NHS Staff Pay

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Nigel Mills

Monday 8th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to the final question, from Nigel Mills.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con) [V]]

Will the Minister confirm that the public sector pay review body can take into account the exceptional service and sacrifice of our nurses and medical staff over the last year, and that if it recommends a higher pay rise than 1%, the Government will look at funding that from new resources and not have to scrimp and save elsewhere in NHS to fund the difference?

[Helen Whately]

I agree: our NHS workforce—in fact, our whole health and social care workforce—have done a phenomenal job through the pandemic and, we should not forget, continue to do so. I will not pre-empt the recommendations that we will receive from the pay review body, but I assure my hon. Friend that we will absolutely consider them carefully before coming to a decision.

Covid-19: Economic Package

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Nigel Mills

Tuesday 12th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Let us go over to Derbyshire now to Nigel Mills.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con) [V]]

I thank the Chancellor for his announcement today, which is exactly what Amber Valley businesses have been asking for. Is there any way he can allow them to bring back some employees part-time, earlier than his extension, so that they can perhaps reopen their businesses next month rather than having to wait until a later date?

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Nigel Mills

Wednesday 16th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills]

The leaders of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire have shown ambition in trying to find a deal that works outside the core cities, but there are always challenges, in areas where people do not all look to one city, in working out whether closer working or more competition is the right way forward. I think there is also a lack of trust in Derbyshire and a feeling that a Greater Nottingham bid would centralise too much in Nottinghamshire. A bid that covers three cities and three counties would look less focused on the biggest city and take a more strategic and sensible approach that could help the whole region to compete with neighbouring regions. To be fair, however, there has been a lot of ambition already to bring the counties together. We just need to find a situation that works. That we had to change the name from D2N2 to East Midlands and then to North Midlands suggests we have not got the geography right.

I come to a couple of areas on which major changes have been announced. The first is the pensions system. The Chancellor announced some welcome changes in the Budget. I like the idea of the Help to Save scheme—we appear to have help for everything now—to give people on low incomes a 50% bonus if they can save a certain amount for two years or longer, and I like the idea of the lifetime ISA and making pension saving a bit more flexible so that people can save when they can and then, if they need to—if they want to buy a house or need to do some repairs, or if they fall out of work and want to live on their savings—draw down the money and put it back later. That sort of system is more flexible, is better suited to how people live and can help people to manage the ebbs and flows in their financial situation.

We need to stand back and ask, “What are we trying to do in using taxpayers’ money to help people save?” We are in the slightly strange situation of compelling people—generally those on low incomes—to enrol on to a pension scheme, hoping they do not opt out and then giving them roughly a 25% bonus from the Exchequer on what goes into that scheme. We have now produced another savings vehicle—Help to Save—whereby we give them a 50% bonus if they save a certain amount for a certain period. For some people on low incomes, it might be better to be enrolled on to the latter—they would have a more flexible savings pot with a bigger taxpayer-funded bonus—than a pension scheme that locks the money away for a long time, which has high charges and which they cannot use flexibly when they need to.

We ought to consider giving employers the choice of auto-enrolling people on to the lifetime ISA, which might be a more flexible and attractive solution for people on low wages—the ones generally in auto-enrolment—who we are trying to help to save and have the right savings at the right time in their lives. We are going in the right direction, but we need to make sure that what we are strongly encouraging—not compelling—people to do makes sense now that there are different vehicles on the market.

The pensions dashboard, which is hidden away in the Red Book, will be of great use in getting the industry to produce one place where people can go to see what they have in their pensions and savings. It will mean they can see what they can have in their retirement and what more they need. I welcome the move to make that happen. It has long been talked about, and we have to assume it can be done, given how IT is used these days. I look forward to seeing it happen.

I want to make a few remarks about the corporation tax changes. There are some welcome measures here to crack down on tax avoidance and evasion, and I hope they can all be made to work as effectively as they can. We can do more to give the public confidence that our large businesses are complying with tax requirements. My sense is that most of them do, and it is only a small proportion that go in for the aggressive avoidance that we cannot accept. I urge the Government to look at the idea of making large companies publish their corporation tax returns when they file their statutory accounts, so that we can actually see in some high-level way how much tax each company says it owes and how they have got from what is in their accounts to the cash tax bill.

Given the amount of disclosures of their actual accounts we require from companies, this would not put much sensitive information in the public domain. The principle of taxpayer confidentiality applies to individuals but should not apply to large companies, which might disclose their income in any case. I believe this would bring greater confidence and it would show, I hope, that most of those companies are not doing anything that is not acceptable.

I welcome the changes to try to expand how withholding tax works on royalties. Our rules in that area have been somewhat outdated and they do not apply to all forms of royalty. Extending them to certain other payments and trying to ensure that we actually collect the tax has to make sense. We should be careful to draw this wide enough to ensure that we catch things such as know-how payments or payments for access to recipes or whatever else companies will try to say their payments are. If it is not a payment for a tangible service or product, it probably ought to fall in the royalty regime and the withholding tax ought to apply.

I am not entirely sure how we will get this through our tax treaty network or the EU interest in royalties directive without having to give zero rates to nearly everyone we pay royalties to. I guess the measures announced for how we deal with situations where royalties have flowed through a regime that we would accept into one about which we have concerns, particularly about how to ensure we collect the tax in those situations need to be worked through.

I welcome, too, the proposals to simplify loss release for companies that are having to spread them across a group of companies. Five years ago, I tabled an amendment to the Finance Bill to try to argue that the Government should look at a group tax return so that large groups would file one tax return for all their companies, rather than having to file many dozens. I thought that would help to tackle tax avoidance by taking away the scope for funding arrangements between those companies that do not have any economic effect. If we are to simplify how companies use losses, it would be easier to let them file one tax return to show their group profit, and have one loss offset, rather than try to find a way for a group to calculate these things in a strange way further confusing HMRC. I think HMRC will benefit from knowing exactly how much profit a group is declaring in one return, so that it can then be compared with real turnover.

The announced interest restrictions are a sensible idea. We have moved past a situation in which we can justify allowing large companies to borrow in the UK, claim tax relief for profits not earned here without paying tax and dividends that come back. We have to be careful to do this right. We have attracted a lot of head offices here by the generous exemption we chose to give. We do not want to lose them all, but we also do not want to make infrastructure spending far more expensive than it needs to be. That can justify high levels of interest; there is generally no income in the early days. I hope we can find an exemption to get right and for the private equity industry as well.

Royal Assent

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967 that Her Majesty has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts and Measures:

Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Act 2016

Charities (Protection of Social Investment) Act 2016

Childcare Act 2016

Education and Adoption Act 2016

Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016

Safeguarding and Clergy Discipline Measure 2016

Diocesan Stipends Funds (Amendment) Measure 2016

Jobs and Social Security

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Nigel Mills

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills]

My hon. Friend reinforces the point that it is utterly unreasonable to say that the scheme is worse than doing nothing.

Providers who cover my constituency have told me that they had only a short time to prepare before they started work. They said they had not worked in the east midlands before, so had not only to find staff, but to build links and form relationships with employers to convince them to take people in more challenging situations. Expecting brilliant results at the start of the programme does not work.

The latest data show that 29% of first referrals from June 2011 have now had a job start, and that 37% of under-25s have had a job start. Those are not terrible results; they are encouraging. In Amber Valley, the results are better than average: 4.2% of those referred have met the target of spending six months in a job. I accept that that is less than the 5.5% target, but it is well ahead of the national average. Amber Valley is generally performing well. Total jobseeker’s allowance claimants are down 21% since the election, and JSA claimants under 25 are down 24%. Claimants per vacancy are down from 6.2 to 1.5. That is not a disastrous situation, but a sign that things are going in the right direction. I sincerely hope it continues—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I know a new Member will speak shortly, but could we just have a little quiet so we can hear Mr Mills?

[Nigel Mills]

Opposition Members clearly do not want to hear the truth of my argument.

The Select Committee on Work and Pensions report from last year, which was produced before I was a member of the Committee, gave the scheme a broad welcome, but one concern was the impact on smaller providers that are subcontractors to the main providers. I wholeheartedly endorse payment by results, but it can make things quite hard for organisations that are not large businesses with strong balance sheets, which can fund the gap. Given the delays in the system, some of the smaller providers have found their cash flow squeezed and are struggling to survive. All hon. Members value their innovative ideas and the extra local knowledge they can add to the scheme, so will the Government, after seeing the results, find a way of reviewing how small providers are funded and ensure they can survive the transition period and continue to provide their valuable work?

Overall, there are some concerns with how the Work programme has started. We would prefer the numbers to be a lot better, but there are encouraging signs. The programme can be a success and performance is going in the right direction. I hope that, in a year’s time, we are talking about the great successes of getting the most challenged people—those who have been out of work for a long time—back into jobs, which will improve their lives and the situation for the taxpayer.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Before I call the new hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), I remind Members that there will be no interventions because it is a maiden speech.