Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Rebecca Long Bailey and Jackie Doyle-Price

Committee stage & Committee of the Whole House (Day 1)
Monday 19th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey [V]]

I will limit my brief comments to freeports. Detailed Government assessments on the operation and impact of freeports are sadly not yet available. As we have heard tonight, the OBR has stated that the announcements made in the Budget came too late to be incorporated into its forecast. If the Government recognise this, they must understand that they have a duty to provide such evidence and legislative reassurance in response to legitimate and wide-ranging concerns on the operation and impact of freeports.

There are concerns that, rather than complementing a local economy by stimulating the growth of new business, existing businesses may simply opt to relocate to freeports. Certainly, the Government have not made it clear how they will mitigate against the significant geographic movement of jobs away from one area and into a freeport—how they will avoid a wild-west scenario of pitting regions against each other, nor the prospect of lost revenue for local authorities from business rates, for example, if businesses opt to relocate to such a zone.

The job creation numbers are equally sketchy. The Chancellor argued back in 2016 that if the UK’s approach performs as well as that in the USA, freeports would create more than 86,000 jobs, but as the Centre for Progressive Policy found, this figure was a cut-and-paste job, being simply the number of people employed in the US free zones adjusted for the relative size of the UK population. There was no data on the labour market impact on specific regional economies or industries, nor any mention of the need for bespoke local skill strategies to feed into this.

On workers’ rights, the TUC has repeatedly warned about the gradual erosion of workers’ protections in these zones. It stated:

“Free ports are a Trojan Horse to water down employment protections”—

in a “race to the bottom”.

Finally, as we have heard tonight, there are real concerns that freeports could create a bonanza for money launderers and tax evaders. Indeed, the EU reported in 2018 that freeports were

“conducive to secrecy. With their preferential treatment, they resemble offshore financial centres, offering both high security and discretion and allowing transactions to be made without attracting the attention of regulators or direct tax authorities.”

The Government must address these concerns before pressing ahead. To that end, new clauses 5 and 25 would allow the Government to create an evidence base for freeports, which the House can then examine, and new clause 4 would impose standards and protections. If the Government are serious about addressing these concerns and building in clear legal protections, they will support these new clauses tonight.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

I commend the Government on the ambitious agenda running through this Finance Bill. It needs to be ambitious because the last year has been a very painful one for us economically. We must do everything we can to foster renewed growth, renewed job creation and, indeed, renewed wealth creation.

I have listened to the speeches from Labour Members. They raise some important things, but if I seriously believed that this freeport policy was going to undermine workers’ rights and lead to massive non-compliance with health and safety and tax legislation, I would not support it. I am supporting it because I have real ambition for my local community and my area, and I am very proud and pleased that the Thames freeport has been chosen as one of the eight. I assure the House that this is going to be the transformation of Thurrock after a very long time.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) referred to the fact that people often see levelling up in terms of north versus south and we have heard that a lot, but nothing could be further from the truth; in fact some of the most deprived areas in our nation are our coastal communities, so it is absolutely right that freeports should be one of the headline levelling-up policies.