Employment and Trade Union Rights (Dismissal and Re-engagement) Bill

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Kevin Hollinrake

Friday 22nd October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman says that there is only one thing worse than fire and rehire, and that is just fire. But if this is about the option of an offer of redundancy with a redundancy payment, as opposed to someone having a gun over their head and being told, “Take these worse terms or you won’t be able to pay for your housing. You can have no job at all, with no redundancy pay-off”, I am not sure he is right. And the situation may even be worse than that. He needs to remember the stress that our constituents were facing when they were faced with fire and rehire.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Lady makes a good point, but all these matters are covered under employment law. Whether on wrongful dismissal, unfair dismissal—constructive dismissal—or redundancies, an employer has to follow due process.

Planning Decisions: Local Involvement

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Kevin Hollinrake

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to close this debate in which many Back Benchers have expressed their concerns, both about their local areas and about the Government’s stated intention to remove the community voice from local planning decisions. Unfortunately, time does not allow me to acknowledge all the excellent contributions to the debate.

The motion in my name and those of my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed) and others, states that

“planning works best when developers and the local community work together to shape local areas and deliver necessary new homes; and…calls on the Government to protect the right of communities to object to individual planning applications.”

We have brought it to the House because of the wealth of opposition throughout the country to the Government’s proposals, including from professional institutions, respected non-governmental organisations and councillors of all parties, including the Conservative-led Local Government Association, as well as the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee in its unanimous excellent report.

From the outset, the health and wellbeing of people and communities were at the heart of what became the town and country planning system. Planning is making decisions that are central to our lives and that impact on the generations that follow. It is not about churning out housing “units”. It is about delivering homes—enough homes for the full range of pockets and household types, particularly young people who want to get on with their lives. It is not just about building new estates. It is about place making, incorporating the social, transport and physical infrastructure that makes a place a community and ensuring that there are places of work, providing jobs, regeneration and growth. Planning is about deciding how we move towards net zero, how we enhance and improve our biodiversity, how we protect and enhance our natural environment, and how we build strong and sustainable local high streets.

Many of the challenges we face as a society and as a country will need to be tackled through the planning system. To do that, new development has to be planned and determined with the engagement of people and their elected local representatives, but the Government want to undermine local involvement—in fact, they want to undermine the whole planning system. The proposals in the White Paper, confirmed in the Queen’s Speech, are the next step in the Conservative party and its friends’ 10-year project to dismantle the planning system. They have been doing it for years, such as through permitted development rights and going back to delivering “slum housing”, as the Government’s own adviser described it. Instead of involving local communities in future development decisions, the Government want to limit that. The right to comment on planning applications would be abolished in the new growth areas, potentially in large parts of the country—[Interruption.] Well, which areas are going to be growth areas? It could be large parts of the country, affecting many constituencies.

Planning applications will be determined not by local elected councillors but by unelected planning officers. Even the delegation process will end. The Government’s ambition is to require all local plans, covering all of England, to be delivered within 30 months. That is way beyond the resources not only of most planning departments, but even of most community organisations that already comment on and are involved in planning matters. The task is just too great, the timescale just too tight.

Community engagement and discussion leads to better outcomes. When I speak to voters in my constituency, they consistently tell me that not only do they want truly affordable, good-quality homes, but they want the community services that go with them—sport and play areas, schools, more buses and so on. Hounslow Council’s planning decisions have delivered all of those, and more. The people are being sidelined because the Government do not trust the people. The Government justify tearing up our planning system by saying that they want to build more homes, but as we heard today, about 1 million homes have permission; they are just not being built out. The Government proposals risk ignoring the issues of quality, affordability or type of housing to be built.

There is a housing crisis—we accept that—but there is no doubt that the Government are delivering the wrong answer to the growing challenge. Too many young people are priced out of the community that they grew up in. The bulk of homes in recent years have been executive homes in the south-east or expensive London flats, all way out of the reach of local people. Defenders of the Government’s plans have said time and again that these proposals are the solution to the housing crisis, as though delivering all these homes would magically bring all house prices down to a level affordable to all young people across England. They know that the solution is far more complex than that.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Ruth Cadbury]

I am sorry, but I cannot. You have told me, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I need to leave enough time for the Secretary of State.

Only in some places are prices low enough that young people can buy. Schemes such as Help to Buy are affordable in my constituency only to a few who earn City salaries or have a large chunk of money from the bank of mum and dad. From 2008, the Labour Government delivered the biggest affordable housing programme in a generation, with £10.8 billion in three years, but it ended with the 2010 election.

We need a planning and housing system that delivers well designed homes in genuinely mixed, well designed communities with proper infrastructure. The Government have had 10 years of tinkering and have undermined the planning system. They have allowed a free-for-all in town and village centres, where any shop can be converted into a flat without requiring planning permission.

No one on the Opposition Benches is suggesting that the planning system should be preserved in stone. It is ludicrously complex, and local plans take too long. There are elements that we welcome in the Government’s proposals—digital technology, a speeding up of the local plan process and a plan for every part of England. We agree, and the Government acknowledge, that there is a desperate shortage of planners with the range of skills needed. However, beyond the removal of public participation and the failure to address the housing crisis properly, so much is missing from the Government’s proposals.

Specialist housing, which my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) mentioned, protecting our high streets, levelling up, protecting and enhancing our natural environment, delivering net zero, mitigating the impact of climate change—the Government talk the talk on those objectives, but do not walk the walk. The specific proposals are not there, and we cannot support the Government without those details. It feels as if they are just not interested.

We need an effective planning system—an improvement on the current system, not its demise. Rather than removing the public and their elected representatives from the picture, the Government need to improve their engagement and retain their right to have a say over planning applications. They can start by giving planning committees back the power to determine whether shops, office blocks and warehouses should be converted into housing, and if they are approved—because some are suitable—to ensure that they make for good-quality housing.

There are developers that want to work with communities and councillors to develop good places that serve the neighbourhood. I have worked on community plans with just such firms, and they should be encouraged, but too many of the Government’s friends and party donors in the house building industry just see the planning process as a block on their mission to deliver “units” and little else.

We want a planning system that effectively mediates between public and private, between community and decision makers, between local and national—a system that is transparent, open and participative. We need more decent, affordable homes, but a home is more than bricks and mortar, and a community is more than a collection of houses miles away from anything and anywhere. The Government must listen to the people and their elected representatives, not their paymaster donors. We do not need a developers’ charter; we need a charter for communities and delivering homes.

The Government’s gagging of communities, removing the inconvenience of people and their elected councillors from decisions, is perhaps a new version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” If the Minister is unsure about the reforms, he could call a friend, but after last week’s by-election result, I have a feeling that his friend will beg him to withdraw these plans. He could even ask the audience, but some of the audience on the Benches behind him do not seem, from their contributions today, to be too keen to help him. That simply leaves him 50:50—plough on, or ditch these proposals.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Kevin Hollinrake

Committee stage & Committee of the Whole House (Day 2)
Tuesday 20th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this part of the debate, and I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

It was probably 15 years after we set up our business that our own accountants came to us—we were making reasonable profits by then—and suggested that we take advantage of a tax avoidance measure, and a pretty aggressive one in our view. This was not a particularly unusual accountants—it had a decent reputation locally— but so much money potentially runs through these schemes that some promoters inevitably see an opportunity for themselves.

I must tell the House that we told our adviser that we did not want to take part in such a scheme, and there were two reasons: we believed that people should pay their tax—that we should all pay a fair amount of tax—but also that any person who takes up such measures should be afraid that HMRC will one day come along and say, “Those measures were not appropriate.” By that time, a lot of the money that they think they have saved has gone out in costs to promoters and the rest of it, and they are left with a huge bill.

Had the person who promoted that scheme to us—our accountant—thought that he would potentially end up on jail, I do not think he would have come to us and told us about it. This was a reputable local person, and perhaps he did not even think that tax avoidance at that point was fraud. Nevertheless, it certainly can be fraud, and in many cases it is. If we are willing to hold people to account, ultimately through a criminal prosecution—as HMRC can, of course, as the Minister pointed out earlier—there would be a lot less of this kind of promotion and a lot fewer of these activities.

Before I talk in more detail about that, I want to tackle some of the shadow Minister’s points. It is a little churlish not to recognise the steps that the Government have taken since 2010. There have been 150 measures to tackle tax avoidance; that was at a cost of £2 billion to the taxpayer, but it brought in £250 billion in contributions to our public services. Of course, the Minister said that we need to go further, but it is wrong to simply say that the Government are not doing enough. Some of those measures, such as the digital services tax and the diverted profits tax, are very significant internationally.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I acknowledge the point that the hon. Gentleman makes and the amount of money brought into the Revenue by the measures, but is he not also conscious that the sheer number of different measures has, for many taxpayers, added to the complexity? We have one of the most complex tax regimes in the world and that complexity often catches people unawares, and costs them lots of money and sometimes their businesses and their homes.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I absolutely accept that our tax system is very complex, and I have proposed a number of measures on the Floor of this House to try to simplify it. For example, abolishing business rates and replacing them with an increase in VAT would simplify the tax system, instead of having an online sales tax. However, in terms of this debate I do not think it is the complexity of the issues that catches people out. We can see that 99% of tax avoidance schemes in the UK involve disguised remuneration—these are very contrived schemes. We should look at amendment 77 carefully. As to whether it is unfair on a person who is a promoter of what I would say is an extremely contrived tax avoidance measure, I am not totally sold that that should be a problem.

One of the biggest problems we have is faith in the system. This Government have done a huge amount to reduce the tax gap, which is at a record low of 4.7%, but if there is a £20 billion tax gap from fraud, the person in the street might reasonably say, “Why should I pay my tax?” This creates an incentive then for people to look at ways of avoiding tax. As to whether tax avoidance is fraud, the Government’s own call for evidence last month says clearly:

“The Government recognises that the design of arrangements that are sold as avoidance schemes may in fact enable fraud.”

So there is a good case for being able to take these further measures, as the Government are doing through stop notices, further civil penalties and stopping individuals hiding behind corporate structures.

The trouble is that, as we see in many areas, not least the banking sector, which I am pretty active in through my work in the all-party group on fair business banking, these kinds of organisations see a fine—a civil penalty—as a cost of doing business; the real deterrent for people is a criminal penalty. One of the best examples of this is to be found in a completely different sector, with the personal liability for a director in the construction industry. As soon as that personal liability came in and there was the potential for someone to go to jail if they did not make sure their sites were safe or they did not put measures in place, there was a huge decrease in the number of injuries and fatal incidents in the workplace in construction. That speaks to the point that if there are real criminal sanctions that we are willing to take forward and people think that that is going to happen, this promotion of avoidance schemes will start to drop significantly.

We probably have better resourced areas in terms of the prosecution of avoidance; I believe there are about three and a half times this number of people in the Department for Work and Pensions looking at benefit fraud, despite the fact that it is a much lower level of fraud—the level of benefit fraud is about 10% of that seen by HMRC. A beefing up of the resources in HMRC is therefore something we should consider. We have seen very famous schemes. I believe the Ingenious film scheme cost the taxpayer £1.6 billion, but not a single promoter has been held to account for it. We need more resources, but we should also look at legislation. This country does not have a great record on prosecuting serious fraud. There are a number of examples where the Serious Fraud Office has failed to make charges stick—I think, for example, of cases involving Tesco and Barclays. That is why the SFO wants to bring in more legislation, which the Government have agreed to do, to create a corporate offence of failing to prevent economic crime. This would be a personal sanction on the directors of a corporation that failed to do that. Of course, in banking we now have the senior managers regime that the Financial Conduct Authority put in place following some of the scandals there, when nobody was held to account for the disgraceful abuse of both consumers and businesses through the past couple of decades in the sector. The excellent Minister might say that amendment 77 is not the right vehicle for this, but some beefing up of the legislation to make it easier to prosecute fraud—criminal activity—is something that we should seriously consider.