Oral Answers to Questions
John Glen Excerpts(4 days, 6 hours ago)
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James Murray
East West Rail is a transformational project that will unlock economic growth and housing. Just yesterday, I was glad to host a representative from East West Rail at an infrastructure roundtable at the Treasury with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. My hon. Friend is another powerful advocate for her local area, and I will happily discuss this matter with the Rail Minister and get back to her.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
Last week I met Lawrence Bowman, the chief executive of South Western Railway. I am keen to make sure that all the Government’s changes take positive effect in Salisbury and south Wiltshire, so that tracks, signal and stock can be improved. Will the Minister make sure that there is a suitable reference board along the commuting line into Waterloo, so that when Lawrence Bowman’s business plan is delivered, there will not be any delays when he has to interact with local authorities—a concern that he raised with me last week?
James Murray
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for raising the concerns of the services used by his constituents. I can assure him that I will look into those and get back to him.
Business Rates
John Glen Excerpts(4 days, 6 hours ago)
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Dan Tomlinson
As a London MP, I do not get the joy of staying in a hotel in my hon. Friend’s constituency—instead, I get the joy of the Northern line on the route home. She asks an important question about hotels, which are valued in a different way from some other sectors. Their methodology is well established, but as with pubs, specific concerns have been raised, and the Government think it is right to review how hotels are valued for business rates purposes to ensure their valuations accurately reflect the market for those sectors. I intend to engage with hotel businesses and their representative groups on this important issue. Any future changes to business rates for hotels or other businesses will be considered in the usual way as part of the usual Budget processes.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
Can I respectfully remind the Minister that when Jonathan Russell from the Valuation Office Agency came before the Select Committee, he was very clear that the impact of the rate rises was made known to the Treasury before the Budget? The VOA provided data drops over 12 months, which did not detail the rates for individual properties, but provided a clear overview at a central level and revealed that 5,000 pubs would see their rates double. It is just not credible for the Minister to say that the Treasury did not know what was going to happen, is it? It had a very clear view of the impact of the changes that it was imposing.
Dan Tomlinson
We were aware of the changes to rateable values that were going to be published at the Budget, which is why we came forward with a significant package of support to help businesses adjust to their new values. For example, yesterday, Waterstones came out to express its support for our changes to business rates, because the lower multipliers that we have put into the system will support its business. Businesses across the country are benefiting from those lower multipliers. As I have said, more than half are seeing their bills either flat or falling. We have also put in place significant transitional relief support, with caps this year, next year and the year after. That is because we were aware of the effect of the changes to valuation, although I was not aware of what would happen subsequently with the pubs and their views. I have engaged with them on the methodology, and because of that we are launching this review. We think it is right to look carefully at that methodology.
Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief
John Glen Excerpts(3 weeks, 5 days ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Dan Tomlinson
The previous Government negotiated poorly when it came to trade deals. When the Conservatives negotiate, Britain loses. Labour has negotiated four new significant trade deals that will help to ensure that British businesses—farming businesses and businesses of all sorts—can access more markets, more easily. That is the right thing to do for long-term growth and productivity.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
I welcome the partial U-turn. When I met a number of farmers on Boxing day, all 400 of them were very concerned that the next phase of this Government’s relationship with rural Britain would be a consultation on banning trail hunting. On the basis of this experience, I think that the Minister could go back to the Treasury and ask his officials to put together a team to work very closely with their counterparts in DEFRA to absolutely ensure that the farmers’ obligation, and indeed their true intent—to produce food and be good stewards of the environment— can be combined, and to ensure that never again in the course of this Parliament will such measures be undertaken as they were last year.
Dan Tomlinson
The right hon. Gentleman has mentioned the issue of trail hunting. That was in our manifesto, and it is part of our animal welfare strategy to continue with some important changes there. I think it right for governing parties to make progress on the commitments that they made when they stood before the country.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Glen Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Lucy Rigby
As has been covered by my colleagues, we are putting in a £4 billion support package and continuing to engage with the hospitality sector. I should also add that we are easing licensing to help venues offer pavement drinks and one-off events too.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
I welcome the changes to the listings review, but will the Minister look at what is happening with research and development tax credits and the efficiency of the delivery of those tax credits, because when the system does not work well enough, businesses are struggling before they get to listing?
Lucy Rigby
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for his question, as I always am. We are doing an awful lot to support R&D in this country, including through many of the measures announced at the Budget. That includes putting an additional £7 billion into specific areas within the industrial strategy.
OBR: Resignation of Chair
John Glen Excerpts(1 month, 4 weeks ago)
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James Murray
I very much agree with the sentiment of my hon. Friend’s question. The OBR is a vital part of our fiscal framework—indeed, as I mentioned earlier, one of the first acts we took on entering government was to strengthen its role to ensure that it could never be sidelined. It is precisely because we see the OBR as holding such an important place in our fiscal framework that it is important that we maintain its integrity and trust.
My hon. Friend asks what further steps the OBR will take. We will work with the National Cyber Security Centre and the OBR to take forward the recommendation that a forensic examination of potential premature access at previous fiscal events is carried out. Let me add that there is no evidence of hostile cyber-activity, but the OBR report’s findings indicated access at previous fiscal events. That is a very serious matter that we will investigate.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
Richard Hughes was a first-rate public servant, but he did the right thing on the narrow matter of the premature upload of the file last week. OBR representatives told us a number of things yesterday in the Treasury Committee. They told us that there was a £16 billion downgrade and £4.2 billion of headroom on 31 October, because there were also improved tax revenues. I do not think £4.2 billion can be characterised as a black hole, but it was a challenging circumstance—that is the truth. Will the Minister consider, in all future Budgets, that such a letter should be made available, at the same time that Budget publications and OBR publications are made available, setting out what was said to the Chancellor at what point? We could then verify whether the press conference on 4 November was very wide of the mark and gave a materially misleading view of what was actually happening.
James Murray
As will be clear, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks about Richard Hughes’s contribution to public service. However, I disagree that the premature publication of the forecast last Wednesday was a narrow matter. The report showed that it was about not simply a single error, but more systemic issues, which it highlighted, so I disagree with the characterisation of that as narrow.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to some of Professor Miles’s comments at the Treasury Committee. Professor Miles confirmed that the £4 billion headroom identified in the forecast on 31 October was not inconsistent with the sentiment that this is a very challenging fiscal position.
The right hon. Gentleman also asked about the OBR’s letter, the nature of its being published and what it speaks about for the future. As I said earlier, the publication of the OBR letter was agreed to by the Chancellor due to the unique nature of this Budget and the context of the OBR’s productivity review, as it said itself, while acknowledging that it would not become usual practice, due to the importance of preserving a private space for discussion.
Office for Budget Responsibility Forecasts
John Glen Excerpts(1 month, 4 weeks ago)
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James Murray
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: imagine if I were trying to defend a Budget to the House that was delivered with just a few billion pounds of headroom—what message would that send about the UK economy? The headroom is there to reduce the cost of Government borrowing and to give us protection against future shocks that might come our way.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
On the process failure of the premature publication of the document, I think there is consensus across the House that it is damaging to the reputations of the UK, the OBR and the Treasury. I welcome the fact that the report says there are issues for the Cabinet Office, the Treasury and the OBR in respect of how documents are hosted. However, on the substantive issue of what the OBR had told the Treasury and the net overall effect of that, there can be no doubt. There may be a dispute about whether £4.2 billion was sufficient or not, but we know for certain that the OBR did not say there was a significant black hole that required a 2p increase in income tax, which was the consequence of the Chancellor’s press conference. Does the Chief Secretary agree that the material distinction between those two issues must not be lost, and that he must face up to the reality of the overall net effect and the impression that was left?
James Murray
The right hon. Gentleman is a former Treasury Minister, so he will know the importance of the OBR’s productivity downgrade and the impact that that has had on the forecasts. He will know that £16 billion is a significant downgrade to have had as a result of that productivity review, and he will know that were I here defending a Budget with just a few billion pounds of headroom, that would not be a position that any of us would want to be in.
Budget: Press Briefings
John Glen Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
James Murray
Mr Speaker, as I made clear, every Minister in this Government takes their responsibility to this House very seriously and I am not going to engage in further speculation today, but what we are seeking to achieve in the Budget next week is to ensure that, in meeting her iron-clad fiscal rules that the Chancellor has committed to, we provide extra headroom to give more resilience to the public finances, reduce inflationary pressures and get the cost of borrowing down.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
Two weeks ago, the Chancellor held a press conference from which everyone inferred that income tax was going to go up. On Friday, every newspaper said that income tax was not going to go up. It is plainly obvious to the general public and anyone who reads any of the papers that everything is being briefed from the Treasury or No. 11. Surely the Minister needs to come to terms with that and face up to the fact that it has a horrendous effect on business and consumer confidence, which is doing the economy a lot of damage.
James Murray
As I said earlier, regrettably there is always noise and speculation ahead of a Budget. In reference to the Chancellor’s speech earlier this month, the reason she set out the challenges we face as a country was to be straightforward with the British people about the challenges we face and clear about her priorities, which are to protect on the NHS, bear down on the cost of living and get national debt down.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Glen Excerpts(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lucy Rigby
My hon. Friend raises a really important point. As part of developing the strategy, the Government have engaged with Financial Inclusion Committee members and other organisations on how to measure the impact of the strategy, and indeed to drive its delivery. The strategy’s implementation will be reviewed two years from publication against outcomes-based metrics to provide an update on progress. I will be more than happy to meet her to discuss this.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
When I was Economic Secretary, against the advice of officials I advanced something called the no interest loan scheme. I am given to believe that one of the Minister’s two predecessors since the general election may have suspended that valuable attempt to support the most vulnerable in society. Will she look at that again in advance of the Budget in three weeks? There really was wide cross-party support for it.
Lucy Rigby
I am aware of the scheme that the right hon. Member talks about. He will appreciate that I cannot pre-empt the launch of the strategy tomorrow, nor indeed the Budget, but I would be more than happy to meet him to talk about it in more detail.
Stamp Duty Land Tax
John Glen Excerpts(3 months ago)
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Kit Malthouse
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s hope for the next generation, and I completely agree with him. As somebody with three children, I hope they get the same housing opportunities and economic opportunities as I did. Sadly, given how the housing market has gone and is going, it does not look as if that will be the case, but he neatly makes the point that I made in opening my speech. To get young people on the housing ladder, a subsidy scheme would see us come full circle. Instead, we should think again about how we can have a deregulated free market that functions for them and allows the houses to be built that can accommodate them. Taking tax off young people and then giving it back in the form of housing subsidy is nonsensical.
To return to my point on the supply chain, thousands of small builders around the country are desperate for this kind of work and are seeing the housing market stagnating and their work reducing. Worse than that, in areas of high property value, those who do have capital decide, instead of moving, to build down, up or out. We therefore get densification, particularly in areas such as central London, which often causes significant problems.
Moving on, this tax does not work very well for Government either. First, as Members will know, it is pro-cyclical and crashes when the Government need it most. During the 2007-08 crash, stamp duty receipts fell by 60%. We saw a surge in stamp duty receipts during the window a year or so ago, but since then, they have been falling significantly. The Chancellor, who is facing significant fiscal problems, will see that fall even further, so the tax does not work for Government on that basis.
Secondly, stamp duty is a bad tax because of its salience. Economists have this idea that taxes have a salience, which is how much people notice they are being taken. VAT has low salience, because we do not really notice it. It is in the prices that we pay. Income tax and pay-as-you-earn have low salience. Stamp duty is enormously noticeable at a moment when people are making a huge decision about their lives. They are trying to progress their families and wham, here come the Government saying, “We are going to have a slice of your wealth.”
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is making a brilliant speech. On salience, does he acknowledge that stamp duty has had a particularly pronounced effect in the capital, particularly for those who come to this country to invest here and create jobs? One of the prime reasons we have seen such a significant number—perhaps 16,000 people—leave this country is the incidence of that tax in the capital.
Kit Malthouse
My right hon. Friend is completely right, and he makes a powerful point. Anybody, whether overseas or here, who comes anywhere in the country, but particularly to London and the south-east, and wants to make a significant purchase is immediately presented with a massive bill that cannot be borrowed. It comes out of any equity that they may have spare lying around or that they may have saved up for years to build towards their housing decision. For the Government to show up and take it at that moment of significance in anybody’s life is extremely damaging. It is the same when the Government show up on the death of a relative and say, “We will take our slice.” Such taxes have enormous salience. As a result, stamp duty and inheritance tax are easily the two most unpopular taxes in the country.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Glen Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lucy Rigby
My hon. Friend raises an important issue, and it is very good to hear him championing businesses in his constituency. The Government published the small business strategy in July, which sets out how we will make the UK the best place to start and grow a business and puts SMEs at the heart of our growth mission. That includes tackling the barriers that SMEs face when accessing finance. That is why the Government are committed to increasing the total financial capacity of the British Business Bank to £25.6 billion and introducing a new business growth service, which will make it easier and quicker for businesses across the UK to get the help, support and advice that they need to grow and thrive.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
I warmly welcome the new Economic Secretary to her role. Over the summer I looked at issues around liquidity in the London Stock Exchange and the deterioration that has happened. Given that only 15% of share trades attract stamp duty and much more trading is conducted in a dark environment, will the new Economic Secretary meet with me to hear my concerns and the concerns of those in the City so that we can move forward in a positive direction?
Lucy Rigby
I pay tribute to the right hon. Member’s work in this area, and I would be more than happy to meet with him to discuss those concerns.