Trade Bill

Debate between John Redwood and Stewart Hosie

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 17th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I want to be able to understand whether this is a real problem. Can the hon. Gentleman give me a specific example of where he thinks the UK Government might assert a power that they should not assert, and how that might arise?

[Stewart Hosie]

That is a reasonable question, and I will answer it properly. Clearly we cannot tell precisely where the problems will arise, because we do not yet know precisely what the UK Government might do. Having said that, the Bill gives back to Ministers discretionary powers over procurement. In Scotland, because of the actions taken there, 78% of publicly procured contracts go to small and medium-sized enterprises, 60% to Scottish SMEs. The UK Government figure is 20%. If that power is taken back, and if oversight is retained by Westminster, there would be a real risk that we could lose that economic diversity and that fantastic achievement in a real-life area. That is a real concern that I hope the right hon. Gentleman will share.

I shall turn briefly to the amendments. Amendments 25 and 26 seek to address an issue in the Bill that has a direct read-across to clauses in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 that confer powers on UK Ministers in devolved areas without any form of devolved consent. No amendments have been made to the Act to alter that approach or to require the consent of Scottish Ministers when UK Ministers make regulations in devolved areas. Amendments 25 and 26 seek to ensure that the UK Government seek consent from devolved Ministers before amending legislation in devolved areas.

Before I move on, I meant to say that I recognise that Government amendments 64 and 66, and consequential amendments 65 and 67, now require Scottish Ministers only to consult and not to seek consent in certain areas. However, the number of areas is limited, and the amendments do not address all the problems.

Amendment 27 requires the Secretary of State to consult Scottish Ministers before deciding whether, or for how long, to prolong the period during which implemented powers can be used. That is important because there is no equivalent provision in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, and because no amendment has been made to the existing provisions in the Trade Bill that allow the UK Government unilaterally to alter the powers of Scottish Ministers in relation to grandfathering trade arrangements for further periods of up to five years at a time.

At present, it is envisaged that the powers in the Trade Bill relating to the grandfathering of existing free trade arrangements with third countries would have to be used in only a very small number of cases that could not be dealt with under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act—for example, for reasons of timing. However, with so much uncertainty around the ease with which existing agreements will be rolled over, it is possible that this restriction could have a more significant impact, not least because many of the 24 areas likely to be subject to the clause 11 regulations—that is, the power grab—are highly relevant to the world of trading and trade deals. If left unamended, or amended only along similar lines to the amendments in the withdrawal Act, this provision in the Trade Bill would in effect allow the UK Government to change the law in devolved areas to allow for the implementation of these arrangements, which might not necessarily remain exactly as they are at present. In essence, that is close enough to having an ability to implement a new trade Bill with almost no consultation or consent at all. Our amendment 28 deals with that problem.

Amendment 29 is small and seeks a direct read across from the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. It would replace the need for consent from UK Ministers in certain circumstances with the need only to consult. As I said, I note the Government amendments in that regard.

We are not arguing for vetoes for Scotland nor for any sense of Scottish exceptionalism; we are simply looking at the facts, understanding what is going on and what needs to happen. If Scottish Ministers are required to consult or seek consent when Scottish parliamentary responsibilities intersect with UK responsibilities, we are simply arguing that UK Ministers should be under the same obligation to consult or seek consent where UK policy responsibilities intersect with those of the devolved Administrations. It was said in the last debate that that happens with the Parliaments of Belgium, and it also happens with the Canadian provinces. The world does not collapse when proper respect and statutory weight is given to the rights and responsibilities of sub-state administrations. It is common sense. We are trying to improve the situation to make it work and to ensure that our voices and our national interests are protected and that the rights of the devolved Administrations are respected.

Time is short, and we do not want many votes on this group so as to allow time for the last group, particularly new clause 18, which needs to be properly debated, but I hope to press amendment 25 to a vote.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I will not speak for long because our Front-Bench spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) has covered the issues well, but I want to talk briefly about why it is important that the Scottish Parliament, Scottish Ministers and the Scottish people in general should have more of a say in deals going forward than is proposed by the UK Government.

In recent times, the UK Government have not had responsibility for signing off and negotiating trade deals. They have not been the key player. Therefore, they have not been able to undertake some of the practices that we think they could undertake, so it is understandable that the Scottish people are worried given that we have been monumentally badly served by the UK Government over decades. Just look at the roll-out of universal credit, the bedroom tax, the rape clause and the passage of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018—legislation that happened despite the Scottish Parliament refusing consent. All those things show the ways in which the UK Government are badly serving Scotland.

Until I was an MP, I genuinely thought that the UK Government were, at times, probably trying their best. When I got elected to this place, I discovered that when the UK Government propose legislation and we say to them, “Have you thought about how this will affect Scotland?” the answer is not that they are trying to do anything bad, it is just that they forget we exist. They just do not even consider the views of Scotland or the differences in Scotland. Look at how the common fisheries policy has been negotiated by the UK Government, for example. The way that the Government negotiated swaps removed quota rights from Scottish fishermen to the benefit of fishermen in the south of England. Such choices made by the UK Government have a direct negative impact on Scottish people. On that basis, it is understandable that we are worried that the UK Government will not take decisions in Scotland’s best interests because they may simply forget that we exist.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between John Redwood and Stewart Hosie

Wednesday 8th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie]

Not at the moment.

It is worth reminding ourselves how we got to where we are today. It is not all the fault of this Chancellor, but the Tory targets on debt, deficit and borrowing that were promised in 2010 simply were not met. I shall demonstrate the scale of the failure. We were told that debt would begin to fall as a share of GDP in 2014-15, that the current account would be in balance the following year, and that public sector net borrowing would be barely £20 billion in that same year. Of course, as many of us warned it would not at the time, that did not happen. Debt will not begin to fall as a share of GDP until 2018-19, the current account will not be in the black until the same year, and public sector net borrowing in 2015-16 was not the barely £20 billion promised, but £72 billion. In short, the Scottish National party argues that the first five years of Tory austerity failed, and we have little confidence that the second five years will be any better.

I turn to the present, and then the future. Last autumn, the Chancellor told us that net debt would peak at 90% of GDP, or £1.84 trillion—that is 12 zeros. Today, he gave us the startling news about the huge progress: it will now peak at £1.83 trillion. Borrowing is down a few hundred million for 2017-18, and the current budget, due to be in surplus by £18.5 billion in 2019-20, has barely changed. The forecasts are as bad as they were promised to be in the autumn and have barely changed from last spring.

What growth there is seems to be driven in large measure by an assessment of increased business investment of around 4% over the next few years. The Office for Budget Responsibility says that there will be

“a 0.1% fall in business investment in 2017, before uncertainty begins to dissipate”.

We are about to have article 50 invoked, followed by a tortuous 18-month to two-year negotiation, and the OBR and the Treasury are telling us that the uncertainty will dissipate sometime at the back end of this year. That almost beggars belief.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Can the hon. Gentleman explain why he and his party thought before and immediately after the referendum that there would be a sharp slowdown or recession this winter? Were they not completely wrong then, and are they not wrong now about article 50?

[Stewart Hosie]

The right hon. Gentleman is completely wrong. I can say with absolute certainty that there was never, ever a threat of an immediate collapse. Indeed, I am on record as saying there would be no problem in week one, month one or year one, or even in year two or year three, which gets us to just beyond the negotiation. The danger was always the long-term risk of decreases in foreign direct investment and trade, and of loss of GDP from reduced migration, to which I shall turn because the Chancellor did not.

Much of the previous failure came about because the last Tory Government strangled the lifeblood from recovery by cutting too much or too quickly, with little or no regard to the consequences. That error was set in stone by the old fiscal charter and its requirement to run a permanent surplus quickly, almost irrespective of the economic conditions. The new fiscal charter, which was not really given a look-in today, is certainly more flexible than the last one, but it still targets a surplus early in the next Parliament. The numbers and the timescale look precarious. The forecasts for a current account surplus are tiny, not even reaching 1.5% of GDP in this Parliament. If there is any external shock or any capital flight, if we suffer more devaluation, which is quite likely, or if the negotiations go badly, the figures could fall apart very quickly indeed.

These numbers are being delivered before the full impact of a hard Tory Brexit are felt. We cannot even assess properly what the consequences of that will be, because the OBR tells us

“there is no meaningful basis for predicting the precise end-point of the negotiations as a basis for our forecast.”

That is a central assumption that pretends Brexit does not exist—a ridiculous thing to do with the invocation of article 50 looming.

The OBR’s central forecast is in rather stark contrast to what we already know. The Treasury had reported previously that the UK could lose up to £66 billion from a hard Brexit, and that GDP could fall by almost 10% if the UK reverted to WTO rules, which echoes what the Chair of the Treasury Committee said. Other assessments mirror that. The London School of Economics says:

“In the long run, reduced trade lowers productivity.”

That is a huge problem for the UK. It went on to say:

“That increases the cost of Brexit to a loss of between 6.5% and 9.5% of GDP.”

It puts a range of figures on that of between £4,500 and £6,500 per household.

Last year’s PricewaterhouseCoopers report suggested that employment could fall by 600,000. The figures for Scotland produced by the Fraser of Allander Institute suggest that a hard Tory Brexit could result in 80,000 lost Scottish jobs and a drop in wages averaging £2,000 in a decade. If we add to that the report by senior executives in the FTSE 500 saying that Brexit is already having a negative impact on business, and the British Chambers of Commerce reporting that half the businesses surveyed have already seen a hit to margins due to devaluation, we can see the scale of the problem. What we should have seen today is mitigation to match that.

To be fair to the Chancellor, he did move a little last autumn with announcements of additional support for capital investment and research and development. Today, he reiterated some of the R and D statements and put some flesh on the bone of other investment, no doubt taking his cue from the IMF, which had said previously that the Treasury had done enough to stabilise finances for the Government to embark on extra investment spending. However, the figures from last year’s autumn statement show public sector net investment falling in 2017-18 to 2018-19 and not recovering again until we are in the next Parliament. The figures today for public sector gross investment show them falling this coming year, 2017-18, to the forecast made only three and a half months ago. The money should be spent now to mitigate that rather than waiting for the OBR to say that the damage has been done.

However, it is not all about broken promises on debt, deficit and borrowing. It is not even about repeating the mistakes of the past on investment. We are now in such uncertain times that, to protect jobs and the current account, trade should be front and centre, but little was said about that today. The Red Book tells us already that the current account is in negative territory for the entire forecast period. The impact of net trade will be zero or a drag on GDP growth for almost every year in the forecast period. That is after an average 15% devaluation in sterling since the EU referendum.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between John Redwood and Stewart Hosie

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

As with every Budget, there are some things to welcome. I welcome what the Chancellor said about the European Union. He will not be surprised to get help on that from SNP Members, because we also believe that we are better off in. I also welcome some of what he said about tax evasion and avoidance, and the abolition of class 2 NICs.

When it comes to the self-employed and contractors—people who, in many cases, are taking their first step in forming a new business—I would make the point that the Red Book suggests that there will be £765 million in extra tax due to travel and subsistence changes. It would have been far better to review that regime entirely rather than simply going ahead and doing that.

I welcome the oil and gas changes. The changes to the supplementary charge and petroleum revenue tax are very welcome. I was slightly disappointed by the lack of strategic direction, with no mention of exploration or production allowances, but I am sure discussions are ongoing. Likewise, I welcome the freeze on whisky duty and the freeze on fuel duty, for which we have been calling.

It is one of the small measures, but may I say that we very much welcome the additional money for school sports? I do not know what the Barnett consequentials of that will be, but it provides a useful opportunity for SNP Members to welcome the creation, in the past week, of the 150th school sport hub in Scotland, delivering the necessary additional sport for children.

I have a small point of disagreement with the Chancellor. He prayed in aid the leader of the Scottish branch of the Tory party, to cheers from many Members on his side of the House. It is probably worth noting that, last May, she led the Conservatives to their worst UK election result in 150 years.

The Chancellor rather skipped over his record in the last Parliament on debt, deficit and borrowing. We know he did not meet a single one of his targets. He told us that debt would fall as a share of GDP by 2014-15, that the current account would be in balance this year and that public sector net borrowing would be barely £20 billion. That, of course, did not happen. We warned at the time that debt would not begin to fall as a share of GDP until later, that the current account would not be back in the black until 2017-18, and that public sector net borrowing for this year would be about four times what he promised.

Our judgment is that much of the Chancellor’s failure came about because he strangled the lifeblood from the recovery by cutting too much too quickly, with little or no regard to the consequences—an error he set in stone with the fiscal charter, with its requirement to run a permanent surplus almost irrespective of economic conditions or the effect that cutting more than necessary would have on the prospects for the economy. We have had a very quick look, and we listened to what the Chancellor said, and the current account will not now be back in the black until 2018-19. The targets keep getting pushed back—more broken promises. Borrowing will still be higher in four years’ time than he promised it would be this year. That is the scale of the failure on the key economic metrics. Even in this Parliament, when he has continually been warned about repeating the mistakes of the past, he has done the same today—in many ways with a vengeance.

Capital expenditure is a mixed bag, and I will come on to that. I do not expect the Chancellor to listen to me, but he should listen to the IMF and the OECD. The IMF said that he had done enough to stabilise the Government’s finances—that is questionable—for them to embark on extra investment spending should GDP growth slow. He should take that advice. Only in February, the OECD told him it was revising down its GDP forecast for this year and recommended a commitment to raising public investment, which would boost demand while remaining on a fiscally sustainable path. We would have expected him to listen. We are glad that there is a very modest rise in capital expenditure over the forecast period, but it is actually marked down this year compared with the forecast we got in the autumn statement last winter. That is not consistent with what needs to be done, or with the advice received from others.

It is not all about broken promises on debt, deficit and borrowing. We now have a Chancellor who has done this many times—he has set about replicating the errors he made with his borrowing figures in his trade and export figures for this Parliament. He said previously that he expected to be able to deliver an almost certainly unachievable doubling of exports by 2020, but the OBR told him last year, at the time of the autumn statement, that he would fall short by £350 billion. We looked at the autumn statement, and the impact of net trade on GDP growth will be negative from 2016 through to 2020, and there will be a deficit in the balance of trade current account for the entire period. I am disappointed, because action can be taken. The impact of net trade on GDP growth is no better or worse in every single year of the new forecast period, and the balance of payments current account is actually worse in every single year, even compared with last autumn’s forecast. In the past week or so, we had confirmation of a £92 billion trade deficit and a £125 billion deficit in the trade in goods.

To be fair, those failings are not all the fault of the Chancellor. Some have been embedded in the UK economy for decades, whether on exports, support for innovation and manufacturing, or boosting productivity. They are all inextricably linked. In many ways Labour is the biggest culprit, having lost more than 1 million manufacturing jobs during its time in office—and that was before the recession. But it is the current Government’s failure to address those problems that is really troubling. We would have expected concerted action today on innovation, manufacturing, productivity and work with academia—all the things we are falling behind on internationally, which has led to decline. Manufacturing was 30% of the economy in the 1970s, and today it is 10%; it provided more than 20% of all jobs in the 1980s, and today it is 8%; and it went from more than a quarter of all business investment in the 1990s to barely 15% today.

The Chancellor will argue that some of the tax cuts will allow businesses to keep and invest more of their own money, and I hope that is true, but if he were serious, we should have seen an increase in the budget of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Instead, we have seen the Department’s budget being marked down every single year. We would have seen an announcement on support for innovation, because we know that since 2010 the science budget has been frozen in cash terms, with a real-terms drop of 10%. By 2012, publicly funded science fell to less than 0.5% of GDP, and we can see nothing today that will take us off the bottom of the G8 heap.

[John Redwood]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stewart Hosie]

In that case, because it is the right hon. Gentleman, I will happily take the intervention.

[John Redwood]

I am very grateful. Is not the British problem not that we lack great universities, great ideas, great innovation, a large number of patents and a lot of start-ups, but a problem of getting smaller businesses to grow sufficiently and become big businesses that can export to France and Germany? How would the hon. Gentleman tackle that problem?

[Stewart Hosie]

That is indeed one of the substantial issues, which is why our Government in Scotland have delivered the small business pledge. In return for assistance from Scottish Government agencies, the pledge requires those businesses to seek out and take export opportunities, and to innovate. We have delivered a £78 million fund for innovation to encourage 1,000 new inventions and to allow 1,200 businesses to liaise and work directly with academia. There are many practical ways to solve the problem that the right hon. Gentleman rightly identifies.

We will have to check the fine print about businesses that want to export, but in the Blue Book in the autumn, UKTI’s budget, after a slight rise for 2016-17, was cut by more than £20 million a year. Between 2018-19 and 2019-20, it will be flatlining in cash terms and falling again in real terms. We need to begin to tackle properly the underlying issue of poor productivity. From our perspective, that means delivering inclusive growth—essentially, a fairer and more equal society. We have seen the numbers, and we understand that it is not enough simply to grow the economy to fund public services. We must squeeze inequality out of the system to get the growth we need in the first place.

The Tories have never believed in that, and Labour failed on it for 13 years, and we have seen some of the mistakes repeated today. In the previous Parliament, discretionary consolidation—the balance of cuts and tax rises—went from a ratio of 4:1 to 9:1. What did we see today? Billions taken from people with disabilities, through changes to the personal independence payment, to fund an above-inflation increase in the 40p threshold. The 40p threshold did need to be addressed—I have said it for years—but to have an above-inflation rise while taking billions from the most disabled people in the country is disgraceful and economically wrong. The UK lost 9% of GDP growth due to rising inequality in the two decades from 1990, and the Chancellor is making the same mistakes again.

Some of the business measures that the Chancellor announced are to be welcomed. It was good that the Chancellor mentioned apprenticeships, but what he did not mention, of course, is that many firms—he should know this by now—already pay a 1.5% levy on payroll to the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board for training. The apprenticeship levy was simply an additional tax on jobs. I had hoped the Chancellor would reflect on the comments made following its introduction last year.

Likewise, the Chancellor told us last year that he was counting on a windfall of about £31 billion from the sale of banking, financial and commercial assets, but the OBR told us last year that it would be £24 billion, and there has been little change since then. Clearly, the Lloyds stock will still be privatised, and the Red Book refers, I think, to other sales, but there was absolutely nothing about an anticipated windfall, so it will be interesting to see whether he intends to sell off the family silver in a way that has gone unannounced today.

The Scottish Government’s ability to re-energise the Scottish economy cannot be hamstrung and hampered by decisions taken here. Before today’s statement, we expected that our discretionary budget this Parliament, taking into account the cuts already imposed, would be about £3.9 billion, or 12.5%, lower in real terms than it was in 2010. No matter what has been said, we expected capital spending to be £600 million lower in real terms than in 2010-11, and, based on the autumn statement, we expected that the departmental expenditure limits—DEL—budget would be increased by about 0.7% in cash terms, or a 1% real-terms reduction. We wait with interest to see what the number crunchers tell us the implications of the Budget will be.

This is all about political choices. We said at the election—and we hold to it—that a very modest, 0.5% real-terms increase in expenditure could have released money not just for investment but to make sure that those on benefits did not fall any further behind. That would have been a sensible, humane and productive thing to do, but the Chancellor and the Government have gone against that one more time. He might be able to sell it to some of his Back Benchers, but he has been unable to sell it in Scotland. I fear that that will continue to be the case.

Public Finances: Scotland

Debate between John Redwood and Stewart Hosie

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie]

Not at the moment.

What is remarkable is that the motion does not talk about public finances or the impact of getting the fiscal agreement wrong. It is almost exclusively focused on the process of negotiating a formula—a formula that, of course, must deliver no detriment, which was one of the key principles identified by Lord Smith. Although fairness for Scotland is recognised in the motion, many other drivers of Scotland’s public finances are not.

[John Redwood]

rose—

[Stewart Hosie]

Not at the moment.

There was a cursory passing reference to Labour’s plan, which was announced yesterday, to make Scotland the highest-tax part of the UK. That has a bearing on the public finances. It is a Labour plan to add to the tax burden of half a million Scottish pensioners. It is a plan to add to the tax burden of 2.2 million taxpayers. In essence, it is a plan to change the public finances by taxing Scots more to pay for Tory cuts. That is the weakness in Labour’s plan.

[David Mowat]

rose—

[John Redwood]

rose—

[Stewart Hosie]

No, I am conscious of time and it would not be fair to give way.

It is absolutely right that the negotiations are done privately. Imagine if there was a running commentary and slight snippets of information, out of context, became the fodder for a new “project fear” campaign run by Labour. We do not want that. We want a Labour party that, instead of sniping from the sidelines, is determined to support fair play, and a fair settlement that delivers on the principle of “no detriment”. Instead, we have this thin motion, combined with Labour MSPs who last week backed the Tories and refused to back the per capita index deduction block grant adjustment mechanism, which would deliver the “no detriment” principles that Labour signed up to in the Smith agreement.

In my view, that is economic and political madness from Labour, but it is not a surprise. After all, in advance of the fiscal agreement, before agreement is reached on an LCM, and before powers are transferred, the Labour party has spent many times over the modest cost of a reduction in air passenger duty—a policy that will create 4,000 jobs and put £200 million of economic activity into the economy—by committing to spend £650 million of Scotland’s public finances from a pot that does not yet even exist. No wonder Labour Members are more interested in talking about process than policy.

As the First Minister has said, the Scottish Government are negotiating the fiscal agreement in good faith, but they will not sign up to a deal that systematically cuts Scotland’s budget, regardless of anything that they, or any future Scottish Government, might do. That message has been reiterated many times by the Deputy First Minister, who said a few moments ago that the reason why we do not have a fiscal agreement right now is that there is no basis to be agreed that is consistent with the Smith commission, and we will not sign up to any document that is not consistent with the Smith commission report.

Let me conclude by being even clearer on behalf of my party: we will not agree to a fiscal agreement that abandons the principle of “no detriment” and embeds unfairness into the Scotland Bill. We will not support Labour tonight. This is a silly motion about publishing minutes that does not address the core substance of the fiscal agreement. We have tabled an amendment to that motion, and I commend it to the House.

National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill

Debate between John Redwood and Stewart Hosie

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood]

(Wokingham) (Con): I welcomed the manifesto pledge and am very pleased that we know that for five years there will be no increases in the major tax rates. I listened carefully to the Labour response, and one of the worries expressed was what would happen if there were a cyclical downturn or if the economy hit a bad time because of a world recession or something similar. As I am sure the hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) knows, it is common policy between the major parties in this House that if that happens we will normally borrow more. If revenues fall because people have lost their jobs and are not earning so much, and if costs have gone up because more people are out of work, which we do not foresee and do not wish, it is quite sensible to borrow a bit more to help the economy through the difficulties. Fortunately, the official and external forecasts say that we can look forward to several years of continuing progress and growth, as we have had since 2009, so, we trust, the problem will not arise. I think that that answers her point.

[Stewart Hosie]

The right hon. Gentleman would be right in normal circumstances, but we now have the fiscal charter. Given that it has a rolling four-quarter on four-quarter comparison, if forecasts begin to fall the automatic stabilisers might not necessarily kick in in the way that he has described, which was traditionally the case.

[John Redwood]

I think that we would make a judgment at the time, but fortunately we do not have to make that judgment now. If we should get into that awful position, I am sure that there will be a lot of debate in this House. The hon. Gentleman and I might even share the same view, or we might have a difference of view. We would have to judge it on the figures and on the merits of the case.

On this side of the House, we regard having more people in jobs as a very good thing and want to promote better pay, particularly for those whose pay is very low and needs topping up with benefits. I buy into the Government’s vision that we want more people in work and more people in better-paid work, with less benefit top-up needing to be paid. They should be better off as a result of these changes.

In the course of proceedings this afternoon on this Bill and on the European Union (Approvals) Bill, we have been told that not enough time has been allocated to debate tax credits. I recall that we have had three major debates on that subject quite recently, and three votes, and the House has come to the same view on each occasion. This is another such opportunity. I note that Opposition Members have not come to the Chamber, but it seems to me to fall quite within the remit of the Bill, which is about how to tax work and what people keep as a result of work, to discuss tax credits as another part of the equation. I see the Bill as an important part of the Government’s strategy of making work pay.

We regard work as a good thing, as I trust all parties do, and we do not really want to be taxing good things. Unfortunately, however, we live in a world where we need a lot of revenue, so we end up taxing good things as well as bad things. However, where we have the chance to shift the balance, surely it makes sense to tax the good things less, such as work and earnings, so that people can have more opportunity of finding a job and of keeping more from a better-paid job. We can then find less desirable things that we are more prepared to tax, as well as running sensible value-for-money government so that the overall demands are not too great.

The danger, if one went down the route of opposing the Bill, is that it might become all too easy to put an extra 1% or 2% on national insurance. One might say that people would not notice it, but it would have two immediate adverse effects. First, there would be fewer jobs as it is a direct tax on jobs and, secondly, employees would be worse off because of the effect on their contribution and we would have to find more money under our scheme for tax credits or other top-ups.

In conclusion, it is excellent that my party intends to keep its clear promises to keep these tax rates down, which I fully supported and campaigned on. We must see it as part of the wider debate, and today is another opportunity to debate national insurance in the context of tax credits. If we keep taxes down or reduce them more, there is more scope to deal with the tax credit problem.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between John Redwood and Stewart Hosie

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I start by welcoming a number of the measures that the Government announced, such as the increase in the revenue non-compliance budget, increased export funding and the further doubling of the annual investment allowance. If the Government carry on like this, we will be back to having an industrial buildings allowance policy, which should never have been scrapped in the first place. There is also the halving, at last, of bingo duty—my favourite cause. All these one-off measures are very sensible, could be implemented by any Government and ought to be welcomed by everybody.

However, that does not change this Government’s underlying direction of travel or the underlying shape of the economy as described to us in the Red Book. Scotland has suffered an 11% cut in the fiscal departmental expenditure limit, a 27% cut in capital and a real-terms 9.9% cut in the overall budget. The numbers announced today imply a further real-terms cut in the budget. I do not want to speak too much about Scotland, but it is important that we get on the record just how damaging this Government continue to be.

What the Budget speech and the Red Book tell us is that, by every measure the Chancellor has set for himself, he has failed. In his first Budget, he told us that in 2013-14 the current account deficit would be 2.3% of GDP, borrowing would be reduced to £60 billion and the net debt would be 70% of GDP. Today, he told us that for the same year, the current account deficit is higher, borrowing is actually at £95.6 billion and the net debt is around 75% of GDP.

Let me be generous: any Government can make a mistake for one year, so what about the big targets the Chancellor set for himself? They were: that debt would begin to fall as a share of GDP by 2014-15; that the current account would be in balance the following year; and that in the same year, public sector net borrowing would fall to £20 billion. Debt will not begin to fall until 2016-17—two years late. The current account will not be back in the black until 2017-18—two years late. Public sector net borrowing in 2015-16 will not be £20 billion; rather, the forecast figure—£68 billion—is more than three times that. Not a single one of the Chancellor’s key targets has been met.

[Mr Redwood]

Has the hon. Gentleman noticed the forecasted very sharp fall-off in petroleum revenue tax, and is that reflected in SNP plans?

[Stewart Hosie]

It is extremely convenient that, once again, we have a “North sea oil price crash” story on Budget day, some six months before the referendum. If the right hon. Gentleman keeps saying it, I am sure someone somewhere will finally believe him. I am not dreadfully convinced.

The bottom line is that—just like the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention—the Chancellor’s speech was hugely political. He did not tell us about recovery; he did not tell us that he is trying to lift the burden from hard-working families; he did not apologise for trying to rebalance the economy on the backs of the poor. This Budget speech was a political platform for the next election, and if it was supposed to be a vindication of his policies, then it failed, because the policies have failed.

The Chancellor did of course have a deal to say about tax. He is right to increase the basic rate threshold to £10,000, and then to £10,500. Raising the threshold from £6,500 to £10,000, resulting in savings this year of £700 for the average person, is sensible, but of course, that is only part of the personal tax story. This Government have pushed ahead with a tax cut for millionaires and have continued to squeeze the middle—the genuine middle class. The threshold for those paying the 40% rate of tax has come down from £37,500 to under £32,000, so for every penny saved at the bottom, they have had to pay more than a penny at 40%. I therefore welcome the fact that the 40% threshold is going to be increased, but that is not until 2014-15. It will not change the fact that the proportion of people paying the 40% tax rate has doubled over the past two decades, and there are now 2.1 million more people paying a rate of tax that was previously only for the rich.

It is not just the middle: it is the poorest in society who have been hit hardest. We know—the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) told us—that the proportion of tax cuts to tax rises is 4:1. We knew from previous Budgets that the impact of the discretionary consolidation would be £155 billion. Interestingly, the Government have removed that figure from the Red Book: they have removed the year 2016-17 from the forecast, and are now telling us that the discretionary consolidation will be only £126 billion. However, that forecast goes only to 2015-16, and I am concerned that they are not making a longer forecast, so we can see the real scale of the damage they are trying to do.

We in the SNP know where the pain of this Budget and of this Government’s policy direction will be felt. It will be the 144,000 households in Scotland who are losing some £3,500 each through changes to incapacity benefit. It will be the 372,000 Scottish households who have seen tax credits reduced to the tune of £800 a year. It will be the 620,000 families hit by changes to child benefit, who have lost an average of £360 a year. It will be felt by the 55,000 people who are losing an average of £3,000 a year as disability living allowance is removed. Those are the people whom we should be thinking about and who should be helped. Instead, the Government continue to try to balance the books on the back of the poor.

I welcome the fact that the Budget forecast at least says that there will be some growth, but it is once again heavily predicated on business investment growth. In Budget after Budget, the Government have produced five-year growth forecasts. In 2010, growth was predicted to be between 8% and 10% a year, but by the time we got to 2011 it had turned negative and they had to set yet more ambitious targets for the next five years. So it went on, and we find in the Red Book that the forecast business investment growth for last year turned negative again. I am desperate to see positive business investment growth, and the jobs that come with it, but we keep seeing the same story from the Government. They keep failing.

What should the Government have done? There are any number of policies that they might have adopted. Instead of tinkering with air passenger duty, they might have cut it properly or acted sensibly to boost international connectivity. Instead of simply freezing fuel duty, they might have introduced a real fuel duty regulator to smooth out future spikes. They might have cancelled some of their austerity measures, or at least removed the cap on discretionary housing payments to help the poorest. There are so many things that they might have done.

In the North sea, the Government announced that they would implement the Wood review in full. That will save the industry some £45 million, and it is to be welcomed. However, they are keeping the offshore chartering regime that they announced last year, which will cost the industry £600 million. They keep getting it wrong every single time.

Section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993

Debate between John Redwood and Stewart Hosie

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Redwood]

As I shall make clear shortly, our policies are rather different. For one thing, the coalition Government decided to increase current public spending, which is running at £64 billion a year more this year than in the last year of Labour government. The Red Book shows that real current public spending has risen in each of the two years of the coalition Government, although not by very much. The Government are clearly not trying to deflate the economy by introducing massive current spending cuts, given that overall current spending has been rising.

[Stewart Hosie]

The right hon. Gentleman, who knows the Red Book inside out, will recall that it makes it clear that the Government’s projected discretionary consolidation by 2016-17 amounts to £155 billion a year, of which 81% will be delivered by cuts in services and the remainder by tax increases. The hon. Member for Preston (Mark Hendrick) was right: the Government are embarking on precisely the policies for which the right hon. Gentleman is criticising others.

[Mr Redwood]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman has not read the Red Book intelligently. The 80:20 statistic on which Members seem to rely relates to changes compared with much bigger growth in public spending that was in inherited programmes. It is not the reality. The reality of the Government’s strategy is a massive increase in taxes over the planned five years of the present Parliament to pay for rather modest increases in current public spending over the life of the Parliament, and to get the deficit down. The 2010 strategy suggested that tax revenues would be £171 billion a year more in year 5 than they had been in the last Labour year. The Government have now had to reduce that figure a bit because—as other Members have pointed out—the expected growth has not been forthcoming, for a variety of reasons.

We need to promote growth vigorously and actively, which is common ground between the Government, coalition Back Benchers and many Opposition Members. The argument, surely, concerns what measures are most likely to bring that about. It appears that over the last four years both Governments have operated policies involving actively increasing public spending, with the exception of capital spend—certainly overall spending has risen—and actively promoting massive borrowing, while at the same time the economy has bombed very badly. I am not suggesting that that is causal, but it should lead Opposition Members to ask why that fiscal injection—massive borrowing and an increase in current public spending—has not done the job. There seems to be some disconnection between the remedy that they recommend and the reality of what is happening.

When we look at the way in which other countries have pulled out of crises of this kind, and, indeed, the way in which Britain has pulled out of similar but, perhaps, less aggressively damaging crises than the one that we inherited, we see that there is nearly always a period during which public spending must be reduced or controlled quite strongly to make room for a private sector recovery, and that a series of measures to promote that recovery will then be necessary. As I have explained at length in the past, banking reform and competitive banking are crucial. The Government’s theory favours a tight fiscal policy and a loose monetary policy. They want to allow more money to circulate through the private sector through credit and through the banking system, and they want to lower the deficit gradually in the public sector so that the fiscal policy becomes a bit tighter.

Finance Bill

Debate between John Redwood and Stewart Hosie

Thursday 15th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie]

I am a great supporter of innovative product design, marketing and pricing strategies, and I hope that all those things happen, but we are debating an amendment to the Finance Bill in which the Government are putting up IPT. I shall not strain the limits allowed by the Chair, but shall stick to the amendment and what is in the Bill, while supporting any innovation that the insurance sector, which is massively important in Scotland, might bring forward.

There is a deterrent effect on those who wish sensibly to insure themselves against many risks, and that effect will be enhanced as the cost of insurance rises. There are also specific consequences for individuals. Some 1.2 million people—about one in 20 motorists—regularly drive uninsured, and honest motorists pay the £30 premium I have mentioned, which is likely to go up. If someone is caught driving without insurance, the police are entitled to remove their vehicle from the road and charge them for the cost of transporting, storing or scrapping it. However, some cars may be worth less than the cost of insurance and there will be a burden on the public purse as a result of that removal, storage and scrapping of vehicles if people choose simply to abandon them.

People might also cut corners and opt for the “free” travel insurance offered by credit card companies, which might leave some travellers without the necessary levels of cover and might be costly in the long term. I do not intend to take up much of the Committee’s time on this issue, as this is a probing amendment, but this issue is more serious than I had initially imagined. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments on that last point in particular, because if people decide not to pay insurance premiums and instead settle for the “free” cover offered by their credit cards, they might be underinsured in certain circumstances. Also, business might be driven from the traditional, successful, good insurance companies, and I am conscious of what the net loss of jobs, revenue and profitability in that sector might be. So, putting up IPT will have consequences for the sector, for individuals and for jobs. All these points need to be answered properly and considerable comfort needs to be given that we are not going to turn into a nation that says, “We can’t afford insurance; we’ll do without it and let other people pick up the tab.” I shall listen very carefully to the Minister’s reply.

[Mr Redwood]

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) has highlighted the two very important and different issues of health insurance and motor insurance. Let me start with motor insurance, which is a legal obligation that is imposed on everyone who wishes to own and drive a car.

Like my hon. Friend, and, I suspect, everyone else in the House, I think it quite right that there should be that obligation. It reminds people that driving a car is a serious business and that they could do considerable damage to others or themselves if they do it badly. It also means that, were someone to drive badly or to be involved in an accident that was not their fault, there would be redress and injured third parties who might need substantial compensation would not be left without it. For all those reasons, we think that car insurance is a very good idea and we accept that it should be a legal obligation.

The coalition Government think that one way of raising more revenue is to increase the tax on that compulsory purchase, but quite a lot of people in the House think it would be better to raise more revenue from the existing level of insurance tax on motor insurance by getting more people to be insured. We are rightly very concerned that, because of the way in which the insurance market works, a significant number of people, particularly younger people, may not be taking out any insurance or may not be taking out proper insurance for their circumstances, and that that places other people at risk and could mean losses that those young people could not afford to pay if they had an accident. That clearly means a loss of revenue for the Exchequer, because those people are not making their contribution by paying their share of insurance tax. We would like the Minister to consider whether better enforcement of the insurance rules could help with his task of filling the coffers and narrowing the deficit. That might be a better route than increasing the tax.

I am sure that the Minister will remind us that we are talking about a 1% increase and that it is quite a modest sum of money. We have been reminded a few times that young people with certain kinds of vehicles, or some young people with any kind of vehicle, can be required to pay a four-figure sum each year for their motor insurance, so we could be talking about £10 or more. The additional increase would not be welcome, because most young people find such sums of money quite large in the first place, and a further 1% would not be helpful.

Finance Bill

Debate between John Redwood and Stewart Hosie

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I intend to finish my remarks by talking about the performance of the Chief Secretary, but I will start by commenting on what the shadow Chief Secretary said. He rightly pointed out that if the Government did not get the growth forecasts that they expected, the only option that they would have in meeting their deficit reduction targets would be to cut more. However, Labour’s policy to halve the deficit, again in a fixed time scale, suffered from precisely the same problem. If the growth forecasts of 3.25% for four of the next five years had not been met—indeed, if there had been a downturn—there would have been no room not only for a fiscal stimulus but, perhaps, for the use of the automatic stabilisers. The Government’s plans and Labour’s previous plans have that problem in common.

Let me start by commenting on the things that we agree with in this very thin Finance Bill. I am pleased that the Bill seeks to bring down corporation tax. The phased reduction in the headline rate will provide an incentive for businesses to locate in the UK, although I am not convinced that paying for this through the changes to investment and other capital allowances might not yet prove to be a problem for growing businesses. As the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), who is not in her place, said, this may help businesses that are up and running, but not those that seek to grow. I am disappointed that she is not here, because if she were, I would have the opportunity to ask whether she now regrets the Labour Government’s abolition of the industrial buildings allowance—another key allowance to help industrial investment that went some time ago.

[Mr Redwood]

The hon. Gentleman and I made common cause against the previous Government for not adjusting for the cycle in their Budget plans. I believe that this Government have said that if things were to go wrong and we headed into another global recession, they would adjust the plans accordingly for the cycle.

[Stewart Hosie]

Indeed. It is worth making the point, though, that on paper there is a rigidity about this. I remain concerned that if growth forecasts, downrated sensibly, are not met, there will have to be these necessary adjustments.

I welcome the phased reduction in corporation tax, but question whether it makes sense to pay for it through changes to capital and other investment allowances. The Road Haulage Association has said:

“We are concerned about the reduction of the investment allowance for small firms to £25,000 from £50,000 which will have a detrimental impact on small haulage companies.”

That trade body probably speaks for many in its approach to the change to the annual investment allowance.

I am pleased by the way in which the Government have handled the capital gains tax changes, keeping the rate unchanged for basic rate payers to encourage and allow modest investment but increasing the rate for higher taxpayers. Closing the gap removes a perverse incentive to take income that could be taxed as capital rather than through income tax, but keeps a sufficient distance between the rates of income tax and capital gains tax to encourage real investment. That was handled quite well.

I have a question, though, about the rationale for the increase in insurance premium tax. I heard the explanation that it has previously mirrored the VAT rate, but there is no reason why that should still be the case. It will bring in some £2 billion in additional tax over the next five years, and I can only hope that that decision does not come back to haunt this Government in the way that the abolition of advanced corporation tax on pensions came back to haunt the Labour Government. The Conservative party in particular has made a great many criticisms about how that pension change was made and the impact that it had. Indeed, it was a smash-and-grab raid that the Chancellor described as “disastrous” in Accountancy Age last year. I hope that the insurance premium tax increase will not be described in that way in future.

Incidentally, in the same interview, on 6 October, the Chancellor also stated his aim to get the country saving again, which makes it even more difficult to explain the coalition Government’s intention to scrap the child trust funds. We have spoken about savings and savings ratios in the past, and the Red Book forecasts future ratios of just over 5%. However, that is about half the savings ratio that the Labour Government inherited and about the average through the whole of 2004 and 2005. It is not particularly ambitious, if the Government’s intention was to get the country saving again.

However, the real damage in this Finance Bill, as many Members have mentioned, is the determination to put up VAT. That directly contradicts the stated intention of both coalition parties to create a fairer society. Although it may well be the case that in cash terms the wealthiest will pay more VAT, it is clear that the poorest 10% will pay nearly three times higher a percentage of their disposable income than the richest 10%. That is all because of the wrong-headed view, to some extent shared by Labour, that deficit consolidation must be achieved quickly. That is based, I believe, on a flawed assessment of the Canadian model, rather than a credible one perhaps based on the New Zealand model, which certainly worked. The consequence of the VAT changes, at least according to Save the Children, is that the VAT bill for the poorest could rise to more than £31 a week.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between John Redwood and Stewart Hosie

Tuesday 22nd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Redwood]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we have much less power to reduce or improve regulation from Brussels than we do with what is homespun. However, so much crass and foolish regulation has been put on British businesses over the past decade by the home legislators—the then Labour Government—that we can get quite a long way by removing, amending or changing that. In the meantime, we need to summon up a bit of courage and tell those in Brussels that they, too, should join in the process, as that would benefit their businesses as much as ours.

I have often said in this House that, from the point of view of running a business, reducing regulatory cost is a good way of offering something that is just like a tax cut without reducing the public revenue. Indeed, it is even better: not only is there no revenue loss, but public sector costs can be reduced, as the enforcement and monitoring costs of needless or over-the-top regulation can themselves be reduced. That means that businesses get a cash flow benefit, and that there is a reduction in the costs of Government.

The previous Government regulated too many things, and they did so too much and too often. They often regulated in a way that made things worse rather than better. We often found ourselves opposing them, even though we did not disagree with their aims. Like them, we wanted people to have nice lives and decent jobs, and to be free from risk in the workplace and so forth, but we often found that the regulation that the former Government proposed was very expensive and did not achieve the required result.

A tick-box culture means that people get very good at ticking boxes and writing memos, but that they do not manage in the proper way. A factory can be made less safe if the process is merely bureaucratic. Instead, the notion that safety comes first, second and third must be inculcated in all the senior people in that factory. They must manage safety intuitively, as ensuring that a workplace is safe cannot be achieved by tick boxes, inspectors or regulators.

Safety must be inherent in every workplace, and what we can do is to set a tone by saying that it matters above all else. We can have laws at a high level on safety but we need not go into as much detail as the previous Government did. Their approach often made things worse, and much more expensive.

The most important table in the Red Book can be found on page 45. It is one that we must discuss and understand, as it sets out the expenditure patterns for the forthcoming period of Government. The information in the table will come as a pleasant surprise to many neutral people outside the House, although it may worry Labour Members, who seem to be in denial about it. The table shows that total expenditure in the last year of the Labour Government reached £669 billion, and that expenditure will rise steadily to £737 billion by 2014-15.

[Stewart Hosie]

The right hon. Gentleman is accusing Labour over this cash-terms expenditure increase, but I am sure that he will remember that the Chancellor explained early in his speech that ever-increasing debt repayment costs were included. I have no doubt that, for the sake of completeness, he will want to remind the House of the gross domestic product deflators of 3.2%, 2.1%, 2.1% and 2.6% over the next four years.

[Mr Redwood]

I was going on to say that we are talking about a big increase in cash. If all of us in the public sector can get better at managing that cash, we should be able to do a good job for people because the amount of spending is going up.

What could go wrong? Well, the hon. Gentleman has mentioned two things that could go wrong. If public sector inflation is as high as, or higher than, forecast general inflation, that will eat away at the value of the money that we are spending and make it more difficult to sustain good public services. However, Ministers tell us that they will be very tough on wage increases. That will help, as it will share the work and mean that we can keep more people doing more worthwhile things for our constituents, without all the money being eaten away by wage increases.

After all, that is what the private sector had to experience for two or three years, during the worst of the recession. In that regard, I pay tribute to the many work forces and unions in this country that did not merely accept that there would be no pay increases; instead, they often accepted pay reductions and very tough work-sharing schemes. They did so because they understood how dire the position of their industries and companies were, and they helped their managements to see their companies through.

We do not have to go that far in the public sector, but there is something that we need to tell all our public sector employees, and I think that this is a task for Opposition MPs as well as Government MPs. We need to say, “Things will be less painful and better for all of us if we can keep costs down and wages and salaries under control. More jobs will be preserved and a better service delivered to the people whom we serve, because more of that cash increase is going to go into helpful spending.”

As the hon. Gentleman says, the rising interest charges are also a worry, albeit one that makes the coalition Government’s case rather well. If we do not tackle the rising deficit now, more and more of the money will go on paying interest bills for past spending, rather than being available for paying teachers’ or nurses’ wages, which is what we would rather be doing with it. His point therefore makes the case strongly that the more action that is taken at the beginning, the better, because then more of the quite large sums of extra money that will be available will go on buying real improvements or maintaining a decent quality of public service, instead of going on the rising interest bill.

The Government have had just one piece of good fortune with their rather bleak inheritance, as well as quite a lot of bad news from outside the United Kingdom. The one piece of good fortune is that over the weekend the Chinese Government announced that they were going to allow their currency to start to move upwards against the dollar. We have had quite a long period of the yuan/renminbi being pegged to the dollar. That has meant that China has been super-competitive. China works hard, she is developing much better technology and she produces good products. With the managed exchange rate that we were experiencing, with the pound sticking around with the dollar in recent months, we discovered that China was getting more and more competitive. Indeed, there has been another huge surge in Chinese exports in recent months.

Let us hope that the Chinese will now allow their crawling peg to crawl up quite a bit. The last time they had a crawling peg, it started a bit slowly, but then there was a 20% revaluation of the currency, which was quite helpful. We need all the help that we can get, because Britain has to export more and earn more money in overseas markets. The world’s No. 1 colossus—the dominant, most competitive exporter—is China, and any currency revaluation would be helpful. We still have to work hard—we have to get smarter and control our costs—but that revaluation might take some of the pressure off.

However, the bad news is that the European market is getting worse. We had hoped that European countries would have a normal, cyclical recovery, such as that which the United States is enjoying. However, it now looks as if their recovery will be slow, with quite a number of countries going backwards this year and early next year, because of their deficit problems and difficulties with the euro. Indeed, those countries’ economies might continue to fall or start to fall again. That is difficult for Britain, because euroland is an important marketplace for our physical goods—it is not nearly so important for services or inward and outward investment, but it is important for physical goods. It is therefore in our interests that euroland starts to mend itself as soon as possible. I therefore hope that the Chancellor will continue his negotiations and work with his European partners, because it is important that we allow them to take the actions that they need to take to start mending the euro.

The euro is a single currency in search of a single country, and that has been its tragedy ever since it was first created. Those of us who warned that we could not have a single currency without a single economy, a single budget and a single Government were told that we were quite wrong and that we had misunderstood things. Apparently all that history that we had read was a waste of time. However, all the history of currency unions that I have ever read shows that they work only if there is control of the borrowing and spending levels through a central power, which is what we are now told our friends and colleagues in euroland are learning. They have discovered that they cannot allow Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain to free-ride at the expense of the rather more prudent core. Those in euroland are learning that, if they allow those countries to borrow and borrow at the lower common interest rate that Germany has granted them, there comes a point when the markets no longer believe in those countries and they start to blow their debt markets apart.