Jim McGovern
Main Page: Jim McGovern (Labour - Dundee West)Department Debates - View all Jim McGovern's debates with the HM Treasury
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
This evening’s debate has centred around the complexities of this hugely complex legislation. I had not intended to speak, but I, too, was prompted by the contribution of the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), which led me to think about my experience of running a small business with 12 to 14 staff, doing payroll on a weekly basis and the huge complexities of keeping up with changes in legislation and making sure that my staff were aware of such legislation. Hon. Members would not believe the number of staff I have employed over many years who did not understand what a tax code was, how they were taxed on their income and how national insurance was involved.
Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)
Some of the previous speakers, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) and the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), should remember that these proceedings are televised and that the public hope to understand what we are talking about. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) has kept his contribution fairly simple so far, but I failed to understand some of the earlier contributions.
Ian Murray
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention, which highlights the fact that the Government’s agenda for growth is about growth in the small and medium-sized enterprise sector, and making sure that small businesses in particular can contribute a significant amount to the private sector to take up the slack caused by the job cuts in the shrinking public sector. However, the complexity of the legislation we are examining is detrimental to the many small business owners who will be concerned about the complex process they will have to go through to make sure that they employ people in accordance with the right piece of income tax legislation. Many issues have been raised about travel—I do not call the train the Caledonian sleeper; I call it the Caledonian keep-you-awake, as I have yet to sleep on it—and I hope that the legislation does not include provisions on where someone falls asleep, otherwise my own tax affairs could be rather complex.
We must consider the issue of close connection. People may work in a different part of the UK, but it is not necessarily the place that they call home. Any Scottish MP who has regularly done the trip from Scotland to London will recognise many faces on their train or flight as people who work in London Monday to Thursday. They leave Scotland on Sunday night, and return on Thursday evening or Friday morning to their family. They would not regard themselves as English income taxpayers. They would very much regard themselves as being resident in Scotland. It is where they call home, but, as we have heard from the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South, it would not necessarily be classified as their place of residence for the payment of income tax.
Jim McGovern
My hon. Friend will have used the Caledonian sleeper. Does he agree that “Murder on the Orient Express” has nothing to do with that train?
Ian Murray
I was about to say that I was delighted to receive an intervention from my hon. Friend, but perhaps I should say that I have noted his comments, and will move on.
I should like to mention Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. At my surgery—no doubt this is the case at the surgeries and advice sessions of many right hon. and hon. Members—I have been beset by the complicated problems that my constituents have experienced as a result of their not understanding the HMRC process. Indeed, taxation errors have been made by both HMRC and employers. HMRC is undoubtedly under pressure, with more job losses over the next few years. In fact, I think its work force will have halved by 2015. I hope that the Government will take into account the complexities of the legislation to make sure that HMRC has the resources to be able to deal with it properly. The Federation of Small Businesses has been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Ann McKechin) in connection with the number of small businesses that use the pay-as-you-earn system. There are problems with self-assessment, which can become complex for someone who satisfies some of the tests of the legislation, but conducts personal business in different parts of the UK.
My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) raised the issue of tax avoidance. If there are different income tax rates in Scotland and England, I hope that HMRC will have the resources to deal with that so that people do not deliberately try to satisfy the tests of the legislation to benefit from a different income tax rate on the other side of the border. Many of the constituents of the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) will be affected by those cross-border issues, as we have heard.
HMRC definitely needs the resources required to be able to deal with that properly, and to put provisions in place to make sure that people understand the system. All too often, as the Member representing Edinburgh South, I have dealt with self-employed constituents who have filled in self-assessment forms and then experienced a hard-nosed approach from HMRC in some pretty dreadful letters. Some letters say that it will send agents round to seek to pin down possessions and sell them to cover the debt when, in fact, HMRC has made an error in its tax coding and the problem has to be sorted out at a different level.
All those issues come together. The measure is welcome, as it gives the Scottish Government and Parliament real accountability for the proportion of tax that they can raise locally in Scotland for the people of Scotland. However, we must be aware that there will be many small businesses, employers and employees who will be concerned about how the measure will operate. If the system is to be accountable and is to operate practically for the benefit of the people of Scotland and for the Scottish Parliament, we must make sure that it is not undermined by a complex set of rules that are easily circumvented as a result of tax avoidance or because genuinely self-employed or small businesses cannot understand it sufficiently. We must put support in place to ensure that they follow the rules properly and so that the measure operates in the most effective manner.
Jim McGovern
On the subject of retrospective taxation, the previous Government committed to tax breaks for the computer games industry. Will the coalition Government commit to introducing tax breaks for the computer games industry retrospectively to April 2010?
Mr Gauke
With the greatest respect to the hon. Gentleman, I am not sure that that is entirely in order. I am sure the Chair would not want me to be diverted into that matter.
I assure hon. Members that the Treasury is not seeking a general power to impose retrospective legislation. I am not in a position to predict what consequential changes might be needed to other legislation because of future finance or other Acts in relation to the Scottish rate of income tax. The period of potential retrospection is rightly restricted to the start of the tax year in which the order is made, so that if we need to make a consequential change it can take effect at the same time as the provision to which it is consequential. To do otherwise would create complexities.
Mr Gauke
The ordinary meaning of the main place of residence is set out in case law. It is not necessarily determined by the number of days one spends at a location. To use the example of my hon. Friend’s father, if a commuter has his family home in Hamilton and stays there every weekend, although he might spend more time at work in London, Hamilton would be his main residence. HMRC guidance will provide a number of worked examples of that. I am reluctant to give too much information that could constitute specific advice, as I obviously cannot comment on individual cases, but I hope that that is helpful.
Jim McGovern
I presume, and hope, that the Minister has discussed what he is talking about with the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.
Mr Gauke
I will come to condition C in a moment, which I hope will provide the hon. Gentleman with the answer that he and others are looking for.
Having dealt with condition A, it would be remiss of me not to address condition B. It is possible for some people with two or more places of residence in the UK to be unable decide which is their main place of residence. I do not think that that applies to Mr Stewart senior, but it might apply in some cases. It is for such people that condition B has been designed. Someone who cannot determine under condition A which part of the UK they have a close connection with will need to count the number of days they spend in Scotland, compared with the number of days they spend elsewhere in the UK—in other words, a straightforward day count test. If they spend more days in Scotland than they do elsewhere in the UK, they will be a Scottish taxpayer. If they spend more days elsewhere in the UK than they do in Scotland, they will not be a Scottish taxpayer. We recognise that it might be onerous in some cases to have to keep a day count record, but the number of people within that category should be relatively few.
To deal with one question that my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) raised, for the purposes of the day count, an individual has spent a day in Scotland or in any part of the UK when they are present at the end of the day—in other words, at the stroke of midnight. That is consistent with the existing and long-standing rules that determine presence in the UK for the purposes of tax residence.
Condition C, which I suspect is of particular interest to a number of hon. Members, is set out in proposed new section 80D of the 1998 Act and is very straightforward. If someone represents a Scottish constituency in the Scottish, UK or European Parliaments for any part of the year, they will be a Scottish taxpayer for that tax year, provided of course they are UK resident, which I assume will generally be the case. The definition has also been designed in such a way that an individual will be a Scottish taxpayer for a full year. They cannot be a Scottish taxpayer for part of the year and not a Scottish taxpayer for the rest of the year. That again helps to reduce unnecessary complexity in applying the definition and understanding of whether or not an individual is a Scottish taxpayer.
It is envisaged that the new Scottish rate of income tax will first be applied from 6 April 2016, as we have already heard. There are more than five years before the provisions take effect, and during that time we will continue to discuss with businesses, employers, taxpayer representatives, charities and software providers the necessary practical steps to achieve a successful implementation. The measure will need to work successfully throughout the UK tax system, as it will not impact on Scottish taxpayers or on Scottish employers alone.
HMRC has therefore established three technical groups with representatives throughout the UK, including a pensions group, charities group and an income tax group. Those groups are reporting to the high-level implementation group, which the Secretary of State and I established last summer. We are discussing with the technical groups the implementation issues—for example, the application of differing rates throughout the UK on tax relief for contributions to pension schemes and on gift aid. It is also conceivable, given the lead time to implementation, that there might be changes in the business or tax environment or to processes.
As we discussed when considering the earlier amendments, the clause includes a number of supplementary powers to allow certain modifications to be made at a later date—for example, enabling certain types of income or relief to be included or excluded from the Scottish rate to provide the flexibility to respond to stakeholder input and to the changing environment.
I shall pick up on some of the questions that I have not dealt with in my explanation, which I hope the Committee has found helpful. A worker who spends significant amounts of time on an offshore oil rig or another place of work off the UK coastline will not usually need to count the number of days they spend there to determine whether they are a Scottish taxpayer. The oil rig is not likely to be their sole or main place of residence in the UK, so any time spent on it can be disregarded when deciding whether they are a Scottish taxpayer. The only exception is if the location of the individual’s main place of residence is genuinely unclear. In such cases, whether someone is a Scottish taxpayer will be determined by the day count. If the oil rig is in Scotland, those days will need to be included for the Scottish count.
We continue to look, with the Ministry of Defence, at the issues surrounding our armed services, and we will come to a firm conclusion on that in the near future.
The question was raised of whether a personal representative of a deceased person will be a Scottish taxpayer, and the answer is no. A Scottish taxpayer will be an individual, and after their death that will not extend to the personal representative. It follows that any income arising during the administration of the deceased’s estate will not be subject to the Scottish rate of income tax.
I was asked whether it was fair that people will not receive split-year treatment when they move between Scotland and the rest of the UK, and I touched on that briefly a moment ago. No split-year treatment applies to those leaving or arriving in Scotland: an individual will be a Scottish taxpayer for a full tax year or not at all. There is no prospect of double taxation when someone lives part of the year in Scotland and the rest of the time in another part of the UK. It would be administratively much more complex were we to try to split the year.
On whether proposed new section 80G is too broad, that goes back to my earlier discussion of the amendments in this group. The power in the new section is needed to deal with mainly technical changes and to decide which reliefs should be taxed at the variable or UK rates. That is almost a mirror image of the power to deal with the consequences of setting the Scottish variable rate, which is already in section 79 of the 1998 Act. It is worth pointing out, as I said earlier, that we have set up three technical committees, on charities, pensions and income tax, to discuss the impact that the Scottish rate of income tax will have on the wider tax system, and to consider where modifications might be required. Therefore, we need the power to deal with that situation.
I reassure the Committee that the Treasury does not seek a general power to impose retrospective legislation; the measure set out in proposed new section 80G is limited to the start of the tax year. If we need to make a consequential change, we will ensure it takes effect at the same time as the provision to which it is consequential. We think that that will be helpful.
A point was made about what HMRC and the Government will do to support employers, and about the concern that the measure might be administratively difficult for employers when identifying who is and is not a Scottish taxpayer. Let me assure the Committee that it will be HMRC’s responsibility to identify who is and is not a Scottish taxpayer. Scottish taxpayers will then be given a Scottish tax code by HMRC, and employers will use it in the PAYE system, just as they do with other employees. It is also worth mentioning that there will be an awareness campaign in Scotland and in the rest of the UK ahead of the system’s introduction.
The rights of appeal will be based on existing mechanisms, but they might need to be adapted, and HMRC will discuss that with the professional associations in due course through the technical groups that it has established. The self-assessment form for the self-employed will need to be altered to reflect the existence of Scottish taxpayers.
On condition C, which applies to Members of Parliament and of other elected bodies, the question was asked, “Why not Scottish judges, other senior members of the Scottish civil service and so on?” We have singled out only elected representatives; others will be subject to the same rules as other Scottish taxpayers. We think it appropriate that there is no ambiguity in the case of elected representatives, and those representing Scottish constituencies at whatever level should be Scottish taxpayers.
That is a rather lengthier speech than I had hoped to make, but a number of questions were raised and I wanted to provide as many answers as possible to what is one of the most technically challenging aspects of the Bill. The solutions that we have reached are those that improve what we are building on, and they should provide as much clarity as possible.
Ann McKechin
Indeed. The hon. Lady attracts me into an interesting debate on the difference between residency and domicile, but I am not going to bore the Committee—I can see that the Under-Secretary is getting a bit concerned—about the distinction between the two. That sort of thing keeps tax lawyers very busy.
Jim McGovern
Surely my hon. Friend would agree that going to Blackpool in the summer guarantees that one is Scottish.
Ann McKechin
Indeed. Travelling down there on the train to the Labour party conference on a Glasgow holiday weekend was an interesting experience. One could easily distinguish between those who were delegates and those who were on their holidays. I remember one occasion when people had brought along half a band, which was playing on the train.
The hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) and others commented on the Caledonian sleeper. Let me say that the Caledonian sleeper provides an essential travel service for many of us, and long may it remain so, because otherwise our travel plans would be even more difficult than they are given that certain flights will be withdrawn at the end of this month. That brings to mind a story that I recall being told about a colleague who represented the city of Glasgow many years ago, and who was a member of the railwaymen’s union. He regularly managed to sleep on the train. One night, he asked the guard to make sure that he was taken off the train at Motherwell, not Glasgow, because he had to address a union meeting just before the workers went on shift. There would be several hundred people there, and it was absolutely essential that he got off. He duly woke up in the morning and found himself at Glasgow Central station. The guard opened the door and said, “I know you’re really angry, but you’re not as angry as the man we shoved off the train at Motherwell.” I am sure that there are many such stories about Members of Parliament.
I note the Minister’s comments regarding residency of Members of Parliament. Some people might think we are getting special preferential treatment so that we can easily distinguish whether we are UK tax residents who are not living in Scotland or vice versa. However, I do not object to the definition. Perhaps it makes things a little easier if, when the Bill becomes law, we are asked awkward questions about our own position. I am sure that some of the points raised today will be considered by implementation committees.
On the Minister’s comments about armed forces personnel, we need to be able to define this at a fairly early point. It would be preferable if at some point during the passage of the Bill—certainly before it comes back from the Lords—we knew about the position of the armed forces. Will the Minister ask his colleagues to ensure that we have a definitive response before we reach our final conclusions on the Bill?
The Minister’s comments on amendment 70 were helpful in defining the circumstances in which retrospective amendments may be made. I acknowledge that there will be limited circumstances where that is appropriate. Given the timing of the Budget, it is almost inevitable that this may occur from time to time. His clarification helped to show that he regards this as a de minimis clause rather than one that will be used to the maximum extent. However, I hope that he can assure us that Scottish Ministers and the Scottish Government will be provided, at the earliest opportunity, with information about how this is likely to impact on them. Perhaps it is part of the Exchequer’s standard consultation process and pre-Budget report that it is fully engaged with the Scottish Government so that they are able to make appropriate contingency plans should a clause in the Finance Bill then be passed by this House and by the House of Lords.
I believe that we have had a reasonable level of reassurance from the Minister on those questions. These are primarily probing amendments. Accordingly, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 26
Scottish rate of income tax
Amendment made: 61, page 20, line 31, after ‘Treasury’, insert ‘by order’.—(Mr Gauke.)
Amendment proposed: 42, page 20, line 31, after ‘Treasury’, insert
‘, with the consent of the Scottish Parliament,’.—(Stewart Hosie.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Stewart Hosie
The borrowing powers in the Bill are at the heart of devolution. On Second Reading, a number of serious questions were raised on both revenue and capital borrowing powers. I shall come to the detailed issues in the main part of my comments, but, fundamentally, I am seeking to put in place a code of practice for the Treasury and the Scottish Government to address limits, restrictions, thresholds, maximum amounts and the nature of borrowing, be it through bonds or direct loans from the consolidated fund. That is a sensible way to amend the Bill. To make such provisions otherwise would require draft orders to be tabled, but amendments to Bills cannot be made with draft orders. Much of the narrative on this matter is in the Command Paper, but it is likewise impossible to amend by amending the Bill.
The amendments are pretty self-explanatory but I would like to detail the reasons for them. The revenue-borrowing powers are fundamentally linked to the wider taxation proposals in the Bill. Both the Scottish National party and the Scottish Government have previously made clear their concerns about the tax proposals. If a full range of fiscal policy levers were available to the Scottish Government, it would have to include a borrowing regime with sufficient flexibility to allow public spending profiles to be managed across entire economic cycles, not simply four-year forecast periods. The UK Government’s proposals, however, fall far short of that, yet by exposing the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament to cyclical fluctuations in income tax they embed a high degree of volatility in Scotland’s public finances, which cannot be right when we are seeking to protect public services and find means to grow the economy.
The Bill proposes to allow for annual borrowing of up to £200 million in any one year, and for a maximum limit of £500 million to finance current expenditure where there are differences between forecasts and the outturns of Scottish tax revenue under the Bill’s income tax proposals. Loans must be made within four years of being taken out. I understand that these provisions are additional to the provisions of the Scotland Act 1998, which allows revenue borrowing for the purposes of providing cash balances and maintaining cash flow. The aggregate limit of the Act is also £500 million, so the additional purpose proposed in the Bill, plus the passage of the 13 years since the original limit was set, has apparently not been considered sufficient reason for lifting the limit. We do not believe that that is credible.
The Bill also lacks flexibility to deal not necessarily with forecast errors, but forecast falls identified in advance. I will return later to the reason that that is a problem. More crucially, the provisions in the Bill are insufficient to manage volatility in tax receipts that might reasonably be expected to occur. Importantly, over the past decade, UK Government income tax forecasts have, on average, been overly optimistic, and the annual cap of £200 million would have been insufficient to offset deviations in income tax receipts relative to forecasts in recent years.
Jim McGovern
The hon. Gentleman might have heard me earlier saying that these proceedings are televised. The general public would like to know what we are speaking about, so will he keep his remarks as understandable as possible?
Stewart Hosie
I thought that my remarks were always understandable. The problem is that we are dealing with the technical provisions—the fiscal and borrowing powers—of a Bill. It is necessarily technical. However, I shall try to summarise it in plain English, if possible, when I get towards the end of my remarks.
In 2010-11, the difference between the Treasury’s original forecast for UK income tax and the most recent estimate is about £35 billion. Under the Scotland Bill, an equivalent forecasting error would have reduced the Scottish Government’s budget by approximately £1 billion. The implication of that and the four-year payback period is that had the system been in place during the last spending review period, repayment of the loan would have had to be made within what are now pressurised budgets—a £1.3 billion cut to Scotland this year, and over £3 billion in the comprehensive spending review—between now and 2014.
In contrast, the UK Government can spread the repayment of cyclical borrowing over a significantly longer period to ensure that it does not adversely impact on the resources available for public services. That is important, because it is accepted in all parts of the House that in times of recession or downturn, tax revenue falls and borrowing goes up—that is an automatic stabiliser—but the same implicit provision has not been made in the Bill. That is a flaw that I know is now recognised by people in many parties.
The inadequacy of the borrowing powers for this purpose was highlighted in the written evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee from Professor Andrew Hughes Hallett and Professor Drew Scott. They said:
“Over the decade before the current recession, 1997-2007, the UK governments track record for income tax receipts is one of forecast errors that range between +7% to -4%, with an average of +1.1%”
a year. They continued:
“Since borrowing will follow from overestimates”—
the real amount will be less than the forecast—
“this means the Scottish Government will need to cut spending or borrow every year on average and should expect to exhaust its borrowing limit several times in a decade.”
To have such a flaw built into a Bill from the outset is profoundly unhelpful to the efforts of the Scottish Government to protect public services and grow the economy. The proposals also lack any ability to smooth the effects of cyclical downturns.
Unlike the UK Government, the Scottish Government will have no opportunity to use borrowing to compensate for a forecast decline in income tax revenues in the event of, for example, an anticipated slowdown in the global economy. Scotland would have no option but to cut spending to match the reduction in revenue at precisely the time when we might want to invoke an economic stimulus—a policy of the previous Government that we supported. However, it would be impossible to do that, because cuts would be required to match a forecast fall in revenue.
The Bill misses the fundamental point about being able to respond effectively to the natural volatility of tax revenues in managing public expenditure. Paradoxically, the more accurate the Office for Budget Responsibility is at forecasting falls in future revenue, the greater the volatility in the budget, because borrowing is permitted not against a forecast fall but only against a discrepancy between the forecast and the actual level. That is a huge problem with the borrowing powers at the heart of the Bill. If the Exchequer Secretary or his Scotland Office colleague wants to indicate that they intend to table the necessary amendments on Report or later to rectify that, I would be happy for them to intervene at any point.
Jim McGovern
Most hon. Members will know that the hon. Gentleman is my constituency neighbour. He mentioned “Strengthening Scotland’s Future”. Does he actually believe that separating Scotland from the UK would strengthen Scotland’s future?
Stewart Hosie
I certainly think that improving the provisions of the Bill that relate to capital borrowing would strengthen the Scottish Government’s ability to do the right thing, whoever was in power. If we want to have a debate about the relative merits of independence versus the Union, I am happy to do that—[Hon. Members: “When?”] Not today, because we are dealing with the Bill.
Mr Donohoe
Since I have been in a position to see this matter at first hand, I have received many representations over the years from constituents who have concerns about the system, as I am sure has my hon. Friend. As a result of my tabling the new clauses, a number of individuals have written to me to tell me that I was spot on in making this argument. Therefore, there have been a number of representations. Not many people have come to me and argued for the continuation of the crazy system that is in being. I will expand on that point later in my speech.
Never in the history of politics has a political party given so much power to its opponents as in the Scotland Act 1998. Since then, all sorts of people have come on to the scene, cherry-picked within the constituencies and caused mayhem. That is why I have tabled the new clauses. Obviously, we must look at this whole question. We must go back to the first election to the Scottish Parliament in 1999. In my constituency, there was the crazy situation in which not only was the person who came second under first past the post elected to the Scottish Parliament through the pool for constituency Members, but the people who came third and the fourth. As my constituents tell me, something is fundamentally wrong when such a system is allowed to continue. That is the crux of my argument this evening.
Jim McGovern
I go round the doors every weekend, as I am sure does my hon. Friend and most Members here. Does he agree that most people on the doorstep are confused about how they vote for the list person? In politics, the people who know about it regard it as the assisted places system.
Mr Donohoe
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will develop that argument in my speech.
Mr Donohoe
I did not think he would. That demonstrates exactly what I am saying. There is no accountability, and no structure to allow it, for list Members. That is a major problem, and why I have tabled new clauses 1 and 2.
Jim McGovern
Does my hon. Friend agree that most people would recognise their MP, some would recognise their MSP, and some may even recognise their MEP, but very few would know who their list MSP is?
Mr Donohoe
The only one I could think anybody would recognise would be the ex-Member for Cumnock, Carrick and Doon Valley, George Foulkes. Whether that is because of his politics or because he was the chairman of Hearts I do not know.