Telecommunications Infrastructure (Relief from Non-Domestic Rates) Bill

Robert Courts Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 5th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in a debate that is, as we all know, enormously important. I spoke in detail about the effect of poor broadband in my constituency on Second Reading, but I now want to make two brief points about events which occurred during the recess and which illustrate precisely what I have spoken about in the House on so many occasions.

Kernahan Service is a garage on one of the major industrial estates in Witney. It is an excellent local family-run company which has serviced vehicles throughout west Oxfordshire for many years. When I visited the garage, the people there wanted not just to explain to me how the business worked, but to demonstrate to me the difficulty caused by the poor broadband that was available to them. Nowadays, as we know, when vans and other vehicles go into a garage, they are plugged into a computer which then connects to a server, and that provides the diagnostic information. I have seen for myself the waiting and the waiting and the waiting in that garage: I have seen those people waiting to find out from the Ford servers what the difficulties are with a particular vehicle. Moreover, I have witnessed with my own eyes the managing director waiting and waiting and waiting for the results of a simple Google search for information. That makes very clear the problems experienced by businesses throughout west Oxfordshire, although it is not a particularly rural problem; it is being experienced in Witney and on one of the most important industrial estates there.

Then there is the domestic side. Isabelle Jackson, a 15-year-old constituent who lives in Kiddington, a small village just outside Woodstock, wrote asking me to raise this issue, and I now gladly do so. I am grateful to her for writing, because she has drawn attention to problems that are experienced by many young people.

Isabelle will take her GCSEs in the current academic year, and is required to do her homework online. She is required to do research and to use sites such as BBC Bitesize and MyMaths, which, as I am sure those with children of the relevant age will know, are very important. The broadband in her village runs at 0.9 megabits per second, so it is simply impossible for her to do her homework. It cannot be right that, simply because Isabelle and many like her live in rural areas, they are being disadvantaged in the course of their education, but that is exactly what we are seeing.

It is for those reasons—the effect on business and the effect on the domestic instruction of young people in particular—that I wholeheartedly welcome the Bill and the incentives that it gives operators to provide the investment that will ensure that we have high-speed internet in rural and, indeed, urban areas throughout west Oxfordshire.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Courts Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Lady asks if enough is being done to clamp down on tax avoidance. I can assure her that it certainly is. Since 2010, we have raised £160 billion by way of clamping down on exactly those behaviours. In the forthcoming Finance Bill there will be further measures to make sure that over the scorecard period we are bringing in between £7 billion and £8 billion in addition, in corporate tax avoidance measures.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

Will the Minister confirm that due to steps taken by this Government, the top 1% of people now pay 27% of income tax, and that that is a higher proportion than under the previous Labour Government?

[Mel Stride]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. The Labour party would constantly have us believe that somehow we are being soft on the wealthy and hard on the less well-off when the precise opposite is true. The top 1% pay over 27% of tax, and the wealthiest 3,000 people in our country pay as much as the poorest 9 million. Under Labour, the poor paid more tax relative to the wealthy, not less. No wonder that under our policies income inequality is at a 30-year low.

Balancing the Public Finances

Robert Courts Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan—it is the first time I have had the opportunity to do so. I will keep my remarks very brief because I know a lot of hon. Members want to speak, and I will try not to repeat things that others have said already. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) on securing the debate, which is of enormous significance as we consider the Government’s progress since 2010 and where we go as we look forward to a strong economy for the future.

When the Government came to power in 2010, they immediately set about putting right and reducing the massive deficit they inherited from the Labour Government. The deficit has been brought down by three quarters after starting as the highest since records began. At that stage, one pound in every four spent by the Government was borrowed. That deficit has been brought down from 10% of GDP to 3%.

That matters a great deal, for two reasons, the first of which is that anything borrowed has to be paid back. It is a fallacy simply to think that there is a pot of money that can be borrowed and spent, but that there is never a day of reckoning. If the deficit is not dealt with by this Government or this generation, it will have to be dealt with by the generations that follow. It is not responsible—it is not something I wish to be a part of—to hand down to my children and to the children who follow us a debt that we were unwilling to consider repaying.

Secondly, there comes a point when the borrowing rate increases and becomes unsustainable. Owing to the cuts to the deficit that the Government have made, they now pay 1% on their 10-year gilts. That compares favourably with Italy, which pays 2%, or Portugal, which pays 2.9%. That has avoided tens of billions of pounds of extra debt payment.

Borrowing is not free. In the year 2014-15, about £34 billion was spent on servicing debt interest, which is about 4.6% of all Government spending. Depending on how it is managed, that is bigger than the transport budget and approximately equivalent to the defence budget. No one should be under any illusion that, in borrowing such amounts, our spending on debt interest is equivalent to that of a major Government Department of State.

[Neil O'Brien]

You are absolutely right—my hon. Friend is right—to point out that we are paying that much in debt interest payments. You will know that more than a quarter of our debt is held overseas, so by my calculations we are spending something like £10 billion a year to other countries for them to spend on their schools and hospitals. My constituents in Harborough will be shocked that we are spending that much to support public services overseas.

[Joan Ryan (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien) that he is supposed to address the Chair.

[Robert Courts]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that powerful point. He is right that when we are paying debt interest overseas, we are paying money elsewhere when it could be spent in this country building up the economy and spent on our priorities.

The central point is that a strong economy is needed to fund strong services. It is all very well to have a long list of priorities on which we would like to spend. Let us be under no doubt that everybody Government Member wants strong public services. We want to increase spending, but that must be done in a responsible way. That money, in order to be spent, has to be raised. If public spending is not balanced, it leads to a weaker economy. That means less money to be spent on our public services, and it means that we are in a weaker positon to withstand the next economic shock when it comes. In due course, there always will be a downturn in the economy and we need to be in a strong position to meet it when it comes. That is the overriding mistake made by the Labour Government.

Living within our means is not an ideological fixation. It is not simply a desire. It is a necessity to ensure that we can protect our public services and spend sensibly for this generation and for generations to come.

Public Sector Pay Cap

Robert Courts Excerpts

Wednesday 5th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

Will the Chief Secretary confirm that new Government 10-year gilts are paid at 1%, and will she confirm that if the markets lose confidence in our deficit reduction plan the interest rate is likely to rise, as is the cost to the country, which will mean less money for our public services?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the macroeconomic picture, and to point out that if we do not have a confident deficit reduction plan such as the one that the Government have pursued for the last seven years, the financial markets will lose confidence, and the effect on working people will be a rise in interest rates, a rise in housing costs, and problems for the Government in respect of our borrowing.

Equitable Life Policyholders: Compensation

Robert Courts Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

I will aim not to disappoint, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for securing this extremely important debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) on their extremely hard work over a number of years to try to secure adequate compensation for everyone who lost out as a result of this scandal. The issue of Equitable Life and the fate of those who lost out after investing has been debated by Members on both sides of the House for more than 15 years. As has been said, there is a great deal of cross-party work on this matter. Throughout that time, the Equitable Life Members Group and the all-party group have campaigned tirelessly to ensure that the issue is not simply kicked into the long grass. I am pleased to have another opportunity to press the case for those who lost out.

After a long battle, I appreciate the action that the Government have taken to date for those affected by this scandal. However, as we have heard from Members and our constituents, many policyholders remain short-changed, receiving a payment of less than one quarter of the compensation to which the ombudsman found they would have been entitled. The second ombudsman’s report was clear that the aim of the compensation scheme should have been to put people back into the position they would have been in if maladministration had not occurred. Despite that—we have heard this from many Members today—1 million people have received only about 22% of the compensation they are due.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman, like all speakers in the debate, is making a very powerful point. I, too, have received a great number of letters from constituents who have corresponded with me about the money that they or their relatives lost. He is right to say that they received only 22% of the compensation they expected. Is it not the case that we are dealing with pensioners and that we are losing about 15 a day? If the Government were to look again at whether, with a growing economy, more could be done for the people who have lost out, that would need to happen sooner rather than later.

[Justin Madders]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We are dealing with people who are getting on in years. As he points out, sadly about 15 policyholders a day are dying before the situation has been resolved. I am strongly of the belief—we see this for a whole range of issues—that the longer people wait for justice, the harder it is to appreciate that justice has been served.

The core of this issue is that many people feel that, even after all these years, justice has not been done. That message has come across loud and clear from my constituents and those of other hon. Members who have spoken. These people worked all their lives only to find that their pension pot has failed to materialise in the manner they were promised and they genuinely believed would occur.

In practice, this means that people who spent decades working for a comfortable retirement have had it denied them. It means that they are downsizing or even re-mortgaging their homes in their old age just to make ends meet. That is clearly not what we want for people who have contributed throughout their lives.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

At times, the debate has seemed like a meeting of old lags, since some of us have been discussing this issue for many years.

I would like to be able to say, like other Members, that many of my constituents are still coming to see me about Equitable Life. I cannot, however, although many constituents used to do so; unfortunately, time has done its work and there are now few left. They are people like my constituent Gertrud, an elderly lady who thought she had made the right choice and would have a decent standard of life in retirement, but who is now living off 25% of what she thought she would get, which is very difficult. The situation is the same throughout the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) unfortunately cannot be here today, but she told me of her constituent Ishbel, who is in the same situation. These are elderly people who had made the right decision and found that they had lost out.

The motion before us today notes that the Government have made no further funding available in the spring Budget. Several Members have mentioned that this is similar to the situation of the WASPI women. These are totally different issues—one is about retirement age while the other is about the amount received from private pensions—but, as others have mentioned, they bring us to the same thing: ever more people believe that it is not worth saving for pensions. That will cause huge difficulties in the future. Young people today say, “What’s the point of doing that? Look at what’s happened to others, like my granny. That’s what is likely to happen to me.” Reports such as one today saying that the pension age is likely to go up yet again, and young people may now be working into their 70s before getting a pension, continue to undermine confidence in pension provision. We will face a huge problem in the future if we continue in this way.

I was an MP when we tried to persuade the last Labour Government to do something about this issue, and they turned their face against that and refused to do anything. I acknowledge that the coalition Government and the current Government have grasped the thistle to some extent, and have made some money available. They must be given credit for that, but of course it took a report from the ombudsman to get the ball rolling for compensation, and she concluded that the state of the public finances was “a relevant consideration”, which I suppose is why we are still here today.

Part of the difficulty is that there is a huge difference between the amount sought by the action group and the sum the Government say was actually lost. There is no real agreement as to what the total losses are. In a sense, the Government came down in the middle with a figure of £1.5 billion, and in coming to that figure cited the state of the public finances. It is disappointing that the Minister stated in his letter to the hon. Members for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) of 30 January, which was circulated to us:

“The announcement was clear that the funding available to the Payment Scheme was not a fixed amount of £1.5 billion but rather that up to £1.5 billion would be made available.”

Should we take that as confirmation that the Government have no intention of even putting the remainder of that amount—about £140 million, I understand—towards the plight of those who have lost out? To be frank with the Minister, given the Government’s previous record, that seems rather small minded and mean, and it undermines the Government’s commitment, which they have shown previously, to tackle this matter.

EMAG argues that the policyholders’ pension savings, carefully accumulated over decades, should be safeguarded in exactly the same way as funds deposited in banks and building societies. They have a point, although they should not stretch it too far, as there is a limit on those funds and it is not an exact analogy. But it is also worth recording that, in her response to the Government scheme, the ombudsman stated:

“I am unable to conclude that the Government’s proposals comply with the recommendation for the establishment of a compensation scheme which I made in my report.”

Such comments will continue until the Government do something to address the continuing sense of injustice.

Others have said that Equitable Life was touted as a long-established, steady company, and that small business people and the self-employed were encouraged to invest their pension savings in it. When I was a practising solicitor—many years ago now—Equitable Life was considered one of the best investments, which is why so many people were encouraged to go into it. Increasingly, however, we are being encouraged to invest in pension provision to augment our state pensions, and people will find it difficult to have confidence in any pension company while this issue remains unresolved. It is also clear that fewer than half of new pensioners will receive the whole of the new single tier pension when it is introduced, so this issue is becoming more and more important.

The fact that pensioners now have much greater freedom to access their pension savings will also greatly alter the pension landscape and the attitude of savers towards pensions, but it could also make it more difficult for companies’ investment strategies. It is doubly imperative in this new environment that there is confidence in the stability and worth of pension investment. Pension investment is not the same as putting money in a bank or building society; as we know, it depends on fluctuations in the market and the type of investment made.

[Robert Courts]

The hon. Gentleman is making many powerful points. He has mentioned confidence. Does he agree with the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) that, having encouraged members of the public to do the right thing and invest in what was seen as a secure and safe scheme, there is a danger that a precedent could now be set and that those people could now decide that investing in a pension would not give them safety or security in retirement? Does he also agree that the unfairness that that creates is unhelpful to the pensions industry as a whole?

[Mike Weir]

Indeed it is. That is the point that I was making.

Some of us are now getting to the age at which we are beginning to think seriously about what our pensions will bring us—it is going to hit us pretty shortly—but I have children who are in their 20s, and this is a very long-term investment for people in their 20s and 30s. Young people today who look at the WASPI women or at Equitable Life pensioners will not have the same confidence that people of my generation might have had that they are putting aside savings to augment their state pension. The state pension is changing, and we are looking at different ways in which people will invest for the future, such as auto-enrolment. All these things require confidence, but that confidence has been undermined by continuing scandals such as Equitable Life.

The Government have to look at the bigger picture, rather than simply looking at Equitable Life in isolation. They have to look at how we can get over this hump and ensure that all young people make provision for the future. If we do not do that, a much bigger problem will be coming over the horizon when those young people get older, having made no provision because they lacked confidence in the system. What are we going to do then? The fall-backs that exist today will no longer be there for them. I urge the Minister, even at this late stage, to go back to the Chancellor and say, “Look at the bigger picture. Look at how we are dealing with pensions. How can we get confidence back?” If we do not do this, the picture will get even worse later.

Class 4 National Insurance Contributions

Robert Courts Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

I have made it clear that there will be no increase in national insurance contributions during the remainder of this Parliament. As I have said, I am not setting out today the Conservative manifesto for the next general election. I am making a commitment for this Parliament, and I hope the House will be satisfied with that.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

I declare an interest as someone who was self-employed until a few months ago. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Thank you. As a member of the Federation of Small Businesses and the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for small and micro businesses, I welcome today’s announcement from the Chancellor and thank him for it, as will the nearly one fifth of my constituents in Witney and west Oxfordshire who are self-employed. Will the Chancellor give a little more detail on the scope of the review he will undertake over the summer?

[Mr Hammond]

Yes. First we will respond to Matthew Taylor’s report, which looks more widely at employment rights in a rapidly changing economy. We will look at parental benefits, which are the principal area where there is still a discrepancy in what is available for the self-employed and the employed. There are other relatively minor areas, but we will look at all of them and seek to, as it were, audit the differences in treatment between the employed and self-employed. The House and people outside will then be able to see in the round the difference in access to benefits and entitlements and the difference in contributions, and form a judgment about how we should move forward.

Equality: Autumn Statement

Robert Courts Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I welcome any support for women. Women make up half the population and contribute a great deal to our economy. We need to focus on ensuring that we have a strong economy, because through a strong economy we protect women as well as men, disabled people as well as able-bodied people, and people of all races. With a strong economy, all those people will prosper. I am pleased that our growth under this Conservative Government is second only to that of the US.

It is unfortunate that Labour Members focus on the negatives, not the positives, and that they do not seek to raise ambitions and aspiration for all society. I would like to highlight four positives in relation to women: for those who are young, for those who are on low wages, for those who are more skilled, and by way of international comparison.

First, I do not think that it is appropriate to talk down young women. Girls often do better than boys in school, and more women than men go to university. Secondly, I want to recognise the benefit of the Government’s policies for women on lower salaries. Men as well as women benefit from the national living wage going up to £9 by 2020. If, as the Opposition say, women are paid less than men, the policy will disproportionately benefit women.

Thirdly, let us not forget the strides that have been made for the higher paid. We have no all-male FTSE 100 boards, and the number of women on FTSE 100 boards went up to 26% in 2015, from 13% in 2011. Fourthly, it is important to consider how we are doing by comparison with other countries internationally. The World Economic Forum gender gap measures and ranks the level of equality of opportunity between men and women. We are 20th out of 144, ranking above Canada, the US and Australia.

The hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) stated that she was proud of successive Labour achievements. She failed to mention that according to a Fabian Society study, only 36% of Labour councillors, 16% of council leaders and 11% of the most senior Labour staff are women. I want an economy and a society that work for everyone, of every race, gender and religion.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Lucy Frazer]

I have just finished.