Finance Bill

Robert Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Commons Chamber

As Oil & Gas UK has pointed out, driving drilling rigs out of the UK continental shelf may only compound the problem of low levels of exploration and production. As the Wood review recently identified, exploration is now at a critically low level. Even more worryingly, production fell by 38% between 2010 and 2013.

[Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is making an important point: maximising exploration is crucial to future revenues. Unless oil is produced out of the ground, we will not see any tax revenue.

[Catherine McKinnell]

That is an ambition that I believe the Chancellor has expressed himself. It is vital the Government get this right and that is why we are asking these questions today. I hope we will receive reassurance from the Minister.

Production fell by 38% between 2010 and 2013, which is the equivalent of 500 million fewer barrels of oil being produced. Critically low exploration has meant that 150 million fewer barrels of oil equivalent have been discovered in the past two years.

This clearly has wider implications for the UK’s oil and gas sector. As the hon. Gentleman points out, it also has serious implications for the Exchequer. Just yesterday, there was a report in the Financial Times highlighting the fact that North sea oil and gas tax receipts decreased by 60% in the past two years alone, and are now at their lowest level since 2004. Some of that can be accounted for by significant investment in the past few years—the fiscal regime was designed in such a way, under the previous Labour Government, to encourage such activity and therefore be less liable to tax—but these figures are still reflective of the wider issues facing our North sea oil and gas sector, as I outlined previously.

I want to draw the attention of the House to concerns, expressed by numerous tax specialists, that these measures represent the Government abandoning the application of the arm’s length principle in determining transfer pricing in the oil and gas sector. Just to explain the background, OECD member countries have agreed that to achieve a fair division of taxing profits, and to address international double taxation, transactions between connected parties—for example, intra-group companies—should be treated for tax purposes by reference to the amount of profit that would have arisen had the same transaction been executed by unconnected or independent parties. The arm’s length principle is enshrined in article 9 of the OECD model, treaty or convention.

The Government apparently support the arm’s length principle, but the Chartered Institute of Taxation has expressed concern that imposing such a cap, as new schedule 1 would provide for, calculated through a formula based on the original cost of the asset, effectively imposes a legislatively fixed benchmark price that overrides the arm’s length principle. An article for Tax Journal in February highlighted this issue and concluded:

“these measures are reflective of the Treasury’s willingness to introduce special measures where it perceives that the application of the arm’s length principle fails to determine an appropriate allocation of profits in cross-border transactions.”

Will the Minister say whether this reflects the Treasury’s willingness to intervene and override the arm’s length principle, where it deems the application of such to be inadequate? The main reason why the Government’s abandonment of the arm’s length principle is of such concern is the possibility that other countries may follow suit and introduce their own special measures; something that the OECD and its members, through the arm’s length principle, are at pains to prevent. It would be useful to hear from the Minister whether the Government have taken account of international reactions to these measures and their potential detrimental impact.

As the Minister well knows, and as we have put on the record in this House on countless occasions, the Opposition support the Government on any steps they take to tackle tax avoidance. However, a number of concerns remain as to how the Government have approached implementing these measures. We welcome the Government’s consultations with the industry, belated though they are, but I would be interested to hear from the Minister whether he and his officials believe that they have, in the final version of the Bill, fully addressed the concerns of industry. The feedback I have received from the industry suggests otherwise.

After the debacle of the autumn statement last year with regard to this unexpected announcement, it is important that Ministers finally, three years after they made the same mistake, learn the lessons of turning to the North sea oil and gas industry to plug holes in their books, and coming up with policy on the hoof. In 2011, we saw the detrimental impact such unilateral action can have, particularly in an increasingly marginal industry—that was, perhaps, reflected in the Financial Times report yesterday. We can only hope that the Government have fully considered the impact of the latest changes and properly accounted for them. Finally, the measures seem to diverge from the Government’s general approach to transfer pricing and the arm’s length principle, but I hope the Minister can provide clarification on that.

New clause 5 and new schedule 4 provide for further tax relief for the creative sector—based, of course, on the last Labour Government’s highly successful film tax relief. They introduce a tax relief for theatrical productions, and the relief will operate in almost exactly the same way as it does for high-end television and animation productions, but with one small difference. It allows qualifying companies engaged in theatrical productions to claim an additional deduction in computing their taxable profits. Where that additional deduction results in a loss, they have to surrender it for a payable tax credit. Both the additional deduction and payable credit are calculated on the basis of UK core expenditure capped at 80% of total core expenditure by the qualifying company.

The Minister set out the provisions in some detail, and they received some welcoming comments, particularly from Government Back Benchers, but I have a few queries about the new relief; I hope the Minister will be able to resolve any outstanding ones. The first relates to measures contained in new schedule 4, and it is important to ensure that the measure is not open to abuse. Such reliefs as these—or tax expenditures, to use Treasury-speak—well-intentioned though they are, have increasingly come in for criticism from the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office. We have already discussed the number of both known and potentially unknown tax avoidance schemes generated around the reliefs and the subsequent criticism of them. I do not think it would be helpful to hold this discussion again here on the Floor of the House; Members will be able to read Hansard to see the extensive debates and discussions we had in the Public Bill Committee.

Following the consultation process, the Government appear to have taken on board the views of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, which suggested in its consultation submission that any evidence of abuse should be promptly identified and acted on by using the general anti-abuse rule. New schedule 4 provides for a general anti-abuse rule based on the GAAR, but the Chartered Institute of Taxation suggested that this tax relief should be properly monitored and reviewed by the Government. The Government’s consultation response suggests HMRC will “continue to monitor” for abuse, but can the Minister give a specific commitment in this respect?