Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Nigel Mills and Nigel Huddleston

2nd reading
Wednesday 17th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question, but he has jumped ahead to a later part of my speech. I will get on to that point in a moment, because the movement to a household budget is an important part of the announcements.

I should just reiterate the first points on the changes that we have made. Overall, we estimate that 485,000 families will gain an average of £1,260 in child benefit in 2024-25 from these changes to HICBC. And, of course, what is good for families is also good for the economy at large, as my hon. Friend pointed out. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that, through these child benefit changes, the economy will gain additional hours work equivalent to around 10,000 full-time equivalents by 2028-29. Going forward, we want to ensure that the child benefit system fairly rewards families in all their diversity, including those who, for example, have only one working parent. The Government will end the unfairness, for example, of single earner families in the child benefit system by administering the HICBC on a household rather than an individual basis by April 2026. We shall be consulting on this in due course, as my hon. Friend quite rightly highlighted. This is something, we know, that many people have been calling for.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

Can the Minister give us an indication of what level of household income the Treasury has in mind for that consultation? I presume that it will be much higher than £80,000; otherwise, it would be a more punitive situation. Will it be £100,00 or £120,000? What will it be?

[Nigel Huddleston]

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s inquisitiveness, but this is the point of the consultation. We will be having a consultation and I am sure that his views and opinions and those of others will be taken into account.

I shall now turn to how the Bill will drive investment in our economy. We all recognise that investment in the economy is crucial for economic growth. It supports everyone across the country and ensures our competitiveness in international markets. That is why, through this Bill, the Government are taking decisions for the long term to support that investment. For example, our creative industries contributed £126 billion in gross value added in 2022 and supported more than 2 million jobs.

By announcing more than £1billion of new reliefs for the UK’s world-leading creative industries at the spring Budget, we have signalled our commitment to ensuring the sector’s continued growth. For example, we will make current tax reliefs for theatres, orchestras, museums and galleries permanent, at a rate of 45% for touring theatres and touring productions by museums and galleries; 40% for non-touring productions; and 45% for orchestras. That will ensure that our creative industries have the support they need after the unprecedented economic shock of the pandemic.

We will also further support the UK’s independent film sector through a new UK independent film tax credit at a rate of 53% for films with a budget of up to £15 million, which is worth about £80 million a year. This will support the production of UK independent films and, of course, the incubation of UK talent, which is admired around the world. This Government are committed to supporting UK businesses and these measures deliver on that.

Finance Bill

Debate between Nigel Mills and Nigel Huddleston

Committee of the whole House
Wednesday 10th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston]

I think my hon. Friend is kicking off what is likely to be a long debate over the course of the next year, but an important one for our constituents and businesses. The economy will play a pivotal part in discussions this year. It is very clear what we are doing: we are implementing vital changes, asked for by business and in response to business, to provide that business certainty and an environment in which they and therefore our constituents can thrive. I do not think any of us want to put that at risk. However, without the clarification and confidence from the Opposition about what they might do, these issues will be raised and the uncertainty can persist. We on the Government side of the House are committed to this, and my hon. Friend is right to make that clear.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

I think the Minister just read out that the assessment is that this measure will create £3 billion additional investment per year. Is that right? If I remember the Green Book correctly from the autumn statement, the annual cost of this measure was £11 billion, which I think equates to £55 billion of extra capital expenditure. Is he saying that £52 billion of that £55 billion is just bringing forward investment that would have happened later, and £3 billion is new, or have I somehow got my numbers wrong and this will generate a load of investment that would not otherwise have happened?

--- Later in debate ---

[Nigel Mills]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I want to direct my remarks to clause 1, on permanent full expensing for the purchase of plant and machinery, which I discussed during the autumn statement and on Second Reading.

This is actually quite a radical and expensive policy. We have, probably for longer than all our lifetimes, given companies relief for capital expenditure using capital allowances. That was originally quite a generous 25% in the first year—I suspect that most plant and machinery had a longer life than that when the rules were produced. We have chosen to do that for all these years, rather than just letting a business deduct its own accounting calculation of depreciation, because we did not want the manipulation of tax deductions by businesses doing their tax returns. We chose to do it this way.

The tool that Governments of all colours for decades have had when the economy hits trouble is to give first-year allowances and various enhancements. I remember a 40% first-year allowance and a 50% first-year allowance. We have had full expensing up to £1 million, as the shadow Minister referred to. That has been the way of incentivising investment in a period of economic recovery for probably as long back as there has been a toolkit.

Now we have landed on permanent full expensing, so businesses get full relief on plant and machinery spend in the first year. What are the Government expecting to happen differently here? Are we expecting capital investment by businesses of more than £1 million a year that otherwise would not be economically viable and would never have happened? Are we expecting investment to be brought forward and to take place earlier than it otherwise would have? That would be entirely welcome and would probably modernise businesses, protect jobs and give them a chance to grow in a way that they perhaps would not have had, which is not a bad policy aim at all. Or are we just giving business an earlier tax relief than they otherwise would have had, whereby they bank that and are happy but it does not change behaviour?

It is hard to get behind the numbers on this measure in the Green Book. As I said earlier, the estimate at the end of the five-year period, and probably the first full year that making this permanent will make a difference, is a tax cost of £10.9 billion just for this measure. If we run the numbers, bearing in mind that businesses will already have had 25% tax relief on that same expenditure in that year, that means we expect a £55 billion higher claim to get tax relief in that financial year than otherwise would have happened. However, the Minister said that only £3 billion of that is estimated by the OBR to be additional investment that would not otherwise have taken place at some point. It suggests that we have a lot of investment being brought forward with a lot of more generous tax relief that would have happened anyway. Will the Minister explain what the Government are aiming to achieve and what is being forecast? Is the OBR being unduly cautious? That would enable us to understand how we judge whether the measure has been successful.

Are we expecting to see whole loads of investment in plant and machinery that never would have been viable before, or are we expecting to see it brought forward? If what we are getting is brought forward, at some time the cost should start to taper down, because this is not a new tax relief that businesses would not have already had; it is just an acceleration of tax relief and businesses will pay more tax in all subsequent years, because they are not getting the relief they used to get. The measure could cost £11 billion in the first year and gradually that would level down and in the fullness of time there would be no more annual cost, in effect. Can the Minister clarify that?

It is not immediately clear how the Government plan to assess whether the measure has worked or is working. I assume that from electronic corporate tax returns we can track down to the pound the amount of investment claimed for full expense relief every year. We could have a report within six months of the end of a calendar year on how much of these 100% allowances has been claimed and compare that with the total amount claimed for capital allowances in whichever preceding years we like. We could see whether full expensing was driving behaviour change. Will the Minister talk us through what he expects to happen and how he will assess whether this has been an effective way of boosting productivity and increasing investment for £11 billion a year? It is probably one of the most sizeable line entries we have seen in a Finance Bill in my 14 years here. Normally we expect the big number to be a tax cut for individuals, and this measure is significant.

As we are making this measure a permanent feature of our tax system, it shines a light on what we are trying to get from our corporation tax system. There will not be any kind of compliance saving. The Minister made a brave attempt at saying there might, but effectively all that will change is that the number that a business currently puts in its additions to its writing down allowance pool will now be put in the 100% first-year claim box. It is the same number in a different box; that is the only compliance change we have here. It throws into question some previous policy decisions we have made, because for a business to get full benefit from this, it needs to be paying enough tax to use the full relief in that first year.

If a business cannot use the full relief, the incentives are not as powerful as they would otherwise be, because then the option is effectively to carry that excess deduction forward, but we introduced rules a few years ago that are strict on how many losses a business can use in a year. If we really think that giving people the earliest possible cash tax benefit for capital investment drives investment, we should probably take away that restriction on using losses, so that businesses can get the benefit as early as possible and not have it spread over a number of years going forward. Will the Minister explain whether the Government will look at that and make sure we are not accidentally undoing some of the benefit we are seeking to get?

My second question is: what do we do with the legacy writing down allowance pool that relates to plant and machinery expenditure for God knows how many past years? On a reducing balance basis of 25%, it takes many, many years to get full tax relief for expenditure, so every business will have a large pot of money that it has not yet had tax benefit for. Are we expecting them to run that down at 25% reducing balance a year and still be doing so in 23 years’ time, by which point no one will have any idea what on earth that balance ever was? Or should we say, “That is a bit of a nonsense. Why do we not just let you take the whole balance at 20% a year over the next five years and finish that problem off, because we do not need to be focusing on that?”? We could find any number we like there, but it would draw a line under that past expenditure in a way that genuinely simplifies things.

We then have the question of, “What do we do with capital expenditure on items that are not plant and machinery?” The tax relief we give on structures and buildings is not generous, but if we are trying to drive an increase in productivity and large businesses to invest in new gigafactories to build batteries for electric cars or for electricity storage or whatever, do we not want to incentivise them to build the factory building as well, rather than either giving them no relief or giving it over a long time? If we are spending £11 billion a year to encourage investment in plant and machinery, should we not spend a little money on trying to encourage other things that are key for industrial investment to take place, by being a bit more generous on buildings and structures? Has the Minister any thoughts on that?

The Government did a capital allowances review only a year or two ago, which did not look at permanent full expensing as one of the options, but it would be interesting to see whether they have had any further thoughts on that. We are now asking every business to go through and track every item of capital that they spend and treat it differently in their tax return from how they treat it in their accounting records. Then we have all manner of different laws depending on whether it is a long-life asset, a short-life asset, a car or an environmentally friendly car—I could go on. For the amount now at stake, and given that we have given full relief for plant and machinery, which is the biggest amount, do we really need all that cost and complexity? Or should we just say for all those other items, “You can just have your accounting calculation”? Okay, businesses might take it a bit quicker than we would like, but in actual fact the cost of that is not all that material in the grand scheme of things.

We could move to a system where the only adjustment someone has to make to their tax return is to claim a very generous tax relief on plant and machinery, and they would not have to touch anything else. That would be a more coherent corporation tax regime, now that we have spent all this money incentivising plant and machinery. It would then genuinely be a compliance saving for a business in that situation.

I support the measure and truly hope that it works, but, as a significant amount is being spent, it would be helpful to understand what we are trying to achieve and how we will know whether we have been successful. I hope that the Government will move on to think about how we can slightly recast our tax system so that it makes sense, having made this radical and generous change.

[Nigel Huddleston]

I thank hon. Members for their contributions. I will take a few moments to respond to quite a few questions raised during the debate. First, I reassure hon. Members that further guidance will be provided on these schemes. Of course, we do not want all the schemes just to exist; we want them to be used so that they have a real-world impact. More information will therefore be coming out about a variety of areas over a period of time.

I gently remind the hon. Member for Ealing North (James Murray), who yet again took the opportunity to talk the UK economy down—the Opposition always do—that every single Labour Government have ended with unemployment higher than what they inherited from the Conservatives. I think the public are well aware of that pattern.

I turn to the many questions raised. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) and for Erewash (Maggie Throup), and indeed Opposition Members for their contributions. On timing, the Government have been clear since the merged scheme consultation was published in January last year that the intended implementation date for the scheme is April 2024. Importantly, in response to that consultation and in recognition of comments, the merged scheme will apply to accounting periods starting on or after 1 April 2024 rather than to expenditure incurred from that date. Again, we will provide further guidance on that.

Gambling and Lotteries

Debate between Nigel Mills and Nigel Huddleston

Tuesday 8th December 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I hope the review will recognise the important role that high street gambling venues play in employing local people, and the Minister will recognise that it would be rather strange if the review had the damaging impact of moving gamblers from the relatively safe, supervised gambling premises on the high streets into the unregulated, unsupervised online world. I hope the review will look to bolster gambling on the high street, rather than on the internet.

[Nigel Huddleston]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point out that many gambling entities take their responsibilities for safe gambling incredibly seriously and do a very good job. It is important, therefore, that we strike the right balance between enabling people to gamble safely and protecting those who are at risk. There is nothing wrong with legitimate gambling that is well regulated and enacted in accordance with minimising harm.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nigel Mills and Nigel Huddleston

Thursday 20th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

3. What progress his Department has made in engaging with businesses on the potential effect on their revenues of the UK leaving the EU.

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

14. What progress his Department has made on engaging with the tourism industry on the potential effect on its revenues of the UK leaving the EU.

[The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr David Davis)]

Since the referendum, the Government have met companies from every sector of the British economy, including tourism, to discuss the risks and opportunities. I believe that as we build an ever more outward-facing, agile economy, with firms trading more widely across the world, there is enormous potential for the UK to be an even better place to do business. We are meeting representatives of business regularly, and the detailed analysis shared with us by many of them is informing the preparations for the negotiations.

On tourism specifically, foreign visitors contribute £22 billion to our economy, and the industry as a whole supports some 1.6 million jobs. A record 3.8 million people visited the UK in July. My right hon. Friend the Culture Secretary has met industry leaders to discuss our exit from the EU, and we debated this matter in Westminster Hall last week. As the Prime Minister has said, we are confident our exit presents opportunities for growth in tourism, and we will work closely with the industry to realise this.