Rachel Reeves
Main Page: Rachel Reeves (Labour - Leeds West)Department Debates - View all Rachel Reeves's debates with the HM Treasury
(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House notes that HM Revenue and Customs figures show that 8,000 people earning over £1 million will gain an average of £107,500 from the Government’s decision to cut the top rate of income tax from April 2013; further notes that figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that the Government’s changes to tax allowances for pensioners will mean that 4.4 million existing pensioners will lose an average of £83 from 2013-14, while thousands of people turning 65 will lose £323; and calls on the Government to announce in the Autumn Statement that it will not go ahead with its proposal to cut the top rate of tax for the richest earners at a time when the economy is flatlining, millions of pensioners on middle and low incomes are paying more, and when wider tax and benefit changes being implemented in 2012-13 will result in families with children losing an average of £511.
In March this year the Chancellor of the Exchequer stood in this House to deliver his Budget. It was a revealing moment. Having previously said that we are all in it together and insisted that those with the broadest shoulders should bear the greatest burden, the Chancellor announced a tax cut worth, on average, £107,000 for those earning more than £1 million a year. It was the moment that the Government’s façade of fairness disappeared for good. In these tough times, against the backdrop of the biggest squeeze in living standards for a generation, and with the economy flatlining, the Chancellor prioritised millionaires above millions of working people. That is why we have called this debate: to question the priorities of the Government, to stand up for pensioners and families who are being hit hardest—
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
The hon. Lady said that she wants to prioritise ordinary people over millionaires, so would the Labour party, if it were to come into government in 2015, reintroduce the 50p rate?
Rachel Reeves
We are hoping that Government Members will see sense and vote for the motion, and that the Chancellor will rethink his decision in next week’s autumn statement. It is not too late to reverse this change. I am not going to write the manifesto for 2015 now, but every single Labour MP will be voting against this tax change, which has not yet come into effect, so the Government can still think again.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
Can the hon. Lady explain why only two Labour Members—the hon. Members for Newport West (Paul Flynn) and for Bolsover (Mr Skinner)—voted against the rise after the Budget statement in March?
Rachel Reeves
We have already debated this; when we debated the Finance Bill, Labour MPs voted against the cut in the top rate from 50p to 45p, as the hon. Gentleman is aware.
Let us look at the facts. There are 30 million taxpayers in the UK—30 million people who go out to work each day and pay their tax—yet the Chancellor’s tax cut helps only the richest 300,000, of whom 8,000 take home more than £1 million a year. According to table 2.5 on page 30 of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’ income tax liabilities statistics of April this year, their total income in 2012-13 is expected to be £18.4 billion, and they will pay £8.6 billion of tax on that income at the 50p rate. From next April, when the additional rate is lowered to 45p, they will pay £7.7 billion of tax on that income. This represents £860 million of lost revenue because of a tax cut for people earning over £1 million, and an average tax giveaway of £107,000 to each and every one of them—not just in one year but in each year to come.
Andrew Bridgen
Will not the hon. Lady be honest with this House and this country? This was a Trojan horse of a tax brought in at the very fag end of the Labour Government as part of a scorched-earth policy that has been shown to have cost the Exchequer almost £7 billion already—something else that the previous Government messed up and that this Government have to put right.
Mr Speaker
Order. In using the word “honest”, it should be taken as read that Members are always honest in the Chamber.
Rachel Reeves
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
The increase in the top rate of tax from 40p to 50p was introduced to help to reduce the deficit because the last Labour Government thought that it was right that those with the broadest shoulders paid a little bit more towards achieving that. The fact that this Chancellor has reversed that and is reducing the top rate of tax shows that he thinks exactly the opposite—that his priorities are not with ordinary working people but with the richest 1%. [Interruption.]
Rachel Reeves
I will—and if the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) has an intervention to make, then he can make it.
Charlie Elphicke
Does the hon. Lady accept the calculation by the Office for Budget Responsibility that this proposal would cost £100 million—yes or no?
Rachel Reeves
Let us look at what Robert Chote, the chair of the OBR, says about the cut in the 50p rate:
“This is a judgement based on not even a full year’s data based in terms of how people have responded to the 50p rate, in particular in terms of those self assessment tax-payers.”
Indeed, we know that a series of larger-than-usual dividends were paid in the days and weeks just before the introduction of the 50p rate. For example, the Prime Minister’s friend Emma Harrison, who is the Government’s adviser on their welfare-to-work programme—we know how successful that has been—was paid on 1 April 2010, before the new tax year, which meant that her dividend was taxed at the old 40% rate, saving her £800,000.
That is why the Government’s claims about the yield of the 50p rate do not stand up. People have had the opportunity to anticipate the introduction of the new taxation rate by bringing their income forward, as they did when the rate was reduced. As the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Institute for Fiscal Studies said, it is difficult to produce a definitive estimate for the long-term yield of a tax that has been in place for only a short period, and it is fiscally irresponsible and wholly misleading to use figures from the first year to justify the policy.
Charlie Elphicke
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way again, but let me press her a bit more on this point. The OBR said that its calculation was a “reasonable and central estimate.” Does she disagree with that?
Rachel Reeves
Robert Chote has said:
“This is a judgment based on not even a full year’s worth of data”
and the estimates are very uncertain. Another group of experts at the IFS stated that
“by giving out £3 billion to well-off people who pay 50p tax…the Government is banking on a very, very uncertain amount of people changing their behaviour and paying more tax as a result of the fact that you’re taxing them…There is a lot of uncertainty, a lot of risk on this estimate.”
If the Government think that lots of millionaires who were not paying the 50p rate of tax will start flooding to these shores to pay the 45p rate—well, we will see what happens when the numbers come out.
Charlie Elphicke
Let us talk about those millionaires. Today’s Daily Mail states that the number of millionaires slumped from 16,000 to 6,000 after the 50p rate of tax was introduced, and that revenues fell from £13.4 billion to £6.5 billion. Does that show that if the rate of tax is increased too much, it will have a negative impact on the public finances?
Rachel Reeves
I thank the hon. Gentleman for at least highlighting that thousands of people with declared incomes of more than £1 million who were paying the 50p rate will get a tax cut next year. His figures show that in 2010-11 there were 6,000 people with declared incomes of more than £1 million, and 10,000 in 2011-12. A written answer that I received from the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury on 19 June stated that 70% of people earning more than £250,000 were paying more than 40% in tax, and 80% of those earning more than £500,000 were paying the 50p rate. In the new year, each and every one will get a large tax cut.
If the Government honestly want people to pay their fair share of tax, they should spend more time and resources on tackling tax avoidance, not compensate the wealthiest by cutting the headline rate of tax. No wonder they have cut staff numbers at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs by 11%—they have just given up.
I am happy to debate the Government’s record on raising revenue through taxation. Last autumn, as a result of the slowing economy, projected income tax revenues across the board had to be written down by £51.2 billion by the Office for Budget Responsibility because of the weakness of the economy and the double-dip recession. Only last week, the Office for National Statistics released statistics showing that public borrowing in October was £2.7 billion higher than for the same month last year.
Over the first seven months of financial year 2012-13, the Government have borrowed around £5 billion more than for the same period last year. Why are we seeing that increase in borrowing? It is not as if the Government have not put up taxes for ordinary people or cut public services. The Chancellor’s flatlining economy has forced a 10% slump in corporation tax revenues, and VAT revenues are expected to be down by 2.5%. The Government can spend all the time they like defending a tax cut for millionaires, and Ministers as much time as they like in Cabinet arguing among themselves about why there has been no growth, but it is time they changed course and adopted a plan for jobs and growth.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
Whether the rate is 45p or 50p, does the hon. Lady accept the principle that a low-tax economy is better for Britain and for businesses to do business in Britain?
Rachel Reeves
The hon. Gentleman says, “Whether the rate is 45p or 50p”, but the difference between those figures is £3 billion that could be used to pay down the deficit, help families who are struggling with the rising cost of living or get rid of the granny tax that the Chancellor is introducing next year. The principle of having lower taxes is fine, but we have a deficit to reduce. I thought the Government believed we should be cutting that deficit instead of giving tax cuts. The Chancellor said that in his first Budget, but he has thought again since then and is giving a tax cut to the wealthiest while asking ordinary families to pay more. That is not what my constituents want, and I doubt it is what those of the hon. Gentleman want either.
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that, strangely, because the cut in the rate of tax was announced and then postponed, a number of people will doubtless try to do in reverse what they appear to have done when the tax was introduced? The Government will then say, “Ah, but in this year, not enough was raised through that tax.” It will almost become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Rachel Reeves
Exactly that point about income profiling and not being able to estimate the impact of the tax because it has not been in place long enough was made by the IFS and the OBR. It is a shocking indictment of the Government’s priorities that the Chancellor has chosen at this time to give a tax cut to the few at the top—a tax break for millionaires—while asking working people to pay more. They are the same, old, out-of-touch Tories, and not one of their accomplices—the Liberal Democrats—had the nerve to stand up to the Chancellor.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Studies show that those countries in the world that are happiest and have highest levels of contentment and well-being are the Scandinavian nations that have relatively high taxes and high minimum wages. Is it not strange for the Government to believe that we make the rich work harder by giving them more money but the poor work harder by taking money from them?
Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend makes an important point. The work of Wilkinson and Pickett in “The Spirit Level”, and other academic research, has shown exactly that. Some people will be a lot happier next year—the 8,000 millionaires who will have their taxes cut—but ordinary working people who see their taxes go up will be a lot worse off and, I expect, not very happy with either their finances or the Government who have inflicted that situation on them.
In the same Budget as the Chancellor’s giveaway to the richest, buried in the small print as a tax simplification, was the Chancellor’s granny tax. The freeze in the age-related allowance for the over-65s will see 4.4 million pensioners who pay income tax losing an average of £83 each per year. People who turn 65 next year will lose most of all—up to £322. Listening to the Chancellor was like watching Robin Hood in reverse. Most pensioners who will be hit by the granny tax live on incomes that put them in the bottom half of income tax distribution. Those with a small personal pension of £67 a week—£3,000 a year—will be in line to lose under this measure. How insulting to pensioners who have worked hard all their lives, who have not earned large salaries, but who have done the right thing and saved responsibly so they could provide for themselves in later life.
Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend recognise figures from Hansard that show that in the north-east some 4,000 taxpayers will benefit from the changes, but more than 278,000 will be worse off and they will mainly be pensioners? Does that not show all we need to know about the Conservative party?
Rachel Reeves
My hon. Friend makes an important point. People on modest incomes such as pensioners will lose out, while those at the top get a little bit more—well, not a little bit more; they will get £107,000 more next year from the Government. How insulting for those pensioners to see their taxes go up on the same day that millionaires have their taxes cut. Families, pensioners and young people cannot escape the Chancellor’s austerity programme—only millionaires can do that.
Pensioners have already seen their winter fuel allowance cut and their pension indexed to a lower measure of inflation. The increase in the state pension age for women has been brought forward, and the rise in VAT has added £275 to the costs faced by an average pensioner couple. Services such as the national health service, social care and local transport have been cut, and the TUC estimates that a single pensioner will lose access to services worth 11% of his or her income. No wonder so many people have spoken out against what the Chancellor is doing.
Age UK has stated:
“We feel it is disappointing that the budget offered a tax break of at least £10,000 to the very wealthy while penalising many pensioners on fairly modest incomes who are already squeezed.”
The chief executive of Saga has said:
“Over the next five years, pensioners with an income of between £10,500 and £24,000 will be paying an extra £3 billion in tax while richer pensioners are left unaffected”.
The National Pensioners Convention has said:
“We have been inundated by pensioners who are disgusted that those on around £11,000 a year will no longer get additional reductions in their tax…whilst those earning £150,000 or more will see their tax bills reduced…This is seen by many as the last straw…Pensioners feel they are being asked to bail out the super rich…and it’s simply not fair.”
The Opposition could not agree more. It is the same old out-of-touch Tories.
Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)
To add to that litany of taxes on pensioners, annuity rates are in freefall; one cardinal fact of the past two and a half years is the collapse in annuity rates for pensioners. On top of those other attacks on their income, pensioners now find that their annuity rates are collapsing.
Rachel Reeves
I thank my hon. Friend, who is the shadow pensions Minister, for his intervention. I am sure he could add many other examples of pensioners being hard hit by the Government. The change in annuity rates is one example as the economy continues to flatline.
The rest of the taxpaying public look with disbelief on what the Government are doing, including the families with children, who are, on average, £450 a year worse off because of last year’s VAT rise, and another £511 a year worse off this year because of further cuts, freezes and reductions to benefits and tax credits; the couples with children who cannot increase their hours to the higher threshold introduced by the Government and who will have working tax credits withdrawn, which, in many cases will drop them below the poverty line; the families with incomes above £26,000, who are now losing all their child tax credit, contrary to the Prime Minister’s promises before the general election; and those on modest earnings with children at school, who will suffer cuts to services equivalent to 13% of their incomes.
The deterioration of the economic outlook on this Chancellor’s watch has led to the OBR revising projections on real disposable income per household down by £800 last year, by £1,100 this year and by £1,700 next year.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
On tax credits, what does my hon. Friend think about a case I heard about two or three days ago, in which the application for tax credits was not even opened for three months?
Rachel Reeves
Given the cuts to departmental budgets, it is not surprising that some applications are not being processed and that, as a result, families are missing out on the tax credits to which they entitled, pushing them further into hardship.
How will households throughout the country feel next year, when those earning more than £1 million get a tax cut of £107,000? What is the Government’s message to people who work hard and want to get on in life? We remember when the Conservatives liked to think of themselves as the party of aspiration. Baroness Thatcher liked to claim she stood up for people who wanted to work their way up, and yet, under this Government, people who get a pay rise or promotion lose their child benefit. Imagine that! A person who earns £49,000 a year and has three children will lose thousands of pounds in child benefit if they take a pay rise or promotion. What a terrible position to put people in.
The truth about the Government is this: pensioners pay more, low-paid parents pay more, and a family working hard to get on in life and provide for their children pay more, but millionaires pay less. That tells us everything we need to know about the Government and their values. For many, 2012 will be remembered as the year the Chancellor’s drastic cuts began to hit home, but for the richest, 2013 will be remembered as the year they received their tax give-away from this Robin-Hood-in-reverse Chancellor.
Last week, the Prime Minister compared the economic situation we face to war. It is true that we are facing a period of national upheaval, but that is why it is crucial that the Government are a uniting force, not a dividing one. Is this really the time for a tax cut for the richest? During the second world war, the public queued to get their copy of the Beveridge report, because it set out the beginnings of a welfare state in which everyone had a stake. In the period of reconstruction after the war, that spirit and sense of national mission led to the creation of the national health service.
The Government do not understand the need for one nation politics, or the need to take people with them and share the burden of sacrifice fairly. Instead, they will be remembered as a Government who divided. Indeed, of the richest who are receiving the tax give-away, 85% are men, but around 70% of the revenue raised from direct tax and benefit changes will come from women. Fifty-two per cent. of those benefiting from the millionaires’ tax give-away are based in London and the south-east, but long-term unemployment is rising in the north. The poor are expected to work harder, because otherwise they will be made poorer, but the rich will work harder only if they are made richer. There is one rule for the very richest and another for everybody else. It is the same old out-of-touch Tories.
When the Chancellor came to the House to deliver his 2011 Budget, he said that
“now would not be the right time to remove it when we are asking others in our society on much lower incomes to make sacrifices”.—[Official Report, 23 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 957.]
He was right then, and he is wrong now. He revealed his true colours in this year’s Budget.
Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)
Does my hon. Friend recall the remarks of the parents whom she and I met at the Pen Green centre in Corby, who spoke about many local priorities, including vital local services such as our hospital? They did not believe the millionaires’ tax cut was the right priority for people in Corby and east Northamptonshire or for people throughout the country.
Rachel Reeves
Although my hon. Friend has been in the House for a lot less time than many Government Members, he speaks more sense than they do, on behalf of his constituents in Corby and east Northamptonshire, who sent a clear message to the Prime Minister two weeks ago when they elected my hon. Friend and booted out the Conservatives. He is right to stand up for their interests. They do not want the tax cut for millionaires; they want help for ordinary families, for pensioners and for young people getting back to work. That is what people in Corby and the rest of the country want.
The Chancellor waved goodbye to the pretence of being on the side of working people in this year’s Budget. He waved goodbye to saying, “We’re all in this together,” and, “Those with the broadest shoulders should bear the greatest burden.” The Budget was the U-turn that revealed his true motives and told people for whom he stands. People will not forget that, when times were tough and they needed support, the Government cared only for those who needed it least. The Tories are back to doing what they do best. It is the same old out-of-touch Tories.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Greg Clark)
It is a pleasure to respond to this debate, not least because of the maiden speech made with such distinction by the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), whom I warmly welcome to the House. He spoke in a way that was assured and fluent and with a degree of geniality that I think will make him many friends throughout the House. I have one issue of contention with him. He outed himself as a fan of Cardiff City and, since they are locked in a promotion battle with my hometown club of Middlesbrough, that will be a point of disagreement between us during the weeks and months ahead.
Call me naive, but I had hoped that, during an Opposition day debate, we might have heard something—anything—about the Opposition’s policy, but sadly it was not to be. At the end of this debate, their economic policy is, if possible, even more obscure than it was at the beginning. There are four fundamental matters crucial to this debate that both shadow Ministers—the hon. Members for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) and for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell)—failed to address.
The first could not be more basic. What do the Opposition believe to be the purpose of the 50p rate of income tax? Is it to raise revenue, to punish the rich, as the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) has said, or to serve as a piece of rhetoric? We need to know, because if the Opposition are clear that its purpose is to raise money, will the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North say—she is welcome to intervene—whether they will drop their support for the 50p rate if the evidence continues to support our assessment and those of HMRC and the OBR that it raised very little indeed and would be likely to cost the public purse even more? Will she be clear—is the argument that the rate raises money the criterion for the Opposition’s support for it, or is it a price worth paying just to send a message that they want to soak the rich?
Secondly, do the Opposition accept, in the words of HMRC, that
“high tax rates in the UK make its tax system less competitive and make it a less attractive place to start, finance and grow a business”?
Do they accept HMRC’s assessment that high taxes are bad for the international standing of the country? I would be pleased to take an intervention from the hon. Lady. My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) asked the shadow Chief Secretary whether she subscribed to that view, and she could not answer. Is tax competitiveness important to the Opposition? We do not know. In their view, does it matter if the UK has the highest tax rate in the G20? Is that a concern or not? Does it make a difference to British competitiveness? The last time the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) was asked he said, “I don’t know.”
The third issue is whether the Opposition agree with the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), who said that this measure should be only temporary. We have had no clarity on that from Opposition Front Benchers.
The fourth matter that the Opposition need to consider, given that they regard this tax as being so crucial—so totemic—that they wanted to call this debate about it, is whether they will send a clear message that they would restore it if they came to power. Again, we have silence. Let us bear in mind that we are now in the second half of the Parliament, and the time for posturing and procrastination is over. The time has come for the Opposition to tell the country what they would do in government—or do they simply not have the courage to face up to the need to be straight with the British people? I strongly suspect that this will be one of the last occasions when we debate the 50p tax rate as it gets shuffled off to the retirement home of meaningless gestures that the Opposition no longer have time and use for.
Labour is, to its core, the party of tax and spend, and, to be fair, it takes a very consistent view of both sides of the equation. With regard to spending, it is always a matter of “How much?” and not “To what end?”—of inputs, not outcomes; of the number in the headline on the press release, not what is achieved with the money. On taxation, too, for Labour it is all about the price tag—the headline rate, not the revenue actually raised, nor, indeed, the amount of tax that the wealthy actually pay. The top rate of tax paid by the rich in all but the last month of the previous Government was lower than what they pay now. The top 1% of earners now contribute over 27% of income tax revenue—far more than they did under Labour—and the effect of this year’s Budget is to take from the richest five times what they gave through the reduction of the 50% rate.
Of course, the tax system that we inherited from the previous Government was a mess—a typically socialist tangle of tripwires and loopholes which, as my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary made clear, we are taking action to close. Too much of the money made under the previous Government was in keeping with the ethos of the previous Government—short term, reckless and unsustainable; the boom before the bust. In future, if there is money to be made it will be done in the responsible way, through real enterprise and real innovation. As we seek to rebuild a productive economy on the ruins of Labour’s cardboard economy, this is the worst time to punish the producers, innovators and entrepreneurs on whom our future depends.
Rachel Reeves
If the Government are doing so well on the economy, why has it shrunk over the past year, and why is Government borrowing now rising, not falling?
Greg Clark
The hon. Lady will be aware that the record structural deficit in the G7 bequeathed by the previous Government has been paid down by a quarter.
As we seek to rebuild our productive economy, Labour Members know all about the power of the headline figure—that is why they have made such big play of the top rate of income tax. It is interesting that the shadow Minister was more familiar with the opinion polls than with the cost of this measure to the economy. If they think that it plays well to the gallery, then how do they think it plays to those who might or might not want to invest in this country, and who might create the new private sector jobs that a financially exhausted public sector can no longer pay for?
For our part, we want to create an economy in which those who prosper most are those who are best at creating wealth for all. That will require moderate tax rates, properly enforced, and the long, hard slog of tax reform and simplification. As in so much else, we have chosen the difficult path but the right one. Today’s debate provides further proof that Labour has made the opposite choice. As always, the politics are cheap but the consequences would cost our country dear.
Question put (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.