Finance Bill

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

The hon. Gentleman was a Member of the House in the early days of the previous Government, so he knows all about rolling up numbers. I could roll up the numbers for how much will be raised from the bank levy—I do not have the details in front of me, but we would get to about £8 billion—but I am not sure that that is a terribly helpful way of approaching things.

The corporation tax reduction is just one part of the wider package to build a private sector-led recovery. Instead of increasing the small profit rate by 1%, we will cut it to 20% in next year’s Bill, which will benefit some 850,000 companies from April 2011. We are increasing the threshold at which employers start to pay national insurance contributions and have announced a package of support for small businesses. The package will also include a reduction in the writing-down value of plant and machinery allowances to 18% and a reduction in the annual investment allowance to £25,000. That will still provide for allowances that are broadly in line with depreciation, while the annual investment allowance will still cover the annual qualifying expenditure of 95% of businesses. Furthermore, we are reducing the main rate of corporation tax this year and changing allowances in 2012. We are giving companies a timing benefit that will form part of the £13 billion extra that will be invested as a result of the changes.

The third and final area that we are addressing is fairness. Clause 2 increases the rate for capital gains tax for higher rate payers to 28%. That progressive change will substantially reduce the incentive for individuals to disguise their income as a return on capital. It will ensure that the appropriate rate of taxation is paid, which is fair in itself.

Avoidance is a significant issue for the Government and it has been a significant topic throughout the Bill’s passage. It was raised with reference to corporation tax and capital gains tax, and it is the target of clauses 8 and 9, which protect about £200 million of revenue a year. I assure the House that the Government are absolutely committed to tackling avoidance and evasion robustly.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Gauke]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I am keen to press on.

We have inherited plans to limit tax relief on pension savings for the wealthiest. Under the approach in the Finance Act 2010, individuals on the highest incomes who were able to make very large pension contributions could have continued to get pensions tax relief worth up to £51,000 a year. We have concerns about the complexity and fairness of the previous Government’s approach. Given the state of the public finances, we cannot ignore the £4 billion or more of revenue that the policy was set to raise, and as we are committed to protecting the public finances, the alternative needs to raise no less revenue than the existing plans. We are looking at an approach whereby the annual tax relief available will be restricted to less than half that under the previous Government’s plan, which will significantly curtail the ability of the super-rich to benefit from pensions tax relief.

We have touched on annuities. We want to enable people to make more flexible use of their pension savings. We intend to end the obligation to annuitise by the age of 75 from April 2011, and last week we launched a consultation on the details of the change. Before a new system is introduced in next year’s Finance Bill, this Bill puts in place interim measures that will delay such decisions until an individual is 77. That will prevent anyone turning 75 on or after Budget day from being disadvantaged by having to make a decision before the new rules are in place.

The Bill is at the heart of the Budget changes that are necessary for this country’s tax system. Unlike our predecessors, we do not believe that, in a pit of debt, we should still be digging. We do not believe that we can just borrow to pay for front-line services. In the words of the previous Chancellor:

“If we are not credible in what we do and say, people will assume there will be more borrowing or huge tax rises to come.”

Our predecessors failed that test but we are succeeding.

In the words of the shadow Business Secretary, we cannot wish the deficit problem away. The Bill will promote enterprise. It is progressive and responsible, and I commend it to the House.

[Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

I am very grateful for the opportunity to say a few things in conclusion to our debate about the panic Budget that has been sped through this place. To all those who have observed these debates about the Budget and the Finance Bill, it is now clear that the Budget is born not of economic necessity, but of political anxiety—anxiety that, if Liberal Democrat Members are allowed to see any more evidence of the damage that the Budget is doing to confidence and growth, they will remember where they buried their Keynesian tradition, disinter it and refuse the Chancellor their support.

The great question that this Budget and Finance Bill should have answered is how do we lock in the recovery that Labour left? Winning that recovery dominated our final two years of office. Not since 1945 has the world been hit by a recession on the scale of that which hit our shores in 2008. The global economy shrank by some 1% for the first time since the war, G7 economies shrank by some 3% and world trade fell by some 12%. What started as a collapse in confidence on Wall street rapidly infected the world’s financial system and triggered a disastrous domino-like collapse in confidence among markets throughout the world. No country, not least one of the world’s great trading nations, could be isolated from its effect, and we were not.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My right hon. Friend referred to the 1940s, when the deficit was massively higher than it is now. Of course, the magnificent Labour Government of 1945-51 grew their way out of problems by keeping full employment and public spending going.

[Mr Byrne]

Precisely. The Minister could not understand that point from his own Budget, but I shall explain it in more depth in a moment.

On Friday this week, we will be able to test the durability of the recovery that Labour delivered. Almost two years on from the oil price hitting $147 and the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Office for National Statistics will publish growth figures for the second quarter of 2010, which I am sure all hon. Members await with some interest. But this much we already know. The ONS has told us that our economy has grown by 0.7% since its low point last year; that growth in the first quarter of 2010 was some £8 billion larger than it was in the final quarter of 2009; and that output is growing by about £88 million a day.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research has also already estimated that output in the second quarter of this year could hit 0.7%. If that comes to pass, it will be no mean achievement, especially when our neighbours tell us precisely how hard it is to sustain recovery. In the first quarter of this year, our last quarter in office, growth in this country reached 0.3%. In Germany, it was lower; in France, it was lower still; in the eurozone, it was lower; and Spain, Ireland and Greece are all forecast to see negative growth this year. Labour is proud to be the party of the recovery, and the question that the Bill should have answered is, how do we guarantee the recovery’s future?

We are proud to have been the party that brought together a global response to the recession. Here in London, countries from throughout the world agreed a plan, including a £1.1 trillion support package, that helped to ensure the revision of global growth from 1.9% last year up to 3.5% this year. We are very proud to be the party that stopped the British banking system collapsing in the face of its exposure to melting international credit systems, and we are very proud to be the party that put in place here at home the most comprehensive recovery plan to protect people’s jobs from the axe, homes from repossession and employers from liquidation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Eagle]

I will not give way because the hon. Gentleman has not been here for the entire debate; if he had been, I would have done.

We see in this Finance Bill that the Tory-led Government have made precisely that error with their deliberate, ideologically driven choice to go for a much more aggressive and reckless slash-and-burn strategy for public spending than the objective economic conditions, or even the bond markets themselves, required. The decision to opt for a balanced budget in four years is driven not by the objective economic conditions but by an ideologically driven political belief in a small state, a belief which is now apparently shared by the Liberal Democrats. Similarly, the decision to cut the deficit by imposing a 77% to 23% ratio of public spending cuts to tax rises is a choice driven not by the objective economic conditions but by the same belief in a small state apparently shared by the Liberal Democrats. It is a ratio of pain never before achieved in the UK, and it was not shared with the voters before the election. No mandate for this was established in the general election. Ministers have admitted that the cuts will be painful, but they have failed to acknowledge the scale of the pain that they have chosen to inflict. The apparent relish with which they choose to announce huge and ongoing cuts does them no credit whatsoever, and it will be seared into the memories of the millions of victims of their sadistic fiscal policy for years to come.

The propaganda techniques are chilling. Carefully chosen, extreme examples of excess in public expenditure are leaked by the Government to sympathetic tabloids to be highlighted in screaming headlines and make the case for more cuts. Government websites coarsen the debate still further by parading a stream of ignorant vitriol whipped up by sensationalist reporting, so it is suggested that workhouses are to be reopened, benefit claimants sterilised, and immigrants deported. If this is the nice face of the Tory party, then God help us, and shame on the Liberal Democrats for going along with it. The apocalyptic and absurd scares that they have issued about the UK economy resembling that of Greece—we heard it again today—have been not only fundamentally wrong but deeply irresponsible, and they have risked precipitating the very loss of confidence they purport to avoid.

This Finance Bill signals the biggest and most sustained public spending cuts in UK peacetime history, coupled with increases in taxes such as VAT that will directly take demand out of the economy just when recovery is fragile and still needs nurturing. That is why it is such a gamble. Labour Members are not the only ones who are deeply worried about the choices that have been made in the Bill. Following the Chancellor’s “austerity Budget”, the International Monetary Fund has just cut its growth forecast for the UK for both this year and the next. The OECD has criticised the decision to abolish the future fobs fund and other employment support packages as short-sighted and warned that the scale of job cuts in the public sector will slow down the recovery.

As a direct result of the June Budget and this Finance Bill, the now notoriously named Office for Budget Responsibility has had to revise upwards its estimates of job losses in the public sector. At the same time, it has revised downwards its growth forecasts and hoped that no one would notice that it excluded 550,000 people who work in state-owned enterprises from being in public sector employment, even though the Office for National Statistics classifies them as such: thus public sector job losses are likely to be even higher. The OBR’s prediction that the anticipated “recovery” will generate 2 million extra jobs in the private sector in just five years has caused widespread incredulity, because that target has never been achieved in the modern era. It has certainly never been achieved at a time when huge public spending cuts are likely to dampen employment prospects in the private sector and austerity measures are being imposed simultaneously in almost every developed economy in the world.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Exactly the same predictions were made about unemployment falling because of the 1979 Budget—in fact, it went up to 3 million.

[Ms Eagle]

People should learn from their economic history; I only wish that this Government would.

The OBR’s heroic assumptions about export growth and business investment also strain credibility, but Sir Alan Budd will not be around for much longer to defend his forecasts, whatever happens in the real world. One thing is clear: we cannot all export ourselves out of trouble at the same time. Because world trade has been so badly impacted by the global credit crunch, the UK has experienced a 25% devaluation of its currency without any noticeable upturn in export performance. Prime ministerial trips to China accompanied by huge cuts in Government support for new industrial activity in the UK do not seem to be the right response to this challenge.

The Finance Bill contains no strategy for growth, yet growth is the best way of dealing with any deficit. In place of a growth strategy, we see a pious, dogmatic belief—often restated today—that the private sector will miraculously spring to life and fill every space vacated by the Government. This is in the teeth of massive private sector deleveraging, damaged confidence and an ongoing lack of affordable bank lending. The huge hike in VAT will damage demand at a crucial moment. This is an example of blind economic faith—it is not a serious growth strategy. The Bill contains no hint of an alternative if this blind economic faith turns out to be misplaced. There is no fallback position if the economic gamble that the Chancellor has outlined starts to go wrong. How high will unemployment have to rise before the Chancellor looks again? Why, once more, is unemployment a price worth paying?

Finally, I want to look at who is paying for the measures contained in the Finance Bill. The Chancellor has repeatedly asserted, “We’re all in this together”, but we have to judge him by his actions rather than fine words, and his assertion of social solidarity turns out to be a cruel joke. The Finance Bill and Budget measures are regressive, not progressive. They hit the poorest hardest. The VAT hike is the regressive centrepiece of a regressive budget. The stealth move from retail prices indexation to consumer prices indexation for all benefits and all pensions takes £6 billion in savings from the poorest and most vulnerable and gives at least £50 billion, and possibly £100 billion, to employer pension schemes, at the risk of employee representatives. The losses mount year on year, for ever into the future.

Analysis has shown that the Budget takes a massive 21.7% of income from the bottom 10% of the income distribution and a mere 3.6% from the top 10%. My right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has shown that of the £8 billion net revenue raised by the measures before us, £6 billion will be raised from women and children, with only £2 billion being raised from men. Like Flashman in a tight spot, the Chancellor has chosen to put women and children first. He has put them first in the firing line, bearing the brunt of his tax rises and spending cuts.

This Finance Bill takes a huge gamble with our still fragile economic recovery. It gambles that a vicious bout of self-inflicted austerity will not tip us back into a recession or a long period of low growth, and that we will be able to export our way into growth at a time when a globally synchronised austerity signals otherwise. It is regressive, threatens social cohesion and hits the poorest hardest, and we cannot support it.