National Insurance Contributions (Termination Awards and Sporting Testimonials) Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Kirsty Blackman and Thelma Walker

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Thelma Walker]

Q And there are conversations to be had with the trade unions about this.

Robert Jenrick: As I said, we have consulted on this and I believe that they took part. They have had an opportunity to have their views known and listened to by the Treasury, as have business groups.

[Kirsty Blackman]

Q Moving on to sporting testimonials, I am not somebody who goes to a huge number of live sports matches of any kind. How much do people generally pay for a ticket to a sporting testimonial?

Robert Jenrick: There is no easy answer. There is immense variation in events; they vary from a sporting testimonial at Wembley stadium for a premiership footballer to ones at my local football club in Newark for a player who has retired after a 10-year career. You see a complete range of prices for sporting events. We have evidence on the amount raised by the average sporting testimonial that is affected by the Bill from a piece of work that HMRC and the Treasury did in 2013. I believe it was £72,000. Obviously, many much smaller testimonials go below that, such as the one I have just described in the small club in my constituency. Finding the evidence on more substantial testimonials is not easy, because there is no central point of collection for it, but after doing a trawl for evidence in the public domain, we came to the conclusion that the amount is about £72,000 a year. As you will probably have seen, there is a threshold in the Bill of £100,000, so the vast majority of sporting testimonials will not be caught by this measure.