Greensill Capital

Debate between Paul Scully and John Howell

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

The hon. Lady talks about two different things. There is a review into supply chain finance and the request from Greensill Capital, but there is also the wider view of how taxpayers’ money was spent when the Government were working about as close to real time as they will ever get to do. Business owners will understand the huge difference between the speed at which business and Government work. We will review how taxpayers’ money has been spent, but we will also make sure that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Jacob Young) said, we chase people who have used Government grants and support inappropriately.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con) [V]]

Is it not true that the accreditation process that was used allowed a wide diversity of lenders to become accredited under the scheme in order to give more choice to borrowers, and that focus on the choices available to borrowers was crucial?

[Paul Scully]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Chancellor and a number of Ministers reflected the view of the House that we wanted to push to make sure we had that diversity of finance and capital available to businesses of all different types. We should be proud of the support that has been given out, which has allowed companies to get through this incredibly difficult time, and it remains a difficult time.

Horizon: Sub-Postmaster Convictions

Debate between Paul Scully and John Howell

Wednesday 10th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

As I have said, the terms of reference of this review are deep enough to get to the bottom of exactly what has happened. The fact that the chairman, who will be appointed, is independent of Government, independent of Post Office Ltd, and will have the freedom to be able to go and find evidence to complement the evidence that has already been published by Mr Justice Fraser in his judgment means that there will be plenty to draw on in order to come to conclusions and recommendations.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Does the Minister not accept that this is as big a scandal as that of the Guildford Four? Although the settlement was reached by mediation, which I approve of, much of that settlement was taken away in cash for lawyers. Can we not do something to ensure that the settlement justifies the indignities that many of these people have had to suffer?

[Paul Scully]

With regard to the scale of the issue, I agree with my hon. Friend that this has gone on for so long and has involved so many people who have suffered as a result, some with their lives, as we have heard. The point is that the mediated settlement was between the Post Office and the sub-postmasters who took out that group litigation. I am pleased that it came to a conclusion, but, as a result of that, the Government cannot enter into a new discussion with the Post Office on that basis.

Enslavement of Black Africans (Libya)

Debate between Paul Scully and John Howell

Monday 18th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 205476 relating to the enslavement of black Africans in Libya.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I would like to read the petition into the record. It reads:

“Put pressure on Libya to take action to stop enslavement of Black Africans.

CNN has released video footage of black Africans being sold into slavery in Libya. I am asking the UK government to put pressure on the Libyan government to take immediate action to stop these criminals from selling more people, to set current prisoners free, arrest the criminals and end this.”

I am delighted to welcome the petitioner, Constance Mbassi Manga, who has done a fantastic job in raising this issue and getting so many signatures in such a short space of time. I am delighted that she is able to join us today.

As of this morning, 265,272 people had signed the petition within only about three weeks of it going live, which is a real testament to people’s strength of feeling. It is interesting: the likes of Cara Delevingne, Naomi Campbell and Rihanna, and a whole load of rappers who are far too cool for me to even know who they are, have taken up this issue, put it on social media and shared it. All of that, including the petition system, is really part—not the end—of a campaign to make people aware of the horrific things going on in another part of the world that they might otherwise not have been aware of at all. Hopefully, as well as raising awareness, we can start to effect change.

It was international Human Rights Day a week last Sunday. A number of us were out and about, raising issues; I was talking about the situation that the Rohingya Muslim community face in Burma, the Tamils, the Ahmadiyya Muslims and a number of other issues that are close to me and to my constituents, given the various diaspora groups in my constituency. Only a week later, we are talking about something that we thought had long since passed. When the Prime Minister was Home Secretary, she brought in the Modern Slavery Act 2015—a fantastic achievement—which recognised that slavery still existed in hidden pockets of this country. However, this is not hidden; it is absolutely brazen and out-and-out across parts of Libya and its migrant routes. It has to stop.

I was chatting to the Minister a little while ago—I do not know if he will remember this—and we shared the view that when people believe that another group of people are subhuman, there is no depth to which they will not stoop in their treatment of them; they are treated worse than animals. People started being aware of this situation when the International Organisation for Migration started to hear stories and went to document people’s experiences, write reports and share what those voices were saying. However, it was only when CNN covered the issue a few weeks ago that it really came to the public’s wider awareness.

I want to read one piece of documented evidence from the IOM to illustrate what is happening. One of the operations officers in Niger reported on the rescue of a Senegalese migrant. He referred to him as SC, to protect his identity. SC was returning to his home after being held captive for months.

“According to SC’s testimony, while he was trying to travel north through the Sahara, he arrived in Agadez, Niger, where he was told he would have to pay 200,000 CFA—about $320—to continue north towards Libya. A trafficker provided him with accommodation until the day of his departure, which was to be by pick-up truck.

The journey—over two days of travelling—through the desert was relatively smooth for this group. IOM has often heard from other migrants on this route who report seeing the remains of others abandoned by their drivers—and of trucks ransacked by bandits who siphon away their fuel.

SC’s fate was different. When his pick-up reached Sabha in south-western Libya, the driver insisted that he hadn’t been paid by the trafficker, and that he was transporting the migrants to a parking area where SC witnessed a slave market taking place. ‘Sub-Saharan migrants were being sold and bought by Libyans, with the support of Ghanaians and Nigerians who work for them’”,

the IOM reported.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. He mentioned Nigeria; when I visited it as the Prime Minister’s trade envoy, I had a discussion about this problem. We all agreed that if we did not help to get sub-Saharan Africa right, the catastrophe waiting to happen in Europe would be colossal, as more and more Nigerians put themselves in the hands of unscrupulous traffickers on the way to Libya and the Mediterranean coast. Does he agree that that is a realistic view of the situation?

[Paul Scully]

I understand my hon. Friend’s expertise and knowledge of the area and totally agree with him. There is a real risk. We can tackle the atrocities of the slave trade in Libya, and Libya’s power vacuum, but ultimately the biggest threat to that part of the world and many others is migration—and not necessarily just migration through conflict. Economic reasons, climate reasons and any number of other reasons are moving such a mass of people, which causes other situations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Scully]

I absolutely agree, because it is a matter of pull factors, and stopping people having to make the choice to migrate over such a treacherous route. They have so far to go: there are human traffickers; people may just be ditched at the side of the road as I have described, or sold out of a bus in the back of a car park, and then sold on again and beaten with wires; they may then be on the Mediterranean on a boat—and the technique used with those small boats is that as soon as a navy cutter comes to the rescue, they are deliberately capsized to tip the people in the water. The rescuers have to pluck them out of the water; they cannot just pull the boat somewhere. To return to the Greek example, while I was there I met a Yazidi Christian—someone on a different migrant route—with a 10-day-old child. They had gone through that whole process. How the child, who by then was aged three months, was still alive, I shall never know. Those are the most treacherous circumstances, so anything that can be done to stop the migration in the first place must be the only course of action.

[John Howell]

I want to pick up on the previous intervention. I think that there is a huge role for British companies in educating people in their country. I went to see Unilever in Nigeria; it has eradicated modern slavery from its whole supply chain, and that has had a big effect in the effort to convince Nigerians that they should stay and make something of themselves in their own country. Unless we do that, we shall run into a lot of problems.

[Paul Scully]

My hon. Friend makes a typically insightful point, and it is right to use some of our big companies working in the areas in question to provide education and secondary industries. As we move into looking at trade agreements with Africa but while we are also a member of the EU, we could seek tariff reduction as well. Obviously a big concern is tariffs on the least developed countries, but with the slightly better-off countries such as Nigeria, the “Everything but Arms” rules do not apply. They are charged a lot in tariffs on coffee and chocolate and similar things, and cannot build up the secondary industries that would help to develop gainful employment, so that people would have a stake in their own area and not feel the need to leave to find a better life.

I have talked about the Modern Slavery Act 2015, and it is nearly 200 years since the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 that William Wilberforce worked for. Only last year there was a remake of the seminal television programme of the book “Roots” by Alex Haley. I watched the original version, but the one I watched last year seemed to be of a time gone by. There have been other fantastic films about slavery that have also really hammered their point home, but they give the sense that “This happened so long ago; isn’t it wonderful that we have stamped it out?”—but we have not; that is the news. It is still going on every day.

I ask the Minister to answer my questions. Finally, what more we can do as a country to support Libya, improve conditions and ultimately end the need for detention camps there?

Mortgages: Eligibility

Debate between Paul Scully and John Howell

Monday 23rd October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 186565 relating to eligibility for mortgages.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. The petition, which has attracted 147,307 signatures, reads:

“Make paying rent enough proof that you are able meet mortgage repayments”.

The petitioner, Jamie Jack Pogson, goes on to say:

“Since living on my own I have paid £70,000+ in rent on time yet still struggle to get a mortgage. Unless you’re getting handouts, wealthy or in receipt of inheritance it’s almost impossible. I want paying rent on time to be recognized as evidence that mortgage re-payments can be met.”

The broken housing market is one of the greatest barriers to social progress in Britain today. Whether buying or renting, housing is increasingly unaffordable, particularly for ordinary working-class people who are struggling to get by. The number of people getting joint ownership mortgages has gone up to 74% from 66% 20 years ago because of the need for two people’s incomes. The average age of first-time buyers is also creeping up. Deposits have increased significantly to £48,000 on average across the country. Here in London—I am a London MP—it costs £94,000 on average to get a deposit.

The key to fixing the housing market is clearly to build more homes, which is why the Government are committed to delivering 1 million more homes by the end of 2020. However, finding a deposit is still one of the biggest problems that people face when looking to buy a new home. The Government’s Help to Buy schemes have helped more than 320,000 people across the UK to buy a new home, including more than 275,000 first-time buyers. The equity loan scheme provides buyers with an equity loan of up to 20% of the value of a new build property, which is repayable once the home is sold. I am pleased by the recent announcement of a further £10 billion investment in the scheme to help an estimated 135,000 new buyers and to ensure that the scheme can continue to 2021.

Since the equity loan scheme’s launch, more than 130,000 properties have been bought with the support of the equity loan scheme; the majority—81%—were bought by first-time buyers. The scheme has not just helped people to buy a new home. Industry experts have also credited Help to Buy with boosting supply and generating benefits for communities, councils and the Exchequer. The London Help to Buy scheme offers an equity loan of up to 40% for Londoners who have a 5% deposit. The help to buy ISA will also continue to help people to save up for their first home by providing them with a maximum Government bonus of £3,000 on £12,000 of savings—a boost of 25%. However, far too many hard-working young people from all walks of life are still struggling to get a foot on the property ladder.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

We face a situation in which banks have to ensure that they give good loans, but people want their rental payments to be taken into account. Rental payments do not seem to me to be a good guarantee for future performance, so does my hon. Friend have any suggestions about how they might be taken into account?

[Paul Scully]

I appreciate my hon. Friend’s important point, which I will come to later. Rent clearly does not give any guarantee for the future but it gives a better guide to creditworthiness, in the sense that people have spent time paying rent regularly, on a monthly basis. As we heard, the petitioner spent £70,000 with little to show for it other than that he paid his bills, whereas obviously, when someone has the aspiration of home ownership, that same £70,000 could have been building up equity. If someone has a good record in one area, they would hope that that, combined with all the other checks that banks need to do, would be good for credit for a mortgage as well.

The Government have doubled their housing budget and are investing £7.1 billion in the expanded affordable homes programme to deliver 225,000 affordable housing starts by March 2021. In addition, the housing White Paper sets out bold new plans to fix the broken housing market and build more homes across England. Starter homes, which are targeted at the first-time buyers we have been talking about, form an important part of the Government’s action to help more than 200,000 people become homeowners.

A £1.2 billion starter homes land fund will be invested to support the preparation of brownfield sites for starter homes and other affordable home ownership tenures. I am delighted that this year we will see the first starter homes being built on brownfield sites across the country. They will be built exclusively for first-time buyers between 23 and 40 years old, at a discount of at least 20% below market value. Alongside that, a new rent-to-buy scheme will help hard-working households to benefit from a discounted rent set flexibly at levels to make it locally affordable so that they can save for a deposit to purchase their home.

Stamp duty means that the average first-time buyer typically faces a tax bill of £11,427 here in the capital according to the Land Registry, which recorded the average price paid by new entrants to the London property market as £428,546. Even a starter flat costing a quarter of a million pounds attracts a stamp duty bill of £2,500. In my view, the Government should aim to take most first-time buyers and some downsizers purchasing smaller properties out of this tax entirely, to reduce the burden on family homes, and to fix anomalies such as those around shared-ownership properties, which are an increasingly popular way to get on the housing ladder.

The evidence is clear: stamp duty, like all transaction taxes, reduces the level of transactions. The effects can be pretty stark. For example, ahead of the buy-to-let surcharge in March 2016, mortgages soared by 71% but then dipped to 60% the month after. That was not just a short-term effect. Six months later, in December 2016, buy-to-let mortgage lending was down by nearly 40% on the year before, whereas other mortgage lending was up.

Introducing the buy-to-let surcharge clearly reduced transaction levels, and the best way to boost them again is to cut stamp duty for homeowners, which should boost transactions and economic growth. By focusing on residential homes, such a cut would also boost home ownership. At the same time, shared ownership—an increasingly popular way to help people buy part of a property—needs stamp duty reform. Currently, the providers of these affordable home ownership properties and their customers often pay twice: providers pay on the whole property and then shared owners pay again when they buy their share. Stamp duty in such cases should be charged only once, making it even more affordable for people to get on the housing ladder.