Rob Marris
Main Page: Rob Marris (Labour - Wolverhampton South West)Department Debates - View all Rob Marris's debates with the HM Treasury
(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Mark Field
I will speak briefly in favour of amendment 151 on carried interest. In my time as a Member of Parliament, I have sometimes been critical of elements of the tax regime that applies in the private equity and venture capital world. It seems to me that the generous tax regime, although it has been justified to support entrepreneurs, has often been misused by those in the industry—inadvertently; I am not suggesting that anything untoward or nefarious has taken place. I believe that many in the private equity field have, particularly in good times, in effect been financiers rather than risk takers. As such, it would surely be more equitable for their rewards to be treated more like income than capital gains. That has been at the heart of the whole debate about carried interest.
The Government have been aware of this issue. Let us give them some credit for that. To some extent, we are trying to play catch-up on it. Inevitably, there has been controversy about the treatment of private equity firms’ carried interest, which is levied as a capital gain, rather than as income. There was a time—pre-2010—when the difference between those two things was rather greater than it is today. That may be because capital gains tax has been raised, but the starkness of the problem is to some extent less pronounced now than it was during the time of the last Labour Administration in the noughties.
It is clear that the Treasury is doing the right thing in trying to provide a more favourable regime that is intended to reward genuine entrepreneurs. In principle, that must mean that where carried interest looks like income, it should be treated as such for taxation purposes. That is what we are slowly doing with amendment 151.
Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)
Has the OECD not recommended that all carried interest should be treated as income?
Mark Field
It has, but there is a distinction between different elements of carried interest, and we are trying to get to the bottom of that. To be brutally honest, in the longer term I would be much happier to have a regime in which we treated capital gains and income identically. There would not then be any sense in trying to arbitrage one way or the other. In many ways, perhaps inadvertently, the coalition began to move in that direction.
I am sorry that I was not in the Chamber to hear the whole speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), but he is absolutely right. Private equity has had a bad rap because of certain high-profile concerns—partly because of the misuse of tax to allow huge amounts of debt on to balance sheets—but a large number of businesses in each and every one of our 650 constituencies in the UK benefit from having private equity investors. Many jobs now exist because of the private equity investment that has come into play, particularly in growing businesses that will make a real difference in the future. The Government have broadly got this right, although I am sure we will have to come back and look at it again.
I would make one point to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman). It is not about inheritance tax—we have had our joust on that—but on a more fundamental point, on which I think she is absolutely right: the more complicated a tax code, the more the door is open to tax avoidance of all descriptions. We very urgently need to begin to simplify our tax code. We will add yet more pages to it today. A lot of them are to apply Elastoplast in ways that we can all support for individual reasons, but we need to get back to the principles of a much simpler tax system.
I believe that one of the impacts of leaving the European Union will be not a race to the bottom in lowering tax, but a much simpler tax system. This is a wake-up call for all of us in the House—obviously, particularly for those in the Treasury—to have a much simpler tax code. Such a code will be readily understandable and supported by all our constituents, which is one of the issues we face. It will also say to those bringing in much of the inward investment that will come to the UK from across the globe that we have a simple tax code, which will not be tinkered with in successive Finance Bills because it is very straightforward, and they will be able to work on that basis. I know that may be wishful thinking—going back many years, most Chancellors have talked about having a simpler tax code—but this now needs to be looked at urgently. Urgent attention must be paid to getting simplicity. If we do not do so, we will all very much pay the price.
Rob Marris
I entirely echo the right hon. Gentleman’s comments about simplification. I may attempt to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, to address the House on that issue later. However, I caution him against linking that to Brexit, because almost all the complications, of which there are many in what we now call the tax code, are due to domestic legislation and are nothing to do with the European Union. Brexit may afford us an opportunity to start at the bottom on various areas of Government policy and endeavour, but leaving the EU will not provide such an opportunity in this case.
Seema Malhotra
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, which was opened by my hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey), on the new clause and amendments relating to capital gains tax. I will speak particularly about new clause 14, on “Entrepreneur’s Relief: value for money”, amendment 174, which would remove the capital gains tax cut, and amendments 175 and 176 on the investors’ relief sunset clause. Labour’s main issue of contention with the Government is the reduction of capital gains tax, the reasons for which have been well outlined. I want to highlight the very serious issue of value for money in public finances, and to continue to make our call for the Government to look at the way in which we scrutinise and review tax reliefs.
As we have argued since the Budget, the Finance Bill is inadequate if we are to rise to the challenges we face and to work towards a very strong economy in which we can all feel and believe that prosperity is shared by all. At a very tough time for the public finances, the Government have chosen to prioritise a corporation tax cut and a capital gains tax cut. Certainly while working on the Finance Bill, including as shadow Chief Secretary, I have had several conversations with business figures who quite openly said that they did not necessarily expect a corporation tax cut while other issues that are so important for their business success—investment in skills, housing, infrastructure and superfast broadband, and ensuring that we get the productivity shifts this country so desperately needs—require great attention. To purport that there is a simplistic link between a capital gains tax cut and a strong enterprise and investment culture is therefore not very honest, because it has not been proven that the cut is either necessary or sufficient to achieve that outcome, which we do indeed want.
Let us not forget that at the last Budget, the OBR took all the Chancellor’s measures into account and still downgraded the business investment forecasts. The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics estimate that business investment decreased by 0.8% between the second quarter of 2015 and the second quarter of 2016. Therefore, it continues to be a concern that the Government’s economic strategy does not take into account the wider needs of businesses beyond tax cuts.
It is the context of squeezed public services and lack of investment that leads me to raise the issue of tax reliefs, particularly those pertaining to capital gains tax, and the way in which we understand the needs of businesses. Tax reliefs are an important part of our tax system and have been needed for a variety of reasons, many of them extremely valid. However, after six years of this Government’s failure on the economy, in so many ways, with many people feeling the brunt of the cuts and with our public services under considerable strain, every penny of public spending should be going on much needed investment in our schools and hospitals and on supporting the most vulnerable. The figures got even worse this summer, with more than a third of children leaving school without the equivalent of five good GCSEs, and schools in my constituency tell me that they are giving out money every day to help parents buy school uniforms and shoes. We therefore need to justify every penny that is spent by the Exchequer.
That also has to apply to every penny that is not collected. Tax reliefs are effectively tax forgone. I firmly believe that we need to apply just as much scrutiny to relief as we do to expenditure. That is not to say that I am opposed to tax reliefs to incentivise good and positive business behaviours—far from it. For me, providing behavioural incentives to achieve economic and social goals is a central part of the role of Government, but they must use effective judgment that is based on the interests of fairness and prosperity. A Government who are working in strategic partnership with business and industry in the interests of the economy and society will actively consider such measures.
However, there is a serious paucity of scrutiny of whether and to what extent various tax reliefs are achieving those goals and whether they remain value for money for the taxpayer. The HMRC website lists 405 tax reliefs in the UK, but in reality there are many more. The Office of Tax Simplification has identified 1,140 tax reliefs. Of the 405 tax reliefs listed by HMRC, 102 cost more than £50 million, 84 cost under £50 million and there are 219 for which HMRC does not provide cost data.
Rob Marris
Does my hon. Friend agree that of all those reliefs, the biggest scandal is tax relief on pension contributions, which costs more than £30 billion a year in forgone revenue and principally goes to the most well-off? For years, the Department for Work and Pensions has had no evidence that that tax relief produces a change in behaviour that results in more people making pension contributions. We are, in effect, handing out a lot of money mostly, but not entirely, to a lot of rich people to get them to do something, when there is no evidence that it does so.
Seema Malhotra
My hon. Friend makes an important point. The conundrum of how we fund, finance and incentivise pension savings needs to be thought about much more holistically. He highlights an example of incentives that reach not the majority, but a minority. We must keep that under review.
The Public Accounts Committee took forward the work of the National Audit Office on these issues and took evidence. Its report found that some reliefs
“costing some £100 billion a year, are designed to deliver a policy objective that could be met instead through spending programmes”,
which would be more rigorous and more auditable. The report states that
“HM Treasury and…HMRC do not keep track of those tax reliefs intended to influence behaviour. They do not adequately report to Parliament or the public on whether reliefs are working as intended and what they cost and whether they represent good value for money.”
Nothing has really changed since the report was published last year. That is why Labour continues to raise this issue during the passage of the Finance Bill.
We need to question the efficacy of tax reliefs such as capital gains tax relief and entrepreneurs’ qualifying business disposals, or entrepreneurs’ relief. There are clear reasons for entrepreneurs’ relief and it can be argued that it incentivises investment, but does it make a great enough difference to be worth £3 billion a year to the Exchequer? I do not claim to have all the answers, but we do need evidence to prove that it makes that difference and the Government need to be challenged to justify this and other reliefs.
In Committee of the whole House, the then Financial Secretary to the Treasury defended entrepreneurs’ relief and, as usual, did so without evidence, saying:
“of course, as with all tax reliefs, it is entirely appropriate that the Government keep it under review to ensure that it is well targeted and not open to abuse”.—[Official Report, 28 June 2016; Vol. 612, c. 245.]
I challenge the Government to say when they will do that. New clause 14 would make the Government and all of us turn those warm words into action.
Furthermore, the Finance Bill introduces a new relief, investors’ relief, which extends the low rate of capital gains tax to investors in an unlimited trading company for at least three years. In principle, I support the idea of a relief that is intended to incentivise investment and to support access to capital for businesses, particularly at an early stage in a business’s life cycle, if we can provide evidence that it will help turn those with initial ideas into the successful job creators and innovators of the future. That is extremely important in creating the economy of the future, with all the opportunities that new technology and other initiatives can bring.
However, it concerns me that this could end up being yet another tax relief that is introduced for a good reason, but then left to mushroom into a relief that is extremely expensive and difficult to remove. We need a mechanism to ensure that there is time to review whether it is achieving the desired effect, whether the costs are aligned to those that are forecast and whether it constitutes value for money. For that reason, I support the sunset clause for the relief in Labour’s amendment 176, which would ensure that after a number of years, when we have the evidence on which to base our conclusions, those questions will not go unanswered.
I call on the House and the new Treasury Ministers to take seriously our scrutiny of tax reliefs and to support the Opposition amendments, which would put in place proper mechanisms for reviewing the reliefs and ensure that they remain targeted at supporting businesses, while showing evidence of value for money.
Rob Marris
The Minister says that the measures will drive investment. What evidence is there for that?
Jane Ellison
That point has been made repeatedly. Contributions from those critical of the policy often miss the way in which measures interact. We are trying to create a climate that encourages investment. A number of international studies have indicated that low rates of CGT support equity investment in firms and promote higher-quality investment in start-ups. That is an important source of innovation and growth. The evidence is there. The measures are part of a package that is trying to create a climate that makes our country attractive to invest in and enables domestic investors to invest in company growth. At the same time, as we have stressed and as other measures in the Bill stress, taxes must be fair and must be paid; the hon. Gentleman took part in a good debate last night about some of those measures.
A number of external bodies have expressed support for clause 82—that also goes to the hon. Gentleman’s point. The CBI and the Institute of Economic Affairs have both welcomed the cuts as a means of encouraging entrepreneurship and growth, and, as I have said, there is a body of evidence, not least internationally, to indicate that lower rates support equity investment in firms and promote higher-quality investment in start-ups. Again, I welcome the support of and international perspective given by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) on this subject.
The changes made by clause 82 are about encouraging investment where we want businesses to expand. As I have said, they are very much a part of a general pro-business agenda, but we have also been clear that we want fair and competitive taxes and that taxes must be paid. We addressed that in a good debate last night, when there was a good degree of cross-party consensus.
The hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) mentioned the geographical distribution of the CGT cut. HMRC publishes national statistics on CGT each year that include a breakdown of its payers by geographical distribution, so there is transparency on that. It is also worth saying that it has been estimated that up to 130,000 individuals will pay lower taxes as a direct result of these changes to CGT, including 50,000 basic rate taxpayers.
The hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) made a typically thoughtful speech, not just on CGT but on her general thoughts on tax reliefs and how we review them, as well as on tax simplification. Again, I felt that she did not perhaps entirely address the interaction between the various measures—they cannot be seen in isolation. The other issues she mentioned are hugely important; for example, the investment in skills, but I did not think she was fair about what the Government have done on that agenda, which has resulted in record levels of apprenticeships. She is right to say that there are other issues such as that one, but these measures are part of a general package and are not the whole picture.
Amendments 175 and 176 were also tabled by the Opposition. In the 2016 Budget we announced the introduction of investors’ relief, benefiting long-term investors in unlisted companies. As has been explained, the amendments seek to end that new relief after a period of six years, with the option of an additional 12-month extension if agreed by both Houses, and ask the Chancellor to lay a review of the operation of the relief before both Houses.
The amendments are unnecessary as the Government keep all tax policy under review in line with normal tax policy making practice. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) again, I thought, did not really give credit to the interaction of different measures nor to the wider point that, given that the Government are bringing the measures forward to stimulate economic growth, there is absolutely no incentive for us not to keep a very close eye on them and review them at regular intervals. We do so all the time because we want measures to work—we want our measures to stimulate economic activity, and we do not in any way want them not to work. Indeed, there are a number of measures in the Bill to correct things that have been done in the past, where we feel that an improvement could make something work better.
We feel that there would be limited merit in conducting a review within six years as the first data on the uptake of the relief in its first year of operation will not be available to HMRC until 2021. Amendments 175 and 176 are neither needed nor useful, and we ask the Opposition not to press them to a vote.
New clause 14, again tabled by the Opposition, proposes that the Chancellor publish, within six months of the passing of the Bill, a report of the Treasury’s assessment of the value for money provided by entrepreneurs’ relief. As I have just said, the Government keep all tax policy under review because we want it to do what we have set out as the intention behind it, namely to stimulate economic activity and to make investment in business attractive to people. That review includes entrepreneurs’ relief, as demonstrated by recent action taken to ensure that the relief is effective, well targeted and not open to abuse. We will continue to act, where appropriate.
My predecessor as Financial Secretary has already informed the House of this, but it is worth reiterating, as it is germane to this point, that HMRC officials have commissioned an in-depth survey of taxpayers’ reasons for using entrepreneurs’ relief and its effects on behaviour. We expect the results of that survey, which will be published at some point in 2017, to inform future changes to the relief. I hope that that gives Members some comfort that the relief is being looked at very closely.
In our wider debate, some general points were made about the Budget being tilted towards the south-east of England. A number of points could be made in rebuttal, not least the debate we had last night, which touched on support for the oil and gas sector in Scotland. More generally, some interesting points were made about having a simpler tax system. In the next part of our debate on the Bill, there will be an opportunity to discuss the Office of Tax Simplification, but as this point came up during the current debate it is worth noting that the Bill puts the OTS on a statutory footing. Around half of the OTS’s 400 or so recommendations to date have already been taken on board. I again take on board the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field). I feel sure that this a topic that we will return to over the coming months and years.
I thank all Members who have spoken in the debate.
Jane Ellison
As I have said, the date will be confirmed in due course, but I think it reasonable to assume that the window of opportunity to which the hon. Gentleman has referred is broadly correct.
I shall speak briefly—as, again, there is no Liberal Democrat presence in the Chamber—about amendment 179, which deals with the apprenticeship levy. This would exclude qualifying bonus payments to employees of employee-owned businesses from being considered as part of the employer’s pay bill when calculating the levy. To ensure the levy is as simple and fair as possible, the Government have decided to use the existing definition of earnings—those used for employers national insurance contributions. This avoids unnecessary complication. This point about avoiding complication was made repeatedly to us during the consultation. We feel the amendment would add complication and therefore we urge the House to reject it.
Lastly, Labour amendment 141 on employee share schemes proposes a tax exemption for residual cash amounts remaining in share incentive plans when they are donated to charity. While we appreciate the proposal is made with the best of intentions, we are concerned the change would, again, add complexity and the amendment lacks details. We would need further development and evidence of this idea before giving it further consideration.
I will end there, but I may look to respond briefly at the end if there are any further points I can add that would assist the House. I look forward to the debate.
Rob Marris
I am disappointed by the Minister’s concluding remarks on amendment 141, which is in my name and those of my hon. Friends. She says the amendment lacks detail. We are talking about simplification today and I will go on to address the House on that issue, but this amendment covers more than an A4 page, so there is quite a lot of it. It might be the wrong detail—I freely accept that I am not an accountant—but I cannot get my head around the concept that it lacks detail. So I am disappointed and urge her to reconsider.
I am pleased at the movement from the Government on amendment 180. It will not surprise SNP Members to know that I want to touch briefly, as the Minister did, on new clause 6. Frankly, they have made their bed and they should lie in it. They were warned that this would be the financial effect, and having an inquiry into the financial effect of something they knew was going to happen and has happened—it may be an adverse financial effect—is what you get with devolution; you make your decisions and you live with them. They should not be looking indirectly through this mechanism for yet another bung from the English taxpayer when they are already getting shed loads of money under the Barnett formula. I support the Barnett formula and the Union, but sometimes people can push their luck a bit and I think that is what is happening here since they knew in advance what would happen.
I want to make some brief remarks on the question of evidence-based decision making and the difficulties we have in that regard as policymakers and legislators in this House. That applies particularly to financial matters. Although the House of Lords scrutinises Finance Bills, it does not vote upon them for good historical reasons. It cannot, therefore, amend the Finance Bill and we have to get it right here.
Oppositions cannot table amendments to put up taxes and it has become commonplace in recent years to table amendments to express concern and call for a review. That has been the mechanism used by those who take issue with a particular course of action, or lack of a course of action rather than moving amendments to abolish something, as the Liberal Democrats extraordinarily did yesterday with their amendment to abolish corporation tax, which, as the Minister said, would cost £43 billion a year. In this group, new clauses 3, 6, 8, 16, 17, 18 and 19 all call for a review, as did new clause 14 and amendment 176 which were debated previously. It is the flavour of the day.
This highlights a problem that the Minister addressed in her concluding remarks in the previous debate. We have at the moment an economy with extraordinarily good unemployment figures, and I praise the Government for that. That figure has come down, and we have had 2.5 million more jobs in the past six years. That is great, but it has been bought on a sea of debt, with the deficit going up 60% under a Government who said that they were imposing austerity in order to bring public finances under control. They are still not under control.
Kirsty Blackman
In the absence of the Government showing any willingness to take the bull by the horns on tax simplification, how can we get them to part with the information that they say they have on the continual review on tax reliefs? I have not been an MP for very long, but it strikes me that there is a failure in the system if we are not seeing the transparency that we need. If the Government are actually doing these reviews but not providing their working to the Committees or to Opposition MPs, that strikes me as a failure in the system. How can we get them to part with that information?
Rob Marris
I quite agree with the hon. Lady. Sadly, I am unlikely ever to be a Minister, but I am hoping that the Minister will stand up this afternoon and say, “The hon. Member for Aberdeen North has made a jolly good point.” She has said that the Government keep all policies under review all the time, so let us have the transparency. I salute what the Government did for transparency yesterday in accepting amendment 145, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). I urge them to go that bit further today by publishing the evidence that they have and by marshalling more evidence and disclosing it. They must have the courage to seriously go for simplification, which would be better for business and employment in this country, even though there would be a cost to be borne by society in the form of less nuanced decision making and systems becoming more monochromatic and rough and ready. Some of that would of course rebound on Members of the House, because we would get constituents writing to us saying, “I have a particularly nuanced situation here, and you guys have made all these laws that are a bit monochromatic and do not help me.” We have to have the guts to say that that is a price worth paying, and as legislators we should be prepared to do so.
John Redwood
I had hoped to clear up my point in an earlier intervention on the Minister, but I fear that I was not happy with her answer so I shall try again and extend my case a little on the important matter of VAT on energy-saving materials. That is the principal issue at stake in new clause 15. As I was trying to explain to the Minister, many of us feel that it would be quite wrong to increase VAT on energy-saving materials, given that the House decided to choose the lowest rate that we are allowed to impose under European Union law. A case was then lost in the European Court, and the Government have wisely been undertaking a very long consultation into how they might implement this ill-conceived and unwanted judgment. The longer they consider it, the better, and the sooner we get out of the European Union, the sooner we can bring the whole charade to a happy end.
To many of us, this illustrates exactly what was wrong with our membership of the European Union, and this is something that we can offer to our constituents as we come out. They voted to leave and to take back control of their laws. That includes their laws over taxes. During the campaign, we on the leave side made a great deal of how we wanted to scrap VAT on energy-saving materials. Like many people in this House, we believe that we could do much more to save and conserve energy and to raise fuel efficiency, and if we did not tax those materials, perhaps they would be a bit cheaper for people. That would send a clear message that this was something that we believed in.
I urge the Minister to go as far as she can in saying that this Government have absolutely no wish to put up VAT on energy-saving materials, and that they would not do so if they were completely free to make their own tax decisions. I would love her to go a bit further—this might be asking quite a lot—and say that once we are free of the European Union requirements, we will be scrapping VAT on energy-saving materials altogether. It is not a huge money-spinner for the Government, and its abolition would send a very good message. It would particularly help people struggling in fuel poverty, who find energy-saving materials expensive. The extra VAT on them is far from helpful.
The Minister suggested to me that the Brexit Secretary was dealing with this matter, but I can assure her that he is not. He made a clear statement on these matters in the House yesterday and wisely told us—I repeat this for the benefit of those who did not hear him—that it is his role to advise and work with the Prime Minister to get our powers back. His job is to ensure that this House and all of us can once again settle the United Kingdom’s taxes without having to accept the European Union’s judgments and overrides. However, it will be for Treasury Ministers and the wider Cabinet to recommend how we use those wider and new powers and to bring to the House their proposals once they are free to do so.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
It is a pleasure to take part in this stage of our consideration of the Finance Bill. I was interested to hear the carefully constructed arguments of the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting). Let me pick up on the point he made about wanting to see social justice from this and future Budgets, and to see it at the heart of the Government’s agenda, as was made clear on the steps of No. 10 by the new Prime Minister. He also talked about the impact on the poorest households, which is the focus of new clauses 2 and 3 and the reviews that they propose. As ever, it was also interesting to hear from the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West (Rob Marris), and to listen to his thesis on post-factual analysis, be it on the Labour leadership contest or on this Bill. He mentioned roads, so perhaps he should come down to Enfield and give us a post-factual analysis of the cycle lanes that are planned in my borough to see whether we should continue with that expensive proposal, given the need for best value.
Let me return to the matters at hand. First, I wish to speak to new clause 2, which stands in my name and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). Sadly, the latter cannot be here as she is leading her Health Committee on a visit, although she would want to be here to support this new clause. I hope and expect that across the House there is support for the principles of wanting to carry out a proper review of the impact of the duty regime, particularly in relation to high-strength cider, although I very much welcome the Minister’s comments. She will know all too clearly from her previous role in public health of the impact of alcohol and high-strength alcohol in particular, including cider, on the poorest and those most in need of our attention. I welcome the hint that a wider, more coherent view of the relationship between alcohol duties and harm could be taken, which was mooted by the previous Prime Minister but seemed to get kicked into the long grass—it has never returned. The Minister will be well aware of the permutations and the different interests across Government in relation to that review and its final outcome. The previous Prime Minister was talking about minimum alcohol pricing in terms of when not if, but this has now gone back to an if. I look forward in future Budgets and future consideration to a wider review and factual analysis of the relationships to harm and the impact on behaviour, particularly among the poorest.
New clause 2 hones in on an area that is about not just health harms, although that is the core of the argument, but an anomaly in our treatment of cider and of beer.
Rob Marris
I was a “remainer”, so at the risk of sounding like the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), may I ask the hon. Gentleman whether he agrees that this is one area where, as a small silver lining, leaving the European Union may assist, because the rates of excise duties, the definitions and so on are related to our membership of the EU? For example, I am thinking of the way in which wine is treated, because of the Italian, Spanish and French wine industries. If and when we leave the EU, we will have more flexibility in this regard.
Mr Burrowes
I welcome reluctant converts to the cause of Brexit, whenever they come. That is a silver lining among many. I see this very much as sunshine, rather than silver linings. At the heart of it all, this is about our taking back control over a duty that has an impact on the most vulnerable, and we have already had arguments about VAT. I look forward to hearing the Scottish Members’ support for the same silver lining, because they have been battling to ensure that their proposal for minimum unit pricing is not subject to court and European Court interference. They, too, would perhaps welcome that silver lining; I look forward to their joining the hon. Gentleman in what he has just said.
As much as anything else, new clause 2 is about dealing with an anomaly to do with high-strength ciders. In the recess, hon. Members may have enjoyed ciders of all varieties. They may have popped their corks and had some sparkling cider, which is a substitute, perhaps a poor one, for champagne. They need have no fear about this, because the essence of my proposed review is very much about the nasty stuff. I doubt many hon. Members will have partaken in it, although they may have done. I am talking about people going down to their local office licence to get a large bottle or can of white cider, which is not particularly sparkling or pleasant. However, it attracts under-age drinkers and, in particular, dependent drinkers—
Mr Burrowes
It has never seen an apple. The Minister intimated that the same is true of pears. We need to look at the fact that white cider attracts the lowest duty per unit of alcohol of any product while representing the cheapest way to consume alcohol and get drunk, and to enable addicts to continue their dependency. Three-litre bottles of high-strength ciders are available for just £3.50; people can get completely wasted on £3.50, but they would struggle to buy a bottle of some mainstream ciders for that. As a result, these products are causing disproportionate levels of harm, which is closely associated with dependent, street and under-age drinking. The Government are rightly emphasising and prioritising tackling street homelessness and putting funds into preventing homelessness. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) has introduced the very helpful Homelessness Reduction Bill. We hope that, with cross-party support, he will be navigating its safe passage through this House on 28 October and all hon. Friends will attend to that.
Let me make a wider point about future Budgets, as connected to that is the need to examine the impact of duty and the evidence that price has a particular impact on behaviour.