National Insurance Contributions (Reduction in Rates) (No.2) Bill

Debate between John Redwood and Clive Lewis

2nd reading
Wednesday 13th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood]

I largely agree with my right hon. Friend, but if we look at the numbers, I think the fall-off was from 2020 to 2024. Prior to that, with good Conservative policies and lower taxes, we were growing the self-employed army very noticeably, and it was making a very important contribution to general growth and the way all our local communities are serviced. It is so often self-employed people who allow us to make personal contact in a way that large companies do not seem to want any more. They are the people who turn up in the evening or at the weekend, if necessary, to get work done, and they are the people who wrestle with the increasingly impossible streets created by Labour and Liberal Democrat councils, which make it more difficult for them to get their vans around.

[Clive Lewis]

Does the right hon. Member not understand that perhaps the other reason for the decline in the self-employed and small and medium-sized enterprises is the growth of large businesses or large corporations that push them out of the marketplace and that monopolise and dominate? That is a big part of it, and it is a massive part of how our economy has developed over the last 30 or 40 years.

[John Redwood]

No, I do not think that is the main point. I think the two main points are the ones I have made—the covid lockdown and the tax regime affecting the ability to set oneself up. I will meet the hon. Member a little of the way, because I do think that the 2021 reforms in particular put companies off dealing with the self-employed, and the self-employed often need business from other companies, as well as directly from the public, and that has been a problem. If he and his party are seriously interested, they should look at the 2017 and 2021 reforms, which I think they supported, to understand how they have backfired. That is a good example of the OBR and the Treasury thinking that they can get more money out of the self-employed by forcing more of them to be employed but ending up with a far less successful economy with far fewer people working.

Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax

Debate between John Redwood and Clive Lewis

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Clive Lewis]

Over the past two years, the North sea oil and gas that was exported doubled. It is not our oil and gas. It belongs to the corporations that bring it out of the ground, and they sell it to the highest bidder. It does not increase our energy security. The right hon. Gentleman made a point about Biden inheriting fracked shale oil and gas in the US, but he failed to mention the ecological costs, which every year run into hundreds of millions of pounds of damage to the natural world. That is the price the United States is paying for its fracking, which I imagine the right hon. Gentleman would expect us to take up here as well.

[John Redwood]

I was not talking about onshore gas at all; I was talking about North sea gas, which comes from under the sea. A variety of reservoir easing techniques have been used for many years and never caused political controversy. I was recommending that we review again the opportunity to explore for more, to develop more and to bring into production the fields that we know are out there. That would also help the SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn), who would rightly like more jobs or to sustain jobs in his successful oil and gas city, which faces the problems that he described. I was interested in his warning about how a windfall tax could, like last time, collapse investment and reduce the amount of extraction and future investment that we get.

The hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) said that not all the gas produced in the North sea would be sold to us. That may be right, but the European market in general is chronically short of gas and the continental market is cruelly dependent on Russian gas, which today we can see is not a good idea. A North sea supply would therefore help when we are trying to ease supply pressures and bring prices down.

The second reason why it makes much more sense to use our own gas—or to extract more of it—rather than rely on imports is that we collect much more tax on it, and we are losing all that tax revenue on imports. The hon. Gentleman should remember that we now import 53% of the gas that we need, and we do not get anything like the revenue that we could if we extracted more of our own. Preferably, we would sell it to ourselves, but even if we exported it—we may well do that—we would still collect the extra revenue. There would also be a benefit in jobs and prosperity, because the industry tends to create quite a lot of well-paid jobs, which is good for the communities that sponsor those activities.

I hope that Ministers will look favourably on the idea that, during this transition, we will burn a lot of gas—as will everyone else—so it makes a lot of sense for the UK to produce gas and offer it on long-term contracts, trying to smooth some of erratic prices that we see because of what is happening on the continent, and make our contribution to greater security of supply for ourselves and—indirectly—for Europe.

Finally—I know that time is limited—electricity is much in demand, and it will be much more in demand if the electrical revolution that the Government wish to unleash comes true. One reason why we had a big spike in gas prices was that the wind did not blow, which added to the need to burn a lot more gas in power stations. That can happen again, because the wind clearly is an unreliable friend, and it is particularly difficult if it goes down at times of peak demand or when it is very cold. We therefore need to ensure that we are putting in enough reliable electricity capacity, because that has a direct relationship with the gas supply and demand issue as well as with gas prices, and I do not think that the current plans have nearly enough new capacity in them.

Exiting the EU and Workers’ Rights

Debate between John Redwood and Clive Lewis

Monday 7th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Clive Lewis]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. It reminds me of the old adage “Never trust a Tory”—that is what this comes down to.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Clive Lewis]

I will make some progress. I will give way, but I will make some progress first—[Interruption.] I will take nothing back.

It is a well-established fact, and not one that reflects well on us as a country, that many protections and rights awarded to workers in Britain reside in EU legislation. Throughout the referendum campaign and since, my party has sought assurances that leaving the EU will not lead to any erosion or dilution of those rights. It follows that much of what the Secretary of State has said today will be welcomed by Opposition Members, but let us not forget that it is EU law that has given working people in this country their rights to a limited working week and guaranteed rest periods. It is the EU that has ensured equal pay and protection against discrimination, and it is to the EU that we owe maternity and paternity rights and much, much more. Removing these rights would cause real damage to the lives of working people.

It is a relief to hear that the Government intend to transfer those rights into British law, but that is not enough. I share the Government’s assessment that the overwhelming majority of the 17 million people who voted in favour of Brexit were not voting to axe our employment rights, but there is a tiny minority who were. It is that minority that has a strong presence on the Government Benches.

[John Redwood]

rose—

[Clive Lewis]

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman, one of the individuals in question.

[John Redwood]

As someone who has always fully supported the transfer of all these rights into British law, I welcome the Secretary of State’s promise. Will the Labour party promise us that, assuming the proposed Bill transfers all those rights unequivocally, they will support that Bill? It will be the only way to transfer and guarantee those rights.

[Clive Lewis]

That is a really important point. What we did not hear from the Secretary of State was any promise or guarantee that employment legislation will not, once it comes out of international law, simply go into secondary law. We want to see it in primary law, and our concern is that once it goes into secondary law, the Government will use statutory instruments to undermine employment law and workers’ rights, and that is not what we want to see.

Let us carry on. I am talking about the Foreign Secretary, who described the weight of EU employment legislation as “back-breaking”. Then there is the Secretary of State for International Trade who dismissed the idea of protecting workplace rights as “intellectually unsustainable”. Then there is the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU who spent years attacking employment rights embodied in EU law as “unnecessary red tape”.