Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Jonathan Edwards and Jonathan Reynolds

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 19th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention; I always welcome good news from my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham. Yes, it is very welcome that the Government have conceded on this point, reflecting the parliamentary arithmetic. I am not sure that they did it voluntarily, until they saw the names on the Order Paper. Transparency about the consequences of different types of Brexit arrangements has to be a good thing, because the country and all Members of this House should be as well informed as possible. It is extremely pleasing to see the Government concede on this point.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

I also pay tribute to the work of the hon. Member for Streatham on this issue. I was happy to support him, as he has led a very valid endeavour that I hope will inform our decision making in the weeks to come.

Will the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) confirm that if these assessments indicate quite clearly that the status quo offers the best economic prospects for every part of the British state, the Labour party will support the status quo as the preferred Brexit option as we approach the next few weeks?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

The points I made about transparency are relevant, as every Member of this House will make different assessments. We all know that Brexit is not just an economic concern; political concerns about sovereignty and issues such as immigration form part of the decision that each of us would make. But it has to be a good thing for every part and region of the UK to have the maximum degree of transparency on the economic options available to us. Surely, transparency is the best way forward.

I return to amendment 15, which goes to the heart of what I was trying to articulate—that is, our concerns about the unprecedented power grab that this Government are undertaking. The Government have spent the last two years seizing all manner of tax powers with no regard to the constitutional role of this House. Meanwhile, Ministers have refused to honour any level of transparency, and outline once and for all a clear list of the powers that the Treasury has acquired since the referendum in June 2016 and those it expects to acquire by the time the UK leaves the EU. Amendment 15 would address this and oblige the Chancellor to publish a comprehensive list of the powers the Treasury has acquired and the powers it will then expect to acquire, and to state when we might see those powers returned to the House, where they surely belong.

Amendment 21 would provide a further important element of accountability. This would oblige the Government to deliver a review of the impact of using the powers conferred by clause 89 on tax receipts. This amendment would deliver greater transparency around the true impact of the Brexit deal that the Government have negotiated. It is vital that we have that data available so that we can discuss this in depth and quickly identify if a particular impact has occurred.

In amendment 22, the Opposition are also calling for a review of the Brexit powers being handed to the Treasury. This amendment would require the Chancellor to publish a statement assessing how the powers handed to the Treasury in this Bill would be applied respectively to Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We tabled this amendment because we need urgently to establish whether these powers will cause disparity in the treatment of Northern Ireland in comparison to the rest of the UK. Members may ask why there is urgency on this point, but it is clear from the draft withdrawal agreement that under the so-called backstop arrangement Northern Ireland will maintain a regulatory alignment with the European Union. This is the case in particular in relation to EU customs law, but it also applies to compliance with elements of single market regulation in areas such as the technical regulation of goods, agricultural production, environmental regulation, state aid and other areas of north-south co-operation between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Northern Ireland will also be included in parts of EU VAT and excise regimes and in the EU single electricity market, so Northern Ireland’s compliance with EU rules and regulations will be enforced by the EU Commission and the European Court of Justice.

With this in mind, it is clear that the powers handed to the Treasury by this legislation may not be applicable to Northern Ireland in the legal and regulatory areas under which EU authority remains supreme. We therefore seek a review of where each of the powers being granted to the Treasury can be applied in the event that the Prime Minister’s draft agreement successfully passes. This is clearly a very important amendment, and one which we hope Members of the Democratic Unionist party will also see value in passing. We therefore call on all Members of the House to look carefully at amendment 22 and support it in the Lobby.

Finally, new clause 17 would require the Government to publish a review of the effectiveness of introducing a UK carbon emissions tax in the event of a no-deal Brexit, in terms of helping the UK to meet its carbon emissions targets and carbon reduction commitments. The new clause builds on Labour’s commitment to ensure that 60% of the UK’s energy comes from zero-carbon or renewable sources by 2030.

It is worrying that making provisions for collapsing out of the European emissions trading scheme and all the benefits and economies of scale that it brings is one of the scant mentions of green issues in this Finance Bill. Our exit from the European Union cannot be used as an excuse to take a step back from action on climate change, as was outlined starkly in the report published last month by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. As I highlighted in my Second Reading speech last week, we are already lagging behind our European counterparts on green finance, as they are forging ahead with sovereign bond funds and mandatory climate disclosure laws. Our new clause would ensure that the Government were held accountable for making progress on reducing emissions, without using Brexit as an excuse to stall.

Proportional Representation

Debate between Jonathan Edwards and Jonathan Reynolds

Monday 30th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to be able to follow a member of the Petitions Committee. I thank the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) for opening the debate, although I am afraid that I disagree with him on nearly all the points he raised. I have always been a supporter of electoral reform. It has always seemed to me that the obvious starting point for any electoral system is that the number of votes that people cast for parties should be reflected in the composition of Parliament or whatever body is being elected.

Frankly, I find it absurd that on several occasions in British history we have had elections where a party with fewer votes than another has won the election and formed the Government. That happened as recently as 1974, and before that in 1951 and on several other occasions. People will cite other countries and perhaps compare the situation with the last presidential election in America, but America is different—America is a republic, not a democracy. It clearly has a system based on the representation of the electoral college and the states’ votes as part of that. It is an absurd comparison with this country.

The number of votes cast should be reflected in the composition of Parliament. That is the start and end of the debate for me, but it is not just about the technicalities of systems. In particular, I remember the deep sense of alienation growing up in the north-east of England in the 1980s, which was a time of huge change. The mines and shipyards were going and the social fabric of the area was being completely transformed. There was this sense of having no purchase, no say and no input into a Government who frankly did not care how the north-east voted. In places such as Sunderland and Durham, where I was from, there was this sense of having no ability to change the country’s direction when it was having such a big impact.

We have this argument about strong and weak government, but strong government to me means good government. It does not mean a Government with an artificial majority propelled into that majority by the system when the people have not voted for that majority. Whatever we think of things such as the Iraq war or the poll tax, they are examples of strong government, but I argue strongly that they are not examples of good government.

There is an interesting question—there will be different views about this in the Chamber—of whether our political culture has shaped our electoral system, or whether our electoral system has shaped our political culture, but I worry a lot about the direction of political culture and how we deal with political problems. We are going further and further down a route towards a deep, reductive tribalism that has forgotten the purpose of politics, which is to come together and solve problems. Instead of that, we are seeing a degree of the partisanship that the system is based on, but it is getting more and more absurd.

For instance, a series of interesting Budget proposals have been leaked from the Cabinet. All those proposals would breach the fiscal responsibility charter of the former Chancellor George Osborne, which many Conservatives would have voted for. It was obviously nonsense, but it was trapped in that two-party system that is propelled by the electoral system. We have seen people elected to this House who have expressed strong views that they will not even talk to people on the other side or be friendly with them. That is a completely false direction for this country to go in, and at the heart of it is an electoral system that asks people not to vote positively for things, but to vote against things. That is all that first past the post can do.

We all would find problems with any system—there is no perfect system—but there are clear examples in the rest of the world that have far better democratic systems. Scotland and Wales have better democratic systems than the one we use for general elections in the UK.

[Jonathan Edwards]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech and many valid points. He mentioned Wales. The Wales Act 2017 empowered the National Assembly to devise its own electoral system. Will he join me in calling on all political parties in the National Assembly to use Wales as an incubator to bring forward genuine electoral reform for the UK?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

The devolved nations have led the way on a whole range of policy issues, simply because they have a more representative political culture.

Finance Bill

Debate between Jonathan Edwards and Jonathan Reynolds

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 11th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman agrees that one of the biggest economic challenges that we face is the huge and gross geographical wealth inequality within the British state. Is the Labour position that fiscal devolution has no part to play in the strategy for dealing with geographical wealth inequalities?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

The hon. Gentleman is not correct in that assessment. I certainly agree with him that regional disparity in the UK is one of the principal economic challenges that we face, but I do not agree that the solution is a race to the bottom in corporation tax rates between different parts of the UK. That would be neither effective nor the right way forward, and it would almost certainly fail to address the problems that he raises.

I put it to the House that new clause 2 is a sensible, pragmatic and effective proposal to deliver objectives that are widely shared by Members from all parts of the House: a prosperous Northern Ireland, an effective partnership across the nations of this country and a competitive UK with strong public finances supporting quality public services.