Welfare Reform and Work Bill
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Owen Smith
I will not give way again.
The problem with this change is that it will simply compound that fundamental mistrust. Before the last election, the Prime Minister said, on live national television, that he was not going to cut child tax credits, but he is going to do so. That was a fundamental misleading of the British public. Other Ministers also made categorical statements. When asked whether the Conservative party would cut tax credits, one of them said:
“"No; we are going to freeze them for two years; we are not going to cut them.”
That was a fundamental untruth, and the country knows it.
Unfortunately, when that is added to the Government’s smoke and mirrors and what they say about how they intend to offset the impact of these cuts, it is clear that we as a group—and the Conservatives as a political party—are deepening what is already a profound mistrust in our politics. For the Conservatives to describe themselves as the workers’ party is laughable. Theirs is the party that is cutting the incomes of the workers of Britain, and they should be ashamed of that. They should stand up today and vote with us for new clause 1, and repeal the tax credit cuts.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Prosperity, not austerity: that is what we want. My consistent advice to Ministers dealing with economic matters and benefits is that they should always have at the forefront of their minds the need for everything they do to promote less austerity and more prosperity for the many, because we wish to have a more prosperous people. The outlines of how we do that are clear, and I fully support the Government’s vision and objectives.
The first thing to do is promote work. We need to make sure that people come out of unemployment and into work; that people who are working part-time but want to work full-time have the opportunity to go on to work full-time; and that people in full-time work that is not well paid have the chance to be promoted into a better-paid job, and to get better skills and training and work with their employer so that they can have a more productive and better-paid job. In that area, this Government and the predecessor coalition have been so much more successful than the Labour Government of 2005 to 2010. We know how austerity for the many is created: by following the Labour Government’s policies of 2005 to 2010, when they increased borrowing and spending, and combined that with over-lax regulation of bank capital and cash, which I warned them about prior to the crunch. When they put those three things in a heady mix, they brought the economy down, a large number of people lost their job altogether, a large number had to take a pay cut to keep their job and most people lost their bonuses or their opportunities to work overtime because the great recession that was unleashed on this country did so much damage. The first thing, therefore, that the British people want is to be secure in the knowledge that the economic policies being used are prudent and sensible, so that there is more chance of more people working and of people having better- paid jobs.
Ms Buck
The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point about the importance of allowing people to keep more of their money when they work longer hours. How does he square that commitment with the fact that the changes coming in next April will increase the tapers on higher earnings so that people will be subject to 80p in the pound withdrawal rates when they do work extra hours?
John Redwood
The problem with welfare reform, as all who have wrestled with it well know, is that we either have a large number of people facing a moderate rate of withdrawal or we have a more limited number of people facing a high rate of withdrawal. All the time that we have means-tested benefits—our system is still riddled with them—means that we will have to make that difficult choice about whether there is a fast move off benefit when people’s income goes up or a slower move. That will mean we either have fewer or more people affected by the taper. Labour never solved the problem of the taper. The Labour Government had lots of difficult tapers and high marginal rates of tax and benefit withdrawal.
That brings me to the second fundamental pillar of the Government’s strategy, which I support, after the promotion of work and better-paid work: taxing people less, particularly those on lower incomes. Both the coalition and this Government have worked away at that, by trying to get more people out of paying income tax. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor thinks about his pre-Budget judgment and his autumn statement judgment later this year—he is rightly in listening mode—I trust he will think about the tax element in his policy mix, because the more he can do to take people out of tax or to lower the tax rate upon them, the more he will succeed in promoting prosperity and the more he will offset the impact of benefit changes.
Hywel Williams
The right hon. Gentleman talks about prosperity, but he will know as well as I do that small businesses are one of the chief drivers of it. How does he square that with the cuts to small businesses and single earners’ income from their self-employment?
John Redwood
The Government are trying to encourage people to earn more in self-employment—that is the whole point of the policy. The idea is to create better incentives so that it is worth while people working more and longer hours if they have not had sufficient hours of work and not a sufficient income, and they keep more of the money they make by being in self-employment. That is true for them as well as for people in employment.
John Redwood
The hon. Gentleman has had one go and I am sorry he messed up his question.
Barbara Keeley
I have raised in this Chamber a number of times the issue of the almost 700,000 carers who are working but can work only 16 hours at the minimum wage. Many Conservative Members in this debate and in earlier debates have talked about people increasing their hours, but some sets of people cannot increase their hours—my Front-Bench colleague the hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) has mentioned them and I mention them. What does the right hon. Gentleman say to almost 700,000 working carers who cannot give themselves more hours, are not allowed to earn more than £110 a week and will be hit badly by this cut to working tax credits?
John Redwood
Yes, some people cannot increase their hours or, for good reason, do not want to increase them because they are already working long hours. I have already described the actions they or their employers can take, and that the Government can encourage. We want these people to have better opportunity and more skill, and to work with their employers to raise productivity to justify pay rises. The Government, with the full support of the Opposition, are using the force of the law to increase minimum wages, as part of the policy of driving wages upwards. But the only way we can succeed in getting wages in this country up to levels we would all find acceptable is through a productivity revolution. It has to come by working smarter and better, not necessarily by working longer hours or by working harder, with the right investment and the right back-up from employers, so that people can earn more and justify higher earnings.
Owen Smith
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that we are talking about two tribes here? It is not necessarily people who are on working tax credits who are on the minimum wage—indeed, the overlap is only about 25%, so an increase in the minimum wage will miss 75% of those tax credit recipients.
John Redwood
I do not think it is very nice to say that people belong to “tribes”; we are in one country and we are trying to promote the greater prosperity of the many. I am surprised by that lapse of language, but the hon. Gentleman is right to say that some people who will face a reduction in tax credits are not going to benefit from the minimum wage because they are already earning more than that. That is clearly true.
John Redwood
If the hon. Gentleman would listen carefully, he would know that that is why I say I support a strategy for prosperity that first promotes more people into better pay. I am not just talking about those who are currently on a low wage; I want someone on a better wage also to have the opportunity for more pay. Some of my constituents do; they will be promoted, they will work for smart employers in smarter ways, and they will get pay rises, although not all will. The more the Government can do to help, encourage and support, so that many more people can get those opportunities of better pay, the more we will like it. I hope the Opposition parties will agree that that is the best way to greater prosperity. It is also the best way to better jobs. If someone goes to work every day thinking that next year they might have a better job, a pay rise or a bonus they can benefit from, they will go with more of a spring in their step than if they are going to a low-paid job with a bad employer who is not giving them any options and not giving them a break in life. [Interruption.] I see that some Opposition Members think that that is a funny idea, but I hope they would join me in recommending this approach to employers in their constituency as well as in mine, as that is how we create a more prosperous society. I am just trying to stress that we also need to get taxes down.
That deals with the second pillar of this excellent strategy. We need better work and more better-paid work, and less tax on that work so that people are more prosperous. We then come to the difficult bit, which is the point of the row today, all of last week and probably all of next week, by the looks of how Parliament is going at the moment. The issue is: at what rate do you withdraw the benefits support as people become more prosperous because they are in work, not out of work, because they are in better-paid work and because they are paying less tax? There are difficult judgments to be made, and I am very pleased that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor is in listening mode. I look forward to his autumn statement—unlike the Labour party, I will be looking at all three elements of the package. I will be looking at pay and tax, as well as benefit withdrawal.
Perhaps unlike Labour, I want to end up in a world where far fewer people are on benefits, because their pay and the tax cuts are sufficient to give them a better lifestyle. We will then have a more affordable welfare system that enables us to run an economic policy more likely to deliver better prospects, more jobs and more success for business. As some of my Conservative colleagues have sought to point out, the problem the Opposition face is that no answer is coming from them. We know that they were able to overspend, over-borrow and crash the economy. We are now waiting to hear from them about how they would get the money under control, were they to be trusted again with government. We know that they do not want to cut non-benefit expenditure, so surely they have to accept the case I am making: that we need to get more people out of benefits altogether, and that requires a combination of the good things—promoting work, promoting better pay and lower taxes—and the not-so-good things, such as actually having to make some difficult choices on benefits.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
What answer do I give my constituents? They have a spring in their step because they are getting all these promotions and things the right hon. Gentleman talks about, yet 34,000 children in my constituency who are on tax credits will be thrown into poverty. Can he explain that?
John Redwood
We have just been talking about how we can avoid that. We have been talking about how we can get those people out of poverty and into prosperity and how we can promote, in the hon. Lady’s constituency and elsewhere, more jobs, better businesses and lower taxes, which must be the medium to long-term answer.
Owen Smith
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who is being gracious in giving way. He talks about us all wanting to avoid a disincentive to work extra hours, but does he not accept that that disincentive will be increased by reducing the lower earnings threshold and increasing the taper, thereby increasing the amount of money that is taken away for every extra hour worked and every extra pound earned?
John Redwood
I have already been quite honest in saying that Governments face a difficult choice in this regard: do they want fewer people facing a sharper taper, or more people facing a gentler taper? There are no easy answers. I look forward to hearing the Government’s judgment when they have completed their listening and thinking. Again, the Opposition are refusing to see all three parts of the package. It is not possible to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question as simply as he would like, because working out whether people are better off or worse off, and by how much, depends on what else happens with taxation, rates of pay, inflation and all the other things that are going on.
My advice to the Government is that their strategy is absolutely right: get more from pay, more from tax cuts and then cut the benefits, because people will not need them as much. They must listen carefully to criticisms, for example if their changes are going too far and too fast, or if they catch some people we do not want to catch. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will want to return to those points in his autumn statement and tell us his thinking. However, the direction of travel must not be simply to make big increases in benefits again; it must be to find other answers so that more people can enjoy prosperity from work, earnings and lower taxes.
Helen Hayes
I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman would like to comment on two issues. First, is there any legitimacy or authority in the Government’s approach to cutting tax credits, given that the Prime Minister repeatedly denied that he would do so in the run-up to the general election? Secondly, there is unequivocal evidence from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and others that the maths on the issue simply do not add up, and that asking people to work harder for less is, quite simply, an unacceptable proposition.
John Redwood
I agree with the hon. Lady’s latter point, because I do not want people to have to work harder for less. I have just described the world I want to live in, and how I want that world, which some of my constituents enjoy, to be available to many more. I want people to work smarter and with more skill so that they can earn more because their companies can afford to pay them more. With regard to the Prime Minister’s promise in the run-up to the general election, I heard him rule out cutting child benefit, and I understand that there are no proposals to cut child benefit.
When I was asked about welfare in the run-up to the general election, I made it clear that I wanted the total welfare bill to come down and that I expected to see welfare reform, including some reductions in welfare payments and eligibility. Personally, I do not think that I have anything to answer on that score. I was entirely honest with my electorate, and they kindly trusted me with the job again, and with a bigger majority. There are many people in this country with a grown-up view about welfare, who do not want it to penalise those who really need it but who think it is high time we reformed it so that we depend much more on work and tax reduction on lower and middle levels of pay than we have done in the past.
Therefore, I urge my right hon. Friend the Chancellor the preserve the spirit of his reforms but to look very carefully at the detail, because we do not want to see bad cases of the type that Opposition Members have been conjuring out of thin air without proper facts. Above all, we do not want to go back to Labour’s boom-and-bust economy, where generous welfare, far from creating more jobs and prosperity, helped bring the whole thing down.
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
I rise to speak to the amendments in this group tabled by the Scottish National party. We also support new clause 1, which the shadow Minister moved earlier. Let me pay tribute at this stage to the efforts of my hon. Friends the Members for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Corri Wilson) and for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) who worked so assiduously on the Bill Committee on behalf of the SNP, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) for her work on these matters in the Work and Pensions Committee.
My wife has always suggested to me that it provides context and depth to a speech if it includes a quote early on. On this occasion, and in relation to tax credit cuts, I have a quote that was timeously delivered in the past few days:
“It’s not acceptable. The aim is sound, but we can’t have people suffering on the way… The idea that there’s a cliff edge in April before the uptake in wages comes in is a real practical human problem and the Government needs to look again at it again”.
Who is that quote attributed to? That was said by Ruth Davidson MSP, leader of the Conservative party in Scotland, as she called on this Government to have some movement on the issue by the autumn statement.
After last night’s vote in the other place, it is time for the Government to rethink these outrageous proposals. They have managed to unite a considerable swathe of political and civic society against the plans. In fact, after last night the Chancellor really stands alone in continuing to push for the cuts. If the Chancellor, the Prime Minister and this Government will not listen to Opposition Members, if they will not listen to charitable and third sector organisations, and if they will not listen to anyone else, surely they should listen to the leader of their own party in Scotland.
The SNP is completely opposed to the UK Government’s continued attack on low-income families, and we support Labour’s amendment to repeal the regulations, which will affect 350,000 children in 200,000 families in Scotland. Let me say this loud and clear: the SNP will oppose these ideological, regressive and utterly punitive tax credit cuts with every opportunity open to us today and every day, because we realise the damage they will cause to working family incomes, to levels of poverty across these isles, including child poverty, and to social cohesion in every community in the United Kingdom.
The amendments that my colleagues and I support in this group would bring about the repeal of these tax credit regulations and overturn the proposed cuts. However, should the Government decide to press on with the cuts in the face of hostility across this Chamber, and from Conservatives up the road, they must consider forms of mitigation. They must act to protect vulnerable families with a delay and a fully implemented transitional period, as is covered in our new clause 8, which we will be pushing to a vote. In the light of last night’s vote in the other place, I expect that is already being considered by the Government.
New clause 8 would mean that the measures in the Bill and in the 2015 tax credits regulations relating to the award of tax credits and the relevant entitlement within universal credit would not take effect until the Secretary of State had implemented a scheme for full transitional protection for a minimum of three years for all families and individuals currently receiving tax credits before 5 April 2016, and such transitional protection should be renewable after three years with parliamentary approval.
The transitional arrangements are important, as none are put in place by the Tax Credits (Income Thresholds and Determination of Rates) (Amendment) Regulations 2015. This means that the tax credit cuts will be implemented immediately in April 2016. In fact, tax credit recipients will apparently be getting an unwelcome letter detailing the cuts to their award just weeks before Christmas. This will give working families no time to plan effectively for an average cut of £1,300. For families living wage packet to wage packet, utterly dependent on tax credits to keep them above the breadline, the cut will be devastating and impossible to plan for in such a short time.
Amendments 49, 50 and 52 would ensure that relevant benefits, child benefit and tax credits increased in line with the consumer prices index. Amendment 51 is consequential, while amendments 53 and 54 would ensure that the current child tax credit arrangements remained in place. Amendment 55 would remove changes to the entitlement to the child element of universal credit. These amendments were pushed by my colleagues in Committee. The Government did not accept any of them, but they pledged to come back with more information, which has not yet materialised.
Why on earth have the Government decided to rush the Bill from Committee, which only finished on Thursday, to this final stage today? If they are serious about introducing more detail and explaining the expected mitigation measures, why not flesh that out? The rush suggests that the cuts are purely about making savings and therefore ideologically driven. The changes are fundamentally regressive. They disproportionately target those in low-income households and punish them for the Government’s ideological obsession with austerity—an obsession that is failing socially and economically.
The SNP stood on a manifesto that was fundamentally anti-austerity but which also plotted a more responsible path to reducing the deficit. We have argued for a 0.5% increase in departmental spending per year for this Parliament, which would have released £140 billion to invest in capital projects to boost growth and narrow income inequalities. Our plan would also have resulted in a budget deficit of just 2% by the end of the Parliament, and it was backed by an International Monetary Fund report in June that highlighted how reducing income inequality not only reduced poverty but boosted growth. By extension, the policy of cutting tax credits and thereby increasing income inequality will drive more of our citizens into poverty and harm growth and therefore harm the Government’s apparent aim of reducing the deficit. So, as well as being socially destructive, this policy is—to extend the IMF’s thinking—economically incompetent.
Charter for Budget Responsibility
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I welcome the spirit of the shadow Chancellor’s remarks and the fact that he wants a serious debate. Government Members do not favour austerity; we favour prosperity. We believe that the way to create prosperity is to have sound money and sound state finances that we can afford so we have decent public services and money and so that credit is also available to expand the private sector, create the extra jobs we need to get people into work and create the higher paid jobs we need so that they can be more prosperous in work. I hope the shadow Chancellor will understand that.
I am afraid the shadow Chancellor did make a couple of mistakes in his remarks. First, he wrongly said that Conservative Members were calling for less banking regulation in the run-up to the crisis. I chaired the economic policy review for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and there was strong advice that tougher regulation was needed on bank cash and capital. We expressly warned that the banks were over-borrowed and over-geared and that the whole system was very shaky, and I remember the Opposition constantly warning about excess debts in the system. The shadow Chancellor would be well advised to read what we wrote because the warnings were there although Labour and its regulators were not listening.
The shadow Chancellor should reread the Red Book, which set out a few weeks ago the five year spending and borrowing plans for this Parliament. It makes it very clear that there are going to be substantial cash increases in total public spending over the five years of this Parliament as all goes to plan, as we trust it will. As inflation is currently around 0%, that will mean real increases are possible, just as in the last Parliament when, despite all the noise from the Labour party, cash spending went up every year and real spending went up every year. It went up much more modestly than it did during the excesses of the pre-2007-08 period that helped to bring about the crash, but there was room for small real increases in public spending. That is because Government Members care about ensuring that disabled people are properly looked after, that schools have enough money and that there are real increases for the health service every year because there is greater demand and more treatments.
I welcome the charter, and I hope that this Government—which I hope will be re-elected—and any future Government will take it very seriously. The evidence is clear that during the first five years of the previous Labour Government, the economy worked pretty well. I give them credit for that. In three of those five years, they generated a public surplus. They inherited our prudent public finances and for the first few years they ran with them, which worked very well. I therefore refer Labour Members to their own excellent example from those early years. It was only when their Government let rip on spending, credit and borrowing for the state and the private sector that things got out of control and they showed that they could put the boom into the boom and the bust into the bust. They then took us through the biggest and deepest cycle of the post-war period, with awful consequences for the poor and for those who lost their jobs and businesses.
We need responsible finances. We want growth. We want prosperity, not austerity, and this charter will allow us to achieve that. Let us hope that future Governments stick to it. The debt was only £380 billion for the whole state at the point at which the Labour Government ceased to generate a surplus. It went up by almost £700 billion before they left office, and a lot of the increase occurred before the crash. It now stands at £1,600 billion, because getting it down is proving extremely difficult. I urge Labour Members to understand that they jeopardised the public finances, trashed the economy and destroyed jobs and businesses. We don’t want to go there.
Several hon. Members rose—
Finance Bill
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Barbara Keeley
Indeed, and I will come on to that, because the cumulative impact of this and other changes in the Budget on specific groups is of great concern. My hon. Friend is right that there could be a real issue in parts of the country prone to flooding. We do not want to see families in the properties my hon. Friend talks about that are outside the Flood Re scheme go without insurance.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
If the hon. Lady wants to forgo this substantial increase in revenue, what would she replace it with, given that her income tax proposals would also cut the revenue because the higher rate would collect less?
Barbara Keeley
It is not for me to make those suggestions; it is the Government’s Budget, not mine.
As I have said, the increased cost of this will be much higher than the averages for some groups. The AA has also shared its concern. After the Budget, AA president Edmund King said:
“The sting is in the tail. The Insurance Premium Tax increase on the average car insurance policy is still equivalent to a fuel duty increase of almost 2p per litre. Either way drivers are being hit in their pockets. This is an outrageous hike which could well backfire by leading to an increase in uninsured drivers.”
Barbara Keeley
I think that I have already covered that. In a debate in 2010 it was accepted that these costs are almost always passed on. Almost every commentator has said that the costs will be passed on. Aviva and RSA have already announced that they will pass them on, so all the signs are that they will be passed on. Clearly, it would be good if any part of the insurance industry decided not to pass on the costs, but what we are seeing is an increase in premiums across the piece.
This tax increase on a merit good like insurance could undermine the message that individuals and society benefit if the correct level of insurance is taken out. An increase in the insurance premium tax of 58% punishes families and individuals for acting responsibly. When there have been previous increases in the tax, they have been something in the order of around 1%. There is a major concern that this steeper increase could be large enough to alter the coverage chosen by customers, which means that they would become underinsured. It may be that Conservative Members do not face problems of underinsurance in their constituencies. I must say that I have seen a lot of it in my constituency. People really suffer when they are underinsured. If levels of crime are high and there are other issues affecting them on the roads, underinsurance is a real issue.
The Government need to ensure that tax policies do not lead to a situation in which families struggling on low incomes decide to forgo insurance or let their previous policies lapse because prices have risen and they decide that they can no longer afford insurance. That could leave many families at risk of great loss in the event of burglary, or if they have a road accident.
Underinsurance could be a consequence of this rate rise. People could also opt for cheaper policies, which means that they do not get the right coverage, or they opt for higher excesses, which effectively means that their coverage is less. Buying insurance can be a complicated business and a good price may often take precedence over having the right level of coverage.
The HMRC policy paper for this rate rise estimated that there would be
“a small reduction in the demand for standard-rated insurance.”
Any fall in demand for insurance that leaves families open to greater risks should be avoided. Where does the Minister believe this “small reduction” is likely to occur and what is she doing to prevent reductions in the demand for insurance?
Finally, HMRC suggests that there could be changes in the behaviour of insurance companies. It states that there is likely to be
“a small increase in tax planning activity by insurance companies.”
What are the Government doing to minimise this further potential unwanted consequence?
Clause 43 is a typical measure from a Conservative Government who promise one thing and then deliver the opposite. In this case, the Chancellor promised before the election that he had no need to raise taxes, but then he raised this tax, which will have an impact on households throughout the UK and on their usage of insurance. The increase could have a number of negative consequences. Higher insurance premiums may lead to fewer families and individuals purchasing much-needed insurance to protect themselves against everyday problems, which happen much more often in some parts of the country than in others. I am talking about burglary and damage to property and possessions.
The Government must provide more information and analysis of the wider impacts of this tax increase, as well as strategies to prevent the negative consequences that are likely to result from this policy. Labour’s amendment to clause 43 asks the Government to consider the impact of any future increase of the tax.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has called for a road map to indicate a long-term strategy for our tax system. The CBI has outlined its concerns about the UK tax system in a letter to the Financial Secretary, stressing the need for Ministers to recognise that
“changes to the tax system that appear innocuous can have wide-ranging effects.”
The CBI also stated that there was a need for “renewed discipline” in tax policy making and that the lack of consultation and notice period for tax changes can cause great uncertainty for businesses. None the less, the Government continue to increase and lower taxes for short-term policy goals. Labour believes that we need to consider how to reform our tax system so that people and businesses are taxed efficiently and fairly.
As I have outlined, there are particular concerns about this and any future potential rise in insurance premium tax because of the impact it might have on the price of insurance policies and the take-up of insurance by families and individuals. With that in mind, will the Minister comment on the potential for any further increases in the insurance premium tax during this Parliament, given the comment of her colleague in the Lords that the tax is an easy target?
Labour’s amendment will ensure that the impact of any future increase is properly considered by the Government. It will ensure that there are careful deliberations—much more careful than we have seen on this occasion—on the short and long-term consequences of any further increase in the insurance premium tax and its effect on families and business. I ask Members on both sides of the Committee to support our amendment tonight.
John Redwood
: I remind the Committee that I advise an industrial and an investment company and the details are set out in the register.
I found it interesting to listen to the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley)speak from the Opposition Front Bench on this important matter. As someone who thinks that taxes are best kept low and that we need to do all we can to maximise the spending power of those we represent, I had a lot of sympathy with much of what she was saying. Of course, there will be people who do not want to pay an increased insurance tax—who does? In particular, some people will find it difficult because it is quite a high tax. I would have found the hon. Lady more convincing had she been able to answer the question in my intervention: if not this, what?
We have just had a passionate debate in this House in which the Opposition, understandably, wanted us to do more for Syrian refugees. That takes money. We are already being very generous with our overseas aid budget, and although we understand their motivation they are not proposing lots of reductions in spending.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman has forgotten that in July we voted against the cut in inheritance tax in the Budget, which would bring in another £1 billion in the final year.
John Redwood
That is interesting, because one of the difficulties with capital taxes is that they are sensitive to the rate and details of the scheme. The first rule of any tax must be that if it is raised, more revenue must be got from it. One thing that is certainly true of this insurance tax is that although we would rather it was at a lower rate, it is still at a low enough rate that if we raised it we would collect more revenue. I am not sure that that is true of the inheritance tax system, and the hon. Lady must understand that quite a lot of her constituents are not very happy about the current regime and are looking for changes.
Helen Goodman
The right hon. Gentleman is talking through his hat. In my constituency last year, not one property sold for £650,000 and the Government are raising the threshold to £1 million. It certainly will not affect any of my constituents.
John Redwood
The hon. Lady might well find that some of her constituents have aspirations and could be successful; I am surprised that she is so negative about them. Many people in all parts of the country welcome the idea. In 10 or 20 years’ time, if there is a death in the family and assets pass, they would be grateful not to have that limit. It was a good effort and I accept that the hon. Lady came up with the least bad of the Labour attitudes. Everything else that Labour wants to do involves either spending more money or increasing tax rates, which will reduce the revenue.
Barbara Keeley
The right hon. Gentleman should be directing his question to the Chancellor, because, as I said, it was the Chancellor who said that
“tax increases are not required to achieve
further consolidation, as
“this can be achieved with spending reductions”
The right hon. Gentleman ought to be asking the Government and his right hon. Friend the Chancellor his question rather than the Opposition, because the promise to the electorate—this is the important thing—was that there would be no tax increases, yet here we are soon after the Budget with a tax increase that will hit many millions of households and bring in £8 billion.
John Redwood
But I support the Government on that. I think that they are right to want to make more progress in bringing down the deficit—I am not sure whether the hon. Lady agrees. I also think that they are absolutely right to honour the very important promise they and I made to our electors not to increase income tax or VAT. Better still, we must honour our pledge to get income tax down, particularly for people on lower incomes, by raising the threshold. I also wish to see reductions in income tax at the 40% level, which affects many of my constituents and those who aspire to better jobs and pay, which we hope our economic recovery will deliver to many more people. We are honouring our pledge not to increase income tax rates, but to make the cuts we specified over the five-year period, and we are honouring our pledge on VAT.
Barbara Keeley
There seems to be a very selective honouring of pledges going on. The pledge not to increase taxes is not being met, because £8 billion is being taken. The other thing that I am very concerned about is the Government’s decision to ditch the pledge to cap social care costs. It is one thing to allow people with properties worth £1 million not to pay inheritance tax, but it is quite another when people up and down the country will be hit by the dropping of the pledge to cap care costs. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman would like to comment on that, because I am sure that it affects his constituents just as it affects mine.
John Redwood
I think that we are now going rather wide of the amendment and the clause that we are meant to be debating. I wish to see a generous care system that is properly controlled and disciplined. If the hon. Lady has individual cases where people will be adversely affected unreasonably, I am sure that Ministers will be willing to look at them. The last thing I wish to see is unreasonable cuts affecting people who really need the money, but I also wish to see more work done—this is what the Government are doing—to promote the abilities of many people, including those she suggests are disabled, because many people have many abilities. This Government are about encouraging those abilities, helping people to do more for themselves and, where possible, to get into work so that they can lead more rewarding lives, and so that they can receive pay in addition to the benefit assistance for which they currently qualify. There is a complete policy there to promote better lives for everyone in society, and cutting income taxes is an important part of that, and promoting abilities and opportunities is another.
George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)
Does the right hon. Gentleman not recognise that there is a moral hazard to a degree in taxing insurance? There is a moral hazard that we recognise through the fact that 80% of activity in the insurance business is not taxed. Therefore, if we are increasing the tax burden on that 20% simply to raise revenue, it might be worth coming back and looking at the consequences.
John Redwood
That is very good advice, and that is exactly what this Committee is trying to do by highlighting the issue in a short but thorough debate.
I will now make some progress on the specific matters relating to insurance tax. It passes my first test, which is that if we have to increase a tax rate we must ensure that we get more revenue from it. It passes that test because the starting rate is sufficiently low, and the forecasts indicate that we will see a substantial increase in revenue as a result of the change.
The second question is what is its distributional effect. The hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South understandably made much of the cases that are the hardest, but overall I would imagine—the Minister may have some figures—that people who are better off will pay more of this tax than people who are not so well off, because a lot of it is insuring property and asset and businesses, and it will be the people with the most substantial assets and businesses who will pay rather more of that tax. It therefore meets a general test of fairness in the sense that it is progressive.
My one nervousness about that—I look forward to the Minister’s response on this—is over the issue of the young driver, which the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South raised. I think that we need to ensure that we have a very supportive package for young people generally, because they are finding it difficult to price themselves into housing, and they do not always get the rates of pay at the beginning of their careers that we would like to see them enjoy. It is very important that we keep cutting the income taxes at the lower end of income, especially for them, because they really need to keep everything they earn if their starting pay is not very good.
The biggest problem for the young driver, particularly the young male driver, is that the starting prices for insurance can be exceptionally high. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult for the very young male driver to get insured at all. We have to ask ourselves why that is. The main reason, of course, is that the young driver is perceived to be a bad risk by the insurance company. There is some evidence that the younger driver may, on average, have a worse record than the older driver, and that is why the premiums can be particularly high on younger people.
Perhaps the Government can help rather more, through and with the industry, to tackle the main problem, which is not the tax on the premium but the initial height of the premium. Some good work has been done in the industry to provide methods of reassurance that the young person will drive well and safely by means of technology in the car that monitors them, at their own request and with their agreement. That may be the price of their getting the lower premium. We need to look at how technology and support for good driving can be reinforced so that a young person is more readily insurable at a realistic price. Of course, if the young person behaved recklessly, that would become obvious and the arrangements would have to be changed, but there are ways in which this can be done.
Barbara Keeley
It is not a question of technology changes. This £50 increase, at least, in the duty paid on the very high premiums that the right hon. Gentleman is talking about will prevent young people—presumably young men, more than young women—from getting to the point where they can start to gain experience. The age at which people will be able to be insured will advance and advance so that they will be unable to get started. That is the issue. It is not a question of technology but of making insurance affordable, and this makes it worse.
John Redwood
I am trying to deal with the underlying reason why it can be very difficult for young men, in particular, to afford insurance. The big problem is not the increment on top of the current insurance tax or the bigger increment resulting from this Bill; it is the starting level of the premium. People are working on ways in which we may be able to address that.
If the young person can accept a system that will reassure the insurer that they are going to drive sedately, prudently and safely, then the reason for charging them more disappears. By accepting the constraints of the technology, they can demonstrate that they are driving safely. That reinforces their cheaper premium and they can start to earn the bonuses that the rest of us enjoy if we have driven safely for a long period and then get discounts on the insurance costs. It is getting started that is so difficult for young males, in particular, when they are all judged by the average standards of high claims that the industry experiences. I hope that the Minister and her colleagues in Departments more directly related to the insurance industry will look at this problem. It is not caused primarily by the tax system but by assessment of risk and perceptions of driving behaviour. It can be very unfair on individuals, and the more that can be done to smooth that out, the better.
I do not like tax rises. Part of the reason I am in Parliament is that I want to be a voice to try to keep taxes down and have a more prosperous society as a result. I cannot say that I welcome this part of the Finance Bill, but as someone who believes that there are important public items that we cannot cut, and faced as we are with Opposition parties that very rarely come forward with any proposals to save public money, we have to raise a reasonable amount of money. We have been borrowing too much, and this is part of a series of measures to try to get our borrowing under some kind of control. With regret, I conclude with the Government that this is one of the least bad options for trying to do that. I hope that they will take on board the need to work away at some solutions to the underlying problem of individual categories such as young drivers who may find this to be another increment on top of a difficult situation.
Diana Johnson
I want to speak briefly to amendment 1, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley). It centres on the need to review within three months the impact of clause 43 on the charges for and take up of insurance policies. As I said in my intervention on my hon. Friend, the proposal relates directly to those properties that are not part of the Flood Re scheme.
I want to address this issue because of its effect on Kingswood in my constituency. Hull was one of the most successful areas in the country for the previous Government’s Help to Buy scheme. I welcome that. Obviously it is important that people are assisted in buying their own homes and properties. The problem, however, is that more than 95% of the city of Hull is below sea level and it has been prone to flooding in the past. In 2007 we had very bad surface water flooding, so insurance companies look at what has happened in Hull and fix their premiums accordingly.
The Flood Re scheme has assisted in the past and we now have the new Flood Re scheme. The problem, however, is that it does not apply to properties built after 2009. Those young people and first-time buyers who have bought properties in Kingswood over the past few years are not able to access the Flood Re scheme, so they have to go to the open market for house insurance. I am concerned that those people, who are trying to do the right thing and buy house insurance, may find themselves being doubly penalised, because not only are they not entitled to the Flood Re protection, but they will have to pay this increase in insurance tax.
John Redwood
The two questions that the Committee needs to ask when considering this Government proposal are these. Will it will help or hinder the Government in their central task of making sure we have enough power in this country for our future needs? And will it help or hinder what I hope is also the Government’s task, which is to provide value for money and sensibly priced energy, so that we can tackle fuel poverty and have a plentiful supply of reasonably priced energy to fuel the industrial recovery and the general economic recovery that the Government wish to see? My hon. Friends the Members for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) and for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) made important contributions, but I would like to see whether there is any scope to bring them a bit closer to the Government’s position.
Alison McGovern
The right hon. Gentleman has set out the two objectives that he thinks the Government should have. Is he suggesting that tackling climate change should not be the Government’s objective?
John Redwood
I have made very clear the priorities for myself and my electors. In the situation in which the country finds itself, guaranteeing keeping the lights on and having the power for industry and commerce is a fundamental objective that I take very seriously. I also take seriously the need to ease what Labour used to call “the cost-of-living crisis” to ensure that people have more money to spend for a better lifestyle, so affordable energy is crucial. Those are the priorities I set out for these policies. I think they can be achieved while ensuring that we reduce pollution, which I am very much in favour of. I wish to have sensible environmental policies, but my priorities are security of supply and powering better-paid jobs and more activity, which requires lower energy prices.
John Redwood
I willingly give way to the hon. Lady, who always wants to price people out of energy.
Caroline Lucas
I think I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He, like me, would like to see affordable energy, but given that nuclear power is one of the most unaffordable energies and that we are going to lock ourselves into extremely high prices for nuclear into times to come, will he be consistent in his position? If he does not want unaffordable energy, will he also oppose nuclear energy fees?
John Redwood
I have not seen all the figures on what the contract prices might entail, but I entirely agree that I want affordable energy. The advantage of nuclear energy is that it is reliable energy, and the problem with too much wind energy in the system is that it is very unreliable energy. It is therefore very expensive energy because a full range of back-up power is necessary for when the wind is not blowing. That means investing at twice the cost—investing in the wind energy and then in the back-up energy. With nuclear, only one investment needs to be made. The hon. Lady is quite right that it is crucial to get value for money if it is decided to lock into a nuclear contract.
Caroline Flint
The right hon. Gentleman may be aware that the interim report of the Competition and Markets Authority pointed out in June that customers on the standard variable tariffs are providing the big six energy companies with an extra £1 billion a year on account of over-charging? If he is concerned about the cost of energy, as I am, does he not agree that it is disgraceful that since that report we have heard nothing from the Government about how they are going to tackle this over-charging of some of the most vulnerable customers paying their electricity and gas bills today?
John Redwood
I have no more time than the right hon. Lady for over-charging vulnerable customers. I, too, look forward to an informed and sensible response to the report she mentioned. I do not think, however, that it is very relevant to the levy and the tax change that we are debating here today. The issue before us is whether this change to the levy will make it more difficult to keep the lights on and more difficult to deliver cheaper energy. I do not think it does, but the Government need to respond to the other crucial issues posed by my hon. Friends the Members for Selby and Ainsty and for Brigg and Goole.
Given that the margins are now extremely tight—in view of the huge reduction in traditional capacity that we have experienced, some people are pessimistic about the next two or three winters—can the Government do more, and do it cheaply and sensibly, at the same time as making the levy change? That should ensure that the great power stations we still have available can be either kept in the system and running to provide more power—preferably base load power, but it may have to be variable power, given how the thing is now run—or at least be kept available on standby. We may have to pay a price for that as part of that guarantee of supply. The three power stations we have heard about from colleagues this evening are part of the possible answer. We need to know that there is a future for traditional stations and that they can be priced into the system while we are in this period of transition, trying to work out what a modern electricity generation system will look like in five or 10 years’ time.
Nigel Adams
Will not this change in the levy, which is being made so quickly and with so little notice—28 days—make things extremely difficult for generators such as Drax, and will not the likelihood of capacity that is safe for us all be greatly reduced over the next couple of years?
John Redwood
My hon. Friend has made a powerful case in defence of Drax. I hope that discussions are taking place between the Government and Drax about how Drax can continue to make a contribution and the Government’s intention—which I will be supporting this evening—can be preserved. I think it entirely possible to change the levy while also coming up with a solution for Drax.
Many people wondered about the advantage of switching from coal to wood, and about whether that was quite what we wanted to do as part of a so-called decarbonisation strategy. Perhaps there is a better answer, but I return to my original proposition: I want an answer that will keep the lights on and provide the best possible value for money, and I think that there needs to be more discussion between the Energy Department and the big power stations to meet those two aims.
What I liked about the Minister’s opening remarks was his constant stress on the importance of value for money. That must be what drives Government policy. We want the productivity improvements that are now coming through. It is remarkable how, when Labour Members complain about something, that nearly always transforms it for the better. They complained about the cost-of-living crisis, and energy prices collapsed. Then they complained about the lack of productivity growth, and productivity started to take off. We are very grateful to them for those wrong calls, which seem to provide the stimulus that we need in order to create a better world; but if we are to drive productivity forward, providing more and cheaper power is crucial, because many modern processes, particularly in industry, are very energy-intensive.
The danger of some of the policies that have been followed by the European Union and by the last Labour Government is that we price ourselves out of energy-intensive industries—not in a way that spares the planet the carbon dioxide that those processes generate, but in a way that simply drives the businesses to another part of the world. No one should be happy about that. Those who believe that the fundamental priority is cutting carbon dioxide must take a global view; they cannot take a parochial, single-country view. Again, those whose main concern, like mine, is the prosperity and wellbeing of the British people cannot be happy if the decarbonisation policy has worked in one country, but has produced an equal or bigger amount of carbon dioxide somewhere else because the jobs and the industry have simply been transferred. That makes no sense whatsoever.
My hon. Friend the Minister will have my support—and, I am sure, that of many Conservative Members—if this proposal is tested shortly in the Lobbies, but we see it as only one part of a much bigger picture. We believe that if it is to work in removing the anomaly between different types of power and allowing some power from overseas to benefit, we must ensure that other elements of the policy mix are able to deal with the fundamental issues of supply, availability and value for money in the power system.
What the Government must do—and what they are beginning to do in a way that is shocking some Opposition Members—is revisit the huge cat’s cradle of subsidies, environmental tax, environmental tax breaks and rules which are extremely complicated, and which may, indeed, be having perverse consequences. They may be driving carbon dioxide-generating business out of this country while not cutting the global totals; they may be jeopardising our security of supply; they may be making it more difficult to deliver what we wish to do for, in particular, lower-income consumers who find current energy prices very challenging; and they are obviously in danger of undermining important, big, traditional investments in this country that could serve us better for longer if they were not driven out of business by environmental controls emanating from previous Governments and, particularly, from the European Union.
I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to justify the support of our party for this one element by reminding us that it must be part of a bigger picture, and that that bigger picture must be driven by a more rational policy that can deliver both the security of supply and the cheaper energy that the United Kingdom needs.
Euro Area
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the UK’s relations with the Euro area and further Euro integration.
I am grateful to have secured this debate, because it is time that our Parliament discussed the big moves under way on the continent of Europe, which take the form of a major policy statement by the five presidents of the European Union on how they wish to make rapid progress to a more comprehensive union, including a political union. The document is a well-kept secret. It has been on the European Union website since the end of June. I have raised it a couple of times in the House and in interviews, but for some reason the British media do not seem to have realised that there is this radical prospectus, which is now official European Union policy, written and endorsed by the five presidents.
Some people in the United Kingdom will not have quite caught up with the idea that there are five presidents, but they are: the president of the European Council, who is the senior minister representing the member states’ ministerial teams; the president of the European Parliament, who represents the elected MEPs; the probably better known President of the Commission, who is Mr Juncker for the time being; the president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, who is a bit better known thanks to the comings and goings over the Greek banking system and the Greek state debt problem; and the president of the Eurogroup, who is a little better known on British television screens because he has from time to time had to do the crisis response when we have had another difficult day in the relationships between Greece and the rest of the eurozone.
Those five very powerful men represent all the branches of the European Union. It is tempting to think that only three of the five presidents apply to the United Kingdom, because the UK, by common consent across the parties, is not a member of the euro and is therefore in a more independent position than EU member states that are members of the eurozone. The United Kingdom is a very small shareholder in the European Central Bank and has a non-paid-up, rather bigger shareholding ominously sitting there. Clearly the United Kingdom does not attend the Eurogroup meetings—it is right that we do not—but we have seen in the case of Greece that the Eurogroup cannot always deal with its financial problems. The European group of Ministers wished the UK to give consent to an emergency loan to Greece from outside the Eurogroup.
The problems that have emerged with Greece give the United Kingdom an important warning, as well as a sign that this period of change in the European Union gives us an opportunity. I hope our Prime Minister will utilise it to the full, both for the benefit of a happier United Kingdom in its relationships with the rest of the European Union and for the sake of the Eurogroup, which has its own need to drive further towards common financing and common decision making.
My first wish is that Her Majesty’s Government not be taken on a wild ride to political union. Some people in the proto-debate on what our relationship with the European Union should be seem to claim that staying in the European Union as it is currently constituted is a tolerable status quo that we need not worry about, because we know what it is like. However, there is nothing stable about it and no status quo. This is a wild ride to political union. The euro has been living through an intense and tragic crisis, which has highlighted to the custodians of the euro the need to go much further and faster in the direction of completing the creation of a comprehensive union that will look much like a federal state.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this wonderful debate. His speech highlights to me and many others just what a disaster the eurozone is. On that issue and the plight of Greece, does he agree that the more the disaster unfurls, the more the eurozone tries to patch things together? Now, we have news of a eurozone parliament. That is exactly the sort of thing that my right hon. Friend is warning about.
John Redwood
Indeed. After I secured the debate, no less a figure than the President of the French Republic made an important speech saying that the recommendations of the five presidents of the European Union do not go far enough. I thought theirs was a blockbuster recipe for pretty comprehensive union, but the President of France has said that he would like them to go further and faster. He would like to supplant the current European Parliament, or put alongside it a euro area parliament, to provide some democratic accountability to the increasingly large and important decisions that the Eurogroup makes.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend also note that, according to the press release I have here, President Hollande said that the eurozone needed a specific budget as well as its own government and parliament? In other words, they are going for political union or bust in the eurozone.
John Redwood
My hon. Friend is exactly right. The President of France has gone even further than the five presidents. I will briefly highlight what is in the rather lengthy and important report, because it has escaped most comment and attention in the United Kingdom. The five presidents say:
“For all economies to be permanently better off inside the euro area, they also need to be able to share the impact of shocks through risk-sharing within the EMU. In the short term, this risk-sharing can be achieved through integrated financial and capital markets”.
That is pretty comprehensive union, which they call “private risk-sharing”. Those markets would be
“combined with the necessary common backstops, i.e. a last-resort financial safety net”—
presumably that is public finance. They continue:
“In the medium term, as economic structures converge…public risk-sharing should be enhanced through a mechanism of fiscal stabilisation for the euro area as a whole.”
That is rather wordy and slightly opaque, but I think the meaning is clear. The five presidents have recognised that to have a successful single currency, taxpayer money needs to be standing behind the financial institutions—the banks and others—and the states involved in that financial union. That is exactly the issue that the tragedy of Greece has highlighted.
Euro banknotes have no symbols of French or German taxpayers in the way that our banknotes have the Queen as a representation of the full power of the sovereign in Parliament and the revenues going into the Treasury. Euro banknotes do not have that, for the good reason that the symbols could not be agreed and there was a bit of reluctance to put the full power of taxpayers behind the banknote. They have a misleading symbol on them: the European Union flag. One has to ask why that is, when the United Kingdom—the largest country in the “outs”—has made clear that we have no wish to put any taxpayer money or finance behind the euro, because it is not our project and we are not part of it. That illustrates a much bigger problem that the eurozone is grappling with: who stands behind its banks? Who stands behind the member states when they get into financial difficulties? That problem has come out in the Greek struggle.
The five presidents go on to say:
“Progress must happen on four fronts: first, towards a genuine Economic Union…Second, towards a Financial Union that guarantees the integrity of our currency across the Monetary Union and increases risk-sharing…This means completing the Banking Union and accelerating the Capital Markets Union. Third, towards a Fiscal Union that delivers both fiscal sustainability and fiscal stabilisation”—
that means sharing tax revenues, basically—and
“finally, towards a Political Union that provides the foundation for all of the above through genuine democratic accountability”.
They go on to say that there will have to be a lot more common decision making or shared sovereignty, although I would call that the gift of sovereignty to a higher body. They say that
“this would require Member States to accept increasingly joint decision-making on elements of their respective national budgets and economic policies. Upon completion of a successful process of economic convergence and financial integration, this would pave the way for some degree of public risk sharing”—
that is, countries using other people’s taxes to sort out their own problems—
“which would at the same time have to be accompanied by stronger democratic participation”.
Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is making some incredibly important points. Would what he just quoted not be more accurately described as the “United States of Europe”?
John Redwood
I hope that it would be the United States of Euroland, but my hon. Friend is right. I hope that the Minister will say that we will not be part of it and that a plan exists to negotiate a new relationship for the United Kingdom. We will clearly need such a relationship, because no party in this House wants the UK to risk-share on that basis, putting in British taxpayer money to help Greece, Portugal or whoever is in trouble due to the euro.
The five presidents want a euro area system of competitiveness authorities that will try and create commonality of policy and outturn across the Union. They claim to have largely achieved the goal of bank supervision with the setting up of the single supervisory mechanism, but the single resolution mechanism is not fully implemented, and they want to complete a financial union, launching a common deposit insurance scheme and a full capital markets union. They want to get on with those immediately and not await treaty change, which they will need for some of their other proposals.
The five presidents ultimately want a single European capital markets supervisor, which would have great implications for the City of London and the conduct of our markets and our regulatory system were we to take part. They say that
“regulation creates incentives to risk-pooling and risk-sharing and ensures that all financial institutions have sufficient risk management structures in place and remain prudentially sound.”
Even more importantly, they go on to say, referring to the capital markets union:
“Taxation can also play an important role in terms of providing a neutral treatment for different but comparable activities and investments across jurisdictions.”
Will the United Kingdom be able to opt out of this capital markets union? If we sign up to it, does that mean that we would have to accept common European taxation on this rather important business interest for the UK?
Last, but by no means least, the report contains a heading referring to a euro-area treasury, under which it states:
“The Stability and Growth Pact remains the anchor for fiscal stability and confidence in the respect of our fiscal rules. In addition, a genuine Fiscal Union will require more joint decision-making on fiscal policy”—
in other words, a euro-area treasury.
Sir William Cash
My right hon. Friend knows this, but there is benefit in getting it on the record. The Germans and the French broke the stability and growth pact three years in succession with impunity when it suited them. On the question of how far our Government would go in accepting the proposals, does he agree that the creation of a eurozone is only a de facto organisation and not a legal one? We are caught up in this. When the fiscal compact was proposed, our Prime Minister, having listened to us, decided that he would veto. Would we not want him to veto all this as well and to make it clear that that is the case now?
John Redwood
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the legal complexities that the euro area and the EU face. He is right that there is no formal, treaty-backed legal entity of the euro in full. There is the relatively informal euro-group of Ministers, who meet monthly just before the full economic affairs council, to settle euro business.
The process has gone a bit further, because of course there is a separate legal entity called the European stability mechanism, which is a formal entity for bailing out or offering loans to euro states in need of additional money. It is currently the object of the entreaties of the Greek state as the Hellenic Republic seeks a long-term loan to replace the short-term loan that the European financial stabilisation mechanism has just provided to see it through July. Greece is currently in negotiation over €86 billion—Germany would like it to be less—of possible money from the ESM. There is a legal structure to do some of the financing but, as my hon. Friend rightly says, they probably need treaty modification and a firm legal basis for the euro. In recognition of that, the five presidents suggest that they may need to move towards having an elected-President of the eurozone, which I imagine would have full legal authority and would therefore give personality to the zone as a legal entity and which would make things easier from their point of view.
I am conscious that several colleagues have turned up to join in this debate and, with your permission Sir David, I would like to see whether they can be accommodated, so I will move rapidly on to my questions to the Minister. It seems that much of what the five presidents want is perfectly reasonable in the context of people who have set up a currency that does not yet have a country to love it or back it. They desperately need to make a lot of progress to create a political union, to create a flow of tax revenues and to provide the financial solidity that a main currency usually has, so I can see their agenda. We have already heard the French President say this week, “Let’s go further and faster”, so we know the direction of travel.
Will my hon. Friend reassure us that the UK could not conceivably travel that route? Having made the crucial decision not to join the euro, the British people and Parliament are not going to want to go down the route of political union. Will he also say where the British Government will now stand on the challenge or opportunity of full banking and capital markets union? There would be great hazards in the UK signing up to the full banking and capital markets union, because that would, by implication, drag us into the financing of the euro area and involve us in decisions that it would properly want to make for itself, as we are not a full member. I would be grateful to hear the latest Government thinking on how we can have our own independent markets but co-operate with and work alongside the euro area as it creates its capital markets union.
It seems to me that there will definitely have to be treaty change. The five presidents are suggesting that they can get by without treaty change until 2017, after which they will need it. From the UK’s point of view, that is an inconvenient date, because we would like treaty change as a result of our renegotiations. As the gap between the likely date of our referendum and the date for the euro area considering treaty changes is quite narrow, might one part of our renegotiation be to say to our partners in Europe, “As you need treaty changes quite soon and we would like them now, let’s bring the thing together”? Is it not the case that the treaty changes we need relate not only to the fact that the EU already has more power then we would like over aspects of our lives, but to the fact that it is about to take a lot more power to consolidate the euro? That is a step that we could not conceivably take.
The detailed issues under all that relate to who is responsible for recapitalising failing banks—for example, who is going to recapitalise the Greek banks? Are we fully insulated from all that? Are we now happy that the formulation from the European financial stabilisation mechanism is watertight so that there is no recourse to British taxpayers in the temporary loan to Greece? Can we ensure that all future bailout loans and other advances to euro states come entirely from euro funding and not from EU legal structures, which have added complications? Can we urge the euro area to ensure that it completes its banking arrangements as quickly as possible? It would be much to the convenience of not merely the Greeks but everyone else who needs to deal with Greece that its banks do not shut down for several weeks and can reopen, as they have done partially today, with a full service, so that they can be a proper part of the European market and the world economy.
This is a great opportunity for the UK from which the Prime Minister should take heart. I admire the honesty of the five presidents coming out with all this now, despite the Greek crisis and the knowledge that the UK wishes to negotiate a new relationship. I think it makes things much easier for us, and we should share that fact with the British public, which is what I am trying to do in my modest way today. We must say that there is a big plot afoot—a wild ride to political union that is not something to which the UK can sign up. We should not get in their way, but the price of our happy consent to their new arrangements must be a new set of arrangements for us to get back powers that insulate us from all this. We need to try to find a way to work alongside the euro without being part of it.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. Perhaps I should put on the record the fact that this morning I was re-elected as Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee.
In a nutshell, everything that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) said is completely true. The current situation represents both a massive challenge and an opportunity for the Government. On a number of occasions, when the Prime Minister has been confronted with such difficult, challenging questions, he has decided to do the right thing. This debate, however, demonstrates that there is another new opportunity because of the disarray in the European Union.
The question of the relationship between the eurozone and the rest of the EU provides us with an opportunity, in particular given what President Hollande has said about wanting a eurozone budget, Government and Parliament, as I said in my intervention. That is completely inconceivable for the United Kingdom, the Government and our Parliament. We would be driven inexorably into all the nooks and crannies of those arrangements, because we are bound to be affected by them, as we already have been in the crisis that has engulfed Europe for the past five or six years and that I believe has been apparent since the Maastricht treaty in 1990.
The question of what President Hollande said a few days ago is important. In my judgment, what is significant is that he has a real problem with Germany—I will come on to Germany—because the question for France is one of sovereignty and the question for Germany is one of sharing the risk. That will present a significant problem between France and Germany, which is why Angela Merkel and President Hollande clearly had severe differences of opinion. This is a moment when it is imperative for the British Government to make their position clear. With France and Germany at loggerheads over the question of sovereignty and sharing economic risk, we have a classic Waterloo moment, when we should simply go straight through with our cavalry and say through the Financial Secretary to the Treasury and the Prime Minister what we will not have, that we want clarity and that this is not the time for fudge. This is the time for decisive action and to make it clear what we cannot possibly accept.
Other matters to be looked at include the purposes that lie behind what Wolfgang Schäuble has been edging and pushing, nudging and driving, during the Greek crisis. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham and I each wrote essays in a recent book called “Visions of Europe II”, following on from “Visions of Europe”, which came out in 1993 and in which I quoted myself. I said, I hope not immodestly, that
“the answer to the German question lies primarily in Germany itself”,
but to
“hand her the key to the legal structure of Europe with a majority voting system gravitating around alliances dependent on Germany simply hands to”
Germany
“legitimate power on a plate.”
We can say that that is exactly what has happened since I wrote those words in 1990.
Furthermore, because I wanted to be positive, I wrote:
“Britain wants to work together with Germany in a fair and balanced relationship, based on free trade, co-operation and democratic principles. She does not want to be forced into a legal structure dominated by Germany. Plans for a united Europe stray into the darkest political territory, and must be firmly rejected.”
That was in 1990, and here we are now.
I added that
“if Germany needs to be contained, the Germans must do it themselves…now is the time for the Germans to prove themselves”—
I am afraid that they have. Given the treatment of Greece, irrespective of whether there was culpability on the part of the Greeks, the really big landscape—the manner in which the whole European project has been driven forward since Maastricht—the really big landscape—the manner in which the whole European project has been driven forward since Maastricht—is that the Germans are now in control of the eurozone. No one doubts that. I have a whole stack of cuttings here, from Germany, including from Bild, and from French newspapers. I do not have time to go through them all, but every single newspaper throughout the whole of Europe—rather curiously, there was a fairly muted response from the British press—has made the assumption that it is now effectively a German eurozone, if not a German Europe.
It is not in our interests to allow that, or to allow ourselves to be affected by this situation. We will be driven into the second tier of a two-tier Europe. The eurozone is part of the over-arching legal framework of the EU as a whole, of which we are a part. That is what is driving us towards the exit of the European Union.
John Redwood
I wonder, Sir David, whether, if my hon. Friend agrees, it might be helpful to know how many colleagues would like to speak, so they can all have a fair amount of time.
John Redwood
My hon. Friend made a funny remark about the apparent absurdity of the five presidents, but does he agree that they are not figures in a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, but are enormously powerful figures commanding billions and influencing the lives of hundreds of millions of people across Europe? Just as they took the exchange rate mechanism well beyond the point at which it did untold damage, they could do untold damage with their euro scheme. Is not that a reason why we should try to let them get it right, rather than making it more difficult for them?
Mr Baker
My right hon. Friend is right, and it is not for us to choose the destiny of the other peoples of Europe. We might offer them our advice in different ways, but since they now have the euro as a currency they had better make the best of it—although, again, I do not want to be drawn too far off into ideas about money and banking. We are in a fix. I agree with my right hon. Friend that since those people are extremely powerful, they had better make the best of it, and we should not get in their way.
I was saying that history, while not repeating itself, sometimes rhymes. We had an enormous credit expansion, which broke the banks and led us into a position of desperation in several countries of Europe. We should not in such circumstances cast aside democracy and assemble a supranational state that is not accountable to its people. There we would be running the risk of a tragic rhyme in history—a cataclysmic mistake, possibly, should it go wrong—and it really might. The evidence of history is that it might.
I want to mention four things: we should undo what I would call the spell of Plato—the idea that a guardian class can look after us, free of democracy. We should get off the road to serfdom. We should make sure that we reject the omnipotence of government, and we should overturn this managerial revolution. I refer of course to books by Popper, Hayek, Mises and Burnham, all books written during the period of war in the first half of the 20th century. They are books that I would commend to anyone, lest, while not repeating history, we rhyme with the tragic events of the past.
John Redwood
I think that the debate illustrates that we need rather more time to do justice to these mighty issues. I hope that the Government take away from this short debate our enthusiasm for a new relationship with the EU and the opportunity that the five presidents report proposes. Let me reassure the Labour representative, the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), that I said clearly that I wanted Labour to succeed and did not want to get in their way, but we ourselves must opt out of the wild ride to political union.
Greece
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
It may surprise the hon. Gentleman to find that I agree with him on a number of points. First, I agree that we should respect the result of the referendum and the democratic decision of the Greek people. I agree that we need to see the Greek economy grow, although I would say that that requires structural reforms, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), the former Chancellor, said. I hope we agree, too, that there are many members of the eurozone and that this cannot be just a unilateral decision by the Greek Government and the Greek people, because other peoples and other Governments are involved, including creditor nations. The final thing we agree on is that I think the hon. Gentleman would be an excellent leader of the Labour party.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
The Chancellor is quite right that there are two timetables here. In his discussions with the leading players in the eurozone, was there any sense of urgency? Do they understand that unless they find a way of getting money into the Greek banking system soon, huge extra damage will be caused to the Greek economy when people will be unable to settle transactions or trade with the Greeks, and that there could be further desperate consequences to the Greek banking system? Does he agree that if the banking system goes down and cannot reopen sensibly, everybody will be far worse off and it would be a major disaster for the eurozone as well as for Greece?
Mr Osborne
My right hon. Friend makes the correct observation about the speed of events. To be fair, in speaking to my counterparts, I have found that they do accept the sense of urgency, but trying to get the political systems and political meetings to deliver at the right pace is, of course, difficult. That is the big challenge in the coming days. Whatever the outcome for Greece’s future membership of the euro, we want it to take place in an orderly rather than a disorderly way. Bridging between where we are today and the eventual outcome is something that the authorities in the eurozone need to work on.
Greece
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Osborne
Let me deal with the specific points that the hon. Gentleman has raised. Our advice to the many British people who are planning to go on holiday to Greece is very clear. They should continue to check the travel advice on the Government website. As I have just explained, that advice has been changed, and we are advising people to take more euros with them than they might have been expecting to take.
The hon. Gentleman makes a point about our conversations with the Greek authorities. Clearly they have tried to, in some sense, protect tourists from their capital controls, because if people have access to a foreign bank account, they can withdraw up to €600 from the ATMs. But of course one has to think through a situation where the ATMs potentially start to run out of money, particularly in certain locations. That is why we are advising people to take more cash with them but also to be aware of the safety issues involved in that.
On the question about British citizens who have deposits in Greek banks, I hope I made it clear in my statement that deposits in branches of Greek banks, and indeed, in that sense, also the host bank, are not covered by the UK’s compensation scheme, but the deposits in the subsidiary are in the UK. If people are not entirely sure what their situation is, they should check with their bank, but that has been spelled out for them. On the support for the British embassy and our consular teams in Greece, the Foreign Secretary is here, we have discussed this and the Foreign Office has put in place contingency plans to step up the support it can provide on the ground should the situation deteriorate.
On the exposure of our banking system, it is less than 1% of the common tier 1 capital of the UK banks. As I said in my statement, it is fair to say that as a country and as a banking system we have dramatically reduced our exposure to Greece, as has pretty much every other bank in Europe. In terms of how this is co-ordinated across government, the Bank of England leads on financial stability issues, the Foreign Office covers the consular issues, and the Treasury is covering the financial stability issues and working with the Department for Work and Pensions on payments, but we are meeting regularly. We had the meeting today and we also had a meeting last week, which the Governor also attended. On businesses affected, advice is available on the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills website, and, as I say, HMRC’s time to pay scheme can help with cash flow. Only 0.6% of the UK’s exports of goods and services go to Greece, so it is a small amount, but of course there could be a considerable impact on individual firms.
The IMF was created after the second world war to provide support for economies that have been struggling. We took steps in the last Parliament to increase the capital available to the IMF—I might point out that the Opposition divided the House on that issue, but it was a sensible step to take. The IMF has precautionary balances, and let us be clear that no one has ever lost money lending to the IMF and providing support to the IMF. Of course the IMF is very important in this situation, not least because of the rigour that it brings, which is one of the reasons why quite a few members of the eurozone are absolutely insistent that the IMF is around the table.
The final point I would make is this: of course we would like a peaceful—if that is the right word—or less traumatic resolution of this crisis, but things have taken a turn for the worse because of the decision to hold this referendum and because the Greek Prime Minister said he was going to recommend a no vote. I would therefore suggest that at the moment, in the next few days, the ball is largely in the Greek Government’s court. Of course if things change, there is a very big role for the eurozone to play in helping to achieve a negotiated settlement.
The observation I would make is that five years ago we were much less well prepared to deal with shocks from abroad: we had a very high budget deficit, one of the highest in the world; and our banks were not as well capitalised as they should have been. We are in a stronger position as a result of the difficult decisions we have taken over the past five years and if the hon. Gentleman is willing to support the further decisions that we are going to take in the Budget next week, I look forward to his saying so next Wednesday.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
The European Central Bank has lent €89 billion so far to the Greek banking system, and that money is now at risk. Will the Chancellor confirm that, thanks to our prudent approach, UK taxpayers would not make any contribution to the recapitalisation of the ECB if that money has now been lost?
Mr Osborne
My right hon. Friend is right to point out that in effect what has happened over the past few years is that the private exposures to Greece have been converted into eurozone public exposures and, of course, into IMF exposure. That is part of what has happened. One key decision that we took in the previous Parliament was to get the UK out of these eurozone bail-outs. The previous Government had signed us up to those bail-outs, but the Prime Minister got us out of them and, as a result, dramatically reduced the UK’s direct exposure. But, as I have said, we are part of the financial system of Europe and we will be affected if there is a Greek exit.
European Union (Finance) Bill
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Has my hon. Friend seen the work of the so-called five presidents of the euro area, which sets out how they wish to press for full fiscal union, with a euro Treasury and a euro budget under central control. Will he assure the Committee that we will have nothing to do with any of that?
Mr Gauke
Yes; my right hon. Friend makes an important point about the euro area. No doubt he will have heard the speech delivered by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the Mansion House a couple of weeks ago, in which he made it clear that one of our priorities in the UK’s negotiations ahead of any referendum will be to ensure that the “euro-outs”—the European Union member states that are not in the eurozone—are properly protected and do not find themselves disadvantaged by the eurozone countries working together to the disadvantage of the “euro-outs”. That is a real priority for the United Kingdom.
Mr Gauke
It is important that we meet that objective.
On the subject of the report, I would make the point that we benefit from the single market and do not want to stand in the way of the eurozone resolving its difficulties, but we will not let the integration of the eurozone jeopardise the integrity of the single market or disadvantage the United Kingdom in any way. That is one the important objectives in our negotiation with the European Union, and it is exactly the point that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was making in his Mansion House speech. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) are right to raise the importance of this point, which we fully recognise.
John Redwood
The five presidents’ press release and work programme, which will result in a White Paper, are about taking over the European Union budget and using it for transfers throughout the eurozone. Clearly, Britain does not want to be part of that. I was asking the Minister about the budget, not about single market regulations.
Barbara Keeley
I very much take that point on board.
New clause 1 requests a review by the European Commission of the basis of appropriations for the European Union budget and a study of whether alternative arrangements might offer improved value and enhanced budgetary control. On Second Reading, I highlighted a concern about the growing gap between the ceiling on spending commitments and the ceiling on payments. That gap, as agreed in the settlement of February 2013, is between €960 billion on commitments and €908 billion on payments. As I pointed out in the earlier debate, that gap has crept up from an average of 2.6% to the current 5.4%, and it is projected to rise to 5.7% in the period from 2014 to 2020. We must now seriously question whether that gap is manageable.
The Commission describes the system as follows:
“Commitments are tomorrow’s payments, and payments are yesterday’s commitments. Commitments are planned future payments whereas payments are legal obligations from the past…if every year the increase in commitments is much higher than that in payments you end up promising many partners to pay their future bills but find yourself unable to pay those bills when they arrive years later.
This is what has been happening over the last years: as many commitments were made years ago for projects that are being completed now”.
That is a key issue with the drive to smaller EU budgets, yet, as the Commission says,
“many bills related to projects remain unpaid and have to be rolled over to the following year. This leaves no choice to the Commission but to call for increases in payments.”
John Redwood
I entirely agree with the hon. Lady about the need to get better value for money in a smaller budget and to bring down the commitments. Does she have some individual proposals on things that could be taken out of the EU budget for which the Government should argue?
Barbara Keeley
I think that we could get to that if we had the information in the review that I am calling for, but what I want first is an examination of the system. This system is a recipe to drive up budgets rather than a way to control them.
Commitments are being made at a level of up to €14 billion a year more than payments. We have had years when the commitments have been €14 billion more, and that means bills being rolled forward, or staying unpaid, which is unacceptable. It is not a sensible system, and I think that the Minister actually acknowledged that. If it is not a sensible system, we should not be going along with it.
Productivity
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Chris Leslie
As my hon. Friend says, it is incredibly important to invest in new production process technologies and make sure that we have the necessary machinery and capital equipment. I will turn to business investment and how we can incentivise it. We have to make sure that the Chancellor addresses those challenges. He has his emergency Budget and his own political priorities that he wants to put first, but this, ultimately, is the key.
Chris Leslie
The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) was on his feet first, and I would not want to pick the right hon. Gentleman before him.
Chris Leslie
I agree that we need far better scrutiny of the nature of apprenticeships and of skills and training. We sometimes have a blanket approach that all schemes or tax incentives are the same and—this is the classic Whitehall problem—leave them without going into the detail of how they add value and of how quality fits in. I would advocate a better look at the quality of such investments.
John Redwood
This is a very important debate, and we can learn together about how we can do better. During the 13 years of the Labour Government, there was practically no productivity gain whatever throughout the whole public service. Why was that, and what can we learn from it?
Chris Leslie
Normally, I have a lot of respect for the right hon. Gentleman, but I am afraid his facts on that are wrong. Under the previous Labour Government, we had a period of sustained productivity growth. [Hon. Members: “Public sector!”] Did I hear something, Madam Deputy Speaker? When it comes to private sector productivity, we had a sustained period of growth. We can talk about public sector productivity, but I am focusing on the wider economic, private sector productivity, which is ultimately the way in which we create wealth and prosperity in this country.
I am very proud of what the previous Labour Government did. Between 1997 and the period just before the global financial crisis, productivity grew by an average of 2.2%. In fact, it reached 4.2% in 2003. At the time, the UK’s productivity was second only to that of the United States. The CBI has emphasised that improvements in labour productivity accounted for almost three quarters of UK economic growth during that decade. Over that period, real wages rose faster in the UK than in other advanced economies, and rising productivity and GDP growth meant that the previous Labour Government were able to take significant steps in tackling poverty and improving public services. That was not by accident, but by design.
We achieved sustainable growth in productivity because of relentless efforts to focus on competition, innovation, investment, skills and enterprise, including a 10-year framework for science and innovation, incentives for investment in business research and development, the expansion of higher education and adult and vocational training. That was the record of the previous Labour Government.
John Redwood
Does the Chief Secretary recall that Labour took into public ownership Network Rail, a crucial industry for our country, and that the previous Government commissioned the McNulty report, which discovered that that big organisation was way behind its continental comparators when it came to productivity and efficiency and that their system of managing it had fallen short? Is that something he can help remedy?
Greg Hands
I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. Infrastructure will be a key part of the productivity plan, so we must study which are the productive and which the less productive areas of our infrastructure.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
The productivity puzzle can be understood and resolved. It is a combination of bad news and not such bad news. There was a sharp fall in productivity at the time of the crisis, because we lost a lot of very expensive output, a lot of people lost their jobs and the net result was a big fall. Since the crisis has hit, there has been a continued loss of top-end jobs in areas such as oil, financial services and banking, which score very well in terms of the way people compile productivity figures. An industry such as oil, which produces a lot of extremely valuable output and has a limited number of very well-paid people, gives an enormous boost to productivity, as we have learned today from Norway. We have just lived through a period when, through no fault of any of the three Governments who have been presiding over it, there has been a sharp decline in the output of oil—because it is now a very mature province—and a big fall in the oil price. That recent fall is down to market circumstance and to things happening well away from this country.
There was also a big loss of top-end jobs in banking and financial services. There will be mixed views in the House of Commons on the social value of those jobs, but they scored very well in the run-up to the crash. Some of those jobs have now gone altogether and some have gone to lower tax jurisdictions elsewhere. The bad news side of it accounts for the drop in productivity during the crisis and the slow growth since the crisis.
The better reason why our productivity is below that of some of our continental comparators is that we have gone for a model—I think and hope with the agreement of all parties—of having more people in employment and of creating conditions in which this economy can produce many more lower paid jobs in the hope that that will lead on to higher paid jobs and more output and activity, which is a better model than those people being out of work.
Let us look at the way the productivity figures are calculated. If a country sacks 10% of the least productive people in the economy, which is the kind of thing that the euro was doing to some of our competitor countries in euroland, it can be flattering for its productivity figures, because the least productive jobs go, and the productivity of the total country rises, but the country is a lot worse off, because it then has 10% of its workforce out of work who would otherwise have been in less productive jobs. It is the same in a business. The easiest way for a business with below-average productivity to get to average or above-average productivity is to close its worst factory, but that is not always the answer that people in this House would like.
George Kerevan
The right hon. Gentleman is making the best he can of a bad job. For instance, if we look at the share of research and development in gross domestic product in the UK, we see that it was down not just over the 1990s, when we had the last Conservative Government, but for the period from 2000 to 2007. R and D is a fundamental component of productivity and it is down. He cannot gainsay that.
John Redwood
One has to first understand a problem before one can address the problem. I think we are all in agreement on this issue. Would we like higher productivity? Yes, we would. Would we like more better paid jobs? Yes, we would, and that goes for Conservatives as much as any other party in this House—probably more than any other party in this House. We not only will the end—more high-paid jobs—but are prepared to take some of the decisions that Opposition parties always deny or query in order to allow those better paid jobs to be created.
Let me go on from the analysis. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will reflect on what I have said and understand that I have provided a good explanation of the path that productivity has taken since 2007, which is a matter of common concern but has some understandable things that we cannot address. For example, we cannot suddenly wish a lot more oil into Scotland, and that remains a fact. We will not be able suddenly to create all those high-end banking jobs. Some Opposition parties probably would not like them anyway. We are where we are. What we can do about productivity is to work away on those parts of the economy where the performance has been most disappointing.
Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that cutting some of the red tape that affects our small and medium-sized businesses would help with the productivity puzzle?
John Redwood
I agree, but only if we have ineffective or over-the-top regulation. Removing it can give more people access to the market and provide a greater competitive challenge, but we need some regulation, because we need rules and certain guarantees in the market.
Let us take a sector that I asked the shadow Chancellor about. It was a problem that, in the Labour years, we had a long period of practically no growth in public sector productivity. I am the first to admit that the concept of productivity is more difficult in parts of the public sector. People actually like more teachers relative to the number of pupils, because they hope that that will create better teaching and a better system in classes, but it means that productivity falls. That means that we need other parts of the public sector, where the productivity issue is more straightforward or more like the private sector, to be even better, so that the overall performance of the public sector does not lag behind and cause difficulties. As we have quite a big public sector in this economy, the performance of the public sector is very important. It also happens to be the area where Ministers have most control and most direct influence, so it is the area that this House should spend more time on, because we are collectively responsible for the performance of the public sector. I think most parties now agree that we want to get more for less in the public sector, so that we can control public spending. There are disagreements about how much control we should exert on public spending, but I hope there is agreement that if it is possible to do more for less while improving—or not damaging—quality, that is a good thing to do.
John Redwood
I am afraid I need to move on because many people wish to speak. Time is limited.
I draw the attention of my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to the issue that I raised with him in my intervention. One very important industry that is almost completely nationalised—the tracks, signals and stations are completely nationalised and the train operating companies are very strongly regulated and controlled by franchises, so they are almost nationalised—is the railway industry. It is a growing industry, and this Government are committing a lot of money to it. It is an industry which, I believe, all the main parties in the House wish to commit money to and wish to grow and invest in.
However, an independent study in 2011, the McNulty report, showed that our railway does less for more cost than comparable railways on the continent. It should be a matter of great concern, and I hope it will be a matter for review by those dealing with the railways and with public spending, because as we channel those huge sums of money into our railway to try to get expansion and improvement, we need to pull off the trick that the best private sector companies manage—of driving quality up and costs down at the same time. A myth in some public sector managers’ minds is that a cut in the amount spent is bound to lead to worse quality or impaired service, whereas every day in a good private sector company they go to work saying, “How can I spend less and serve the customer better? How can I apply new technology so that I get more for less? How can I have a better skilled and better motivated workforce?”—I hope it is not done by unpleasant management, because that usually leads to the wrong results—and “How can I motivate the workforce more so that they are empowered to achieve more and do less?”
That is the spirit that we need in the public sector, and if we began with the railways, it would make a very important contribution to improving our overall productivity rate.
European Union Referendum Bill
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Sir William Cash
Very simply, any suggestion that the European Commission or the EU should be involved in this process is the subject of another amendment I have tabled, and nor should they be allowed to make any provision by way of financing. We can debate that later.
On whether contradiction might be created in respect of the position of Government Ministers in this country, my flow has been slightly diverted by my hon. Friend’s perfectly understandable intervention, but the fact is that Ministers and the civil service are in a position under the purdah rules such that they would not be able to use the machinery of government. In relation to the EU, which I know a little bit about, the machinery of government is extensive, but there are methods that could be applied, with a sensible degree of amendment, to ensure that the restrictions on the matters to which I have referred are complied with, because this is what we are talking about; it is not some generalised assumption that Ministers are going to wander on to completely different paths.
Section 125 lists the material I have already referred to—
“general information about a referendum…any of the issues raised by any question…any arguments for or against any particular answer to any such question”
and questions
“designed to designed to encourage voting”,—
and it states that none of that material
“shall be published during the relevant period by or on behalf of—
(a) any Minister of the Crown, government department or local authority”.
It could not be clearer; it could not be more sensible, more sound or more comprehensive.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Would my hon. Friend like to confirm that it is a principle of fairness in all British elections and referendums that individuals—Ministers as well—participate on whichever side they wish under a single campaign, for yes or for no, which has proper controls over expenditure and publications? Does he also acknowledge that there cannot be a third category of intervention by the Government, because that would break the normal rules of campaign funding and control?
The Temporary Chair (Mr George Howarth)
Order. I have been quite relaxed about Members making interventions but I have noticed that they are getting longer, to the point of being beside the point. Before I call the next speaker, I must point out that I shall now be taking a slightly less relaxed view on interventions.
John Redwood
I hope that, when the Government bring the Bill back on Report, they will give further consideration to the question of campaign spending limits. We are all freshly back from an energetic general election campaign, and one of the finest things about the United Kingdom’s traditions that ensure fair and free elections is the fact that we have pretty strict expenditure limits in each constituency. Those of us who were the incumbents fighting to retain our seats were rightly subject to rules stating that we could not use our incumbency in any way, as that would have provided us with an obvious advantage. We could not use our ability to raise more money, for example, because there were strict limits in place.
Those strict limits applied for a five-month period. We had the long campaign period, which was subject to expenditure control, followed by the short campaign period. It is the short campaign period for the referendum that we are talking about today. I believe that it was right to impose the campaign limits early, because political parties are increasingly campaigning well in advance of the general election proper, and it looks as though the referendum campaign will kick in well before the referendum proper. Indeed, there are clearly already stirrings, even before this Bill has passed through the House of Commons.
It is good that we all have to face the challenge from a number of candidates, any one of whom has a reasonable chance of raising the maximum that we are allowed to spend in a given constituency. It is quite a large sum for an individual to raise, but it is quite a modest sum for someone who has a reasonable amount of support or who asks for small or medium-sized donations from a range of people. It is not that difficult for a relatively popular party or candidate to raise the money needed in order to spend right up to the constituency limit, to give them the maximum chance in the challenge.
I understand that the sums will be rather bigger in a national referendum campaign, and that if one side is a lot more popular than the other, that would give it an advantage not only in the vote but in the amount of fundraising it could do. But I do think that, under the current Bill, the very large sums that would be available, because of the way the parties and some of the supporting organisations are thinking, are thoroughly disproportionate. That would give the impression of unfairness, and the British people have a great sense of fairness. Many people on the yes side have a sense of fairness and would prefer it if the referendum campaign were conducted with more equal sums of money, so that the weight and quality of the argument matter more than access to funds and special ways of messaging.
Mr MacNeil
I must remind the right hon. Gentleman of what happened in the Scottish referendum. The only difference was the way that it was funded. In the United Kingdom, funds are collected centrally and go to London. If the European Union had the same model, they would be collected centrally and go to Brussels and then given out again. The point is that it is taxpayers’ money. In Scotland, we saw our taxpayers’ money come back to the UK Government and used against one side of the referendum campaign.
John Redwood
I quite understand, but I am suggesting something different. I am suggesting that to have a completely fair and independent referendum, there should be much stricter controls over the expenditure of Government money.
Mr MacNeil
I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his revelatory tone and words. He said that he wants a stricter and fairer system, so his commentary on the Scottish referendum is instructive and very welcome.
John Redwood
The result in Scotland was pretty conclusive, so the expenditure of Government money was not the crucial thing that made the difference to the result. The result speaks for itself. But we can always learn from past experiences. For my choice, I do not favour the expenditure of public money on interfering in elections and referendums. I am known to be careful with public money anyway, and I would not want the money to be spent on this area. It is for individuals to decide what they wish to do by way of political intervention, and they can make their own decisions. If we let them have more of their own money to spend, they may wish to spend it on interventions in elections. That is how I would rather it was done. In this case, it would be particularly counterproductive for the European Union to spend some of our money, which we send to them, on intervening on one side. It would cause enormous resentments. Indeed, the no campaign might even welcome it as it would be a cause in itself which it would make use of if this became a clear use or abuse of public money.
Kate Hoey
I raised the issue of the EU on Second Reading. I had a helpful letter back from the Minister for Europe this week. Will the right hon. Gentleman comment on his final paragraph? He says:
“I would trust the proper diplomatic relationships with Governments and institutions, and encourage them to stick by their duty to respect the right of the British people to take their own decision responsibly.”
I do not feel that I can trust the EU on this very important issue. Does the right hon. Gentleman feel that?
John Redwood
I am afraid that I do share some of the hon. Lady’s worries. I would like to see that clearly stated in writing and as an act of policy from the EU itself. That would probably be much appreciated in many sections of the United Kingdom, so that we can be sure that there would not be clumsy, unwarranted or unwelcome interference. It would be a double irony if the EU were using our money to do it. That is what makes it particularly difficult. UK taxpayers of both views would be paying the money to the EU, but only one side of the argument would be funded by that money.
Mr Chope
Surely the Government could do something on this front. They could ask the European Commission and the European Union not to intervene and not to fund the referendum campaign. They could then get a written undertaking from the Commission not to use European Union funds. That is outside the scope of the Bill, but the Minister could give such an undertaking.
John Redwood
Indeed. I am speaking to amendment 10 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), who seeks to clarify this point and prevent the use or abuse of EU money. I hope that the Minister will respond and that he will have his own proposals on Report. The Electoral Commission has given exceedingly good advice across the board on this referendum. It seemed to suggest that it would not be right for the EU to give money for the campaign, and it would be nice to have a reassurance that the Government share that view and accept the advice of that august body, which is there to guide us.
There is an additional issue with EU money, to which some colleagues have referred. What do we do about the EU money that is routed to bodies or organisations within the UK that choose to make a donation to a referendum campaign? That is another difficulty. As I understand it, such a donation would be perfectly legal because the organisation giving the money would be able to say that it had other sources of money and it was not a direct gift of EU money to the referendum campaign. Such a body may be swayed by the fact that it had had generous access to EU moneys in the past. While one would hope that none of them were donating for that reason, people would suspect that a body in receipt of substantial EU moneys in the normal course of business that saw fit to give money to the campaign to stay in would hope that the EU would be better disposed to it when it put in its next application for money.
Sir William Cash
I do not know whether my right hon. Friend was here when we were debating part of this, but the Electoral Commission’s position is that a central principle of the regulatory regime that it supervises is that foreign sources of funding should not have undue influence on our democratic process. It has come to the conclusion that the European Commission does not fall within the list of bodies that can register as a campaigner. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we have to get to the bottom of that? It is highly arguable that the European constitutional arrangements are effectively embedded in our own constitutional arrangements by virtue of sections 2 and 3 of the European Communities Act 1972. We need to get this right.
John Redwood
I was present to hear my hon. Friend speak to his amendment, and I am aware of the legal minefield that the provision could represent. That is why I worded my remarks cautiously—I said that I thought it was the view of the Electoral Commission that it would not be appropriate for the EU to spend money on the campaign. As he reminds us, it has made a clear statement about being a principal donor to the campaign, but there are other ways in which it could help, and it might argue that it was a domestic institution for these purposes. It might say that the EU’s writ runs within the UK. There is an office of the EU in London; it might try and route it through the London office. We need to say that that would be unwise. The Minister may think that it is illegal or that it should be impeded in some way. We need clear guidance from the Minister.
I return to the issue of indirect funding of the campaign by grant-in-aid to organisations that are helped or partially funded by the EU. Of course, it is a matter for the referendum campaign to argue over the rights and wrongs of EU funding. I am sure the no campaign will want to say that the money we send to Brussels and which it gives back to our organisations could be given to them directly by the United Kingdom Government if Brussels were not in the way. It could be pointed out that the £11 billion we send to Brussels in tax revenue is spent outside the UK, so, were we to leave, that money would be available for either tax cuts or extra spending in the United Kingdom.
That would be a matter of debate in the referendum, but an issue for the Bill relates to the legality, morality and political wisdom and judgment regarding the point at which an organisation becomes so dependent on EU funding that it has a very strong interest in it. Restrictions or limitations—or at least a declaration of interest—might need to be made if such a body decides to become involved in the referendum campaign. It would be wise to let people know of such a clear financial interest if the body played an important part in the yes campaign.
Sir William Cash
Does my right hon. Friend think it would be possible to have a register of interests? Then, when companies go on the BBC and say, “We don’t want the United Kingdom to leave the EU,” we would know where their money comes from, what their actual policy is and the extent to which they are dominated by the EU system.
John Redwood
A register of interests would be one way of handling it. It would be quite complicated for large companies, but rather easier for grant-receiving organisations. The issue for companies is rather different. I am all in favour of business people taking an active part in our politics, but they may need to intervene as individuals, because if they are an executive in a very large company that has a broad shareholder base, they may not be speaking for their shareholders on a very political issue. People would ask them, “Is this your private view or are you speaking for the company and has it been tested in a company general meeting?” That is probably a debate for another day. I am all in favour of major business involvement, but unless someone owns the company they have to be careful in associating the company with their own particular views.
The conclusion I wish to put to the Government is that this Bill is extremely welcome, but it is work in progress. These are very complicated areas, because the EU is a unique and powerful institution. In order to have a fair assessment by the British people of its worth or demerits, we need to be very careful and to not in any way trammel our usual belief in independence and fairness when we test the mood of the people. I do not think the Bill quite yet meets that requirement, but I hope that, on Report, Ministers will have better and more detailed answers about how we handle the scale of campaign donations and the period prior to the referendum campaign proper with respect to controls over messages and financing, and that they will be able to address the very vexed subject of how much power, influence, money and messaging the EU itself can inject into what should be a United Kingdom debate.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) and I want to draw on some of the points he made about amendments 10 and 53.
It is a very poor politician who spends a lot of time talking about his previous speeches, but I would like to refer the House to what I said in this Chamber on 13 January 2014, when we had a lively debate on the Europe for Citizens budget, which we had a right to veto at the time and which involved the funding of a whole host of European pet projects. One such project is the European Movement and, from the very position on which I now stand, the late and much lamented Charles Kennedy made an impassioned plea for us not to cut the funding for the organisation of which he was the president. That relates to the point I want to make: we should be very wary of how organisations that receive European funding will act during the referendum campaign and ask whether they should be regulated in some way.
The preamble of the draft regulations for the Europe for Citizens programme states:
“While there is objectively an added value in being a Union citizen with established rights, the Union does not always highlight in an effective way the link between the solution to a broad range of economic and social problems and the Union’s policies.”
Therefore it wants the organisations that it funds to be very positive in the arguments that they make when they engage with civil society.
The Europe for Citizens budget line, which the European Commission funds, gives the European Movement a very large sum of money. I do not wish to pick on the European Movement all the time, but it is a good example of an organisation that receives some money to campaign to present a positive view of Europe, which I know is welcomed by many in this House, and whose funding comes from the European Commission which, I believe, wants to ensure a certain result in the forthcoming referendum.
European Union (Finance) Bill
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Gauke
As I have said, the estimated cost over the previous seven years was £6.6 billion, and in future it will be about £2 billion a year. I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making: he want us to clear up yet another mess that was created by the last Government, although I acknowledge that he was as disappointed by his Government as we were. As for what the UK Government can do about the financial position, let me explain what we did in the 2013 negotiations. Whereas the last Government had agreed to an 8% increase in the spending ceiling, we proceeded with an agenda that was in the UK’s interests. This time, the two sensible things that we could do to protect the British taxpayer were to get the overall budget down and to protect our rebate, and that is precisely what we achieved.
The agreement that the Prime Minister secured back in 2013 was good for Europe and good for the United Kingdom. At the time, some argued that it was not possible, and that the interests of the UK were in some way incompatible with the wider aims of the European Union, but the Government showed them that they were wrong.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Does the Bill not endorse a system that takes £12 billion of our taxpayers’ money and spends it elsewhere on the continent, while we receive not a penny of benefit? If the British people voted “out”, they could presumably be given a £12 billion tax cut to celebrate our leaving the European Union.
Mr Gauke
My right hon. Friend has taken me in the direction of the wider issue of our EU membership. As became clear this week, the people of the United Kingdom will have an opportunity to vote on that, but this is the system that applies while we are members of the European Union. My right hon. Friend may wish to present his argument during a future debate, but what cannot be in doubt is that the Prime Minister’s achievement during the 2013 negotiations constituted a huge improvement on the record of the last Government. It protected the rebate, and it ensured, for the first time, that we were able to reduce the overall expenditure of the EU over the multi-annual financial framework period.
Mr Gauke
The deal Scotland gets includes support from the structural funds which have been protected as a consequence of decisions made by the UK Government in the last Parliament.
Turning to the deal secured on the revenue side, as hon. Members may be aware, the system by which EU member states finance the annual EU budget is set out in EU legislation known as the own resources decision—ORD for short. At the 2013 February Council, there was strong pressure from some member states, the Commission and the European Parliament to reform the way member states finance the EU budget. These included proposals to introduce a financial transaction tax and do away with the UK rebate, or at least change the way it works.
The Prime Minister stood his ground and made it clear that the UK would not agree to such proposals, nor agree to anything that changed the way our rebate worked. It was a specific objective for the UK that this new financing system would require no new own resources or EU-wide taxes to finance EU expenditure, and no change to the UK rebate, and that is precisely what we achieved.
The political agreement at the 2013 February European Council was accurately reflected in the financing arrangements which all EU member states agreed unanimously at a meeting of the Council of Ministers in May 2014. Under the agreement, which this Bill will implement, the Prime Minister protected what is left of the UK rebate, and this is maintained without any change throughout the life of this agreement.
The agreement also ensures there will be no new types of member state contributions and no new taxes to finance EU spending over this period. The new ORD does not make any changes to the way that the EU budget is financed. There are some changes in the detail of the ORD compared with the previous one, however. For example, it reintroduces reductions in the GNI-based contributions of the Netherlands and Sweden, and introduces small reductions in these contributions for Denmark and Austria. The UK will contribute to these small corrections, which will mean an additional £16 million in contributions from the UK per year compared to the last ORD; that is around 0.1% of our total gross contribution in 2014. Moreover, this will be largely offset by changes in other corrections.
John Redwood
I congratulate the Prime Minister and the Minister on defending Britain’s interests against a far worse settlement, but is it not also the case that under the pre-existing agreements if Britain grows more quickly than the euroland, which it is doing and appears that it will carry on doing, we will get caned by having to pay more tax?
Mr Gauke
Part of the calculation of member states’ contributions is based on the size of their economy. That means that bigger economies pay more and smaller ones pay less. As an economy becomes relatively bigger, it makes a bigger contribution. That is the factual situation; that is how it works.
I referred earlier to the corrections and the small reductions in the contributions from Denmark and Austria. The UK has always supported the principle of budgetary corrections set out at the 1984 Fontainebleau European Council, which gave us our rebate. In the absence of any meaningful reform on the expenditure side of the budget, we believe that those member states that make disproportionately large net contributions to the budget in relation to their prosperity, such as the UK, should receive corrections.
John Redwood
Is there any extra tax demand that the EU makes on us that the Labour party disagrees with?
Barbara Keeley
Yes, indeed. I am making the point that we need to make this process clearer, and I would have thought that the right hon. Gentleman and the Minister would agree with that. It is a difficult technical process, but the people outside this place need to be able to understand it. In my view, they do not.
John Redwood
What do people not understand? The EU is taking £12 billion of our money, and this Bill is going to give it more.
Barbara Keeley
I think people do understand that. The point is that the benefits are not understood. [Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman has his view, and other people have a different one. The process could be made clearer, and it is my contention that we will have to do that. As we put this important decision in front of people in the coming months, they will have to be able to understand this better than they do at the moment.
Interestingly, the European Commission recently sent hon. Members a document promising to tell us “How the European Union works”. We have a host of new Members with us today, and I do not know whether any of them have seen that document in among the mountain of material that has landed on them recently. It is a 40-page document, but it contains only two short paragraphs—indeed, 10 lines—about the EU budget. It does not give figures for that budget, nor does it describe how the money is spent. Yet in the months ahead, as I said, that will be a key aspect of the debate for the people of this country.
The debate in the House in February 2013 and other debates since have focused on the fact that substantial reform of priorities is still needed in the EU budget. We have had questions about the balance of agriculture spending, but the Labour party believes that growth and jobs should continue to be prioritised by cutting back even further on agriculture spending and other similar priorities. Spending on the common agricultural policy fell as a proportion of the budget from 55% in 1997 to 46% in 2010. We welcome the continued decline in agriculture spending as a share of the European budget; it will drop from 41% of EU commitments in 2014 to 35% in 2020. The difficult reflection for people outside Parliament, however, is that with agriculture making up only 1.6% of the total output of the European Union, why does it still account for 30% to 40% of the budget? There is still much more to do.