Value Added Taxation

Debate between Jane Ellison and Kate Green

Tuesday 21st February 2017 General Committees

[Jane Ellison]

On Report of the Finance Bill last year, we included provisions to legislate by this spring or by the time that we had left the EU, whichever was legally possible and feasible. We have continued to engage with the Commission at official and ministerial level quite extensively since that debate. We are not likely to be in a position to move this spring, for the reason I spelled out in my comments, but we have given a commitment. We have the same view on this matter in all parts of the House; we want to deal with this long-standing anomaly. I am sure Members of all parties would also support the fact that we are equally committed to abiding by the rules for as long as we are in the club. We will not, and cannot, act outside the rules—that would be counterproductive to a negotiation in good faith—but we have included legislative provisions to move on this matter as soon as we are legally able. The clock is ticking on it. We are not moving towards a distant and unsighted point—we have a sense of the backstop date.

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

I have two questions. The Minister said a few moments ago that she looked forward to European Union alignment, after we have left, with our own VAT successor system, but that is surely the wrong way round. We will want to look at the opportunities to align our systems with a very large trading bloc sitting on our doorstep. First, to what degree does the Minister accept that the Government will wish to continue down a route of as much harmonisation as possible post-Brexit between our VAT system and whatever is developed in the European Union?

My second question is a prosaic one on behalf of my constituents who are trying to understand how their travel arrangements and holidays in the European Union might be affected after Brexit. Does the Minister envisage it will be possible to reclaim VAT paid in European Union countries as consumers leave the European Union to return from their holidays to this country?

[Jane Ellison]

On the first point, I did not express a specific aspiration about harmonisation. I said there was a clear national interest in continuing to engage with the EU. As I said before, the OECD and the EU are moving broadly in the same direction around VAT systems. There is therefore a wider interest in the UK’s continuing to pursue some of its key objectives around simplification and making the arrangements less burdensome, particularly for smaller businesses. The precise aspects of VAT arrangements are, as with so many things, a matter for the detailed negotiations ahead, once article 50 has been triggered.

It is reasonable to say that we would look to have arrangements in future that allow us to continue to trade easily and successfully with all our major trading partners, of which the EU will be an incredibly important one. It remains the case that it is sensible for us to stay engaged with the debate, but the detail of all of those things once we are outside the EU, including issues around things such as harmonisation, are for the negotiations. We cannot be clear yet, but I assure the Committee that the Government will seek the best deal, obviously. It is clear that, after we have left the EU, VAT will continue to be a major contributor to the Exchequer. In the UK we estimate we will raise £120 billion this year, which is important revenue for the Treasury.

Although the exit from the EU will offer the UK greater flexibility, it is important to manage expectations just a little. Colleagues might be interested to learn that requests for reliefs have already been flooding into the Treasury in anticipation of our leaving the EU—to date, a total of more than £30 billion—so the ready reckoner is already ticking over. Colleagues will have done their mental arithmetic and realised that £30 billion is rather a large proportion of the estimated £120 billion that we hope to raise this year. That is on top of the range of zero and reduced rates that have already been applied, estimated to be slightly less than £45 billion in 2016-17.

The issues around future rates for us outside the EU and all other issues have to be carefully considered, not only in terms of our trading relationship with the EU, but in terms of our domestic policy and economic and budgetary constraints. As with all such things, it is a complicated picture, but we will continue to engage with the debate. It is worth putting on the record that UK officials are not only engaged but making an extremely positive contribution to the wider debates on the technical policy-making areas, and we will continue to do that to good effect.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jane Ellison]

We have taken the House’s instructions very seriously. There was not just the debate on Report last year, to which I responded; this has been a live debate probably for my adult lifetime, and there have certainly been a lot of debates in the House in recent years, so we have been actively pursuing this issue. I recently detailed in a written answer some of the extensive engagement we have had at ministerial level and through letters at official level.

While we are in the EU, both sides continue to be bound by existing rights and obligations, and EU law allows for a reduced rate of not less than 5% to be applied to those products. We apply the lowest reduced rate, but we cannot apply a zero rate until there is an EU legislative change. We continue to push for it and to engage on the issue very actively, but the EU legislation can be initiated only by the Commission, and to date it has not provided the proposal that it was planning to bring forward before the EU membership referendum. We continue to push for the proposal, and we have tried to find ways of accelerating the prospects of a change, but it is likely that it will feature only as part of the VAT rates review that we anticipate will happen towards the end of this year. We will continue to keep the House updated, and no doubt we will return to the issue in the debates on this year’s Finance Bill.

[Kate Green]

Irrespective of Brexit, what is the Minister’s assessment of the likelihood that the European Union and its component member states will be able to develop and introduce a modernised VAT system, as the Commission hopes? What difficulties does she envisage for the other member states in reaching agreement on doing so?

Concentrix

Debate between Jane Ellison and Kate Green

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

It is important to recognise that when a case is resolved, it means that a conclusion has been reached based on the facts. I cannot give the House the breakdown of cases in which payments have been reinstated, cases in which there was in fact an error in the claim that had to be corrected, or indeed cases—a very small number of them—in which claims were fraudulent. The point is that the cases have been resolved according to the facts provided and in the knowledge of the person concerned. We may be able to provide a breakdown at some point, but I am not in a position to do so today.

[Kate Green]

The House would find it especially helpful to know to what degree Concentrix was steered by the Government towards looking for undeclared partners, and to what degree the contract incentivised Concentrix to jump to conclusions?

[Jane Ellison]

I will come on to that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jane Ellison and Kate Green

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

I would be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and discuss this important issue for his constituents.

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

The NHS Litigation Authority is piloting a new approach to improve feedback and learning in response to allegations of negligence. Will the Secretary of State say how patients can find out what feedback the NHSLA has given to individual trusts and how the trusts have responded?

Cystic Fibrosis

Debate between Jane Ellison and Kate Green

Thursday 10th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

I join the hon. Lady in congratulating the lord mayor. That is exactly the sort of local leadership that can help. One of the big pluses of the devolution of public health to local government is that we see such leadership from people who know their community best and understand the diversity in their locality. I am keen to encourage that. Only recently we celebrated examples in other areas, where we saw that specific leadership in some communities where health outcomes were not as good as they could be. We are always looking for such opportunities, and I am delighted that the hon. Lady has taken the opportunity to highlight local leadership in that regard.

Our focus in the strategy is initially on increasing consent rates. We want people to support transplantation. We can all imagine that families are being asked to agree donation at probably one of the worst times in their life, but many families find that they get comfort from knowing they have helped others to live. We will keep a close eye on what happens in Wales following the changes there, to which the hon. Lady alluded. NHSBT also keeps international experience under careful review. I mentioned the good success rates in Spain, for example.

We need to make sure that we make the best use of the donated organs. Currently donor lungs are procured by a retrieval team and allocated to the transplant centre on a zonal basis, based on the location of the donor. The transplant team at the centre will decide whether or not to accept the lungs and will select the most appropriate recipient.

The trust’s report recommends the implementation of a national lung allocation system whereby donor lungs are given to the most urgent patients, regardless of where they live.

This is something that NHSBT’s cardiothoracic organs advisory group, which includes both lung clinicians and lay membership, will be considering very shortly, and in particular whether we should introduce a national lung allocation scheme for people who need a lung transplant urgently, with all remaining donor lungs continuing to be allocated on a zonal basis. The advisory group’s recommendations will then be considered by NHSBT’s transplant policy review committee, and if a change of allocation procedures is agreed, it will be implemented as soon as the governance arrangements can be put in place.

[Kate Green]

Will the Minister clarify whether the work that is going on now to review the allocation system is looking at the possibility of a national allocation system only for urgent cases, or whether it will also consider the advantages and disadvantages of a national allocation system in all cases?

[Jane Ellison]

I imagine that the advisory group is considering that, but I would rather check and get back to the hon. Lady after the debate. I should have thought that it was looking at the broader issue, but I will come back to her, if that is acceptable, and confirm that after the debate. It goes without saying that I will follow up this debate with NHSBT, which I am sure will be extremely interested to know that Parliament has an interest in the subject. We will revert to any hon. Member to whom I am not able to respond in detail.

The issues are complicated. I have only begun to get a sense of some of that complexity, partly in preparing for this evening’s debate. NHSBT will wish to be certain that any change of policy can be introduced in a fair and safe manner. We need also to ensure that people with cystic fibrosis receive the best quality of care for them and are involved in decisions about that. NHS England has published two CF service specifications, one for adults and one for children, recognising that, although similar, adults and children with CF have differing needs and it is important that the services provided should reflect that.

NICE has issued technology appraisal guidance recommending appropriate drug therapies—one of which has been mentioned by the hon. Member for Bristol East—in certain clinical circumstances, which NHS commissioners are required to fund where clinicians want to use them. The Government also fund a range of research on cystic fibrosis, in particular through the Medical Research Council and the National Institute for Health Research.

The hon. Member for Bristol East alluded to the need for research, so she may be interested to know that the MRC is funding a £3.3 million trial of repeated application of gene therapy for patients with cystic fibrosis. That is being undertaken by the UK Cystic Fibrosis Gene Therapy Consortium, which comprises world-leading teams at Imperial college London and the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh. The trial is testing whether gene therapy can improve the lung function of cystic fibrosis patients and its report is due to be published in May 2015. I am sure we will all await the review with interest. It has the potential for interesting and exciting breakthroughs.

I hope the hon. Lady will forgive me for responding to her points about benefits by saying that I will draw them to the attention of my colleagues at the Department for Work and Pensions. The issue is not in my remit, but her points have been noted and are on the record.

On prescription charges, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell), who has campaigned long and hard—but not successfully today—on the issue. I am afraid I do not have a response for him today, but I will get back to him after the debate.

I think I have covered most of the points that have been made. The hon. Lady raised specific points about local arrangements. Some interesting work is going on between the Royal United hospital in Bath and the Bristol adult cystic fibrosis centre at Bristol University hospital. They are looking at specialist commissioning and I think NHS England is looking to commission a model of adult CF care. I will look at the record after the debate and will draw that particular section of the hon. Lady’s speech to the attention of NHS England representatives, because some of the decisions about clinical care and commissioning sit with them. I will make sure they have a copy of the debate and I will ask them to respond directly to the hon. Lady on the issues within their remit.

In conclusion, I hope I have reassured the hon. Lady and other interested Members that we want to provide the best possible care for cystic fibrosis patients. Service specifications are in place to define that care and what great care looks like. We continue to do all we can to increase organ donation rates, with some notable recent success. We will look in particular at the issue of increasing consent rates so that we can give many more people the opportunity of a transplant. I have referred to the review, which is particularly germane to the current campaign, and I will ensure that interested Members are alerted to its outcome.

I will end by wishing colleagues, hon. Members, Madam Deputy Speaker and the staff of the House a pleasant Easter recess.

Question put and agreed to.

Universal Credit and Welfare Reform

Debate between Jane Ellison and Kate Green

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison (Battersea) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to the debate. Needless to say, I do not share much of the scepticism of so many Opposition Members, who I fear are, in some cases, substituting extended concern about the detail, however right and proper, as a proxy for opposing the reform. Some of the support we have seen even for the principle of these reforms is half hearted at best. Given what we have heard in one or two speeches, one would have thought that this Government inherited some sort of welfare utopia in which all was working smoothly, nothing needed amending and only the uprating of benefits was necessary each year.

The situation we inherited was a complete shambles, which is apparent in a constituency such as mine. We are lucky in that many jobs have been created over the past decade in London, yet young people in my constituency have said to my face, “It isn’t worth getting a job; I’m better off sitting at home, playing on the internet and living on benefits”. If that is the case, we have to do something about it. The problem I see is an inter-generational one.

I have listened to many of the detailed speeches given by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) in Public Bill Committee and elsewhere, and I know she makes many good points about the detail that have to be addressed, but this is also about committing ourselves to a principle, quite apart from the rising costs of the whole system. I have seen intelligent women in my constituency being infantilised and reduced to a position in which they do not even back themselves to manage their own finances monthly, and I have seen people with qualifications and degrees who have been out of work for a very long time.

[Kate Green]

rose—

[Jane Ellison]

I shall take just this one intervention, as we are running out of time.

[Kate Green]

No one is pretending that the previous benefit system was perfect, but we should equally acknowledge that for the overwhelming majority of people in it, work did pay more than being on benefits. One instance of how the system was effective in helping to support that is the fact that lone parent employment—mostly female employment—rose from 44% in the mid-1990s to approaching 60% today.

[Jane Ellison]

That intervention misses one essential point—that there were too many in the system altogether. We cannot go on as we are.

Concerns have been expressed about monthly budgeting and other issues, and it is right to look at them. One particular point I want to make in my limited time is about what I hope will be a real engine for creativity in respect of new products to help people. We cannot say that it is only a matter of providing advice services; we need to work harder as a society to create products that work for people who are vulnerable or less financially skilled and so forth.

I do not believe the point has been made this afternoon that there is a real opportunity for a degree of rehabilitation of the banking sector. I represent an area in Battersea where the Clapham sect was active between 1790 and 1830. Its members included Wilberforce and others who were great pioneers of social reform. Not every Member may know that nearly all the Clapham sect were from banking families. I was reminded of this fact by the vicar of St Luke’s church in my constituency this week. She is piloting a meeting to discuss how the world of finance can do more to help the poor and the vulnerable in today’s society, building on the work of the Clapham sect.

I think there is a real opportunity here for the banking sector to use some genuine creativity and to step into the breach and look at ways of providing practical assistance, putting something back into society in the form of serving vulnerable people who, to date, have largely not been catered for by proper banking products or the right support from that sector. It should not be all about the voluntary sector; there is an opportunity for people involved in banks to be true to some of the heritage of the social reformers who have gone before them. I am thinking about jam jar accounts and individual banking, which I know the Department is looking at, as they could prove to be important and life changing for many vulnerable citizens.

My main point is that the Labour party has got itself on the wrong side of this debate. I believe in the welfare state, which is one of this country’s most important and civilised achievements, but if we do not make it work, not just for the people in it but for society as a whole, and if we do not restore confidence in it, we fatally undermine something that represents, as I say, such an important and civilising aspect of this country.

Before I was an MP, when I was candidate, I received an e-mail that was rather similar to the letter my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) told us he received. My e-mail was from a young woman who was a trainee nurse and lived on one of the tougher estates in my constituency. She was a single mum bringing up two children, and she wanted to work. Every morning, however, as she walked down the walkway on her estate, she was mocked, as people shouted at her through the windows of other flats. They said she was a fool to go to work and asked why she was doing it. It is absolutely appalling that we have created a situation in which someone like that, trying to do the right thing for her family, is mocked by the people around her.

Unless the Labour party puts itself on the right side of this debate and understands that we create and maintain confidence in the welfare state as an important aspect of our country by being on the side of that nurse who wanted to go to work and by ensuring that the system always works for her, it will find itself left behind in this debate. I applaud the Government for what they are trying to do. There are risks, and the Secretary of State has been open about them today—of course there are risks in major reform—but it is about meeting those risks head on and making the reform work, not about naysaying it before it has even started.