Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Jeremy Quin and Seema Malhotra

Monday 11th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have just had a speech from the Financial Secretary which puts a very positive spin on the Finance Bill. Although he sought to put a positive spin also on the measures announced by the Prime Minister today on tax avoidance, his speech shed no further light on the critical issue of offshore trusts and the need for a public register of beneficial ownership. It fell far short of the measures that we announced today in our tax transparency and enforcement programme.

The House is back after three weeks of turmoil at the top of the Tory Government which has called into question the competence and credibility of the Prime Minister and his senior Ministers. They were in trouble even before the Business Secretary’s inept handling of the crisis at Port Talbot. Since then we have had a week of ducking and diving from the Prime Minister over revelations in the Panama papers. What the Prime Minister showed today was that he and his colleagues can get top marks for talking the talk, but when it comes to walking the walk their scorecard is far less impressive.

The Bill seeks to put into law the tax-related measures set out in the Budget, and what a Budget it was. The author of the omnishambles surpassed himself and delivered a mega-shambles. No Budget has unravelled as quickly or as comprehensively as this one. It was a Budget that failed to add up. As we begin to debate the Bill, we do so against the backdrop of a huge, gaping black hole, with estimates of a figure of £12 billion or more that has yet to be funded. The Chancellor was faced with the real prospect of a revolt and his Budget not passing. Within days the main revenue-raising policy—cuts in personal independence payments for over 300,000 disabled people—proved too much even for the Work and Pensions Secretary. His parting shot, aimed at the Chancellor, complained of a Tory Government heading in a direction that divides society, rather than uniting it. The Budget and this Finance Bill have unfairness at their very core.

We will be voting against the Bill tonight, because it fails the fairness test and the test of adequately investing for our future. The Bill cuts corporation tax, which is already the lowest in the G7, while the Budget cuts support for working people, leaving over 2 million families, on average, £1,600 worse off a year by 2020. The Bill cuts capital gains tax, which benefits the wealthiest, at a time when the Chancellor has failed to meet his own deficit and debt reduction targets. How can it be fair, at this time, to fund tax breaks for his friends on the backs of the poor and the vulnerable?

Growth has been revised down last year, this year and every year of this forecast, and so too have business investment and productivity. The Chancellor is set to miss his export target by more than 14 years. Growth in average wages is being revised down while household debt is going up. He has admitted failure on his key targets. He has breached his own welfare cap. The Government are set to borrow £38.5 billion more than planned, and public sector net investment is set to fall as a share of GDP over this Parliament.

This is a recovery built on sand, and it is not just us saying it. The right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) told readers of ConservativeHome that, for all the Chancellor’s talk about investment in export-led growth,

“the growth our economy has seen… comes courtesy of debt-fuelled consumption and a renewed housing and property boom.”

It is young people who are being punished by those choices. A recent YMCA survey of young people found that 41% said that debt was the biggest issue facing their family in 2016—so much for a Budget for the next generation.

The Chancellor has singularly failed to rebalance the economy, and that failure has implications for this Finance Bill. The Bill contains a series of tax cuts that he simply cannot afford. The £12 billion estimate does not include new figures published in an answer to a written parliamentary question, revealing that the Tories’ plans to force every school to become an academy could cost £1.3 billion, yet just £140 million was allocated for those plans, leaving a funding shortfall of more than £1.1 billion.

Before the Government seek once again to hide behind the turbulent conditions in the world economy, as the Minister attempted to do, let us be clear that most of the problems are of the Chancellor’s own making. We needed a Finance Bill that builds the foundations of a strong economy and that is the basis for prosperity and security for Britain’s families and businesses. We did not get it. Of course, there are some positive measures, such as anti-avoidance measures and industry support measures, that we broadly welcome. Support for the oil and gas industry and the quality of apprenticeships— 30% of apprentices currently appear not to complete their apprenticeships—are issues that we will want to explore further, along with tackling frequent tax avoiders. But these measures do not go far enough, as I will highlight later.

There is little good news for manufacturing, and no coherent overall industrial strategy, which of course includes the needs of the steel industry.

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

While the hon. Lady is in a positive frame of mind, would she like to welcome the significant increase in employment over the past few years and the fact that the deficit has been cut by such a large proportion?

[Seema Malhotra]

The hon. Gentleman says that I am in a positive frame of mind. I normally am, but I am just very concerned about the economy. Perhaps he will raise the Resolution Foundation’s finding that, as a result of the measures in the Budget, the poorest 20% of the population are set to be £565 worse off, while the richest 30% are set to be £280 better off. Perhaps he will think about his constituents and how they are set to suffer as a result of the Budget before he makes another intervention.

I was talking about the steel industry.

[Jeremy Quin]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Seema Malhotra]

I will just continue on steel, because it is important also to talk about what is missing from the Bill. This is a serious missed opportunity to provide greater support for manufacturing and steel. The collapse of the steel industry could cost the Government £4.6 billion over the next 10 years. Some 40,000 jobs could be lost, devastating steel-making communities and industries that depend on British steel.

We welcome today’s news that a buyer has been found for Tata’s Scunthorpe steel plant, and we congratulate Unite, Community, the GMB and others who played an important role in the negotiations leading to that deal. However, against that background comes the revelation of a U-turn on business rates by the Chancellor. Before the Budget, the Engineering Employers Federation made a strong case for giving companies an allowance on business rates for plant and machinery, which could have applied to assets such as the blast furnaces in the steel sector. However, we learned from The Times that although the Chancellor was planning to act, he then pulled plans to give Britain’s struggling factories tax relief on business rates.

Why did he do that? The answer, analysts suggest, is that British manufacturing has been sacrificed on the altar of the Chancellor’s obsession with getting a £10 billion Budget surplus in the final year of this Parliament. We wait to see what actually materialises from today’s statement and what actual support comes forward from the Government, particularly for Port Talbot.

The Office for Budget Responsibility revealed that the decision was taken so late that there was no time to change the calculations in its economic and fiscal forecast. That means that its forecast for the level of business investment in this Parliament could well be an overestimate.

Families in Britain are to suffer as a result of another missed opportunity—on housing. By 2025, nine out of 10 Britons under 35 on modest incomes will not be able to afford a home. Rents in the private sector are soaring. So much, again, for a Budget for the next generation.