Coronavirus Grant Schemes: Fraud

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I know that the hon. Lady’s Select Committee is conducting an in-depth inquiry. I believe that the second permanent secretary and others appeared before the Committee last week, and I look forward to its report.

I can absolutely clarify that we do see the distinction between a credit loss and fraud. What we are talking about here is: what are the most effective mechanisms, and over what timeframe, to get that money back? Also, we have received moneys back from, for example, the furlough scheme: moneys and grants that were made in error. So it is a complicated picture. I am certainly not suggesting from this Dispatch Box that the Government are writing anything off, or do not grasp the distinction between a credit loss and fraud. This needs to be tackled, but it needs to be tackled in a time and money-efficient way. Obviously the law of diminishing returns begins to apply after a certain point, and we will again by led by HMRC and its excellent advice as we pursue the matter.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Government are saying that fraudsters will still be relentlessly pursued. If, heaven forbid, the Minister ever had to implement such a scheme in the future, would he regard it as a satisfactory result to know that 99% of these huge sums of money went to the intended recipients?

[John Glen]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. He helpfully highlights that many of these grants and schemes were very effective in getting money to the right people in a timely way. I spoke earlier to an official from HMRC, who said, “We managed to get some of the money out in six days. If we had spent more time designing in more verification, we could have made it watertight. That would have taken several months and many businesses would have gone to the wall.” That was the dilemma we faced. I am not saying we got everything right, but it was certainly done in all good conscience to try to get the balance right.

Budget: Pre-announcement of Provisions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Ensuring that we can move out of the shadow of the public sector pay freeze is obviously something that we are all glad to be able to do. The Chancellor will set out the full details of how that will operate in his statement tomorrow.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Minister is one of the nice guys in Parliament and richly deserved his promotion. What he did not deserve was to be put in this position by an untenable policy. I have to ask him the question: why is it important, right or necessary to share Budget information with the media before it is shared with this House, where it can be subjected to proper scrutiny, and will he give an undertaking on behalf of the Treasury team to stop doing it?

[Mr Clarke]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his kind words. As a Treasury team—indeed, as a Government—we are all committed to ensuring that this House is fully respected. That remains at the core of our work. As a Member of this House, I take that very seriously, and so does the Chancellor. Clearly, when we set out certain announcements, we try to provide some specific information about what the Government are seeking to achieve with those measures. We have respected absolutely and in full the stricture that we should not be talking about tax measures or adjustments, and that is something that I can commit we will absolutely continue to do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to encourage home ownership.

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to encourage home ownership.

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)]

The Government are committed to helping people own their own home. Our new mortgage guarantee scheme is increasing the availability of mortgages for credit-worthy households who only have a 5% deposit, helping them realise their dream of home ownership. The lifetime ISA provides a bonus to those under 40 saving towards a home, worth up to £450,000.

[Dr Lewis]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Last week, The Sunday Times detailed the colossal sums imposed on ordinary people by rapacious freeholders and reckless developers. Why should anyone risk purchasing a lease on a residential flat if we fail as a Government to protect innocent leaseholders from bearing the costs of defective extra storeys or defective extra cladding forced on them by those who are actually responsible for such terrible defects?

[John Glen]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. The Government are investing more than £5 billion in building safety, including an additional £3.5 billion announced this year for the remediation of unsafe cladding for all leaseholders living in high-rise residential buildings. We are also introducing a new tax on the UK residential property development sector and a new levy on developers of certain high-rise buildings to help pay for cladding remediation costs.

Finance Bill

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 24th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. The point I am trying to make to my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary and others on the Treasury Bench is a fairly gentle one: this is something that we can rectify, and we have the capacity to rectify it. We should think of what will happen if it goes much further. We should think of the loan charge and the huge human problems that were caused by that and the attempt by the Treasury to use retrospective legislation to grab money back. Who got hammered in all that? Not the organisations that were doing these things, but the individuals who were led to believe they were in the right set-up. It is always going to be them who get hammered. I thought the purpose of Government was to protect the vulnerable and deal with those who are abusing them.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

It really is enormously frustrating for those of us who, time and again, have made representations to Treasury Ministers on behalf of victims of the loan charge, only to be knocked back by ripostes relating to tax avoidance schemes, that now, when people who have suffered from the loan charge are urging colleagues on this side of the House and no doubt on the other side as well to take steps to ensure that people are not trapped in these schemes in the future, the Government do not want to give them that added layer of protection, so they seem to be wanting to hit them in both directions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

As I have said previously, the Government are committed to co-operating fully with all reviews on these matters. I do not accept what the hon. Lady has said with respect to the schemes that the Government have put forward over the past 14 months. Her constituency has had £16.7 million in business grants and 1,206 bounce-back loans totalling £30 million. In addition, 12,700 of her constituents have benefited from the furlough scheme, and 2,000 have benefited from the self-employed income support scheme. That is a significant contribution to help her constituents.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

How many promoters and operators of schemes subject to the loan charge have been prosecuted for promoting and operating those schemes.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)]

Promotion or enablement of a tax avoidance scheme is not, in and of itself, a criminal offence, as we have regularly debated in this House. However, there have been numerous cases in which Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has made arrests or prosecuted people in relation to fraud, and particularly in relation to disguised remuneration loan-busting schemes.

[Dr Lewis]

My understanding is that very few promoters of these schemes have been prosecuted. Is it not rather shocking that so many people who were mis-sold the schemes on the basis that they were perfectly legitimate are being pursued so relentlessly, while the promoters are in some cases being allowed to continue their work unhindered?

[Jesse Norman]

The suggestion that promoters are being allowed to do just anything is quite wrong. If my right hon. Friend had looked closely at the current Finance Bill, he would have seen a range of measures in that Bill alone aimed at preventing the promotion of tax avoidance schemes and at the disclosure of tax avoidance schemes, as well as other measures. HMRC takes such issues extremely seriously, and that is why the avoidance tax gap fell from £3.7 billion in 2005-06 to £1.7 billion in 2018-19—a fall of more than 50%.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I cannot comment on ongoing negotiations; we remain committed to a constructive dialogue with our European partners regarding the memorandum of understanding, and I can confirm that those discussions are under way. With regard to financial services, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman saw the announcement of our listings review. I thank Jonathan Hill for his excellent work. We will take forward those reforms together with the Financial Conduct Authority to ensure that the UK remains one of the most attractive places anywhere in the world for companies to raise the finance they need to empower their future growth.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The food and drink wholesalers on whom the hospitality industry depends are still excluded from business rates relief, and the additional restriction grants—which do help some of them substantially—are awarded entirely at the discretion of individual local authorities. Can that particular postcode lottery be replaced by a directive to ensure much greater consistency in awarding these vital grants?

[Rishi Sunak]

My right hon. Friend has raised this industry with me multiple times, and he is right to do so. Although some food and drink wholesalers have been significantly impacted, others—for example, those that predominately serve the public sector—have not been, so I do not think it would be fair to provide blanket support. He talked about a postcode lottery. The other side of that coin is empowering local government and local decision making, and I believe that is the right approach. We have announced £425 million of additional discretionary support to local authorities, but I am sure that his raising the issue in the House in this way will give his local council and others the steer they need to direct support to this important industry.

Equitable Life

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

An 84-year-old widow in my constituency writes as follows:

“In the year 2000 our pension was £11,120, it is now £3,187. When my husband died in 2015 it was reduced by one third, so this accounts for some of the loss. It continues to go down annually. With inflation, of course, my loss is even greater than this. The state pension increases because of inflation, yet the Government give no consideration to EL annuitants who invested savings to ensure a decent standard of living in retirement.

When we heard that EL were having problems we were not that worried as we assumed the Government would step in. Why was not the same concern given to EL victims as to those now suffering financially because of the covid pandemic? The effect on us is just as great, and probably more long term. It is twenty years since this debacle began.

My life is very different to that we planned when we put our savings with EL: no holidays, no treats.”

This is the sort of issue that gets politics and politicians a bad name, although 280 Members of this House have been trying through the good auspices of the all-party group on Equitable Life policyholders to put matters right.

In his able introduction to the motion, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) referred to the miscalculation for one pensioner who, it was said, was due £17 when the actual figure was over £8,500. He could also have referred to another mis-calculation discovered by the Equitable Members Action Group: £58 was awarded, instead of over £7,000.

When mistakes are being made on this scale and of this magnitude, it stands to reason that the Treasury should not be sheltering behind any sort of argument or excuse as to how these sums are calculated. The methodology should be out there, and it should be capable of objective independent verification; it should not be necessary for appeals of this sort to go forward. [Interruption.]

My hon. Friend the Minister, chuntering from a sedentary position, anticipates that I was about to come to him next, and despite his obvious dissatisfaction with the point I have just made, I would like to say that he is a very sincere and fair-minded fellow, but he is the latest in a long line of Ministers who have had to defend the indefensible.

On interrogating my own website, I find that the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury in June 2010 was Mr David Gauke, and he said then:

“The coalition Government have pledged to make fair and transparent payment to Equitable Life policyholders, through an independently designed payment scheme, for their relative loss as a result of regulatory failure.”—[Official Report, 8 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 167.]

I said to him at the time how glad I was that that was going to happen. A little later, however, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Mark Hoban, had to defend the fact that it appeared that only a fraction of the losses were to be paid. I know that the ombudsman said that it would not be a matter of the entire sum being paid, but who can honestly believe that paying just 22% of a loss is a fair outcome? Both parties are to blame. Like me, the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen), was elected in 2010 on a manifesto pledge to settle this matter. It needs to be settled, and that has not yet happened.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)]

Let me start, as others have done, by acknowledging the role of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), his long-standing work on the issue and his success in securing the debate. I also need to declare an interest, as I did when I responded to the debate on 31 January 2019: my late father was an investor in Equitable Life and, therefore, I am keenly aware of the history and the importance of the issue to all concerned.

As we have heard and grasped again today, this is a complex and technical subject, the history of which has been very well documented over many years. I should also remind Members that the Equitable Life payment scheme closed to new claims over five years ago, so nothing has changed since that previous debate two years ago. Many of the speeches made today have covered the long and sad history of this matter. I do not propose to revisit all of that this afternoon. I do, however, want to remind hon. Members that the Government took more action than any of their predecessors to resolve this issue and committed significantly more funding than any other.

I appreciate that some investors remain disappointed by the steps that we took and would like to see further funds made available, but the Government have been clear and consistent in saying that this issue is closed and no further money will be paid out. This is in line with the ombudsman’s report, which was explicit about having no expectation of the full amount being paid.

[Dr Lewis]

Will the Minister give way?

[John Glen]

I will not, because of time. Indeed, the ombudsman wrote to the APPG to clarify that position. Today, we have heard additional representations on the transparency and accuracy of the payments made by the scheme. I heard very clearly that point from my right hon. Friend and his reference to me during the debate, and I shall respond to that now.

First, the Treasury published the calculation methodology in full in 2011, as well as a simplified explanation to assist members of the scheme who were anxious about how it would work, with worked examples of the calculation. These explain how every payment made by the scheme was calculated. In addition, the Treasury has also incurred actuarial fees well in excess of £100,000, answering the questions reasonably posed by the actuarial representative of the Equitable Members Action Group, in an effort to ensure that there was maximum transparency to that group and to those members who were concerned, but no errors were found in the methodology. The group confirmed to their members that the payments to annuitants were accurate, and all this was set out in detail to the Public Accounts Committee in 2018.

Some hon. Members have spoken about policyholders who have received increased payments from the scheme, but given the closure of the scheme to new claims, I can only assume that these are historical cases. The Treasury is not aware of any corrected payments having been made to policyholders since the scheme closed, but I recognise that it may be helpful to go into some more detail on this point. The most critical determinant of the value of any payment is the input data received from Equitable itself, including payments in, payments out and the type of policy bought. Actuaries checked this data carefully and made any obvious corrections automatically before payments were made. But then the scheme also gave policyholders the opportunity to verify their own input data, which would be a significant driver of any errors, and where an error was found, the scheme corrected it and recalculated the payment. That is likely to have been what happened in specific cases that Members have raised today, and I believe that they show that the system that the scheme established to ensure accurate payments worked well.

The Government have taken significant action to resolve this issue and to balance the expectations of the policyholder with the needs of the taxpayer. The scheme was fully transparent, as I have set out. We published the calculation methodology in full. We made significant resources available to explain it. And we put systems in place to ensure that where there were errors in that input data and, therefore, payments, they were remedied swiftly. I appreciate investors’ desire that the scheme should pay out more, but the Government’s position has always been clear and consistent, both since the original announcement back in 2010 and since the scheme was wound down over five years ago. I am afraid that that position remains and will not change.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Ind)]

[Mr Speaker]

Self-employed Persons: Financial Support

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I refer to my earlier comments. We are trying to target the support towards those who are in need, in a way that is operationally as deliverable as possible, mindful of the issues that have been raised. We also want to accommodate the other point that colleagues from across the House have raised, namely that we must ensure that those who have legitimate needs are not excluded from the measures.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Will Ministers consider suspending the application of the loan charge for the period of this emergency, thus stopping the hounding of the self-employed people who were the subject of an important debate in this place last week?

[Steve Barclay]

I can provide a degree of reassurance to my right hon. Friend that the self-assessment has been deferred from July to August. That is one of the areas where the Chancellor has taken action to address concerns.

Loan Charge 2019: Sir Amyas Morse Review

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I do. The hon. Lady tempts me into a political point, because the Blair Government were the most active promoter of these schemes, but she is right in general.

When something is as unclear as this tax law obviously was, we do not take the date of resolution from the first date that HMRC wins—we do not keep going until we get the answer that the Government want. We take it from the day it is finally resolved in the Supreme Court. The case was not finally and definitively settled by the Supreme Court until 2017, when it found in HMRC’s favour on the Rangers, Dextra and Sempra cases. The Government—this relates to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West—then passed further legislation to clarify the law. Even after the court case, they passed legislation to clarify the law. If it was so clear, why did we need a new law in 2017? That is the fundamental point.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making an unanswerable case in logic, but I would like to put another political point to him. The cause of tax avoidance is not normally associated with such parties as the Labour party or the Liberal Democrats, but I am sure he would acknowledge that Members from both those parties have played a leading role in trying to put this injustice right.

[Mr Davis]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I started by saying that this is not a political issue; it is an issue of honour. As we would expect from our House—one of the greatest Parliaments in the world, if not the greatest—all sides take part in defending that honour.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Maybe the thesaurus wasn’t clear.

[Mr Davis]

Yes, I will send HMRC a copy of Microsoft’s thesaurus. Not only that, but in paragraph 3.8 of his report, Sir Amyas states:

“The Review’s legal advisers found that there was no precedent for that element of the design.”

That is the retroactive, retrospective or backward-looking element. There was no legal precedent for that design. I hope, frankly, that the Government will now stop playing with words and finally concede that this is indeed a retrospective measure—an unprecedented retrospective measure.

The only just, fair and rational resolution is to remove the retrospective nature of the loan charge and set the cut-off date when the law became clear—when the Supreme Court finally settled the matter in 2017 and when the Government felt it necessary to legislate to make clear what they meant in the first place. That is why, as I made clear, if the Government do not act to address this issue, Parliament—all of us who take this very seriously—will have to act for them and make clear that, in the future, HMRC can under no circumstances act retrospectively. If we cannot solve this, here comes a Finance Bill. I suggest that the Minister should make one simple adjustment to his plans before they are published: change December 2010 to July 2017. That would resolve the issue. It would lift enormous pressure off 50,000 of our constituents, and it would put the Government in a morally defensible, justifiable and decent position.

Tax law is the only part of English law where “innocent until proven guilty” does not apply. If HMRC tells us we owe it money, then, until we prove otherwise, we owe it money. It is therefore very important that the law is clear—that it is not subject to reinterpretation by subsequent Governments and it does not move with social mores or whatever; it is simply clear. That is what we have to do. In the interests of natural justice and the financial and mental wellbeing of thousands of our constituents, it is time for the Government to change their mind and remove this harrowing burden from the 50,000 people who have been caught by it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

During business questions before this debate, I asked about the perennial issue of war widows whose pensions were stopped because they remarried or cohabited, and we were told in no uncertain terms that those pensions would not be reinstated retrospectively. On 6 February, I tabled a question to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who is present, about the apparent difference between the approach to war widows, who will not get retrospective pensions, and people who will be hit retroactively by the loan charge. I was told in the reply that the loan charge is not retrospective. We now know that the reason it is not retrospective is that it is retroactive, even if the two things are exactly the same.

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) for taking the initiative over several months to try to put this right, to the all-party parliamentary group ably led by the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey), and to our former colleague, Greg Mulholland, who has done a great deal of background research in support.

My understanding of the situation can be summarised as follows. First, uncertainties arising from IR35 legislation led tax experts to approve umbrella company loan schemes. Secondly, many self-employed public sector workers, among others, had no idea that they were being paid by means of such loans. Thirdly, if HMRC had been doing its job properly, it would have sanctioned the purveyors of those schemes and warned the victims, as soon as they sent in their first annual returns, that they were making themselves liable for charges.

Fourthly—this is quite incredible—such schemes are still being sold to thousands of people who clearly still have no idea what is waiting for them from HMRC further down the line. Fifthly, the Morse review’s decision to exempt people affected prior to 2010 leaves people who were bullied into making large payments relating to the years before 2010 unable to get those settlements rescinded. People actually paid money before the Morse review for a period that has now been exempted, and they could probably negotiate better settlements, if any were still needed, than those for which they paid money that they cannot now get back, because they cannot reopen the negotiation.

Sixthly, people acted in good faith on the best professional advice that they could get. They should not have been left in blissful ignorance for years on end by a Government body that is now playing catch-up. Because of the time constraints, I will not go through the harrowing personal testimonies, but will stick to a couple more theoretical points and then conclude.

Seventhly, it has been pointed out that there was something called part 7A ITEPA—part 7A of the Income Tax (Earnings and Pensions) Act 2003—which came into effect in December 2010, and this has been cited as justifying the decision for the loan charge to apply from 2010 onwards. However, I am advised by Alan Williams FCA, a constituent as well as a highly qualified professional, that this does not apply to the self-employed, so the self-employed who were so often the victims of this set-up ought not to be caught by a provision—by the assumed knowledge of a provision—that did not, in any case, apply to them.

An eighth point is that the loan charge is not, in any case, full and final settlement, and therefore does not close open years. Even those paying the loan charge will see HMRC continuing to pursue further sums for so-called protected years in which loans were received. The recommendation of Mr Williams is that those accepting the loan charge should be afforded finality by making the loan charge full and final settlement.

I come to the conclusion that HMRC fell down on the job. It was asleep at the wheel. It bullied the victims, and let the villains who created these schemes get away with it. HMRC in this case is not just a bully; it is a negligent bully. The Government should know when they are beaten both morally and intellectually, stop flogging this dead horse and finally do the right thing.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friends the Members for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) for securing this debate today, and I thank colleagues on both sides of the House for their contributions. It is a measure of the effect they perceive on their constituents that, in these circumstances, they are here in such numbers.

The outbreak of covid-19 has created extraordinary circumstances, and it is important to say up front that the Government are keeping the situation under close review, as elsewhere, and will take a proportionate and reasonable approach to anyone covered by the loan charge who is unable to file their return by 30 September. That date has been moved back to give people enough time to respond to the Morse report and its recommendations, but the Government will insist that HMRC takes a proportionate and reasonable approach to anyone covered by the loan charge who is unable to file their return by 30 September.

Anyone who believes they may be affected by this should please contact HMRC as soon as possible. Equally, we must recognise that HMRC’s workforce may well be affected by the outbreak. Where appropriate, HMRC has made it clear that it will take steps to support anyone who has been disadvantaged by delays at its end as a result of covid-19. As the House will know, HMRC has already established a helpline to support any businesses and individuals affected. The hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) raised that issue, and I can confirm the helpline has now been in place for some time and has an expert and supportive staff behind it.

As this debate has made clear, the loan charge, and with it the wider issue of using disguised remuneration schemes to avoid tax, has been the subject of public concern and considerable controversy. Let us be clear that tax is never popular, and my colleagues and I recognise the strength of feeling and sympathise with those who may be subject to the charge. Today’s motion reflects some of the arguments and concerns expressed by colleagues that the loan charge is retrospective and unjust and that the law was not settled, it is claimed, until 2017. If I may, I will deal with each of those charges in turn.

First, however, we need to be clear what we are talking about. Disguised remuneration is a term of art—it is a fancy term—but the House should be under no illusion as to what it amounts to. Such schemes are a form of contrived tax avoidance in which people are paid in the form of a loan with no interest and no intention or requirement to pay the loan back.

[Dr Lewis]

If it were so clear and the schemes were so contrived, why did HMRC not point that out to people at an early stage, so that they would have seen what they were letting themselves become vulnerable to?

[Jesse Norman]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the question. All he needs to do is attend to the detail of the Morse report, in which Sir Amyas Morse goes through the efforts made at that time, before and after 2010, in some detail. That is the basis for the judgment that he reaches about the appropriate relief.