Finance (No. 2) Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Lucy Rigby and Matt Turmaine

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Matt Turmaine (Watford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I will speak briefly on clause 32, as a member of the all-party parliamentary group for video games and esports, to say to the Minister that I welcome the closing of this loophole. Does she agree that the change will support the British video games industry, which is industry-leading across the world, and deliver the best for our economy?

[Lucy Rigby]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Watford about the impact of these measures.

In relation to clause 31, if only the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for North West Norfolk, had the TIIN to hand; if he did, he might have been aware that we estimate that the payments for the surrender of expenditure credits will have an impact on roughly 12,000 claimants of R&D expenditure credit, audiovisual expenditure credit and video games expenditure credit.

The shadow Minister asked about the impact on video games companies: I think it is fair to say that if a company has a game that switches from the video games tax relief to the video games expenditure credit, it simply needs to make sure that it uses the modified version of step 2 when calculating how much credit it is entitled to. This will affect only games that are already in development and need to switch reliefs. There are no figures available to show the impact on companies; it is normally in the tax line, so it is not treated as taxable by most companies. I think that answers all of his questions.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 31 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 32 and 33 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 34

R&D undertaken abroad: Chapter 2 relief only

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lucy Rigby and Matt Turmaine

Thursday 20th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Matt Turmaine (Watford) (Lab)]

3. What steps she is taking to help increase prosecution rates in cases of violence against women and girls.

[The Solicitor General (Lucy Rigby)]

Earlier this month, we marked International Women’s Day, and it was very moving to hear the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips), again record in this House the names of women and girls who were killed in the past year. The scale of violence against women and girls in this country is completely intolerable, which is why, under our plan for change, this Government have already taken concrete steps to tackle it, including the introduction of Raneem’s law to put domestic abuse experts into 999 control rooms.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Solicitor General]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work in this area. She is right to raise the extremely important point of victim attrition, which is unacceptably high right across our United Kingdom. That is why we have taken swift action in England and Wales, through the CPS victim transformation programme, appointing victim liaison officers to support victims throughout the legal process. The Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has also pledged to make this issue a priority as part of his new direction for Scotland.

[Matt Turmaine]

Controlling and coercive behaviour is an insidious form of abuse. Will my hon. and learned Friend please outline what the Government are doing to deal with it?

[The Solicitor General]

Insidious is the right description. We fully recognise just how damaging that form of abuse is, and that it can follow a pattern of escalation that can lead to violence. That is precisely why the joint justice plan is underpinned by a commitment to tackle all forms of domestic abuse, ensuring that police and prosecutors can jointly tackle coercive control. The Court of Appeal recently increased two sentences for controlling and coercive behaviour by way of the unduly lenient sentence scheme, which I hope sends a very strong signal about just how seriously such conduct will be taken.