Loan Charge

John McDonnell Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Like everyone else in the Chamber today, I have constituents who have been affected in a way that is incredibly distressing, so I understand completely the howls of outrage sounding across the House today. I want to deal with process, though.

Some hon. Members here took part in the debate in 2018. I would like people to read the speech made in that debate by my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Ms Brown). I was the shadow Chancellor then, and she was in my shadow Treasury team. Speaking from the Opposition Front Bench, she set out exactly case after case, as hon. Members have done today, but there was one additional case we drew on which has not been mentioned today—a case in which, because of cuts to local councils and elsewhere, staff had been laid off and then rehired on this basis by public bodies, which was particularly shocking.

Let me read the ministerial response that was given then, because I think we should learn from it. The then Economic Secretary said:

“Although…I have tremendous sympathy for those facing large tax bills, it is unfair to let people get away with not paying the tax they owe. There is support for people who have used the schemes and now find themselves in difficult situations, which require those affected to approach HMRC and bring the matter to a close.”—[Official Report, 20 November 2018; Vol. 649, c. 295WH.]

That was the ministerial response. I do not think we can tolerate a similar ministerial response today, because that led to immense human suffering, including, as some have said, some people losing their lives. Many of them did approach HMRC and they did try to negotiate deals, but there was no element of clemency and no understanding of the individual plight of those people. As a result, many of our constituents suffered badly.

I just want to move on and try to get some resolution. I hope that we and the Government can agree today on review. That review should be immediate and time-limited in months, not years. It should be truly independent, with its independence assured by the victims. It should propose a specific range of resolutions, which will have to include some element of compensation for what people have suffered. The review should look at where the compensation should come from. I think it should come not from from other taxpayers, but from a levy on those who promoted the schemes, and perhaps some elements of the finance and accountancy sector that were involved up to their necks, to be frank. That is my first point.

I also think that we need to review our own role in this, and in what has happened over time. I agree with the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) that not only should the Procedure Committee examine the House’s role, but the Public Accounts Committee should look into how we have arrived at current situation.

Let me give two examples of the background to all this. HMRC has come in for considerable criticism today, and I agree with much of it. What I say now is not in mitigation of HMRC’s role, but an attempt to gain some element of understanding of what has been going on there. HMRC is, rightly, under pressure from all of us, on both sides of the House, to tackle tax avoidance and evasion. Some of us have led campaigns over the last 20 years or so to try to get HMRC to work on that effectively, and I pay tribute to the Government for putting it under pressure to tackle the tax gap. They were the first Government to identify a tax gap of £38 billion, or whatever the amount is; I disagree with the figure, but at least we have a target to aim for. However, at the same time, over those 20 years, both parties have excelled in a Dutch auction to establish the extent to which HMRC’s staff levels can be cut.

I can understand a wish to reduce staffing, but there are better ways of doing it, and for a while the way in which it was done at HMRC was fairly brutal. That resulted in redundancy schemes whereby a whole wave, a generation, of expertise was lost, and it had an effect on the culture of HMRC. According to my understanding, HMRC looked for short cuts and a way of meeting the demand for it to tackle tax avoidance and evasion and the tax gap, and I think that this was one of the short cuts that it invented. In latter days, there would probably have been wiser heads in HMRC itself to suggest that this was not the route to go down because it would bring about more problems than solutions. However, a culture of secrecy and protectionism has developed in HMRC, and we need to understand that if we are to tackle this properly as an institutional failing.

Secondly, we need to look at the role that the House played. I have been going back to the year 2017, and trying to remember what was happening in the House at that time. Some Members will recall that there was not a normal process for the Finance Bill, because the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), who was then the Prime Minister, having assured us all that there would not be a general election—I think she assured us of that five times in the House—went for a walk in Wales, came back, and declared an election. So the finance measures were thrown into the wash-up procedure, which, as Members will know, means political parties sitting down to decide what measures are urgent and must be passed. It was agreed that the Finance Bill would go through in a single day, and as a result of that, this measure was introduced. I should like the Public Accounts Committee and others to look at how that process worked and how it did not work.

The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden made an extremely valid point, which we made about every Finance Bill, or Budget Bill, that came forward. When the Government introduced the “no amendment to law” procedure, that tied the hands of the House when it came to what it could open up, what debates it could have and what amendments it could table. That was introduced by—

[Sir David Davis]

Hammond.

[John McDonnell]

Yes, by Lord Hammond. I think it was almost unprecedented. As I say, it tied the hands of the House, even when it came to further investigating issues relating to the Budget and Finance Bills.

I also think that we need to look at the process whereby Ministers and Opposition are able to question impact assessments and how they are developed, as well as the independence of those assessments. I still find it problematic that impact assessments are prepared largely by the Department and the ministerial team that are promoting the legislation involved, rather than its being done independently. Had there been an independent impact assessment in this case, and time for a proper debate and for amendment as well, the House would probably not have agreed to take this course. When I look back, I think that the implications should have been drawn to the attention of the whole House. The impression given was that this would be focused on a small number of “hard case” tax avoiders or evaders, and their scheme promoters.

[Sir David Davis]

I agree with nearly everything that the right hon. Gentleman is saying, but why can we not address it now? Why can we not go back and put it right?

[John McDonnell]

The point I am making is about enabling us to do that. I hope that some of the lessons being learned are learned not just by the whole House but by the Government as well, whichever party is in power. As soon as we introduce measures to fetter the role of individual Members of the House or the House as a whole, we open up the opportunity for mistakes to be made, because policies are not tested effectively in democratic debate in this Chamber.

I welcome the fact that reviews are to happen, but believe they should happen as a matter of urgency, if for no other reason than because I do not want to be here again in a few years’ time—we are now in 2024, and I do not want to be here again in 2026, 2027 or 2028—and find that we are in the same situation as we were in 2019. I do not want to find that more people have suffered and, worryingly, that more people may not be with us as a result of this because they have taken their own lives.

There is an element of urgency about rectifying this issue, and doing it with compassion and, in many instances, with clemency. That will enable us to focus properly on tackling tax avoidance and evasion, and also the institutional arrangements that exist to enable that to happen. We need to have a thorough debate in the House about our regulatory mechanisms, especially with regard to the accountancy and finance sector.