Spending Review
Michael Meacher Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
As the Chancellor’s private sector infrastructure proposals will take years to gain traction, if they ever do, why does he not use public investment to kick-start the economy now, as the only effective means to do so quickly, without any increase in public borrowing? He could do that through a further tranche of quantitative easing, specifically targeted on industrial investment; by instructing the state-owned banks to lend to industry at the scale required; or, most obviously, given that he talks about fairness, by taxing the super-rich, who have made massive gains since the crash, in the last five years.
Mr Osborne
First, we are committing to public investment as well as seeking to secure private investment. The first of the right hon. Gentleman’s ideas is about printing money to spend it on things. That has been tried by a number of countries but it does not always have a happy ending. Secondly, he has this plan to take over full control of the banks and run the banking system as a nationalised banking system. I do not think that would be a sensible approach; it would make the problems in our banking system worse rather than better.
Thirdly, the right hon. Gentleman talks about taxes. I recall, as I was an MP on the Opposition Benches at the time, that he was a Minister when his Government had a 40% tax rate, whereas we have a 45% rate. I do not remember him getting up at this Dispatch Box and complaining all the time that his Government were not increasing taxes on the rich. I seem to remember his good friend Peter Mandelson saying that they were all
“intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”.
Under this Government—I hope the right hon. Gentleman would support this—the richest are paying a greater percentage of our tax than under his Government.
Economic Growth
Michael Meacher Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
The Tory party is obviously going through one of its regular hissy fits over the EU. My experience is that it is best not to intrude in toxic family feuds, so I will confine my remarks to the economy.
Support for the Chancellor’s policy has totally evaporated. His intellectual ballast, provided by Reinhart and Rogoff—namely, that growth rapidly declined once a threshold of debt of 90% had been reached—has been blown out of the water. The International Monetary Fund, the citadel of neo-liberal capitalism, has deserted the Chancellor. The British Chambers of Commerce, the Federation of Small Businesses and even the CBI are now openly criticising from the sidelines. The only austerians who are still full square behind the Chancellor are those in the eurozone. I hope he takes comfort from the fact that that paragon of economic virtue is now his last remaining ally. Contractionary fiscal expansion—his policy—is, to use the words he used today, a totally busted flush. It is an absurd oxymoron, as it always was. Once the rate of growth has slowed below the expansion of debt, the policy is doomed, and that is exactly where we are. Given that, it is so counter-productive now to continue with a policy of semi-permanent stagnation that one has to wonder what the Chancellor’s real motives are—apart, of course, from his own personal survival.
The US has put in place demand-creating measures and is steadily coming out of recession. The UK and the eurozone have not put such measures in place and they are slowly sinking deeper into recession. So why is the Chancellor so obstinately refusing to accept what the evidence is telling him? Why is he refusing to accept what even the IMF is telling him to do? The only plausible explanation is that this is not, in the last analysis, a deficit reduction policy at all; it is ultimately driven by the obsession to shrink the state and squeeze the public sector into the farthest recesses of a fully privatised regime. If that is so, crucifying the UK economy on a cross of ideology is hardly a proper way to proceed.
Of course, the Chancellor likes to defend himself, as he did again today, by saying that any stimulus to the economy will only increase the debt and thus make matters worse, but that is simply not true. First, instead of being kitted out for privatisation, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds—which taxpayers and the Government own 82% and 39% of respectively—could be instructed to prioritise lending for industry, infrastructure, low-carbon technology and key manufacturing niches in which the UK has a natural advantage.
A second option is the taxation of the hyper-rich, who have so far contributed almost nothing to tackling the recession that they largely caused. The latest rich list published in The Sunday Times a month ago showed that the richest 1,000 people—that is, 0.003% of the adult population—have increased their wealth over the past four years since the crash by a staggering £190 billion. That is considerably more than the total budget deficit, and if it were taxed at the current capital gains tax rate of 28%, it could theoretically raise £53 billion.
Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)
I note that the right hon. Gentleman talks about the “current” capital gains tax rate of 28%. Would he like to remind us what the rate was for the last five years of the Government in whom he served?
Mr Meacher
As the hon. Gentleman and everyone else knows, it was 10% less. I strongly opposed that; I think that it was wrong. I do not think that 28% is right either. The rate should be where Nigel Lawson left it—namely, at 40%. But let us stick with 28%. That would easily raise enough money to create between 1 million and 1.5 million jobs in two years, which would kick-start a virtuous spiral of growth.
The third option is another tranche of quantitative easing. The gigantic sum of £375 billion of quantitative easing has already been printed, and it has disappeared into consolidating bank balance sheets. A further, much more modest, tranche of £25 billion, invested directly into the economy, bypassing the banks, could once again kick-start the economy without any increase in borrowing at all.
It is also highly relevant to point out, which the Chancellor never does, that the balance of payments on our traded goods, which has been going up for a long time, reached the staggering level of £106 billion in this last year. That is 7% of gross domestic product. Worse news can be seen when we consider the growth that we like to think occurred in the UK during the best years up to 2007. The National Statistics register shows growth of £300 billion, but that is slightly less than the total for equity withdrawal from housing for the same period. In other words, the inflation of property assets largely accounts for the apparent growth. So, rebalancing the economy, which is now vital, is not going to occur simply with a flourish of the Chancellor’s wand. It will need a hard-won, relentless programme of manufacturing revival, and the restructuring of the banks to ensure that they look after the national interest and not their own.
Finance (No. 2) Bill
Michael Meacher Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dawn Primarolo)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 8—Meaning of ‘tax arrangements’—
‘(1) Arrangements are “tax arrangements” if, having regard to all the circumstances, it would be reasonable to conclude that the obtaining of a tax advantage as a result of tax avoidance was the main purpose, or one of the main purposes, of the arrangements.
(2) Arrangements are not tax arrangements if:
(a) the arrangement was specifically permitted by legislation or regulation relating to any of the taxes referred to in section [General anti tax-avoidance principle] (3) or is clearly consistent with principles on which the taxes referred to in section [General anti-tax-avoidance principle] (3) are based whether express or implied,
(b) the advantaged party shows that the arrangement was neither designed nor carried out with the intention of achieving a tax advantage and that no step or feature was included in or omitted from it with that intention.’.
New clause 9—Meaning of ‘tax avoidance’—
‘(1) Arrangements represent “tax avoidance” if, having regard to all the circumstances, it would be reasonable to conclude that tax is not paid—
(a) by the right person, or
(b) at the right time, or
(c) in the right place, or
(d) under the charging provisions of the right tax, or
(e) at all when it would appear right that it was due, or
(f) in any combination of the circumstances noted in (a) to (e).
(2) In subsection (1) an arrangement is considered “right” when the economic substance of that arrangement giving rise to a potential charge to tax under any one or more of the taxes referred to in section [General anti-tax-avoidance principle] (3) of this Part accords with the form in which that arrangement is declared for assessment for taxation purposes whether in the United Kingdom or elsewhere with non-declaration of a potential charge to tax on the economic substance of a transaction in the United Kingdom as a result of the form adopted for its completion being considered a tax declaration for the purposes of this section.
(3) For the purposes of subsection (2) the economic substance of an arrangement does not accord with the economic form in which that arrangement is declared for taxation purposes if having regard to all the circumstances:
(a) one or more of the parties to the arrangement cannot reasonably have been included as a party to it without the securing of a tax advantage having been an objective,
(b) the contractual form of the arrangement cannot reasonably have been adopted without the securing of a tax advantage having been an objective,
(c) the location in which the arrangement is recorded as having occurred cannot reasonably have been decided upon without the securing of a tax advantage having been an objective;
(d) the timing of the arrangement cannot reasonably have been decided upon without the securing of a tax advantage having been an objective;
(e) the arrangement has as one or more of its objectives the declaration of a transaction for assessment under the provisions of one of the taxes referred to in section [General anti-tax-avoidance principle] (3), or none of them, when declaration under the provisions of another of those taxes would seem more appropriate,
(f) the arrangement represents a transaction as relating to capital when it would appear to related to income,
(g) the arrangement represents a transaction as being income derived from capital when it would appear to be derived from the profits of a trade or employment,
(h) the arrangement appears to be without economic substance,
(i) the arrangement cannot be regarded as a reasonable course of action having taken into consideration—
(i) any relevant tax provisions,
(ii) the substantive results of the arrangements, and
(iii) any other arrangements of which the arrangements form a part.
(j) Any party to the arrangement has stated that an objective of structuring the arrangement in the form adopted was the securing of a tax advantage.
(4) In subsection (3) “taxation purposes” includes—
(a) any action required to comply with the obligations of any legislation or regulation relating to any of the taxes referred to in section [General anti-tax-avoidance principle] (3) or their administration or assessment notwithstanding any deficiency or shortcoming in them that the arrangement is meant to exploit,
(b) any principles on which the taxes referred to in section [General anti-tax-avoidance principle] (3) are based whether express or implied,
(c) the policy objectives of the taxes referred to in section [General anti tax-avoidance principle] (3).’.
New clause 10—Meaning of ‘tax advantage’—
‘(1) A “tax advantage” may be considered to have arisen for the purposes of this Part if:
(a) the arrangement results in an amount of income, profits or gains for tax purposes that is significantly less than the amount for economic purposes,
(b) the arrangement results in deductions or losses of an amount for tax purposes that is significantly greater than the amount for economic purposes,
(c) the arrangement results in a claim for the repayment or crediting of tax (including foreign tax) that has not been, and is unlikely to be, paid,
(d) the arrangements involve a transaction or agreement the consideration for which is an amount or value significantly different from market value or which otherwise contains non-commercial terms,
(e) the arrangement results in an amount of income, profits or gains tax purposes being assessed for tax purposes upon a person who appears to have less economic claim upon that income, profit or gain than another person who would have greater taxation liability due upon it if they were assessed to that income, profit or gain for tax purposes,
(f) the arrangement results in an amount of income, profit or gain being subject to a tax other than that which the economic substance of the arrangement would suggest appropriate with less tax being due as a result,
(g) the arrangements results in an amount of income, profit or gain being subject to tax assessment in a jurisdiction other than the United Kingdom when the economic substance of the arrangement would suggest that inappropriate whether or not more or less tax is due in that other place or not,
(h) the arrangement results in a lower rate of tax being applied to the income, profit or gain than might otherwise have been the case,
(i) the arrangement results in tax being paid later than might otherwise have been the case,
(j) any combination of the circumstances referred to in subsection (a) to (i).’.
(2) Subsection (1) is not to be read as limiting in any way the cases in which tax arrangements might give rise to a tax advantage.
(3) A tax advantage may, without limitation, be indicated to have arisen by the existence of:
(a) relief or increased relief from tax,
(b) repayment or increased repayment of tax,
(c) avoidance or a reduction of a charge to tax or an assessment to tax,
(d) avoidance of a possible assessment to tax,
(e) a deferral of a payment of tax or an advancement of a repayment of tax, and
(f) avoidance of an obligation to deduct or account for tax,
(g) the passing of an obligation to make declaration of a liability to be assessed to tax to another party.’.
New clause 11—Counteracting tax advantages—
‘(1) If tax arrangements meeting the definition of section [Meaning of “tax arrangements”](1) of the Part are identified then the tax advantages arising from the arrangements are to be counteracted on a just and reasonable basis.
(2) The counteraction may be made in respect of each or any tax to which the general anti-tax-avoidance principle applies.
(3) An officer of Revenue and Customs must make, on a just and reasonable basis, such consequential adjustments in respect of any tax to which the general anti-abuse rule applies as are appropriate.
(4) These consequential adjustments:
(a) may be made in respect of any period, and
(b) may affect any person (whether or not a party to the arrangements) so long as they are connected to the party that has enjoyed the benefit of a tax advantage, such connection being as defined in section 993 of the Income Tax Act 2007.’.
New clause 12—Proceedings before a court or tribunal—
‘(1) In proceedings before a court or tribunal in connection with the general anti-tax-avoidance principle, HMRC must show—
(a) that there are tax arrangements that give rise to a tax advantage as a result of tax avoidance, and
(b) that the counteraction of the tax advantages arising from the arrangements is just and reasonable.
(2) In determining any issue in connection with the general anti-tax avoidance principle, a court or tribunal must take into account—
(a) explanatory notes that cast light on the objective setting or contextual scene of the specific Taxing Act or this Part of this Act.
(b) the clear statements by a Minister or other promoter of the specific Taxing Act or this Part of this Act together if necessary with such other parliamentary material as was necessary to understand such statements and their effect.
(c) HMRC’s guidance about the general anti-tax-avoidance principle,
(d) guidance, statements or other material (whether of HMRC, a Minister of the Crown or anyone else) that is in the public domain at the time the arrangements were entered into as to the principles on which the taxes referred to in section [General anti tax-avoidance principle] (3) are based whether express or implied, the nature of tax avoidance, and those matters considered to fall within section [Meaning of “tax arrangements”] (2)(a) of this Part (on which matter HMRC shall issue periodic guidance),
(e) evidence of established practice at that time,
(f) evidence as to the intent of the parties, irrespective of the outcome of the arrangements.’.
New clause 13—Application for clearance of transactions—
‘(1) A person may provide the Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs with particulars of a transaction or transactions effected or to be effected by the person in order to obtain a notification about them under this section.
(2) If the Commissioners consider that the particulars, or any further information provided under this subsection, are insufficient for the purposes of this section, they must notify the person what further information they require for those purposes within 30 days of receiving the particulars or further information.
(3) If any such further information is not provided within 30 days from the notification, or such further time as the Commissioners allow, they need not proceed further under this section.
(4) The Commissioners must notify the person whether they are satisfied that the transaction or transactions, as described in the particulars, were or will be such that no counteraction notice ought to be served about the transaction or transactions under the provisions of section [Counteracting the tax advantages] of this Act.
(5) The notification must be given within 30 days of receipt of the particulars, or, if subsection (2) applies, of all further information required but subject to the conditions of subsection (6) having been met.
(6) The person making application for a notification under this section shall specify—
(a) the amount of tax that they estimate might be due as a result of making the arrangement, or
(b) if that arrangement shall be continuing within the two-year period following its commencement, and
(c) shall pay a fee in respect of the notification to be supplied under section (4) prior to that notification being supplied of not less than—
(i) £1,000, or
(ii) five per cent of the estimated tax due as a result of making this arrangement, whichever shall be the greater,
such charge to be subject to value added tax and to be due whether or not the requested notification can be supplied or not,
(d) HMRC shall have power to substitute such other sum that it thinks appropriate for those sums notified under subsections (a) and (b) if it thinks those estimates unrealistic,
(e) if HMRC makes use of the powers in subsection (d) it shall notify the person within 30 days of its intent to do so and provide its estimate of the tax that might be due under the arrangement with reasons stated, with the person having 30 days thereafter to appeal against the same or let their applications lapse.
(f) HMRC may publish its notifications issued under this section so long as the taxpayer’s identity is anonymised.’.
New clause 14—Effect of clearance notification under section [Application for clearance of transactions]—
‘(1) This section applies if the Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs notify a person under section [Application for clearance of transactions] that they are satisfied that a transaction or transactions, as described in the particulars provided under that section, were or will be such that no counteraction notice under the provisions of section [Counteracting tax advantages] of this Act ought to be served about the transaction or transactions.
(2) No such notice may then be served on the person in respect of the transaction or transactions.
(3) But the notification does not prevent such a notice being served on the person in respect of transactions including not only the ones to which the notification relates but also others.
(4) The notification is void if the particulars and any further information given under section [Application for clearance of transactions] about the transaction or transactions do not fully and accurately disclose all facts and considerations which are material for the purposes of that section.’.
New clause 15—Power to obtain information—
‘(1) This section applies if it appears to an officer of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs that a person may be a person to whom section [Counteracting tax advantages] applies in respect of one or more transactions.
(2) The officer may serve a notice on the person requiring the person to give the officer information in the person’s possession about the transaction or, if there are two or more, about any of them.
(3) That information must be information about matters that are relevant to the question whether a counteraction notice should be served on the person.
(4) Those matters must be specified in the notice under subsection (2).
(5) That notice must require the information to be given within such period as is specified in it.
(6) That period must be at least 30 days.’.
New clause 16—Interpretation—
‘In this Part of this Act—
“arrangements” includes any agreement, understanding, scheme, transaction or series of transactions (whether or not legally enforceable),
“connected” is defined by section 993 of the Income Tax Act 2007,
“the general anti-tax avoidance principle” has the meaning given by section [General anti tax-avoidance principle],
“HMRC” means Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs,
“notification” has the meaning given by section [Application for clearance of transactions] (1),
“tax advantage” has the meaning given by section [Meaning of “tax advantage”],
“tax arrangements” has the meaning given by section [Meaning of “tax arrangements”] (1),
“tax avoidance” has the meaning given by section [Meaning of “tax avoidance”], and
“taxes” has the meaning given to it by section [General anti-tax-avoidance principle] (3).’.
Amendment 11, in clause 203, page 120, line 1, after ‘taxes, insert
‘provided the de minimis test in subsection (4) is satisfied.’.
Amendment 3, page 120, line 9, at end add—
‘(4) Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs shall review the possibility of bringing forward measures to work in conjunction with other G8 countries to require multi-national companies to publish a single easily comparable figure for the amount of corporation tax they pay in the UK, and within six months of the passage of this Act, place a copy of the review in the House of Commons Library.
(5) The Chancellor of the Exchequer shall review the effects of incorporating measures into the general anti-abuse rule to require multi-national companies to publish a single easily comparable figure for the amount of corporation tax they pay in the UK on Treasury tax receipts within six months of the passage of this Act and consult with G8 countries on their effectiveness, and place a copy of the review in the House of Commons Library.’.
Amendment 6, page 120, line 9, at end add—
‘(4) The Chancellor shall review the possibility of bringing forward a requirement for UK companies to report their use of tax schemes which have an impact on developing countries, including a review of the possibility of bringing forward proposals to require that when such schemes are identified under those rules, Her Majesty’s Government shall take steps to notify developing countries’ tax authorities and assist in the recovery of that tax. A copy of the report shall be placed in the House of Commons Library within six months of Royal Assent.’.
Amendment 7, page 120, line 9, at end add—
‘(4) The Chancellor shall make an assessment of the impact of changes to Controlled Foreign Company Rules in the Finance Act 2012 and as a result of this Part of this Act on the overall tax take of developing countries. A copy of the report shall be placed in the House of Commons Library within six months of Royal Assent.’.
Amendment 8, page 120, line 9, at end add—
‘(4) The Chancellor shall provide a report to Parliament within two years of the passing of this Act, as part of a wider post-implementation review, into the scope of GAAR, the application of the double reasonableness test and its deterrent effect.’.
Amendment 12, page 120, line 9, at end add—
‘(4) The amount of the tax advantage arising from the tax arrangement must be equal to or exceed the following amount for the relevant tax:
(a) for income tax the amount is £100,000,
(b) for corporation tax, including any amount chargeable as if it were corporation tax or treated as if it were corporation tax, the amount is £250,000,
(c) for capital gains tax the amount is £100,000,
(d) for petroleum revenue tax the amount is £250,000,
(e) for inheritance tax the amount is £100,000
(f) for stamp duty land tax the amount is £40,000,
(g) for the annual tax on enveloped dwelling the amount is £40,000.
(5) For the purposes of subsection (4) the amount of the tax advantage shall be the greatest of:
(a) the total tax advantage for all tax years in which it is reasonable to assume that the tax arrangement was anticipated to be effective at the time the arrangements were entered into;
(b) the total tax advantage for all tax years that would have arisen from the tax arrangement other than for the provisions of this Part;
(c) the total tax advantage arising from all tax arrangements of the taxpayer that were anticipated to be effective in the relevant tax year.
(6) For the purposes of subsection (5) the amount of the tax advantage shall include any tax advantage obtained by the taxpayer or a related party of the taxpayer.’.
Clauses 203 to 212 stand part.
That Schedule 41 be the Forty-first schedule to the Bill.
Mr Meacher
The purpose of new clause 7 and new clauses 8 to 16, which are connected and which stand in my name and those of my hon. Friends, is to replace the Government’s anti-tax avoidance measure, the GAAR or the general anti-avoidance rule, as set out in clauses 203 to 212, with an alternative, much fairer, more effective and more comprehensive measure, the GAntiP or general anti-avoidance principle—I apologise for all the acronyms. In practice, the latter would mean that where a court could establish, having taken account of all the relevant circumstances, that the primary purpose of an arrangement was the avoidance of tax rather than any economically substantive transaction, it could strike it down.
Let me say immediately to the Exchequer Secretary that I appreciate that although UK tax avoidance for the last 70 or so years has been considered on the basis of four UK court decisions—and notably the Duke of Westminster case of 1936—the GAAR guidelines, which were published a couple of days ago, now override that position. I understand that they are, in effect, legal precedent in their own right, which any court has to take into account. That is certainly a significant advance. However, the Government’s GAAR, as set out in this Bill, is still fatally flawed.
First and most importantly, the GAAR advisory panel is riddled through and through with a blatant conflict of interest. It will be drawn almost exclusively from highly paid City lawyers who have spent their careers, and made their fortunes from, giving expensive advice to companies on how to avoid tax. It is like putting the poachers in charge of the gamekeepers. Surely it would be right for independent experts—some drawn from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs—to form the main body of what should obviously be an impartial membership.
Secondly, it is proposed that the application of the GAAR will be determined on the basis of a highly subjective and partisan criterion, namely whether the arrangement at issue
“cannot reasonably be regarded as a reasonable course of action”.
From the point of view of HMRC and the poor innocent taxpayers who are penalised if the corporate tax abusers are allowed to get away with it, there is a double jeopardy at work. First, what most people might regard as unreasonable might well be regarded by highly paid City lawyers who make their money out of promoting tax avoidance as perfectly reasonable.
Secondly, what is a “reasonable course of action” is heavily dependent on a subjective view of the role of taxation in society. Whatever else it is, it is not an objective test at all. The point is surely that the GAAR advisory panel has been inserted only as a filter, in order to give the tax avoidance industry a veto on which of its practices shall be called to account. That is clearly prejudicial and indefensible. If City lawyers employed in defending corporate tax abuse are asked whether it is reasonable to hold the view that an arrangement is a “reasonable course of action”, it is a virtual certainty that, except in the most egregious cases, they will agree that it is—at which point many highly controversial and artificial devices will not even get near an independent judge in a court. For that reason alone, I believe that the GAAR should be thrown out, although it has other serious flaws.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
Does the right hon. Gentleman not accept that one reason why we have got this far is that Graham Aaronson, who probably meets the right hon. Gentleman’s definition of someone who has made his living from selling tax-avoidance schemes or at least advising on them, recommended that the Government go ahead with the GAAR?
Mr Meacher
I did not catch what the hon. Gentleman said. Can he say it a little more loudly and clearly, or can we have a conversation afterwards?
Nigel Mills
I will say it more loudly. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that one reason why we have got this far is that Graham Aaronson, who arguably meets his criterion as someone who has made a living out of at least advising on such schemes, recommended that the Government go ahead with the GAAR?
Mr Meacher
Yes, I appreciate that. It seems that Graham Aaronson, whom I have criticised pretty strongly in the House in the past, has for reasons best known to himself—although I am very appreciative that he has done this—changed his mind in the important respect that the hon. Gentleman described and which I tried to set out at the beginning. There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 100 just men.
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that I have grave concerns about going down the route of even a general anti-avoidance rule, but surely he must recognise that if his new clauses were agreed and we took a principled, rather than a rules-based approach, that would lead to ever more uncertainty and, dare I say it, even larger fees for the lawyers and accountants whom he wishes to clamp down on in this regard.
Mr Meacher
I will come to that point. I know that the hon. Gentleman, who has spent enough time in this Chamber, as I have, might think that I am kicking it into the long grass, but I will come to it at the end. I think I have an effective answer to it, but I prefer to give it at that point.
There are other problems with the GAAR. For the reasons given, it is far too narrowly drawn, tackling only the most aggressive forms of tax avoidance. It would not, for example, tackle Google or Amazon—which have had enormous publicity over the last weeks and months—because the channelling of profits from genuine sales through tax havens would still be permitted. That is just one example. The implication—dare I say it one that was probably intended by the Government; I hope that is not unreasonable—is no doubt that a veneer of respectability is thereby cast over everything else, which might well include artificial contrivances designed to avoid tax. They will somehow be seen to be okay.
There is also no clear penalty regime in the GAAR, which is certainly needed if others are to be deterred from exploiting every opportunity to go down the tax avoidance route. Contrary to all other tax logic, where the burden of proof has always fallen on the taxpayer, uniquely in the case of the GAAR, the burden of proof that an arrangement is abusive has unaccountably been placed on HMRC. Despite the one improvement, which I am glad to mention—
Mr Meacher
I would rather get on, if I may, as many others wish to speak and it is a very short debate.
Despite the improvement I mentioned at the beginning, the net accumulated effect of all these flaws makes it reasonable to argue that the GAAR is a step backward for two particular reasons. One is that while the most heinous cases will certainly be caught—we are all agreed about that—the impression given is that virtually everything else is somehow okay and everything else goes. The other is the outrageous fact that HMRC cannot commence GAAR action on its own initiative. That is rather like forbidding the courts to take action against a thief until the honorary city guild for thieves has given permission.
The alternative is the general anti-tax avoidance principle—the GAntiP—as set out in new clauses 7 to 16. It was drafted by Richard Murphy, one of our foremost tax accountants, as the Minister knows only too well as a sparring partner, and a founding member of the Tax Justice Network. What are the advantages of GAntiP? I will set them out briefly.
First, tax avoidance is currently estimated to cost this country and its other taxpayers £25 billion or up to £25 billion—I know the figure is much disputed, but it is certainly a very substantial sum. It would be significantly reduced, so that many services now under threat because of Government cuts could be saved and more money would be available to help promote jobs, which the Government want, and economic recovery.
Secondly, to deal with the point raised by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), the UK tax system would be made considerably more certain if HMRC were for a small sum to provide prior indication, which I would strongly support, about whether or not an arrangement would fall within the scope of tax avoidance. No one is trying to trick companies; we want certainty, and this would be a very good way to achieve it.
Mark Field
On this matter, I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. I have said on a number of occasions that if we are to go down this route, whether it be a general anti-avoidance rule or on the basis of the principles that the right hon. Gentleman prefers, it must be done hand in glove with a proper pre-clearance process. It needs to be a swift process and it may be that a fee is to be paid as well, but it must be done on the basis that before any new scheme is marketed it must get the thumbs up from HMRC that it is a legitimate one. That would provide a sensible way forward taking into account the certainty reasons that I pointed out earlier.
Mr Meacher
I am glad to have the hon. Gentleman’s agreement on that. I hope that he will also agree with me that what the Government are proposing—that the criterion should be whether a certain arrangement amounts to a “reasonable view” or a reasonable course of action—is an extremely vague, subjective and uncertain way of deciding this matter.
Mark Field
The right hon. Gentleman referred earlier to egregious schemes, and I think we all recognise that there are some, as highlighted by The Times and other newspapers in recent months. Which particular schemes does the right hon. Gentleman, who is obviously in close contact with Richard Murphy among others, think would not fall foul of the reasonableness test? Which schemes would be regarded as highly egregious yet would fail to be caught?
Mr Meacher
I have already mentioned two that have had a great deal of publicity—Google and Amazon—but there are many, many others. Only a very narrow and small proportion of the most “aggressive”—the Chancellor’s phrase—or abusive tax-avoidance schemes would be caught. What worries me is the impression given that everything else is somehow okay with the Government. I think that is a very unwise position to adopt.
Briefly, the third advantage of GAntiP is that the incentive for accountants, lawyers and bankers to sell tax-avoidance schemes would be curtailed. That would be a thoroughly good thing, because they and their clients would know that most of those schemes would fail in future.
Lastly, my fourth advantage might be the single most important one. GAntiP really could help to change the rancid culture in British society today whereby the top 1%—whether it be super-rich individuals or the big corporations—are widely perceived to be ripping off the honest remainder of the population.
Caroline Lucas
That is very kind of the right hon. Gentleman, who is making a compelling case. Does he agree that it would be helpful to have a clear commitment from the Opposition Front-Bench team that, if it were to form the next Government, it would introduce the sort of principle that he describes so compellingly? For all the reasons the right hon. Gentleman has outlined, the principle is simpler, it provides greater certainty and it will catch far more of the kind of things we are trying to rule out than the rule approach that we have at the moment.
Mr Meacher
As always, the hon. Lady has a similar mindset to mine. That is what I hope, too. Discussions are, of course, going on within the party, and we are yet to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) who speaks from the Front Bench. I am certainly very keen to try to ensure that before the general election, for all the reasons I have given, the Labour party signs up to GAntiP. I am thus pleased to commend to the Committee new clauses 7 to 16.
Nigel Mills
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and I rise to speak to amendments 11 and 12, which stand in my name.
I have said this before, but I have concerns about Parliament agreeing overwhelmingly with a principle that effectively says, “We as a Parliament, even with all the specialist advice we get, cannot draft the law sufficiently well to leave our taxpayers to try to apply and follow it, and leave HMRC and the courts to determine whether that is the case.” The proposals of the Government and of the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) would in effect create a power for HMRC to say, “While the law actually says that, what we really meant was something a little bit different, so while the taxpayer has complied with the letter of the law, they have not complied with the letter of the law as we wish it had been written.”
That is a real power for Parliament to give away. We are saying to an executive agency of the state, “Your job is no longer to apply the law; your job is to rewrite it as you wish it had been written by Parliament in the first place.” I think we should be very careful before going taking such a line. We need to know exactly what we are doing and we need to be happy with setting that principle. If the Government tried to apply such a principle to criminal justice law, we could end up arresting people for something that was not a legal offence but we wished had been a criminal offence. If we applied it to immigration law, for example, there would be howls of outrage saying that the state had gone mad with excessive power, and that it was the end of the rule of law and not the way for a sensible Government to behave.
Mr Meacher
Before the Minister leaves the issue of the GAAR advisory panel, does he really think it right that most of its members are City lawyers who have hitherto spent their careers advising companies how to avoid tax? Will he also deal with the question of the “double reasonableness” test—whether it is reasonable to take the view that the course of action in question is a reasonable one? Is that seriously the criterion for deciding on the application of the GAAR?
Mr Gauke
The “double reasonableness” test was the one we came to after the lengthy process following the Aaronson review. We believe that it focuses attention on aggressive, abusive tax avoidance. Let me be clear: this is an additional tool that HMRC can use; it does not necessarily mean that for those outside the GAAR, everything is fine. I want to make it explicitly clear that that is not what we are saying. There is avoidance that will not fall within the GAAR, but which HMRC would none the less take action against.
The panel will be broad-based, but I see nothing wrong whatsoever in its having commercial expertise to provide reassurance and ensure that the GAAR will not be abused in the way that some Members have expressed concern about this evening, with too much power being placed in the hands of a part of the Executive. It will be broad-based, in just the way the interim panel has been.
The GAAR does not override UK tax treaties. Given the lack of time, I will not go into further detail, but it acts in much the same way as GAARs do for other countries that respect OECD and UN model tax treaties.
Mr Gauke
Let me deal with that in the context of amendment 8, which looks at the general issue of post-implementation evaluation and seeks to establish a review within two years of Royal Assent. We and HMRC have made it clear that we will manage and monitor the GAAR’s operation centrally, so that all cases and potential cases will be scrutinised and recorded. The deterrent effect, which we will see immediately, will be important, but we must also remember the issues of getting the tax returns in and being able to make a full assessment of the implications. We believe that a two-year period would not be practical for a general evaluation. It will take longer properly to evaluate how the GAAR is working, just because of how our tax system operates, so I will not accept amendment 8.
Amendments 3, 6 and 7, which deal with tax avoidance by multinationals and the impact on developing countries, raise a number of important points. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) wanted me to set out the Government’s objectives for the G8. I am sorry that I am not in a position to do that this evening; it will be left to the Prime Minister, who will make the UK Government’s position very clear.
The point about transparency is important and the Government have a good record of encouraging transparency in a number of areas, particularly among extractive industries through the extractive industries transparency initiative. We play a leading role internationally through the global forum. We ensure that jurisdictions comply with the international standard on tax transparency and work with the G20 to maintain pressure on non-co-operative jurisdictions. We have been making a lot of progress in the Crown dependencies, particularly as regards the exchange of information, and in ensuring that the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, arrangements on the exchange of information become the international norm. I can assure the Committee that that will continue to be a key part of what we do and part of our G8 agenda.
Amendment 6 asks the Government to require UK companies to report their use of tax-avoidance schemes that affect developing countries and for HMRC to notify those countries and assist them in recovering the tax owed. Amendment 7 asks the Government to carry out an impact assessment on the effect of the changes to the controlled foreign companies, or CFC, rules on developing countries’ tax revenues. The answer to both points is that as a matter of practicality it is difficult for HMRC to perform the roles required by the amendments as they require assessments not of our tax rules but of the tax rules of developing countries. That takes us outside what HMRC can realistically do. The point was raised that amendment 7 largely repeats the debate we had during last year’s Finance Bill, when a similar, if not identical, amendment was tabled. I refer hon. Members to the speech I gave a year or so ago, in which I stated that simply as a matter of practicality that is not something that HMRC can do.
On amendments 11 and 12, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley, I do not believe that a de minimis rule would be appropriate as regards the general anti-abuse rule as it would miss the point. We do not want anyone involved in abusive schemes to make use of them, and even if only £100,000 was at stake as a de minimis, that could have a significant effect on a number of people. We believe that that would be unfair.
As I said at the outset, I believe that the general anti-abuse rule is a major new development. It sends a message to those who persist with abusive avoidance schemes that even if they try to dance around the tax law, they will face the tough but plain question, “Is it reasonable?” That is a question that we all understand. Those who think about using the schemes will all understand it and, I hope, those who create the schemes will come to understand it. The GAAR will ensure that the time for their clever games, paid at the expense of the tax-paying public, is at an end. I therefore recommend that clauses 203 to 212 and schedule 41 stand part of the Bill.
Mr Meacher
In view of the commitment by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) to carry out a review of the GAAR, and given the double reasonableness test and its deterrent effect, even though it is less than I should recommend, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 6, in clause 203, page 120, line 9, at end add—
‘(4) The Chancellor shall review the possibility of bringing forward a requirement for UK companies to report their use of tax schemes which have an impact on developing countries, including a review of the possibility of bringing forward proposals to require that when such schemes are identified under those rules, Her Majesty’s Government shall take steps to notify developing countries’ tax authorities and assist in the recovery of that tax. A copy of the report shall be placed in the House of Commons Library within six months of Royal Assent.’.—(Catherine McKinnell.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Committee divided: Ayes 223, Noes 275.
amendment of the law
Michael Meacher Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
To fill a Budget with populist gimmicks while wholly ignoring the economic fundamentals that are remorselessly driving this country into a semi-permanent stagnation is to degrade the high office of Chancellor. The home loans scheme has more than a whiff of sub-prime about it, luring those without the means to buy a house they cannot afford and thereby fuelling a housing bubble. The child care voucher is limited to where both parents are working and offers five times more to the richest fifth than the poorest fifth. And the penny off a pint of beer does not do much to compensate for the 9% cut in real wages that the OBR now expects by 2015 compared with 2009.
All this populist flannel misses the point. The real point is the total abandonment of any serious attempt in the Budget to tackle the fundamental problems of a desperately ailing economy. The tragedy for the people of this country is that during this depression we have Herbert Hoover at the controls, when the whole country is crying out for a Franklin Roosevelt. The harshly unrelenting facts of Britain’s inexorable decline speak for themselves. The OBR has been forced to halve the growth prediction this year, which it made only three months ago, from 1.2% to 0.6%. The deficit reduction—the ostensible aim of the whole brutal austerity machine—is going into reverse. The deficit now expected in 2014 is £120 billion—twice what it was expected to be just three years ago. By the time of the election in 2015, the Government will have been forced to borrow an extra £250 billion more than was forecast in 2010. With the plans in the Budget, any hope of the Chancellor’s achieving a firm and sustainable recovery is simply delusional.
The heart of any Budget is its macro-economic strategy. Uniquely, in this Budget, there was no credible strategy. The Chancellor’s policy is still so destructive and the failure so massive that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the real objective is not deficit reduction, but to dismantle the public sector and shrink the state. One simply has to ask, “Why is the Chancellor so wilfully blind to an alternative?”
An alternative must start from recognising that when the household and private sectors are deleveraging, there cannot be a recovery if the public sector does the same. It starts from recognising also that monetary policy alone—throwing £375 billion of quantitative easing at the banks, dropping interest rates to the floor and letting the exchange rate fall by 25%—cannot by itself produce growth; or, as Mark Carney would put it, not much “escape velocity” there. An alternative also starts from accepting that until the collapse in aggregate demand is tackled, there will be no recovery.
How can that be engineered and paid for? There has to be, initially, a public sector-driven investment programme in house building, infrastructure, energy, transport and low-carbon technology until such time as the private sector can take over. That can be paid for by borrowing £30 billion at the dirt-cheap interest rate of 0.5%, or £150 million a year, which would rapidly pay for itself by taking back into employment 1 million workers, whom it is currently costing the country £10 billion to keep on the dole. However, this does not have to involve any public borrowing at all. The nationalised banks, RBS and Lloyds, could be instructed to prioritise lending to key infrastructure manufacturing projects, or the ultra-rich—the 14,000 millionaires who are about to get a £2,000 a week tax give-away—could be capital gains taxed on the £155 billion of gains they have made over the last three years, according to The Sunday Times. Or, instead of hosing down the banks with another huge tranche of quantitative easing, the money could be diverted to direct investment in industry.
Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill
Michael Meacher Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
We have had an interesting and thoughtful debate, which has concentrated on detail, but I think it is worth putting it into context. Despite the banks triggering, as we all know, the biggest economic crisis since the 1930s, with the Government having to provide nearly £1 trillion in loans, guarantees and asset protection schemes to ailing banks, it has taken five years to reach this point of proposing reform—and even then, by any standards, this Bill is woefully short of what is urgently needed to prevent a recurrence of financial collapse and to produce a safe and desirable finance sector. I have a lot of sympathy with my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) when he said, “Is this it?”
First, the Bill’s central mechanism—ring-fencing between the investment and retail arms of the banks—is all too likely to be subverted by the Machiavellian skills of the City in regulatory arbitrage. The Minister mentioned that, but rather slithered over it, I thought, by saying that he had confidence that it would work. The only evidence he quoted in favour of that was the opinion of Sir John Vickers. Since it was his proposal, it is not surprising that he believes it will work. Historically, however, all the evidence is that Chinese walls will be circumvented.
Let me deal with the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. One has to ask, as has been asked a number of times already in this debate, why after five years of delay this Bill is being rushed through just a few months before the Government’s own appointed commission actually reports? The Tyrie banking commission has made it very clear that it strongly advocates electrification of the ring fence. The Chancellor initially rejected that until the commission’s chair, the highly respected hon. Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), and Lord Lawson threatened to table amendments to force the Chancellor’s hand to ensure that the full sanction of separation remained in the Bill. Finding his hand forced, the Chancellor then made the absolute minimum concession he could get away with, namely giving regulators the power to dismantle an individual bank that tried to undermine the ring fence, but not a more general power to apply full separation across the industry. Even after that, dubiety remains because the Bill does not say what precisely is to be ring-fenced. Savings, for example, can certainly be placed in a variety of exotic securities.
The Government have also succumbed to the banking lobby in permitting banks to locate simple derivative products within their retail operations. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) pointed out, that can be, and indeed already has been, uncomfortably extended. The Government’s retreat can only have the effect of opening the door to other forms of speculative activity to nest inside retail banking.
There are other uncertainties. Let me give just one example. Let us suppose that funds are transferred from a ring-fenced to a non-ring-fenced entity via a foreign subsidiary or affiliate in a place where there is no such separation. Is that a breach of the ring fence? How does anyone actually know? I presume that we will not rely on the good intentions of bankers.
The real problem with the Bill, however, is that it does not deal with the fundamental causes underlying the reckless and destructive banking that has done so much damage. It is preoccupied with investment banking, and it offers no relief from those suffering from the abuses in retail banking. As many people have mentioned, payment protection insurance, money-laundering, the fixing of endowment mortgages and interest rates, and pension mis-selling are just some of the rackets that have been run by retail banking. Nothing in the Bill offers any reform.
Many of those abuses, on not only the investment but the retail side, are fuelled by the incessant stock market demands for higher short-term returns, as well as the profit-related pay of executives and traders. Even when the European Union tried to limit the latter by means of bonus caps, the Chancellor went out of his way to stop it without managing to secure a single ally in any of the other 26 member states. I can only say that the banks certainly do not provide half the annual donations to the Tory party without expecting a very big return.
However, even more important than the ring fence and the ambiguities relating to the status of so-called simple derivatives, which are anything but simple—for example, there is the obvious question of whether currency hedges can be sold to small businesses from within the ring-fenced operations—is the leverage ratio. As has been mentioned, the Vickers recommendation was for capital of 4% with a lending ratio of 25:1. The Chancellor, in yet another very big concession to the banks, dropped that to 3%, opening up a 33:1 ratio. In its interim report published today, the Tyrie commission—rightly, in my view—rejected that as being wrong-headed and unnecessarily risky, precisely because of the excessive size of the finance sector in our economy, relative to the size of those in other economies and, indeed, absolutely. I think that that unwise concession ought to be overturned in both Houses.
This is not, I think, a great Clark-Javid Bill. It is a mini-Bill which, unforgivably in my view, entirely ignores the wider banking framework. The big four—and this, surely, is the background to the Bill—have let Britain down badly. We need to transform the whole banking culture, and end its present obsession with property, overseas speculation, offshoring and tax avoidance. By being too big to fail, the big four exacerbate moral hazard; because of their size and weight they choke competition and new entrants to the market; and they have manifestly failed to keep adequate funding flowing to business. They should be broken up, initially by a clean break between the investment and retail sides—on the basis of all the historical evidence, I think that a ring fence is highly unlikely to work—and beyond that by a wider restructuring.
What the country really needs is a national investment bank supported by a range of smaller specialist banks, focusing on infrastructure development, science and technology, small and medium-sized enterprises and a low-carbon economy—to mention only some—together with a regional spread of banks along the lines of the German Mittelstand. The other essential requirement is the regaining of public supervision of the money supply. As the Minister mentioned in his opening speech, the total gross lending of the banking sector has been about £7 trillion a year, five times as much as GDP. What the Minister did not say, however, is that only about 8% of that has gone towards productive investment. The banks have used their virtual monopoly over domestic credit creation—amounting to some 97%—largely to fuel successive property booms and speculative foreign ventures. That is a basic reason for the fact that the country now has a fast-rising and unsustainable deficit in traded goods, which last year amounted to more than £100 billion —7% of GDP.
Steve Baker
The right hon. Gentleman has raised a point that many people fail to appreciate: the banks lend money into existence and into housing, partly because they are encouraged to do so by the risk weightings in Basel. Does he agree that, at least in that respect, the money supply tripled because regulators encouraged banks to do it?
Mr Meacher
I do agree, and I know that the hon. Gentleman believes that banks have far too much power to create money out of nothing. He and I may not agree on exactly how that can be dealt with, but it certainly needs to be dealt with.
Frank Dobson
Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the characteristics of our banking system is that the banks have invested more money in fancy offices in the City for themselves than in British manufacturing industry?
Mr Meacher
That is also true. My right hon. Friend listed some of the huge abuses that have been turned to the private benefit of the bankers and the people at the top, and that is another example.
Our balance of payments problem cannot be allowed to continue. That is integral to our future. If Britain is to achieve what we all want—a long-term recovery with stable growth and full employment—we need a lending system that prioritises manufacturing, construction and export promotion, and allocates credit in accordance with the national interest rather than the private interest of banking executives and traders. The Bill is concerned almost exclusively with limited regulation. All the historical evidence suggests that it is likely to be highly ineffective even on that score, but its real fault is that it does not even address the central issue in the financial sector, which is immensely important and crucial to Britain’s survival. This is a feeble Bill, and the next Government will have to introduce a proper Bill to achieve the necessary regulation.
Corporate Tax Avoidance
Michael Meacher Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
I sincerely congratulate the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) on securing this debate, which has been much needed for a very long time. He raised a series of important issues and I strongly endorse the gist of his recommendations. I shall explore a little further the reasons why the tax system has been corrupted in the way that he suggested, and therefore what needs to be done.
A conventional view and a charitable view is that the Government do the best they can, but are outgunned and outmanoeuvred by all those smart tycoons and multinationals who employ an army of accountants and lawyers to run rings round the flat-footed regulators and tax inspectors who are always behind the curve. That is, in my view, a pastiche of the truth. The reality is that Government, as I will show, far from cracking down on tax dodgers, not only turn a blind eye to all but the most egregious examples of tax misfeasance, but actually promote some of the most brazen examples of tax avoidance. I will come on to that.
This is scarcely surprising when the whole apparatus of tax policy has been captured by the corporate interest. The so-called clamp-down which the Government are promising will be run by the former City corporate tax lawyer and former Tory special adviser, Edward Troup, who is now in charge of tax at HMRC. It will be overseen by the HMRC chairman, Ian Barlow, who ran the most aggressive tax avoidance schemes for KPMG. Even the HMRC’s ethics committee is chaired by Phil Hodkinson, who is a director of the Resolution insurance company based in a tax haven. All that tells a pretty clear story.
As we all know, corporation tax avoidance has become a hot political issue only as a result of the relentless highlighting of it by analysts such as Richard Murphy of Tax Justice Network and journalists such as Tom Bergin of Thomson Reuters and Richard Brooks of Private Eye, as well as campaigners such as UK Uncut. Why is it left to voluntary campaigners to nail the tax dodgers who are cheating honest taxpayers and the Revenue out of, according to the Government, £35 billion to £40 billion a year? That is equal to about a third of the total deficit and the sum is probably a considerable underestimate.
One answer might be that the banks, which are by far the biggest tax dodgers, pay half the Tory party funds every year. [Interruption.] The Minister should not just shake his head. These are facts which are highly relevant. The multinational companies, which are the second biggest tax dodgers, pay most of the rest. If, instead of all the rhetoric that we get from the Prime Minister and Chancellor about moral repugnance and abhorrence, the Government were seriously concerned about stopping industrial-scale tax avoidance, let them answer three questions. If the Minister wants to answer them in my time, he is very welcome to do so.
First, since we all know that the really big numbers are not the tiddly Jimmy Carrs of this world but the transfer pricing by multinationals, why do the Government not bring in country-by-country reporting, which at a stroke would put a stop to the artificial switching of tax liability to low tax jurisdictions for no other reason than simply to avoid tax? I do not know whether the Minister wants to answer. Perhaps he will.
Secondly, since many, if not a majority, of the world’s most used tax havens are UK-controlled overseas territories and Crown dependencies, why do the Government not close them down? Why are not all such countries and territories—the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Jersey and so on—required automatically to hand over details of income, assets and finance structures such as trusts to the UK authorities? This is the point that the hon. Member for Redcar made. If territories fail to comply, why do the Government not refuse to recognise the validity of any financial transactions emanating from them, as well as through domestic tax law, making it far harder, which the Government could well do, to get money into the recalcitrant tax havens in the first place?
The simple answer is that the Government could do that perfectly well and very effectively, but they will not do so because they do not want to, because their corporate and financial backers would scream blue murder if they ever tried to do so, and this is a very feeble Government, who are quite willing to bash the weak through benefit cuts but are not prepared to stand up to the strong.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
I have great respect for the right hon. Gentleman, who has been consistent in pursuing the issue, but his last criticism is completely ill-founded. I do not speak as somebody who backed the previous Tory Governments or the previous Labour Governments when they failed to deal with the issue for years and years. Looking objectively, I have seen far more action from the Treasury under this Government than I saw under 13 years of the Labour Government whom he supported.
Mr Meacher
The right hon. Gentleman, whom I respect, wishes to raise a partisan issue when we are discussing something of much greater importance. Perhaps I can satisfy him by saying that I entirely agree with him. New Labour was just as bad as the Tories and I fully recognise that, but let us turn to where we are and what we ought to do about it.
The third question is this: if the Government are serious about tackling tax avoidance, why are they cutting the number of tax inspectors, many of whom recover more than 100 times the cost of their salary? In 2010 there were 68,000 of them. There are now far fewer. The problem is that when the Chancellor gives his dog-whistle that Britain is open for business, part of that coded message is that Britain is open for tax avoidance, and there will be far fewer tax inspectors nosing about and prying into shady practices.
While the Government have ostentatiously avoided all the actions that will end the transfer of tax avoidance, the truth is even worse. They are now drawing up measures which, frankly, will rip the guts out of the laws that safeguard the nation’s corporate tax base. They have exempted from tax multinationals’ foreign profits, but allow tax relief for the costs of funding them. In effect, that turns the UK itself into a corporate tax haven, which incentivises multinationals to shelter income offshore and to place real business overseas, using the UK as a worldwide platform for tax avoidance.
The Government are now going even further with the CFC—controlled foreign companies—rules. From January 2014, multinationals that open a finance subsidiary in a tax haven will have their corporation tax, as staggering as it may seem, reduced from the current 23% to 5.5%. In future, therefore, multinational companies really need not bother with tax avoidance any more, because the Government are serving it up to them on a plate.
The latest wheeze that the Government have come up with is the patent box. If a company has a product with a small patented component, it will qualify for a 50% cut in its corporation tax—that is 10% from April 2017—not only on that product but on the whole of its profits.
A third example is the general anti-avoidance rule, which the Government portray as their flagship measure against tax avoidance. Actually, it is the reverse. By being narrowly drawn it will block the worst kinds of tax avoidance, but by the same token—
Mr Gauke
I really do not have time to give way, I am afraid. I have to say that the right hon. Gentleman’s speech did him no credit. Some of his wild conspiracy theories will not do his reputation much good.
With more time, I would have liked to address a number of other issues, including EU policy on VAT. My hon. Friend the Member for Redcar will be pleased to hear that, from 2015, the process will be much more to his liking. I want to underline that the Government are committed to dealing with tax avoidance, be it domestic or international. We are taking the necessary legislative steps and giving HMRC the necessary resources. We are determined to address the matter, as I am sure the whole House is.
The Economy
Michael Meacher Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Kwasi Kwarteng
I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, but if he looks at the deficit and the direction of travel and what happened in the 1980s, he will see that the deficit came down, again after a period of Labour mismanagement, every single year from 1979 to 1989, and that the budget was balanced in 1989. It was only as a consequence of the recession that we went back into deficit, as a Keynesian economist would tell him.
Let us look at what has happened over the past three years. The Government came into office when the eurozone was in crisis and there was a massive run on Greek sovereign bonds. The Chancellor’s approach, quite rightly, was to make the deficit our No. 1 priority. That, in effect, calmed the markets. Opposition Members might scoff at the bond markets, but they are very powerful. It was particularly interesting to note that in the six weeks before the general election British gilts were actually rising in value and yields were falling, because the markets rightly believed that Labour would be turfed out of office. In anticipation of that happy event, and before the quantitative easing, people started buying British gilts.
The Chancellor’s approach to dealing with the deficit is exactly the right one, because it followed the insight that we have to deal with spending. All countries in the western world have to do that. That is what the fiscal cliff debate in America is about, because it understands that spending has to be on the table; the issue is the degree to which revenue should be on the table. It has a mature approach to public spending. It is only the Labour party that lives in this Shangri-La world in which we can carry on spending and borrowing money with abandon and making the crisis even worse.
Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
I think this is the most extraordinary rewriting of economic history I have ever heard in the Chamber. The hon. Gentleman has not once mentioned the banks and the financial crash. Does he not realise that the public sector deficit in 2007, just before the crash, was about 3%? It only rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Gentleman will have no time to answer you, Mr Meacher, and I am sure that you want an answer.
Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
I cannot help but begin by noting that, with nearly two hours to go, there is not a single Tory MP rising to defend the Chancellor’s policies. That speaks for itself—I cannot remember the last time it happened.
Mr Meacher
No, I am not going to give way; I have not even started. I am just observing what has happened.
I congratulate my three new hon. Friends the Members for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and for Croydon North (Steve Reed) on what I thought were quite remarkable speeches—confident, informed, quite amusing in places and committed. When I first came to this House—a long time ago—new Members took their listeners on a tour of their constituencies, touching on the buildings, the people and the history, but saying nothing about politics. That was not the protocol. I am glad that that rule has gone. We heard passionate speeches today that were all about politics, including the national health service, child care services and the defence of the unemployed. I think that all three of my new hon. Friends will make a big contribution to this House.
Richard Drax
I do not want to touch on the economy, but may I just say that if what the right hon. Gentleman has just described was indeed the case, is it not rather sad that that protocol was not observed?
Mr Meacher
I obviously made a mistake in giving way to the hon. Gentleman.
As the Chancellor acknowledged, he had two main objectives in his autumn statement/mini-Budget. One was to generate the growth that has certainly eluded him for the past two and a half years; the other was to rebalance the economy and lay the foundations for genuine, sustainable, long-term growth. He failed miserably on both counts. On the first test, the International Monetary Fund, the OECD, the Federation of European Employers, the CBI, the British Chambers of Commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses have all been telling him that he simply must inject growth into the economy and stop endlessly hacking away at public expenditure. Just how desperately such actions are needed is shown by the fact that the Chancellor’s own forecast in his 2010 Budget that cumulative public sector net borrowing over the next four years would be £322 billion has now been increased to a staggering £539 billion. That is an increase of £217 billion. The key point is that that increase is almost wholly attributable to the failure of the economy to grow. That is the significant point behind this debate.
Mr Meacher
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, because he was kind enough to give way to me at the end of his speech.
Kwasi Kwarteng
I am glad to see that some courtesies are still observed in the House. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that this country and this Government have a problem with current spending levels, or does he believe that we can carry on increasing spending indefinitely?
Mr Meacher
Of course I believe that there is a problem with the level of debt and the level of the public sector deficit; everyone accepts that. The issue is how it should be dealt with. I believe that the way this Government are dealing with it is profoundly self-defeating.
The Chancellor has failed in the sense that, according to the OBR, despite an output gap that remains incredibly high at 3.7%, the net effect of all his measures in the autumn statement will be to raise the general growth rate by a footling 0.1%. That is an extraordinary judgment on the Chancellor.
The Chancellor also failed his second test, which was to shift the economy on to a more sustainable long-term footing, moving away from his over-dependence on finance—a move we all agree with—and towards a much stronger industrial and manufacturing base. Eighteen months ago, he announced with great fanfare the march of the makers. That never happened, however. He has now promised a £40 billion guarantee for private infrastructure investment, but the problem is not one of too little credit; it is one of too little demand for credit. The latest figures show construction plummeting ominously, largely because of its great dependence on the public sector, which the Chancellor is shrinking. Moreover, UK manufacturing will this year suffer the biggest deficit in traded goods in its entire history—a deficit of roughly £110 billion, or 7.5% of gross domestic product. That is utterly unsustainable, and if that trend is not reversed, it will inevitably lead to an almighty crash in British living standards before long.
Mr Meacher
I will not give way again, as I do not have much time left.
Why is the Chancellor not meeting his own tests? It is because he is obsessed with a neo-liberal ideology that forbids any public sector lead role in the economy. In fact, the Chancellor is crucifying Britain today on a cross of dogma. What should a sensible steward of the British economy do now? He should do two things: reinstate the capital spending programmes cancelled in the great drive towards deficit reduction, with special priority given to house building, energy and transport renewal and green technology; and set up a national investment bank with its own portfolio of investment projects, focused on key infrastructure and cutting-edge technology.
How will that be paid for? There are three options. Instead of any further £50 billion tranche of quantitative easing being used to consolidate bank balance sheets, as has happened every time up till now, the Chancellor should divert at least a portion of it towards generating 1 million or more jobs by investing it directly in industrial and manufacturing projects. Or he could levy a capital gains tax charge—I know that this would not be welcome on the Government Benches—on the colossal gains made by a minuscule proportion of the mega-rich, which The Sunday Times, a Murdoch paper, believes to have been in the order of £155 billion in the past three years. Or he could justify—yes, I think he could—a temporary increase in borrowing, of, say, £150 million to raise £30 billion at an interest rate of 0.5% on the reasonable grounds that with such a weak economy but cyclically adjusted net borrowing forecast at only 3% this year, he has given himself enough leeway to delay tightening. Those are the three options, and not to do any of them is a culpable negligence for which he will not be forgiven.
On the Chancellor’s second objective of rebalancing the economy, several measures need to be taken urgently. First, British manufacturing clearly needs a larger flow of qualified skilled workers. The academic underpinning of the STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and maths—should be steadily increased; a viable and effective post-14 vocational route, with a much stronger work component, should be established in schools; and employers should be made to take responsibility for on-site training. Secondly, the bane of short-termist bank lending to British manufacturing must be tackled by giving incentives to develop a long-term ongoing relationship between banks and their customers, as is done very successfully in the German Mittelstand. Thirdly, the supply chains, which are crucial to any successful manufacturing economy but which have been broken up by privatisation and foreign sell-offs over the past 30 years, urgently need to be restored to achieve a secure base for SMEs. Fourthly, the sacrifice of key industrial sectors and companies to uninhibited acquisition in the international markets—Pilkington, P&O, Corus, BT, O2, Smith Electronics, Cadbury and BA; it is a very long list and a laissez-faire policy that no other major country in the west would ever allow—should be reversed if Britain’s economy and its survival are to be secured.
All those things need to be done, because the alternative under present policy is semi-permanent continuation of a condition of semi-slump.
Autumn Statement
Michael Meacher Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
How can the Chancellor seriously pretend that he is cracking down on tax avoidance when the £7 billion he referred to today will take up to seven years to realise, at a rate of about £1 billion a year, against a rate of tax avoidance of £35 billion a year? The general anti-avoidance rule that he mentioned is far too narrowly drawn to be effective and—[Interruption.] I hope that he will listen to this. At the same time, he is introducing a tax cut from 23% to just 5% for multinationals in tax havens.
Mr Osborne
I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman has the right figures. We are increasing the amount recovered from taxes that should have been paid from £13 billion under the Labour Government to £20 billion. That £7 billion increase, plus the £2 billion that I have announced today, makes a £9 billion increase in the taxes that should have been collected and that we are now collecting. I hope he will welcome and support that. By the way, we have also got rid of the situation that happened when the current Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor were in the Treasury, in which people in the City were paying lower tax rates than the people who cleaned for them. We have dealt with that problem.
Income Tax
Michael Meacher Excerpts(11 years, 12 months ago)
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Mr Gauke
That is also included in the HMRC assessment of the consequences for economic activity. My hon. Friend raises an important point, however: it is not just about people leaving the UK, but the fact that people would not be moving to the UK, thus damaging our reputation as a business centre. I am pleased to say that under this Government we now have a competitive top rate and corporate tax system. That is why, just this week, UBM and Seadrill announced they were moving to the UK—because it is a good place to do business, and our tax system plays a part in that.
We have taken measures to ensure that high earners make a fair contribution without resorting to punitive and populist measures that damage the economy. We have raised revenues from the most well-off in society in every Budget since we came to power, creating a fairer tax system—one where those with the broadest shoulders bear the greatest burden. That has included increases in capital gains tax and stamp duty. We have also taken a tough stance on avoidance and evasion. For example, we introduced the disguised remuneration legislation in the 2011 Budget, raising £750 million a year, mainly from higher and additional rate tax payers. That is seven and a half times the amount that was being raised by 50p as compared with 45p—and by the way, the Opposition voted against it.
In the 2012 Budget we set out policies on tackling tax avoidance. All our Budgets have included firm measures to close loopholes and strengthen HMRC’s ability to deal with tax avoidance.
Mr Meacher
If the Minister is trying to make a point about how tax loopholes are being closed, how can he possibly justify changing the controlled foreign company rules in 2013-14 to reduce the rate on multinationals with a finance company in a tax haven from the current 23% to just over 5%?
Mr Gauke
The CFC reforms are making the UK much more attractive for businesses headquartered here. The House will remember that in 2007 a number of businesses left the UK. Now some of them are returning, including UBM, which announced just two days ago that it was moving to the UK. Artificial diversion of profits is dealt with under the reformed CFC regime. The old CFC was past its sell-by date. It was unattractive and was driving businesses out of the UK. Indeed, there has been cross-party consensus on the need to reform the CFC legislation. Because of that, we are now seeing businesses moving to the UK, which I welcome.
We have taken steps to deal with tax avoidance. I would like briefly to touch on the issue of pensioners, as the shadow Chief Secretary raised it and it is touched on in the motion. The House should remember that we have seen a substantial increase in the state pension this year. Indeed, the increase has been £120 a year greater than it would have been had we stuck with the plans inherited from Labour. The abolition of the age-related allowances will not result in any cash losers. There are those who are affected by the withdrawal, but they will benefit from the largest ever cash increase in their personal allowance—a real-terms tax cut of £170. Since coming to power, we have taken steps to increase the personal allowance. That is the really big tax cut that dominated the last Budget and it is benefiting millions of people.
We have taken steps to cut fuel duty, with pump prices now 10p a litre lower than they would have been under the previous Government’s plans. We are supporting those on benefits by improving incentives to move into work and increase the number of hours they work. The introduction of universal credit will see the number of people losing more than 70% of their earnings when they move into 10 hours of work fall by 1.2 million. In addition, the single taper in universal credit will ensure that practically every household will face a marginal tax rate of less than 80% when they increase gross earnings, compared with 500,000 under the current system.
In all parts of this House we agree that those who can most afford to should contribute their fair share to the Exchequer, but those in opposition who insist that we should do that through a 50p rate that damaged our economy, sacrificed our international competitiveness and did not raise the revenues intended are making a big mistake. Those advocating a return to a 50p rate have to answer this question. Given that it will not raise any significant amount of revenue—it may even cost money—why do it? It is not about deficit reduction or economics, and it is not even about getting more from the wealthy, because there are better ways to do it; it is all about the politics. But at what cost? At a time when the UK must compete to prosper in a globalised world and when we have a choice to sink or swim, those who advocate a 50p rate are taking the easy choice—short-term populism triumphing over increased competitiveness; a traditional message of “bash the rich” prevailing over the need to attract and keep wealth creators in this country. This country’s route to success will not be through the lazy populism we have heard from Labour. Instead, we have taken steps to ensure that those with the most contribute the most, but also ensured that we have a tax system that enables us to compete on a global stage, creating a fairer tax system that still shows that the UK is open for business.
Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) on making such an extraordinarily good maiden speech. It was elegant, forceful, confident and amusing, and it had a global sweep, covering most of the current political agenda. I am sure that we will hear a great deal more from my hon. Friend, and I wish him well.
The basic reason why the 50p rate decision is so unfair is that the very rich caused the financial crash, yet those at the top of the banks have hardly suffered at all, while the rest of the population are having to fund the bail-out and are now paying the price in rising unemployment, shrinking incomes and reduced services. To cap it all, in those current circumstances of austerity, the Chancellor flagrantly and provocatively cut the 50p tax rate to give the 1% very richest in the country—those on more than £3,000 a week—an average £10,000 tax break, including giving 14,000 millionaires a gift of £40,000 each, which is an extra £800 a week.
The Exchequer Secretary gave two reasons for doing that, one of which was that not much money will be lost as a result, but Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs report on the 50p rate reduction plainly states, in table A2, that the Treasury will forgo £3 billion as a result.
Sheila Gilmore
Does my right hon. Friend think the Government’s rush to judgment on the effect of the 50p rate decision will be as good as their rush to judgment on the value of the future jobs fund?
Mr Meacher
My hon. Friend makes her own point. It is very difficult to reach a final conclusion on this matter, because of forestalling and because this change is seen as temporary. The very rich will, therefore, ensure that most of their income is put forward until the rate is lowered.
Charlie Elphicke
On tax avoidance, would the right hon. Gentleman support a higher tax on second and third homes?
Mr Meacher
I believe that second or third homes—and all other non-primary homes—should incur a higher rate of tax. I never supported the discount given for second homes, which has now been raised to a level nearly equal to that for first homes, and there is a case for the rate for empty homes being raised above that.
As I was saying, HMRC’s report shows that the loss will be £3 billion a year, as opposed to the sum that the Exchequer Secretary kept on talking about today: the £100 million that Treasury Ministers signed off originally, on the basis of arcane taxable income elasticity calculations, about which the Government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility said there was huge uncertainty.
A table given in Hansard on 25 April this year, at column 898, is also interesting. It shows that 80% of those earning more than £1 million paid more than 40% in tax. In other words, tens of thousands of people were—and are—paying the 50p tax rate. They were unable to dodge it. That is an important point, because it serves to destroy the Government’s argument that the 50p rate is a very inefficient method of raising tax revenue and that its abolition will have a negligible effect. I think it will have a very significant effect.
The Exchequer Secretary’s other argument in support of cutting the 50p rate was the old Thatcherite canard—which he stated repeatedly in his speech—that we should not tax the wealthy more because we depend on them for our future. That is the old trickle-down theory. However, we know that the opposite is, in fact, the case. Over the past 30 years, there has been a steady trickle-up effect. There has been a ballooning of inequality, with most middle England incomes having stagnated. That would not be so bad if the trickle-up effect made us more competitive.
The fact is that since 1987, when the top rate went down from 83% to 40%, we have not had a surplus on our current account in the balance of payments for the past 35 years. Our share of world trade was 6.5% in 1970, but it has dropped by two thirds to just 2.3% and our deficit on traded goods last year was £100 billion. That is a monument of uncompetitiveness.
Not only did the Chancellor originally impose £18 billion cuts on the poorest families in the country, but he is now proposing a further £10 billion of cuts to fill the gap left by his failed deficit-cutting policies. The housing benefit cuts that are coming in next April will remove thousands of families across the country from their homes because they simply will not be able to pay the rent. The disability living allowance cuts will leave thousands of disabled people housebound. Atos is cutting a swathe through thousands on incapacity benefit who simply cannot get a job. The poor are being punished for what they did not do, and the rich, who have a great deal to answer for, are almost getting off unscathed.
The second reason for keeping the 50p rate is that the very rich are in a far better position at this time to contribute to meeting Britain’s needs. According to The Sunday Times rich list published this April, the richest 1,000 people—a tiny group who make up 0.003% of the adult population—racked up gains in the past three years of austerity of £155 billion. If those gains were charged to capital gains tax, about £40 billion would be raised. Perhaps the real figure would be less and only £20 billion or £30 billion would be raised, but if it were well invested, it would be enough to kick-start the economy and begin to reduce the deficit in a way that we need to do—by real growth.
The third reason for keeping the 50p rate is the real anger building up across the country about what rich individuals and rich multinationals are getting away with on tax avoidance. I return to the Exchequer Secretary’s table, because it shows that 9% of those earning more than £10 million, which is more than £200,000 a week, paid tax at a lower rate than their cleaning ladies—
Oral Answers to Questions
Michael Meacher Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Mr Gauke
What Sainsbury’s does is a matter for Sainsbury’s, but I also point out the comments made by the likes of the leaders of the Federation of Small Businesses, the British Chambers of Commerce and the Institute of Directors, who have said that this measure will help entrepreneurs, start-up businesses and the fast-growing companies that we need. Surely the whole House should welcome that.
Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
Given that the Government have been keeping extremely mum about the tax avoidance implications of the scheme and that it looks like a wide-open tax loophole for the better off, what capital gains tax avoidance does he estimate it will create?
Mr Gauke
In the design of the scheme we will take steps to deal with tax avoidance opportunities to ensure that we do not create any loopholes, but this is a scheme that will encourage entrepreneurs and start-ups to provide businesses with an opportunity to expand rapidly, and it is exactly the sort of flexible approach that this country needs in the current economic climate.