Taxation (Post-transition Period) Bill

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Anneliese Dodds

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 9th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is potentially a very, very severe impact from no deal, but, as I will go on to explain, there is already a concrete and very acute impact on our economy. I am particularly concerned about the situation for many businesses based in Northern Ireland.

This damage will be long lasting, likely to outlive even the impact of the current covid crisis. Our country cannot afford this. We have already experienced the steepest economic downturn in the G7 due to the covid crisis, and are predicted by the OECD to experience the slowest recovery in the G7. Just the prospect of a potential no-deal outcome is already leading to chaos in the midst of a pandemic. Stockpiling by companies, caused by the threat of no deal, is exacerbating supply blockages at our ports.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The economic damage that the hon. Member is talking about should a deal not be agreed would also be inflicted on the European Union, particularly certain parts of the European Union, such as the Republic of Ireland. She criticised the UK Government for the way that they have negotiated. Does she have no words of criticism for the EU negotiators in this two-way negotiation?

[Anneliese Dodds]

Of course we need application and a determination to conclude a deal on both sides; that surely is obvious. But the fact remains, as I will go on to describe, that it was the UK Government that, rather than tabling this Bill many weeks ago, which they could have done, decided to effectively retain provisions that threaten to break international law. That is on the Government’s head, and it is something that the Government must surely be responsible for.

The irresponsible approach that we have seen recently speaks to a wider pattern over the last 12 months of recklessness with public finances, broken promises to the British people and short-term thinking that is doing long-term damage to our country. The Prime Minister promised the British people that he would get Brexit done. He said he had an “oven-ready” agreement. Whatever he has got cooking ahead of his dinner with von der Leyen tonight, my message to him is to get on and deliver what was promised.

Covid-19 Economic Support Package

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Anneliese Dodds

Wednesday 14th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House believes the Government should do what it takes to support areas with additional local restrictions, currently the North of England and parts of the Midlands, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, by reforming the Job Support Scheme so it incentivises employers to keep staff on rather than letting them go; ensuring no-one is pushed into poverty when they do the right thing; providing clear, consistent and fair funding that goes hand-in-hand with the imposition of new restrictions, including using the £1.3 billion underspend on the grants fund to support local jobs; fixing gaps in support for the self-employed; and extending the ban on evictions.

We are at a critical moment for our country. Infection rates are rising, and the economic outlook is worsening. It is more vital than ever that this Government get a grip on both the health and the economic crises. There are some who seek to pit people’s health against our economy, but we all know that our country has suffered a double tragedy: the highest excess death rate in Europe and the deepest recession in the G7. The predominant reason why many expect our recovery to proceed more slowly than that in other countries is the continued severe impact of the public health crisis in the UK. It has been suggested that the Chancellor blocked proposals from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies for a circuit breaker. He can now, if he wishes to, intervene on me and set the record straight.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

May I intervene?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I asked the Chancellor to intervene on me. I am willing for another Member to, and perhaps the Chancellor will follow.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Member mentioned “a” circuit breaker, but the guidance from SAGE says that “multiple” circuit breakers might be required to bring the virus under control. How many jobs does she believe those circuit breakers would cost?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I was just about to go on to say that the Government’s current stance is costing jobs and leading to reduced business confidence. If we continue as we are, without taking control of the public health situation, we will see a worse situation for jobs and businesses in our country. It appears that that will be the only intervention that I will receive.

It is clear that blocking a circuit breaker does not make sense for the health of our population or for our economy. Government Members need a reality check. One in four people in our country are subject to localised restrictions. We have already experienced a record rise in quarterly redundancies. Without action, we face the prospect of infections rising yet again, with more and more areas coming under localised restrictions and the Government eventually being forced into more national restrictions in any case. Every week of that inaction will hit business and consumer confidence, costing more jobs and livelihoods, with more businesses going to the wall. The question is not whether we can afford a circuit breaker. The question is whether we can afford to continue with a Government who duck taking hard choices until they are forced into them and who seem unable to stand apart from their chaotic lurching from week to week to assess what our country needs and take decisive action.

That circuit break must be used to fix test and trace, devolving it to local areas, so that we can protect our NHS, get control of the virus and start building economic confidence back up again, and it must be accompanied by support for jobs and businesses. We stand ready to work with the Government to ensure that that is put in place, so that no one is pushed into poverty for doing the right thing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am one of the 5.7 million business people in this country for whom this is not a theoretical concept but an existential crisis. I listened carefully to the shadow Chancellor, the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), when she talked about business confidence. I agree with much of what she says, although probably not that much in this debate.

One thing that really damages business confidence is when you flip-flop. To say on Monday that you are willing to support a local lockdown strategy and then to say today that it has to be a national lockdown is totally wrong. That damages business confidence, and it damages consumer confidence. One thing that has bolstered business confidence has been the unprecedented levels of support we have seen from the Treasury and the Government. This is the third recession I have been through in our business, including in the years following 2008, and I have never seen support like this.

We need to be honest with people when we talk about a national lockdown and a circuit breaker. Are we talking about just one circuit breaker, one hit? The reality is that the SAGE advice says we might need multiple lockdowns, multiple circuit breakers, to keep the virus at low levels. Imagine the devastating impact on businesses and consumer confidence. The shadow Chancellor has to be honest with the business community. She needs to say that this might mean—[Interruption.] I did not hear it in her speech. She needs to say that this might mean multiple lockdowns, multiple hits and multiple costs to the taxpayer, and a devastating impact on businesses. A circuit breaker will buy 28 days. It will put us back in the same place in 28 days’ time—that is what it says. Please be honest with the people. What I would like to hear from the Opposition are some ideas on how we keep the economy open. I have not heard anything from them about how we tackle this public health crisis while keeping the economy open. I have not heard that.

If we cannot look to the Opposition, we should look to best practice internationally. There is no European country I am aware of that has gone back to a national lockdown. The leader in managing this crisis is Germany, which uses not just a local lockdown policy but a sub-local lockdown policy. It closed down Gütersloh and Warendorf, with 300,000 people per district. That is what we should look at. We should stop looking at wide regional lockdowns and look at sub-local lockdowns. The hon. Lady is looking at a national lockdown, which is the antithesis of what we are talking about.

[Anneliese Dodds]

I regret the fact that the hon. Member, for whom I have a huge amount of respect, particularly when he campaigns on banking and other issues, has not listened to what the Opposition have consistently said about test, trace and isolate. He is absolutely right about Germany. We wish we were in the situation where test, trace and isolate was working effectively. That would mean we could have a fine-grained response. We do not have it in the UK and that is why we need a reset to fix that system. He should be honest about that.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I agree with that, but it is not either/or. Of course we need to improve test and trace, but that should not mean we have to lock down the entire economy. That is absolutely the wrong thing.

I have three solutions. The number one thing is that we look at this on a super-local basis. We know that the rate of infection in Liverpool is 670 per 100,000. It is 60 in parts of North Yorkshire, but it varies significantly across North Yorkshire. We need to look at a district-based approach that would increase the amount of ownership and responsibility local people have for managing the crisis through peer pressure and from understanding that their actions would be effective.

I fully support having different tiers. I supported them on Monday and I support them today. Having said that, the two higher tiers do lead to a difficult situation. Bars and restaurants in tier 2, and restaurants in tier 3, are not required to close. That means they cannot access furlough support. There are two things we could do: extend the furlough support, which is a hit on the taxpayer; or, instead of coming down from six households per table, as it was last week, to one household, we could go to two households. That concession would have a very important effect for lots of pubs and restaurants, which would then be viable.

The third solution is business support. We need a new iteration of the bounce back loan scheme and the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme, which has been so successful. As my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury knows, we also need to make non-bank lenders part of that new tranche of business support. We need forbearance for SMEs. We should phase support back in, so we move VAT from 5% to 10%, and not back to 20%. We should also phase back in business rates and perhaps stamp duty.

Protection of Jobs and Businesses

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Anneliese Dodds

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. The jobs crisis that we are talking about is particularly intense in many of those communities impacted by the withdrawal of support for industries critical for the future of our country. Of course, as he mentioned, we were promised a sector-specific deal for aviation. We have not received it. We have not had the Government sitting down with the sector to work through the different scenarios and how we can plan for the future in that case. And we are not seeing the targeted wage support in aviation or, indeed, in other industries critical for the economic future that we desperately need.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

rose—

[Anneliese Dodds]

I will take one final intervention, given that it is from the Government Benches, but then I will make some progress.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am grateful. On a sector-based approach, I think that, in an interview with The Guardian, the hon. Member said that such an approach would pose challenges. Has she yet published the solution to those challenges?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I fear that the hon. Member may have missed off the end of the sentence, which is that, while it poses challenges, ultimately that does not mean that those challenges should not be stepped up to—they should be faced up to by the Government. His Government have accepted the need for some targeted support for hospitality and retail with the grants. There is also the Eat Out to Help Out scheme. Yes, there will be boundary issues. We fully accept that, but, ultimately, to govern is to lead. It is to take difficult decisions. The Government trumpet the fact that they worked with industry, with trade unions and with other stakeholders in creating the furlough scheme. They need to do that again to work through these challenges and to create the targeted system of support that is needed.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I will make some progress if the Member will permit me. He may find the answers to his questions—any further ones—in what I am going on to say.

In addition to those groups of people who I have just mentioned, we know that there are many others who are concerned about their futures working in parts of the UK that are still subject to local restrictions, or that may be subject to additional restrictions in the future. We also have huge numbers of people, as we have just been discussing, who work in sectors that are still not back to business as usual, despite their critical importance for our economic future—whether we are talking about highly skilled manufacturing or the creative industries—yet the Chancellor is ploughing ahead with this one-size-fits-all withdrawal of the income support schemes, pulling the rug from under thousands of businesses and millions of workers all at the same time, irrespective of their situation. He is doing so without any analysis, it appears, of the impact of this withdrawal on unemployment levels and the enormous long-term costs of so many people being driven out of work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The shadow Chancellor makes some fair points, particularly about working constructively with government. On that basis, should she not constructively set out her solution to these problems, rather than simply saying that the Government should solve them? Obviously, she has ideas of how to solve them, so why does she not publish solutions?

[Anneliese Dodds]

I would love it, frankly, if the Chancellor and his team wished to open talks with the Opposition, with business, with trade unions, looking at the different options that I have just set out. I know the hon. Gentleman is one who does look at detail. I have just set out a variety of different models that have been set out by business, trade unions and think tanks. We want to work with government on this. If he is signalling that he wishes that discussion to happen, I hope that his Front-Bench colleagues will take that invitation up as well. It is not just he who wishes to have that discussion with his Front-Bench team. I note that a huge number of Conservative Members want to participate in this debate, and I am keen to hear their thoughts on it. Some of their colleagues have already pronounced on it. The right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) has said that there should be

“targeted extensions to the furlough scheme beyond October.”

The hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) has said that he can see the case for it, too. How many more Conservative Members are worried, privately, about the impact on their constituents of this Chancellor pushing stubbornly ahead with his plan to take support away from everyone, all at once?

Growth Strategy

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Anneliese Dodds

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Lady makes a fair point, but she must understand the starting position. The great financial crash was much more severe in the UK in relative terms than in any other developed country.

[Anneliese Dodds]

It was more severe, for reasons that I will come back to later that relate to some of the hon. Member’s work on the balance of investment in our economy and the impact that the slowdown had particularly on our property industry, which is such a significant part of our economy and which led to that particularly severe impact. We should not forget about that.

The very slow recovery has also been in evidence when it comes to living standards. Real wages are still not, on average, at the levels they were back in 2008. That is another significant difference between the UK and many comparable nations and one that we should not forget.

I welcome some of the discussion that we have had on productivity, which underlies some of the brakes on the growth rates that we would have liked to have seen in recent years. On the drivers of our productivity issues, other nations that are highly dependent on oil revenue, for example, have not necessarily seen the same kind of slowdown in productivity growth. Norway, for example, has much lower working hours than the UK and some people have linked issues of work-life balance to productivity as well—but that is just an aside.

It is critical that we look at the points about skills that the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) rightly made. We have seen significant change to further education in recent years; major cuts have been made to colleges and sixth forms. I welcome the fact that the Government seem to be changing tack in that regard; it is absolutely critical that they do so, because when I talk to firms, the biggest issue they tend to mention is the lack of a skilled workforce, so we really need to focus on that.

We also need to talk about investment, as the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) rightly mentioned—both public and private investment. We have seen some negative developments in that regard, particularly in areas that are critical to future growth. Clean energy investments have plummeted since 2015. In 2018, annual clean energy investment was at its lowest level since 2008. There are a range of factors, but I would include the regulatory uncertainty in the sector. We have seen some big changes over time, and we need certainty.

We need to have an appropriate environment for small businesses and to encourage entrepreneurship; I agree with some of what the right hon. Member for Wokingham said about threshold effects. We need to learn from other countries. It is possible to calibrate the tax system far more closely to profits and to not have big cut-offs, such as those we have, for example, in relation to VAT. I would encourage Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to look at that as the tax collection authority—if it has the resource to do so, which is a significant issue.

On IR35, the elephant in the room is that our unemployment regulations are not calibrated with tax regulations; definitions are not the same in the two systems. I have not seen the kind of grasp of that issue that I had hoped for from the Government. IR35 and other measures are trying to plaster over some of the issues caused by the lack of consistency in definitions, but we need a longer term approach from Government.

The right hon. Member for Wokingham spoke in some detail about tax cuts. On corporation tax, some of the changes we have seen in the US have resulted from funds being moved out of tax havens—let us call a spade a spade here—but they have also resulted from much more aggressive pursuance of corporation tax equivalents by the US authorities. When it comes to the UK case—this seems to be a debate that we have just about every day in this House; I suspect that it is getting slightly boring for people reading Hansard—the evidence indicates, and commentators have said time and again, that the reduced rate of corporation tax has not led to increased growth in investment in the UK and that it has coincided with a reduction in the growth of investment and, above all, with a significant reduction in revenue, which has a knock-on impact on the possibility of boosting skills and so forth, and other drivers of productivity.

I think the UK population is very aware of that situation. The recent British Social Attitudes survey indicated that 60% of people want to see taxes boosted, if that could lead to more sustainable public finances and spending. Only 4% of people want to see them fall.

On the issue of free ports, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Derby North, we need to tread with care and look at the research and the international evidence, much of which indicates that those kinds of structures can be very good at moving economic activity around but they are not always as good at promoting new economic activity—it tends to be the factor endowment in different areas that will promote development sustainably, the level of skills in the workforce and the level of investment in plant and so on. I very much enjoyed the hon. Member’s speech, particularly her focus on regional disparities; the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton also concentrated on that. We need to go much further. It is a shame that we have not seen a commitment from the Government to shift economic activity that is under their control to other areas. Labour said during the election that we would like to see part of the Bank of England being moved up to Birmingham. I hope that we might see some more bold measures coming from the UK Government in that regard.

In relation to the claims that tax cuts will necessarily promote investment in economic activity, when it comes to the drivers of entrepreneurship among less well-off people, it is actually regulatory measures that can really make the difference—for example, minimum wages and rights at work.

Finally, on the comments by the right hon. Member for Wokingham about the drivers of risks in the world economy and the activities of the Bank, I was surprised that he did not make any mention of the impact of tariffs and so on in China and the US on the automotive industry. Most commentators would say that they played a significant part, and they would also talk about the fact that the wiggle room for policy activity by the Bank is of course reduced by the very low interest rates that we have. That is a significant issue for the UK, where we have that rather unbalanced situation with so much economic activity tied up in property.