Finance Bill

Debate between James Cleverly and Kirsty Blackman

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kirsty Blackman]

As for the opportunity with Brexit, Scotland will be £30 billion worse off as a result of it. My city will be the worst off place in the UK outside the City of London—that is according to work done by London School of Economics and Political Science on the cost of Brexit; it is not a biased point of view. I do not see positive outcomes for the UK from Brexit. On the tax code, I want to make it clear that we reject moving towards a tax haven Britain and anything that could increase the number of loopholes. We are pleased about the Government’s anti-avoidance changes; we would like them to go further, but that will always be the case, and we will always say that to the Government. We are pleased that they are making positive moves, and pleased with some of their anti-avoidance measures. I agreed with almost everything that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd), said about non-domiciled people and offshore trusts. We will support the Labour party if it pushes new clause 1 to a vote.

[James Cleverly (Braintree) (Con)]

As I am sure you agree, Mr Speaker, we all love a familiar tune that we can hum or whistle along to, the bars and notes of which come effortlessly to mind, so I imagine that a warm feeling of familiarity washed over all Members when they heard the tune being played by the Labour Front Bencher, the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd). It was the familiar one about the Conservatives not taking tax seriously, being on the side of tax dodgers and so on. We have heard it so many times.

It is nice to see the hon. Gentleman using this gargantuan Finance Bill as a stage from which to play that tune. It brought to mind that wonderful 1970s Morecambe and Wise sketch with André Previn; I do not know whether you are familiar with it, Mr Speaker. Eric Morecambe is at the piano; discordant notes are flooding from it, and André Previn says, “Stop, stop! You’re playing all the wrong notes.” Eric Morecambe replies, “No, sweetheart; I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order.” That was an awful accent; I apologise. The hon. Gentleman was not playing the right notes, and definitely not in the right order. Some of the claims made by Labour Front Benchers are built on sand. Far from being on the side of tax dodgers and tax avoiders, this party in government has put measures in place that have generated an additional £160 billion of tax revenue since 2010, and the Bill will, if enacted, bring in additional billions of pounds to the Treasury, so the hon. Gentleman was singing the wrong notes.

Yes, moves to close the tax gap were initiated by a Labour Government—it would be churlish not to concede that—but far from preventing or rowing back on the closing of the tax gap, this Government have continued the pressure to make sure that the gap between the taxes that should be collected and the taxes that are collected continues to decrease. As a Conservative, I am proud of this Conservative Government’s role in ensuring that the people who should pay taxes do, and pay at the appropriate level.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) was absolutely spot on when he said that it is corrosive when we start blurring the definitions of tax avoidance and tax evasion. When we talk about people who act in a financially pragmatic way, completely within the law, in the same way that we talk about conmen and criminals, it sends a massively corrosive message, at a time when the world is getting smaller, in terms of where people can base themselves and their business.

While it is perhaps fun for Opposition Members to vilify people who transact their business internationally and can choose where in the world to rest their head at night and to make them sound like—to be topical—a Halloween villain, that is counterproductive. Although each individual utterance will make little difference, they combine and build to create the background music of intolerance of international business and successful people that will ultimately mean their locating somewhere else. Rather than getting the tax income from them that this country deserves, a different country will generate those tax revenues. A pound—or a euro or dollar—that is taxed somewhere else in the world is a pound that cannot be used by this Government to pay for the public services that we value and the public servants who deserve our thanks and reward.

It may feel superficially pleasant to see an international business, an international business person or a non-domicile flee from these shores. People may say, “If they do not want to be here, let them go.” It is a nice soundbite but ultimately it is massively counterproductive to the job that we should be doing as parliamentarians and that the Government should be doing in office.

Finance Bill

Debate between James Cleverly and Kirsty Blackman

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 11th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

The hon. Gentleman will be unsurprised to hear that I do not agree with him. The Bill is where the proposal is and the passage of the Bill has been timetabled in the way that it has. The idea that we delay changing the tax treatments of severance payments to a point in time when no one in British society is in the process of losing their job is farcical, as I am sure that, on reflection, he will recognise.

As has been said, the £30,000 threshold means that 85% of termination payments are completely unaffected. I am sure we have all heard anecdotes about businesses seeking to manipulate the definitions of the various elements of severance payments specifically to avoid the tax that is owed. Surely, Opposition Members would wish to make sure, as Government Members would, that tax is applied fairly, dispassionately and transparently, and that it affects all people equally. Once again, a disproportionate burden would otherwise fall on small businesses, which do not have that administrative back-office function and cannot play manipulative games to avoid tax. They are the ones that have to pay the full tax, as is right.

Some companies may have clever back-office accountants looking at ways in which to massage the definitions of the various elements of a severance payment to minimise the tax—tax that is due to the Treasury and that we want and need to fund public services. Surely, the Labour party is not suggesting we should turn a blind eye when a clever set of accountants can massage figures, making sure that the burden falls wholly and solely on small businesses, which do not have the opportunity to employ people to do that kind of smoke-and-mirrors work? I cannot imagine that is what Labour would want to do.

Amendment 4 proposes including the words “injured feelings”. Again, I am sure that this is being proposed with the best intentions, but the Labour party must realise that putting into a Bill a definition that is so vague and open to abuse is just inviting unscrupulous businesses to use it as a means of avoiding the tax that should be fairly paid upon a severance.

[Kirsty Blackman]

I am guessing that the hon. Gentleman is unaware—perhaps he is not—that “injury to feelings” is a legal term. It is used within that profession, and it is recognised and understood. Therefore, it is completely reasonable to include it in an amendment.