Mark Field
Main Page: Mark Field (Conservative - Cities of London and Westminster)Department Debates - View all Mark Field's debates with the HM Treasury
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Rushanara Ali
I am here to debate the new clause. I am focused on what the Government are doing. I support the new clause because it is not fair that £3 billion a year should be going to millionaires. On top of that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) mentioned, bonuses in the financial sector are up by 83%. My constituents are living between the City of London and Canary Wharf; they see the inequities and want a fair chance. They are not complaining about people earning a decent living, but they want the Government to be fair in how they tax.
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
The hon. Lady represents a seat next door to mine. We both have significant numbers of constituents living, as she would put it, in poverty—although poverty levels today are very different from those certainly in the first half of the last century and before—and significant numbers who are relatively well off. Does she not recognise that by reducing tax rates we are bringing more money into the Exchequer? She says that the issue is not about the politics of envy, but does she not recognise that higher rates of tax would bring less into the Exchequer to pay for the very services that our more poverty-stricken constituents so desperately need? She is undermining the very case she tries to make.
Rushanara Ali
The Government have made a great deal of their efforts to support middle-income families, but frankly their words have been empty. They have prioritised those at the top. Will the Minister say whether his Government will rule out reducing tax further for high earners to 40%? I give him the opportunity to say so now. The revenue that the Government are forgoing could be used to support others—to get young people back to work, for instance.
Rushanara Ali
I will not give way again as I am conscious that others wish to speak. I will conclude.
The Government’s so-called long-term plan should not be pursued at the expense of those in lower and middle-income families. That is why the new clause would rightly force the Chancellor to publish how much extra tax would be paid by high earners under the 50p rate. That would establish how much those earning more than £1 million per year would contribute. That would go a long way towards giving us the clarity we need.
Our vision is to work towards cutting taxes for the 24 million people on middle and lower incomes through the introduction of a 10p starting rate of tax. That is not only the way to a fairer system of taxation but the only way to nurture sustainable growth for all. After three years of flatlining, the growth that we are beginning to see is welcome, although it is still coming much slower than it is to countries such as the US and Germany.
Opposition Members have a vision for a broad-based recovery forged through the efforts of all people from all backgrounds. We must remember that average wages will have fallen by 5.6% by the end of this Parliament. How does that make our society one in which we are all in it together? I do not hear members of the Government or Government Back Benchers use that phrase any more. I challenge them to use it today if they still believe that it is not a joke as far as most people in this country are concerned. Only Labour’s plans for a fairer and more progressive taxation system will support the return of wages to a level seen before 2010.
In conclusion, I return to the basic premise of Labour’s argument. It is simply not acceptable or fair for millions of people to pay more in tax while millionaires pay less. Since 2010, tax rises and cuts to benefit have left average households worse off. Real-terms decreases in wages across this Parliament have made the financial plight of ordinary people across the UK tougher. People have become dependent on food banks as they have never been and there is rising homelessness in cities such as London. There is rising poverty—child poverty in particular—not only in my constituency, but up and down the country, but this Government still find the energy and will to reward the top 1% of earners while everyone else suffers.
The Government have pandered to the worst suggestions of their critics, namely that they are out of touch, have failed to spread any meaningful recovery to those who desperately need it and are out for the few and not for the many. For those reasons I support Labour’s proposals on the tax cut and support the new clause.
Ian Swales
I do not see VAT mentioned in the new clause. I was pointing out that, as the hon. Gentleman’s own Front Benchers say, the analysis of the benefits of the policy comes out as plus or minus zero: it could have a large cost or be a significant benefit. If we are in that sort of ballpark, we are clearly not talking about huge measures that will cut the deficit.
Under this Government, the wealthy have been paying a lot more every year in income tax than they ever did in any year under Labour. They are paying more in many other ways as well. The Labour Government thought it was okay for the wealthy to pay £250,000 in pension contributions and get full tax relief; the coalition Government have reduced that to £40,000, making £95,000 a year of tax benefits that the Labour Government were happy to give but this Government are not. Capital gains tax was at the derisory level of 18%, and is now 28%. The level the Labour Government charged on capital gains was lower than the rate of income tax, so hedge fund managers could be paying a lower rate of tax than the people who cleaned their offices, a truly shameful record.
If anyone is lucky enough to be spending £1 million a year, they will be paying £25,000 more in VAT. To answer a point made by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) earlier, people on low pay spend very little on standard rate VAT items. Once again, the right hon. Member for Wokingham mentioned this: most of the day-to-day living costs of most people—housing, energy, food and many other costs—do not carry standard rate VAT, so the wealthy are paying more there.
The thresholds for inheritance tax were going up under Labour but have been frozen under this Government through the efforts of the Liberal Democrats. We know that the party with which we are in coalition would like to return the level to £1 million, as it campaigned on that during the last election and I believe it will do so again next time. We are pleased that the threshold for inheritance tax has been frozen throughout our time in Government, because we feel it is the right thing to do at this time. We also saw industrial-scale tax avoidance under the previous Government, and many cases now arriving in court go back to the days when they were in power. The idea that this Government are not taxing the wealthy does not stand up to examination.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I don’t think we use that language, either.
Mark Field
I am sure that the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) would agree.
The hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) is making an important and courageous speech from the Liberal Democrat Benches. It is one that many of us on the Conservative Benches could have made, and I thank him for putting some of the issues that have been raised today into perspective. There has been a lot of outrage on the Opposition Benches but it is important that the history of precisely what went on during the previous Labour Government is put on the record.
Ian Swales
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. I agree that it is important: the narrative that Labour taxes the rich until the pips squeak and that we do not does not stand up to examination.