonight.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

James Cartlidge Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 12th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alan Mak]

In 2017, we had a record number of start-ups in this country, with 660,000 new businesses, up from just under 600,000 in 2015. This Budget, along with the package of measures being introduced, helps entrepreneurs across the piece. I look forward to more entrepreneurs starting their own business in this country, as I and other Members have done across the country. The work allowance measure helps those who want to get off benefits and into work, and I welcome it.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. Does he agree that the whole point about being an entrepreneur is not to be reliant on benefits, but to invest in a business, grow it and succeed, so that people can stand on their own two feet and support others, including those they employ?

Finance (No. 3) Bill

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 19th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am happy to take that point, which although a little outside the remit of the Bill is none the less interesting. For us, the relationship that we would seek with the EU would be based quite simply on a solid cost-benefit analysis of what is in the UK’s best interests. If we look at the various options on offer, given that half the world is already in a regional trading bloc or a customs union of some sort, it is absolutely clear that what we would risk losing by losing frictionless trade with the European Union would never be gained by external trade deals with the rest of the world. A customs union is therefore the right way to go forward. Were the UK to enter one, we clearly could not have a situation in which we were unilaterally exposed to the deals that the EU did with other countries without having a say, so it is a pretty logical position. That does not mean that those deals would always receive the backing of all parts of this House. Elements of those deals might be unacceptable.

The point about sovereignty, which comes from Brexiteers in the main, is so important, because people say, for instance, “Let’s not do a customs union, let’s do a deal with Donald Trump’s America,” but would our constituents really accept unilateral access to the NHS for American healthcare providers? Of course they would not. Would our constituents accept hormone-treated beef in the supermarkets? Personally, I do not think they would. The question is always about the balance between what is in the proposed economic relationship and the political oversight that should go with it. That position is fairly logical and straightforward.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has just said that he would have a customs union and a say in those trade deals. How would we have a say if we were in a customs union run by the European Union yet not in it anymore? I do not understand that.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

We are not proposing to remain in the customs union but not be a member of the EU. We are discussing joining a new customs union that we would negotiate with the European Union. I will say to the hon. Gentleman—I do not think that I am revealing any secrets here—that for a large number of Conservative MPs and, indeed, perhaps for the Treasury itself, that is their preferred solution; they are just not in a position to negotiate that or to request that because of the parliamentary arithmetic of the Conservative party. It does also have the very substantial benefit of our being able to honour our commitments under the Good Friday agreement. That is something that should have been a much bigger part of the referendum negotiations, and it should certainly be a paramount concern for this House going forward. I will get back to the Finance Bill, but I hope that that allays the concerns of Conservative colleagues and makes it quite clear what we think the relationship should be going forward.

[James Cartlidge]

How would the hon. Gentleman have a say? This would be a customs union with the European Union which we would have left. How would he have a say in it? We would not have a vote anymore.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

That is what we are proposing that we would negotiate. That is the entire basis of the proposal. I have no doubt that such an arrangement was on offer and may still be on offer from the European Union. The hon. Gentleman is well-informed and I always look forward to his contributions in these debates. I am sure that he has contacts as we do in other European Parliaments or perhaps in the Commission itself. If he does some investigations, he will see that that was always a preferred option for many people and it is, without question, the right way of going forward for the national interest of this country.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 20th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

As I have already said, not only do the wealthiest in our society pay a very large proportion of all tax, but under this Government we have seen significant increases in the national living wage. It rose by 4.4% last April, and through the Bill—I am proud to say—we are putting on to the statute book an increase next April of 4.9%. That is well in excess of inflation and will help the very people that both our parties are committed, in our different ways, to assisting—although our measures are more practical than those suggested by the Labour party.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

On the point about the higher rate, it was my experience as an employer that if, say, a member of sales staff paying basic rate tax did very well in a given month, got commission or a bonus and as a result experienced a sudden, sharp increase in their tax that month, it reduced the incentive on them next time. I welcome the changes to the higher rate because of the impact on incentives and therefore on productivity and so on.

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[Mel Stride]

The hon. Gentleman will, of course, be very aware of the devolution of various elements of our tax system to Scotland, and the issue he identifies is fundamentally driven by the different relative rates of taxation in Scotland and in the rest of the United Kingdom. I would argue that it is incumbent upon the Scottish Government to do as the UK Government do where these matters are reserved, which is to keep taxes as low as possible. I know that Conservative Members representing Scottish constituencies are most keen to deliver that for their constituents.

As we announced at the autumn Budget in 2017, the Government are legislating in this Bill to tax income from intangible property held in low-tax jurisdictions to the extent that it is income that relates to UK sales. Today some large multinationals are able to unfairly reduce their tax bill by arranging to hold their intangible property in offshore entities. That is unacceptable, and we are now going further to level the playing field. Clause 15 requires multinationals that continue to earn intangible property income in low-tax jurisdictions to pay UK income tax on the proportion of that income that relates to UK sales.

Tax avoidance is not limited to large multinationals of course; businesses of all shapes and sizes attempt to unfairly shift UK profits to jurisdictions where they expect to pay less tax or perhaps no tax at all, so clause 16 introduces carefully targeted anti-avoidance rules to prevent these UK businesses from avoiding UK tax by shifting their profits to lower-tax jurisdictions. The clause targets contrived arrangements that, in broad terms, aim to avoid tax by transferring the profits of a UK’s business offshore in a way that would not be agreed between independent parties.

[James Cartlidge]

I very much agree with my right hon. Friend on this point. Is it not also true that our small and medium-sized enterprises, particularly those that are currently struggling, perhaps including high street businesses, do not have a cat in hell’s chance of running such schemes? They do not hide their profits and they do not mix and match around territories, so we need a level playing field.

[Mel Stride]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The tax avoidance activities that I am describing are way beyond the reach of many businesses of a certain size up and down the country. Thinking particularly of our high street businesses, we have a duty to ensure that fixed costs in the form of taxes represented by business rates are reduced to the extent that they can be, and the Chancellor was able to announce a 30% reduction in business rates for those smaller retailers that typically populate our high streets. That was an extremely important move as we work, through our future high streets fund and other approaches, to enable our high streets to transition and become more vibrant and successful places.

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[Anneliese Dodds]

I am always delighted to hear from the hon. Gentleman, but when he talks about the tax-gap measurement, he is talking about his Government’s tax-gap measurement, not one that is universally accepted. In fact, it is quite the opposite, and many alternative measures suggest that much larger amounts of tax are being avoided and, indeed, that larger sums could be rectified if tax evasion was dealt with. Yet again, we hear this comment about the cut to the corporation tax rate. I am sorry to sound like a stuck record, but I have to remind the hon. Gentleman that every expert commentator on this matter has intimated that the rise in the corporation tax take is not because of the cut to the rate and that, in fact, had the rate not been cut, more revenue would have accrued to the Treasury. As I will go on to discuss, that revenue could have been used to support public services and social security for our constituents.

[James Cartlidge]

rose—

[Julian Knight]

rose—

[Anneliese Dodds]

My goodness—who to choose!

[James Cartlidge]

The hon. Lady will be sighing a bit more when I point this one out. It is very kind of her to give way. She said that the tax take has not gone up because of the rate cut, and she is absolutely right: above all, the reason the tax take has gone up is that the economy has been growing very strongly.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman views as a badge of pride the recent growth statistics. I would never talk down the British economy—it has a huge amount of promise—but I am deeply concerned about the fact that our growth statistics, particularly for the future, have been revised down. For next year and the following year, I believe that they are 1.6% and 1.4%, so they have been revised down. In the past, in normal times, we would have viewed growth statistics of that kind as a failure. Of course I am pleased that our economy is finally growing again—it was, of course, growing when Labour left office—but I am none the less deeply disappointed that we are not reaching the same levels of growth as many of our competitor countries.

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[Anneliese Dodds]

I am grateful for the intervention, because it enables me to make the answer clear. Absolutely not. We are asking for something very simple. Sadly, it is something that this Government have not been willing to provide, which is the information about tax incidence. We do not have that information to the extent that the House needs. The process of analysis has been left to bodies such as the Women’s Budget Group and the Child Poverty Action Group. They have to crunch the data. That is an activity that should be carried out by Government, so that we as Members are able appropriately to scrutinise their policy and practice. We do not have that information at the moment.

[James Cartlidge]

The hon. Lady is being very generous in giving way. As a rejoinder and as a follow-up to the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), that is not the point he was making. He is saying that the implication is that, to change the system, we would need to have discriminatory tax policies to effect a different impact. We cannot just assess it; for it to be different in practice, the measures, by definition, would also have to be discriminatory.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I fear that the hon. Gentleman has yet again made the point for himself. This Government’s approach to taxation so far has affected different groups disproportionately. We can call that discrimination, unequal impact or whatever we like. The fact is that we found out about that not through Government figures, but due to analysis conducted by other bodies. We had a lengthy debate about this during the last Finance Bill, and I am very happy to run through all the arguments again. I suggest, however, that it might be easier for him to read analysis by those expert bodies, which will make the point more eloquently than I could.

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[Kevin Foster]

Normally I thank Opposition Members for their interventions, but that really was quite churlish. My point was that when people transfer their money from an ordinary savings account to an ISA they do not pay tax on the income from their savings, so guess what? They avoid a level of income tax. That is something we all think is right. It is how we incentivise saving and how many millions of people in this country save. So yes, tax is avoided but perfectly legitimately. That is not the point I am making, as the hon. Lady full well knows.

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend is spot on: an ISA is technically a form of tax avoidance. The point, however, is that what irks our constituents is when international companies and others take advantage of avoidance schemes that may be lawful at the time, but which no normal citizen could in any way take advantage of—unlike an ISA, which is commonly available.

[Kevin Foster]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, which gets to the point of the debate. Tax avoidance is when people create a very complex legal structure, for example having something offshore and routing it through a shell company. That is what we are targeting. People will look to minimise their tax liability; that is natural. I am talking about when it is clear that fictional legal companies are being created that do pointless activity or pretend to do something that is not being done, or when a value transaction is actually nothing more than just a wooden dollars transaction made with the intention of avoiding stamp duty or a liability. That is the point being made. We could go through the record of the Opposition before 2010 if we really wanted to, but we should focus on the issue itself. Tax havens did not just appear the day David Cameron walked into Downing Street—far from it.

The PAC looked at Google’s affairs. Before I sat on the PAC, I thought that a double Irish might be a drink and that a Dutch sandwich might be something involving Edam cheese. Actually, they were both ways in which corporations sought to avoid tax and route their profits into tax haven jurisdictions where the level of tax paid versus GDP was rather suspicious, or into islands, particularly Bermuda, where the amount being declared versus what the real economic activity was likely to be was rather suspicious. I will talk more about intangible property areas in a minute. The Dutch sandwich was an idea created by the Dutch Government to try to get IT firms to invest in the Netherlands. That was perfectly reasonable as something that they would look to do, but courtesy of some loopholes, people were allowed to transfer profits through from activity elsewhere. The result was not investment and jobs in the Netherlands, but significant levels of tax avoidance.

In the Public Accounts Committee, we used to be very keen on hearing more details about and having more of a focus in HMRC on where genuine tax evasion had taken place—where people had lied and hidden assets in offshore jurisdictions and not declared them. That is not about people using some clever trick; they had just lied to evade tax. It was vital that penalties followed on from that once it was discovered. If people constantly avoided prosecution, it almost sent a message that if someone is caught, they can just pay up. However, I am conscious that we are not discussing that area of the law today.

It was interesting to go through the House of Commons Library report on today’s debate and particularly to look at some statistics on where the tax gap comes from. The report mentions that in 2016-17, small businesses were part of the tax gap. However, there were also large businesses, and criminals were in third place—depriving us of billions of pounds of taxation revenue—which is why I welcome some of the measures that the Government are looking to bring in as part of the Bill.

For me, the big one is the provisions on intangible property. Clause 15 looks really simple—it is two lines—but schedule 3, which is the meat of the proposal, really starts to get into some of the detail. How the provision is enforced and how it works will be interesting, but I welcome the fact that we are moving to bring it in. As my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) said, it is worth making a point about what intangible properties we are talking about. We are certainly talking about things such as adverts on Facebook and adverts on a search engine being pushed to the top, when someone searches for a particular brand or product. In the debate on the previous of group on amendments, there was an example where someone looking for help with gambling found that—guess what?—“How to help you gamble” was boosted to the top of a search engine’s results, because a particular company had paid for that to happen. That is the type of intangible asset that we will look to target.

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[James Cartlidge]

I was waiting patiently for my hon. Friend to get back to what he thought intangible property was. Is he aware that proposed new section 608H(1) in schedule 3 to the Bill states:

“In this Chapter ‘intangible property’ means any property except…tangible property”?

[Kevin Foster]

Yes, it is an interesting one. I suspect that if I dealt with that intervention fully, I would be like the vicar in the church who has 10 minutes to unpack the Holy Trinity in an easy and understandable way—[Interruption.] I appreciate my hon. Friends’ confidence in my abilities.

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[Chris Philp]

It is a huge pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham), who is always an incredibly eloquent and articulate commentator on matters financial.

I am delighted to see that news of my speech has spread to the office of the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), and that he has come to the Front Bench especially to hear it. I am delighted that he has chosen to come to the Chamber for this purpose; I eagerly await the imminent arrival of the Chancellor as well.

I want to speak to new clauses 5 and 6, which were tabled by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds). Their substance would require more analysis and reports on various aspects of the Government’s programme in the areas of avoidance and evasion. However, as so often in life, action and results speak much louder than reports and words. The Government’s actions and the results they have achieved are far more powerful than any call for evidence or any call for a report can demonstrate.

The hon. Lady posed some questions about whether the tax gap is the best measure. It is an internationally accepted measure and it provides for consistent comparison over time, so it is a good way of consistently comparing the record of one Government with that of another. There may be other measures, but it is at least a consistent measure and it is also a good way to compare different countries, as well as to make comparisons within a country over time.

The current tax gap in the United Kingdom is 5.7%, which is extraordinarily low by comparison with other major countries and significantly lower than it was when Labour was in office, when it was between 8% and 10%. Whatever quibbles the hon. Lady may have about the things that are included or excluded, what is clear is that the tax gap is low compared with what it was under Labour and low by comparison with other countries. That is not surprising.

[James Cartlidge]

rose—

[Chris Philp]

But before I lay out the reasons why it is not surprising, I will give way to my hon. Friend.

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech on what action is happening, but does he agree that one thing not captured in the statistics is what I would call positive inducement as opposed to avoidance? If there are competitive rates of tax, people are encouraged to avoid avoidance and conduct legitimate activity by paying a standard tax.

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[Paul Masterton]

The hon. Lady has highlighted the key point that I made at the beginning of my speech about highly trained and well-paid accountants. The Government are always playing catch-up because she is right: what happens is that a loophole is identified, it takes quite a long time to get a measure to close it through the process, and by then everybody has already moved on to the next thing. We need to get better at pinpointing—almost like in a game of chess, thinking two moves ahead and saying, “If we close this down, where are they going to move next?” These people working in the private sector are able to find these money-saving methods, so there is no reason not to have people working in government thinking along the same lines.

I support what the Government are doing to reduce the tax gap. It is important to bring in the extra money that is properly due in this country by closing loopholes and stopping the feeling that the big corporate guy is getting away with something while I, the guy struggling with my own small business, am paying what is due. There is a real sense of unfairness in the practices that these measures are designed to tackle, and I look forward to supporting them in four and a half minutes’ time.

[James Cartlidge]

It is a pleasure to be called to speak on this important subject of anti-avoidance, and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Paul Masterton). I will take up his underlying point about fairness. There are incredibly important measures in the Bill in relation to avoidance that also deliver other more positive outcomes. I am referring to the area of capital gains tax.

Earlier we discussed exit charges and CGT, but there is also an important measure in relation to foreign ownership of UK property. Non-residents will now have to pay CGT on the sales of UK commercial property, and under the way that property structures can operate, residential property could also be covered.

Anti-avoidance measures can have a positive impact. We should not underestimate the huge impact of inflows of foreign investment in pushing up property prices in this country, particularly in London, and thereby spreading out through the south-east and around the rest of the country.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is not simply about pushing up the value of property, but about changing the nature of neighbourhoods, and that there is a social dynamic as well as a purely financial one?

[James Cartlidge]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and there are stats to prove this. In March, King’s College London published statistics estimating that foreign investment into the UK housing market had driven up prices in London by 20% over the last five years. That is a huge impact.

[Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

rose—

[James Cartlidge]

I am happy to take another intervention from a Lincolnshire MP—two on the trot.

[Mr Hayes]

My hon. Friend is making an important point. The measures in this clause are part of a suite of policies that allow us to deal with the abuse of international multinational monopoly capitalists, who are skewing our economy against the interests of our people and altering the character of both our economy and our society.

[James Cartlidge]

It is always interesting to hear attacks on capitalists from this side of the House. I simply say in terms of the way the property market has gone that we have often focused in the debate on housing on increasing the supply of homes—the statistics just published on new housing supply are incredibly positive—but I have been a mortgage broker and involved in the property sector, and I remember what happened in the wake of the crunch. The impact of fiscal and monetary policy and the stimulus we have had, and measures that have encouraged inward investment, have also been detrimental. We must not forget, as many people might, that in 2011-12 when the euro was facing an existential crisis—who knows, at some point in the future that might well return—huge inflows of capital came into UK residential property, particularly in London, pushing up prices and impacting on first-time buyers.

Having covered that specific point, I welcome anti-avoidance measures in this area. We need a level playing field, and not just in the same way that other anti-avoidance measures give a level playing field for small businesses; we need them for first-time buyers and those in Britain seeking to get on to the housing ladder. I support these measures and the others in the Bill.

[Mel Stride]

We have had a good, rounded and full debate, and I thank all Members for their contributions. I wish to touch briefly on the amendments and new clauses moved this evening. New clause 5 calls for a review of the impact of the clauses in this group on child poverty, on households at different levels of income, on those with protected characteristics and on the different parts of the United Kingdom. As I have stated, the Government already provide impact and distribution assessments and analysis in the Budget, as well as tax impact information and notes on individual tax measures.