Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

My right hon. Friend is right to raise that issue. That is why I met Martin Lewis and the six big mortgage lenders before Christmas. We are very alive to those concerns and will monitor the situation closely.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

It would cost around £1 billion to give nurses an inflation-matching pay rise. Scrapping the non-dom tax avoidance scheme used by the super-rich would raise more than £3 billion. Why, then, is the Chancellor putting non-doms before nurses?

[John Glen]

The Chancellor is not doing that. There is a clear process in place, and we continue constructive dialogue with all professions in dispute with the Government and with their employers. This is obviously a challenging circumstance and we recognise how difficult it is.

NHS Workforce

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

Forgive me. Perhaps the hon. Lady misunderstood me; I was trying to be collegiate in referencing what she had said about covid. We do know, of course, that there have been pressures on the workforce and on the NHS throughout its decades of history. Every generation has the new challenge of ensuring that the NHS meets the hopes, needs and expectations of our constituents.

In opening the debate, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care set out our plans for the NHS and explained that we are taking specific steps on issues such as workforce shortages. We will have an independently verified plan for the number of doctors, nurses and other professionals that we will need in five, 10 and 15 years’ time, taking full account of the need for better retention and productivity improvements. That will build on what are already significant statistics. Between September 2019 and August 2022, the NHS had more than 14,000 more hospital doctors and more than 29,000 more nurses and health visitors.

[Richard Burgon]

The Minister spoke a few moments ago about the importance of approaching this issue in measured tones, so this is an important opportunity for her to say that her ministerial colleague was wrong to attempt in the media to associate our NHS staff with Vladimir Putin’s horrific invasion of Ukraine. I think it is really important that she rights that wrong by correcting that, please.

[Victoria Atkins]

I have not seen it myself but, from descriptions I have heard, I am not quite sure that is what he was trying to—[Interruption.] Members ask why I have not watched it. I was actually getting ready for a birthday party for my 10-year-old. We are allowed lives outside this place.

For those who have commented on workforce figures over the past decade, between May 2010 and August 2022, 36,000 more hospital doctors and 38,000 more nurses and health visitors were recruited. We are also asking the NHS, like all public services, to tackle productivity and inefficiency. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) emphasised the importance of that and brought his experience to the debate.

To help colleagues, the initial findings by Patricia Hewitt, the former Labour Health Secretary, will be delivered to the Department within three weeks, which shows the pace of work that Ms Hewitt and others are taking on this important project. In addition, we are boosting NHS funding by £3.3 billion next year and by another £3.3 billion the year after that, helping to ensure that the NHS can take rapid action to improve urgent and emergency care and to get elective performance back to pre-pandemic levels.

Public Sector Pay: Proposed Strike Action

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) on securing this important debate.

We are seeing an assault on living standards, and their biggest decline in the 70 years since records began. From energy costs to food, and from mortgages to rents, everything is going up—everything except pay. In fact, over the past year, wages have fallen dramatically by almost 3% in real terms. That does not happen in a vacuum, of course; it comes after a decade of austerity slashing public services and the tightest squeeze on wages in 200 years.

Average wages are still below 2008 levels and falling. We are now likely to have had two decades of lost wage growth. One jaw-dropping statistic is that average wages would now be around £10,000 higher if they had carried on rising at pre-financial crisis levels. It is no wonder, then, that workers have had enough. Things have been bad so far but, with real-terms pay set to plummet over coming years, they will get whole lot worse.

That is the context in which so many workers are balloting for strike action and saying, “Enough is enough.” Before I was elected to Parliament, I was a trade union lawyer in Leeds for 10 years, so I know from experience that it is complete rubbish when the right-wing Tories and newspapers say that workers go on strike at the drop of a hat. Workers go on strike as a last resort, when they feel that they have no other option, especially when their pay and terms and conditions are being attacked, and they feel that they are being disrespected by their bosses and by the Government. As we have heard, the term “key workers” quite rightly became popular during the worst of the pandemic, but that term is used less and less by Ministers these days, and we should reflect upon the reasons why.

Inflation of 10% means a real-terms pay cut of 8% for nurses, teachers and many others. Pay cuts will be justified by talk of a need to cut back our services to fill spending holes. We will hear the language of “tough choices” and “difficult decisions”, but any time I hear those phrases being used by Conservative Ministers, I know that the easy choice—sticking the boot into those who can least afford to take it—is on the way. Those real-terms pay cuts, piled on top of a decade of lost pay, mean that we need to consider alternatives. What is the alternative to cuts? What is the alternative to tax hikes on the many? I would argue that there are alternatives.

We do not need cuts or tax hikes on ordinary people. We could tax the very richest instead. Why not end non-domiciled status, which would raise £3 billion? Why not have an annual 1% tax on wealth above £5 million, which would raise £10 billion? Why not have a 45p income tax rate on earnings above £80,000 and a 50p tax rate on earnings above £125,000, which would raise £6 billion? Why not equalise dividend and capital gains tax with income tax rates, which would raise £21 billion? Those four measures would raise a total of £40 billion, which is the so-called gap that needs filling according to Treasury briefings.

Pay cuts are a political choice and the Tories are choosing to push people into poverty. They plan to make working people pay for the cost of the pandemic, just as they made working people pay—through austerity —for the bankers’ crisis. At a time of pay cuts for the many, the wealthy few are having a bonanza. Britain’s billionaires have increased their wealth by £55 billion in the last year alone, City bankers’ bonuses are up 28%, and the average pay of bosses at Britain’s 100 top firms is now £3.6 million a year. It does not have to be this way; there is a better way forward. Let us support our trade unions and working. We call upon the Government to choose the real alternative that is necessary: wealth taxes, rather than further cuts to people’s pay in real terms, and further cuts to our vital public services.

Economic Update

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

I can confirm that the council’s members will be independent; I can confirm that there will be no improper influence exerted; and I can confirm, as the hon. Gentleman will be pleased to hear, that all donations to the Conservative party are vetted and legal.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I have listened carefully to what the Chancellor has said. Our public services are on their knees after 12 years of Tory misrule; they really cannot cope with any further cuts. In contrast, the very richest have seen their wealth soar threefold over the past decade. Surely, rather than further cuts to our public services, would it not be fairer to impose a wealth tax on the very richest in our society?

[Jeremy Hunt]

The trouble with those kinds of taxes is that they end up inhibiting the wealth-creating capacity of the economy to fund the very public services that the hon. Gentleman supports. I support wealthier people paying more tax, but only when it creates more resources to put into the public services that we all need.

Economic Situation

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. As Chairman of the Education Committee, he is a tireless campaigner for education and skills. I agree that the purpose of economic growth is to grow all parts of the economy, to help people across the entire income spectrum—rich and poor alike—and to ensure that the burden of taxation on those people is as light as it can be. That is why we have increased the minimum wage by such a large amount—from £5.93 an hour when Labour left office to £9.50 an hour today—and why we have lifted so many people on lower incomes completely out of taxation through increasing the income tax and national insurance thresholds to £12,570. All that disproportionately helps people on lower incomes.

We are seized of the importance of ensuring that education is properly funded. It is an investment in our country’s future and our children’s future, and I assure my right hon. Friend that that is very much at the front of our minds as we think about the fiscal plan.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Like many others, I have listened with disbelief to much of what the Chief Secretary has said. While we have been in the Chamber, the Bank of England has again linked the economic turmoil to the Government’s disastrous mini-Budget. Will he explain to us all and to the public why he is right and the Bank of England is wrong?

[Chris Philp]

As I have explained before, we are in a global cycle of interest rate increases and there has been global dollar strength. We have taken action in the energy intervention and in the growth plan to protect our constituents, get our economy growing and build on our record as the fastest growing G7 economy last year, this year and over the three-year period as a whole.

The Growth Plan

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Friday 23rd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

We are focused on growth, and it is through growth that that young person will get more opportunities and more benefits and have a much better funded public sector.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Are not tax cuts for the richest and bigger bonuses for bankers the classic trickle-down con trick? The wealth will not trickle down. In fact, it will be sucked up into fewer and fewer hands. Will the Chancellor not admit that that is what this statement is designed to do? The Tories are acting like Robin Hood in reverse, taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Is that not appalling when people across the country—people out there—are really suffering during this cost of living emergency?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

There are three big measures that are helping tens of millions of people up and down the country: first, the energy intervention announced by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister last week; secondly, the reversal of the national insurance planned increase; and thirdly, the acceleration—the bringing forward—of the 1p cut in the basic rate. The hon. Gentleman should be welcoming those measures and not playing to the gallery with his tired old socialist rhetoric.

Energy (Oil and Gas) Profits Levy Bill

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 11th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Flynn]

I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman. That has nothing to do with this Committee stage, and I would hate to get diverted, as some others did earlier.

What we and the industry need to be clear about is what price the Government regard as normal. If we are to have serious legislation, we need serious answers to the most basic of questions.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I wish to speak in favour of my new clause 1, new clauses 8 to 10, which I have signed, and of course the amendments from the Labour Front Benchers.

Away from the drama among Government Members over who will be their next leader, the cost of living emergency out there is biting ever harder. Experts now warn that the energy price cap will surge by another 64% in October to more than £3,200 a year—up £2,000 in just a few months. Millions of people will be thrown even further into crisis. We urgently need further Government interventions to help them, and my new clause offers a way to do that.

In May, after political pressure from the Labour Benches, the Government were forced into imposing a windfall tax on the North sea oil and gas producers’ excess profits. Such a tax is certainly needed. The Government’s own figures suggest that North sea oil and gas companies will make pre-tax profits of £21.4 billion this year—a staggering increase from the £2.5 billion average over the past five years. We have gone from a £2.5 billion average to £21.4 billion this year.

Let us be clear: these excess profits are not the result of extra investment. They are not the result of innovation. They are an undeserved and unexpected windfall, mainly resulting from Russia’s horrific war on Ukraine. They are vast super-profits made on the backs of higher bills for ordinary people. We have a clear choice. Either we allow the oil and gas giants to hoard those excess profits, or we use the funds to help to bail out the vast majority of people hit hard by soaring energy bills.

My new clause 1 calls on the Government to look at setting the windfall tax at 45% on top of normal tax rates, not the current proposed 25%. The aim is to ensure that nearly all of the windfall—the undeserved, unmerited excess profit—goes to supporting families instead of boosting the profits of oil and gas giants.

The windfall tax as it stands will raise £5 billion. The higher windfall tax that my new clause addresses would raise another £4 billion in tax revenues this year alone, which could provide an extra £1,000 payment to the most vulnerable 4 million households. Surely that is more important than boosting oil and gas company profits. North sea oil and gas companies’ revenues have risen so much that even with this higher tax they would still make £3 billion in profits this year, which is above their recent average.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has obviously given real thought to his proposals. Does he agree that the vast profits that the oil and gas companies make do not stay with those companies but go to their ultimate owners, the big City institutions which, in my view, the Conservative party represents these days?

[Richard Burgon]

That is an important point well made by my hon. Friend. That is what this is really about. It is a political choice that we are discussing.

On the Government’s major loophole that I referred to, which gives a 91p tax saving for every £1 invested by the oil and gas companies, we need to be clear that it is a subsidy to oil and gas giants. It takes money away from supporting families and encourages further fossil fuel production when we need to be ending all new oil and gas production to avoid climate catastrophe.

With another huge spike in energy prices now expected, much more needs to be done to help families. The Government should start by accepting my amendment and others that would see less going into profits for oil and gas firms, and more into bailing out people facing the biggest crisis in living memory.

[Caroline Lucas]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon), whose new clause 1 I am happy to support. I rise to speak in favour of new clauses 8 to 10 tabled in my name.

First, new clause 8 would require the Government to produce an assessment of the revenue that would be generated if the level of taxation on oil and gas companies were permanently raised to the global average of 70%. That is 5% higher than the total level of taxation with the addition of the Government’s levy, but it would be permanent.

I know the new Chancellor may be disinclined to increase taxation on the oil and gas industry, given that he has benefited so handsomely from it in the past, previously earning £1.3 million from his executive position at Gulf Keystone Petroleum, including a whopping £285,000 settlement payment when he stepped down from that role in 2018 after becoming a Minister. However, it is important to understand that the level of taxation that this new clause proposes on oil and gas would simply bring the UK into line with countries such as Angola and Trinidad and is backed by 63% of the public. By way of comparison, it may be interesting to note that the UK’s North sea neighbour, Norway, has a taxation rate of 78%, and that does not seem to have done it any harm. I therefore hope that the Government will recognise that this is a very reasonable amendment that it should be easy for them to support.

The reason I am proposing a permanent taxation level is that the UK currently has the lowest tax take in the world from an offshore oil and gas regime. That is not a badge of honour; it should be a badge of shame. Indeed, Norway’s tax take from a barrel of oil in 2019 was over 10 times the equivalent here in the UK. The amendment would simply require the Government to assess the impact of ending that shameful state of affairs. Greenpeace estimates that a tax at that level would generate an additional £13.4 billion for the Exchequer in comparison with the status quo—money that, in addition to providing immediate support to households to cope with the cost of living scandal, could be used to invest in much-needed energy efficiency, quite literally insulating households from escalating costs.

To date, the Government have spent £37 billion on short-term financial support. Although that support is of course very welcome, gas prices are likely to remain high for several years, and a more long-term approach is necessary, especially when the CEO of Ofgem is warning that the number of households in fuel poverty could reach 12 million in October when the energy price cap rises again. The think-tank E3G estimates that the average household with an energy performance certificate of D or lower will be paying what it calls an inefficiency penalty of £916 per year for adequate heating compared with households with an EPC of C or higher. Investment to kick-start a local-authority-led, street-by-street home insulation programme would save cash-strapped families money not just this year but every year. It would also rectify a glaring omission in the Government’s approach so far, with the Climate Change Committee saying clearly in its 2022 progress report to Parliament:

“Given soaring energy bills, there is a shocking gap in policy for better insulated homes.”

New clause 9 would require the Government to produce an assessment of how much revenue would be generated by the energy profits levy if the investment allowance were removed. I also support the Labour Front-Bench amendment that would simply delete the clause on the investment allowance, which is nothing less than a scandal. As the Chancellor and his team very well know, it will come at huge cost to the taxpayer. Analysis by the New Economics Foundation suggests that the investment allowance will cost £1.9 billion a year because any subsidised oil and gas projects will not start to return a profit until after 2025—the date of the sunset clause in the Bill.

New Wealth Taxes

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential merits of introducing new wealth taxes.

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. This debate could not come at a more important time. People face the biggest single-year fall in incomes in 70 years. We in this House often hear shocking statistics, including about the 2 million food bank parcels that are handed out and the 5 million people who have to choose between heating or eating. Behind each of those statistics, however, is a real person who is struggling, be they a mother who is refusing certain foods at a food bank because she cannot afford to cook them, a pensioner riding the bus to keep warm, or a parent missing yet another meal so that their children have just enough to eat to get through the school day. For some, however, this is not a crisis; it is a boom time.

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this extremely importantly debate. As always, he is making a powerful speech. Britain has in recent years gained a record number of billionaires. Between them, they own £653 billion, which is about triple the annual operating budget of the NHS. During the pandemic, their wealth increased by more than a fifth. Does he agree that such wealth is obscene—especially in the midst of a cost of living crisis—and that we should do everything we can to redistribute it away from the super-rich, who have profited from the pandemic and rocketing prices, towards the workers who kept society running throughout and now face poverty and destitution?

[Richard Burgon]

As always, my hon. Friend makes a crucial point, and she is absolutely right: that is a moral imperative.

In the past few weeks alone, we have learned that the number of billionaires in Britain has risen to 177, and their wealth is now at record levels. Britain’s billionaires have increased their wealth by a staggering £220 million per day over the past two years. On top of that, we have learned that bankers’ bonuses are up 28% over the past year and are rising at six times the rate of wages. We have also learned that the bosses of Britain’s top 100 companies have seen their annual pay increase to an average of £3.6 million. We have food banks for nurses in hospitals, but at the top of Britain’s finance sector, the champagne corks are well and truly popping.

That phenomenon is not confined to Britain; it is global. The total wealth of the world’s billionaires is now equivalent to 14% of global GDP—up threefold since 2000. The global wealth of billionaires has risen more in the past two years than in the previous 23 years combined. If we are to tackle inequality and hardship, we need to address our rigged economic model.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making interesting points. I accept that there has to be a limit to the amount of wealth that can be accumulated by a small number of individuals; I do not think anybody would argue that equity is not important to some degree. He mentions the global situation. Many countries have actually stepped back from wealth taxes, which they found did not work because they are bureaucratic and administratively difficult, and they ultimately did not raise the money expected. Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Sweden have all tried wealth taxes and decided that they did not work. Why does he think that is the case?

[Richard Burgon]

I encourage the right hon. Gentleman to read the report I have here. It is by some top academics and makes a compelling case for a wealth tax in the UK. I will return to that point in greater detail later in my remarks.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is not about someone getting more money for doing their job; it is about the obscenity of people getting large amounts of money when others are getting smaller amounts of money. People get six-figure dividends when others live on £10 an hour. That obscene disparity is the issue.

[Richard Burgon]

I could not agree more. We are talking about multibillion-pound enterprises with people at the top hoovering up the wealth, while others do not receive anything. Only yesterday, I and colleagues visited a picket line in Wakefield, where bus drivers are on strike; they are calling for £13.40 an hour. Many people will be surprised that they are not already on at least that sum.

To address our rigged economic model, we must first acknowledge that trickle-down economics has been a lie. Wealth is not trickling down; it is being funnelled up into fewer and fewer hands. That is a consequence of 40 years of deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing, driving down working conditions, the weakening of trade unions and lower taxes on the rich. Contrary to what is said by the spin doctors of the right, decades of keeping taxes low for the very rich has not boosted economic growth. In fact, research by the London School of Economics and King’s College London looking at tax cuts over the past 50 years shows that lower taxes on the rich has led to higher income inequality because the top 1% has captured almost all of the gains, while there has been almost no effect on boosting economic growth.

Inequality and hardship are not just at the heart of our system—it is how our system is designed and how it functions. Poverty and inequality are structural and institutionalised. That is why we need a debate on wealth taxes. A wealth tax is an idea whose time has come.

Last year, the Secretary-General of the United Nations called on Governments to consider a wealth tax on those who had profited during the pandemic, to reduce extreme inequalities. The OECD has argued that there is a strong case for addressing wealth inequality through the tax system. The group Patriotic Millionaires has called on the Chancellor to introduce a wealth tax, saying:

“We know where you can find that money—tax wealth holders like us.”

Oxfam has also called for a wealth tax to rein in extreme wealth and monopoly power.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Does the hon. Member realise that there is nothing to stop those wealth owners who support a wealth tax making voluntary contributions to the Exchequer?

[Richard Burgon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his illustrative intervention, but I would paraphrase a former Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee: charity as a substitution for taxation can be a cold, heartless model. We should not be depending on the voluntary generosity of those at the very top to fund our public services. That creates a scenario that is almost servant and master—blessed is the giver and blessed is the receiver.

The UK does not have a wealth tax. Ministers have previously responded to me by saying that in practice we do, through taxes such as capital gains tax, but, while those earning wages are taxed on every penny of their income above permitted allowances, the same does not apply to the accumulation of wealth. For example, capital gains tax does not apply to all wealth but only to increases in the value of particular items of wealth. Structurally, we tax income much more rigorously than we do wealth. Of course, that favours the wealthy, as it is designed to do. I am afraid it is simply not good enough to pretend that even that system is working.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Member agree that the deliberate decision to increase national insurance contributions rather than other forms of income tax was a deliberate attempt to tax the poor rather than the wealthy for failings in the NHS?

[Richard Burgon]

That is absolutely right. The increase in national insurance contributions was iniquitous, regressive and absolutely outrageous, but from this Conservative Government, it was no surprise.

We currently have the scandal where income derived from wealth is taxed below income derived from work. For example, someone living off share dividend payouts would pay less in tax than someone who earns the same amount by getting up each and every day and going out to work. How on earth can that be justified? Likewise, capital gains tax, paid on profits when selling assets such as a second home, is paid below income tax rates.

There is huge scope for increasing tax revenues by ending the significant tax discounts afforded to income from wealth over income from work. Simply ending the lower rates paid on capital gains and share dividends, and removing the related exemptions on those taxes, would raise around £22 billion per year. That is a lot more than was raised by the national insurance tax hike on working people that we have just discussed.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way, and I apologise for my voice. This debate is very important. People sometimes say that a wealth tax would not work because wealthy people would just up sticks and leave. Does the hon. Member agree that, actually, it is a matter of political will? If we chose to, we could levy an exit tax on vacating wealthy individuals, as they do in the United States. That would be a big discouragement for people to do that. Put simply, what is lacking here is political will—that is what is preventing us from attacking this obscene level of inequality, both here and around the world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Burgon]

I could not agree more; it is a matter of political will. We often hear politicians using the phrase “tough choices”, but when they say that, they usually mean the easy choice of giving real-terms cuts on wages, benefits and pensions. The real tough choice—the real, morally correct choice—is to make those with the broadest shoulders pay their fair share at long last. It is important to note that more than half of all gains from capital gains go to just 5,000 people.

Before those on the Conservative Benches moan that such reforms are part of some kind of socialist plot, I remind them that Nigel Lawson raised capital gains tax rates to match income tax rates, and that it was a top recommendation by the current Chancellor’s own advisers, the Office of Tax Simplification, in 2020. Other tax reforms that touch on aspects of wealth, such as the regressive council tax system, could also be reformed and replaced with a proportional property tax, as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) has so passionately argued.

Beyond making taxes that apply to certain aspects of wealth fairer, it is time for a new one-off tax on the very wealthy. That was recommended in 2020 by the UK Wealth Tax Commission, which was packed with leading tax experts. It was the first such report undertaken in 50 years, and it is recommended—in fact, essential—reading for every Member of this House, in my humble opinion. It concludes that a one-off wealth tax would be fair, as those with the most wealth have the broadest shoulders to afford an additional contribution to society in times of crisis. It would also be efficient. A one-off wealth tax would not discourage economic activity, and the administrative cost would be a small proportion of the revenue raised. It would also be very difficult to avoid by emigrating or moving money offshore. It could raise vast sums to tackle the ills of economic hardship and inequality.

In fact, the commission says that without a one-off wealth tax, we will not tackle inequality because, while we are one of the most unequal countries in Europe on income distribution, inequality is even worse when it comes to wealth. Almost one quarter of all household wealth in the UK is held by the richest 1% of the population—people whose wealth is above £3.6 million. That is why, today, in this debate, I am calling for a one-off 10% tax on any wealth above £10 million. That could raise £86 billion, according to the Wealth Tax Commission.

Such a tax would hit far less than 1% of the population, but it could create a huge social emergency fund to help get people through this crisis and help rebuild the communities hit by a decade of austerity and the slowest pay growth in 200 years. I am sure that the Minister will reply with all sorts of obstacles, such as “Some people are cash poor but wealth rich, so how would they pay?” Well, the payment can be spread annually, or even deferred until assets are sold.

In conclusion, in the end it is not technical problems that we face but a lack of political will. Just imagine, Sir Edward, if the Government went after the tax of the wealthy as much as they piled taxes on working people. It is a political choice—a moral choice—of where to get the money from, how much, and when. Instead of letting the wealthiest off the hook while hiking taxes on millions of workers who face a cost of living emergency, it is time for a wealth tax on the very richest in our society.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Burgon]

Thank you, Sir Edward. It has been a fantastic debate, and I thank everybody who has attended it and contributed. I want to pick up on two quick points. First, my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) raised the issue of how annual wealth taxes could work, and those are an important part of the debate too.

Secondly, they often say that the Back Bench speaks what the Front Bench thinks. That is not always true, but in the case of the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), I think it is. However, he is wrong. He has said, “Let’s keep the wealth creators in this country. Let’s not drive them away.” But those who create the wealth in our society are the 99%. Let us be on their side.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered potential merits of introducing new wealth taxes.

North Sea Oil and Gas Producers: Investment Allowances

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

The points that my hon. Friend makes are set out in the energy security strategy, because we recognise that the North sea will still be a foundation of our energy security. It is right that we continue to encourage investment in oil and gas as we transition to renewables. My hon. Friend is right that the sector, along with many others, provides important jobs for people in the areas where generation is taking place.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

The additional tax breaks given to oil and gas firms mean that the Government are handing billions over to the very companies that are driving up people’s bills and fuelling climate change. That is money that could have been used to insulate 2 million homes, saving each household £340 every year. Are these tax breaks for more fossil fuel producers not the very opposite of what is needed to protect the planet, end our reliance on expensive gas and, crucially, invest in insulation that could get bills down?

[Lucy Frazer]

With the greatest respect, I think that the hon. Member misunderstands the policy. What we are introducing is a significant tax on the oil and gas sector that will fund the most vulnerable, so it is the firms handing money over, as he puts it, to us. We have said that we recognise that companies should invest, because it is good for jobs, good for investment, good for our competitive industries and good for our energy security for the future. We have recognised that we will give tax reliefs if that investment is made.

Economy Update

Richard Burgon Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is why the Business Secretary and the Prime Minister announced the plan to reform the energy market so that we can reduce those bills over time and also double down on our initiatives to improve the energy efficiency of people’s homes, which can save them £200 or £300 relatively quickly.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

The windfall tax amounts to just £5 billion, but it could have been well over double that and still left North sea oil and gas giants with the same profit levels they have had in recent years, before they benefited from this price spike. Surely the Chancellor should be doing everything he can to help people who are struggling, so why is he still letting oil and gas companies keep billions in undeserved profits?

[Rishi Sunak]

I think that the official Labour party view is that the windfall tax would raise £2 billion. The way we have structured ours means it will in fact raise £5 billion, which is a significant amount of revenue that will help fund the things we have announced today.