Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), who spoke with characteristic passion and commitment to his constituents.

I follow other Members who have welcomed the new sugar levy announced today. I have long campaigned hard to make sure we tackle public health challenges, particularly those facing young people and children. Individuals who get a chance to look at the sugar smart app will see how much sugar is in so many of the products we and our children consume. The levy is a positive step forward.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I am pleased to hear that the hon. Gentleman welcomes the sugar tax, as do I. I have long felt we should introduce it. The Chancellor referred to the next generation and the £27 billion we could save. The levy will bring savings to the NHS, change people’s attitudes and address levels of obesity. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if ever there was a good reason for a sugar tax, that is it?

[David Rutley]

I completely agree. The hon. Gentleman and I have been involved in numerous debates about promoting outdoor recreation and physical activity—for older people as well as young people—and the levy is a positive step further forward. I pay tribute to the Government for taking forward its sport strategy and to the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), for her work in taking forward a very proactive public health agenda.

On other areas of the Budget, I felt that the Chancellor set out a clear, strong package of measures to help go on delivering the long-term economic plan and to make Britain the best place in the world to start up and grow a business. I have long talked about the importance of an enterprise economy. To achieve one, we need to focus on some key groups of people who make that happen: the entrepreneurs, the exporters, the employers and, of course, the employees who help put the pieces of that jigsaw together to create the enterprising economy that we want to see in Macclesfield, Cheshire and right across the country.

In recent years, I have also been campaigning hard on behalf of the self-employed. It is fascinating to see how self-employment is moving forward. I have been working with Demos and the RSA on various policy initiatives in this area, and it is clear that there is a long-term trend towards more self-employment—4.6 million, up from about 4 million in 2010. It is clear from the RSA’s own work that the pull factor is bringing more people into self-employment; there is not just a push factor. On the back of that, it is important that we welcome the Chancellor’s announcement on abolishing class 2 national insurance completely, to simplify the tax system for the self-employed.

The Chancellor also talked a lot about productivity, which the Government are absolutely committed to improving. For decades, the UK’s productivity has lagged behind that of other major economies. We need to address that. As a result of the drag from the financial crisis, the OBR has forecast lower productivity in the UK, as the OECD has done in the vast the majority of countries. That is why the Chancellor is absolutely right to keep an unrelenting focus on productivity and to take the strong action we need to take to bolster our economy now and for the next generation.

Colleagues should turn to page 61 in the Red Book to see the vast array of activity being taken forward to encourage more investment: lower taxes to boost enterprise, investment in infrastructure, as called for by Opposition Members, and a strong focus on science and innovation, which I believe is vital for the country and certainly for Cheshire.

I join the long list of colleagues on the Government side—and, I hope, Opposition Members, too—who welcome the fact that the Chancellor has set out that business rates will be reduced, which will have a huge impact on many small businesses. Capital gains tax has been cut; corporation tax has been further reduced to 17%. Stamp duty is to be reformed, not just in the residential sector, but in the commercial sector. These are vital steps in ensuring that we improve opportunities for investment. When we drive productivity further forward, it means more jobs and more skilled employment, which, when combined with the national living wage, will lead to higher wages, too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

In broad terms, the Budget is extremely welcome. It continues the extremely sensible policies that the Chancellor set out as long ago as 2010, the essence of which is on page 127 of the Red Book, which sets out receipts and expenditure as percentages of GDP. Tax receipts will run at 35.7%, 36.3%, 36.9%, 36.9% and 37% of GDP over the next few years, which is in accordance with the normal long-run averages. Only in the highest years of tax receipts, going back to the 1970s, has taxation in this country managed to get as high as 38%. That sets out a limit for public expenditure if there is to be a balance, which it is obviously important to achieve when the economy is going well. We therefore see that public expenditure will be managed in line with the receipts that will come in, so that expenditure will be less than receipts by the end of the period.

That is absolutely what the Chancellor promised all those years ago when he said that he would mend the roof when the sun was shining. A glimmer of sun has come through the clouds of international crisis and the Chancellor has been busy on his ladder fixing the roof with his nails, his hammer and his wood. The process is now nearing completion, for which he deserves a great deal of credit.

Turning to the details of the Budget, the Chancellor also deserves much credit for his reforms of corporate taxation. It was Napoleon who first called us a nation of shopkeepers, and I noticed that the Chancellor quoted Napoleon in his speech. That may say something about his European ambitions, with which I am in less agreement, but we are indeed a nation of shopkeepers. Reducing the burdens of rates, VAT and bureaucracy is only to be welcomed and is thoroughly desirable. Ensuring that multinationals pay taxation according to law is also desirable, but it is always worth remembering that tax avoidance is perfectly legal. If tax is being avoided, it is for this House to change the law so that tax must be paid. It is not some moral virtue to pay more tax than the law requires, so removing loopholes is to be much commended.

I fully support the broad thrust of what the Chancellor is doing. He has got it right, and most of his tax measures are welcome, particularly his changes to personal taxation, an area in which I would like him to go further. Having made £8 billion from cutting the top rate of income tax from 50p to 45p in the pound, he should go further in an exuberant, Laffer-like fashion and cut it back to the rate at which Gordon Brown had it throughout his period as Chancellor.

The area with which I find the most disagreement is found on page 19 of the Red Book, which sets out the economic opportunities and risks linked to the UK’s membership of the European Union. [Interruption.] I am delighted that the nationalists, who so crave independence for themselves, none the less wish to be shackled to the European Union—it is one of their idiosyncrasies that many of us find so charming. If I may, I will deal with that extraordinarily tendentious page, strewn with errors, overstatement and over-egging the pudding. Let us start with the very first line, which states:

“Membership of the EU has increased the UK’s openness to trade and investment”.

That is entirely disputable. In fact, all our membership has done is put us in a customs union with very high levels of regulation and a high external tariff. The tariff on dairy products coming into this country is 42%, much to the disadvantage of our friends in New Zealand. So EU membership has not made us more open; it has closed us to some areas.

Page 19 continues with the statement:

“The UK’s full access to the single market…clearly increases the openness of the British economy”.

There is a word for that, and it is “balderdash”. What access to the single market does is put the dead hand of regulation on the 95% of British businesses that never trade with the continent. They are suffering from that regulation, and their business is made harder to do. This has nothing to do with openness; it is to do with burdens.

Then we get to a bit that I think shows the Chancellor’s wonderful and sophisticated sense of humour. He says:

“At the February 2016 European Council, the Prime Minister secured a new settlement for the UK in a reformed EU.”

It has to be said that the EU was most certainly not reformed at that Council, and our settlement in it was so small as to be hardly noticeable. At the same time it gave away our ability to veto any treaty for fiscal union to follow the monetary union. We said we would do nothing to obstruct that, so we gave away our strongest negotiating hand for nothing—for thin gruel.

[Jim Shannon]

It is always a pleasure to listen to the hon. Gentleman’s contributions in the House—we enjoy them very much. Does he agree that one thing the Prime Minister did not secure was anything for the fishing sector, and that he also secured very little for the farming community? Does he agree that the Prime Minister should have tried to get a settlement with those two things at the forefront of his agenda, to try to achieve things for those sectors? Those were just two sectors that he neglected.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman entirely that fishing and farming—the common fisheries policy and the common agricultural policy—are two of the great disasters of the European Union. The fact that they are not reformed and take so much of the budget—40% in the case of agriculture—is a considerable disgrace.