Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Rupa Huq

Thursday 25th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

2. What steps she is taking to increase the proportion of cases relating to violence against women and girls that are prosecuted.

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

5. What steps she is taking to increase the proportion of cases relating to violence against women and girls that are prosecuted.

Finance Bill

Debate between Ruth Cadbury and Rupa Huq

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Huq]

My hon. Friend is completely right. HMRC needs to show some humanity in these cases. The scheme was obviously badly implemented, with inadequate impact assessment. The word “scandal” is frequently used and often misapplied, but in this case, all the elements needed are there. People have been pushed into bankruptcy; families have been fractured; people are facing financial ruin and losing their homes. As we have heard, there have been seven suicides. The all-party parliamentary loan charge group, which is very active—I am sure it is in everyone’s inbox all the time—has sent round a letter from the daughter of one of the people who sadly took their own life about the impact that has had on everyone involved.

The Morse review is a start, although the APPG feels that it could do better and go much further. All of us have seen these cases; my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker) described the situation movingly.

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

Does my hon. Friend and neighbour agree that the reason why people are driven to suicide, and why a high proportion of those affected are so stressed about the loan charge, as has been mentioned, is that there is no right of appeal to a tax tribunal, or right to negotiate, as there is with all normal forms of tax business with HMRC?

[Dr Huq]

I completely agree, and I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend has done on the APPG, together with the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning); they have done brilliant stuff, and it is disappointing that we will not vote on new clause 31 today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huq]

I completely concur with the right hon. Gentleman. It is very disappointing that even the crumbs of the Morse review are not being fully implemented in a transparent and fair way. Again, we have heard so much about these reviews. There are 200 recommendations on all the race relations stuff that have never been implemented. Another review is not what we need now; we need action.

My hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) described some of the people in IT who have come to see him. Those affected are not actually all in IT or accountants. Some of those who have come to me are from the public sector, including Eugene Nicholson in the NHS and Abigail Watts. I have had a supply teacher and a social worker. Some people are terrified and do not want their cases raised because of repercussions. As has already been said, the real culprits are the promoters of the schemes—individuals who are still practising today. They duped our constituents, who are now facing a nightmare of private debt collection and all sorts of things.

I will briefly turn to IR35, where there is some overlap, because it has caused enormous pain and strain. People got into these schemes innocently—in this case, their employers told them to do it. Many are individuals on low incomes who do not have deep pockets. The assumption is that they are all tax dodgers or whatever. Catherine Qian said that she was a one-woman band. These are micro-businesses. It is not like the discussion earlier where we were talking about going after multinationals. She has no employment rights. She has an accusation of being a hidden employee, but she gets no sick pay, stability or pension. Needless to say, she is not eligible for furlough. The Conservative manifesto at the election we recently fought said that there would be a review of self-employment, so I ask the Minister directly: when will that see the light of day? Will it be another one of these reviews that just sits on a dusty shelf?

How do we solve all of this? At the very least, HMRC should give those who fell prey to the loan charge more time and favourable conditions to reach an amicable solution. It has been said that no one will lose their home, and that is good, but HMRC must accept its share of responsibility.

[Ruth Cadbury]

My hon. Friend is right that HMRC has said it will not be taking people’s homes, but is she aware, as I am, that bailiffs on behalf of HMRC are locking people out of their own homes and refusing to let them back in until they make payment?

[Dr Huq]

My hon. Friend is so much more knowledgeable than me. Lots of my constituents cannot afford to buy their own home and are in rented accommodation, so that does not even apply to them. They are in beds in sheds—maybe I should not dob them in, but that is a phenomenon in the London Borough of Ealing.

Again, HMRC must accept responsibility for not communicating regularly with people. It could have acted sooner to avoid this sizeable group of people who went into these remuneration schemes having to pay back sometimes hundreds of thousands of pounds at a time. IR35 is being rolled out now, so the deferral is obviously welcome, because these things can be fixed in real time, as long as the deferral is not just pushing punitive measures further away. The Government need to urgently commit to a full review of tax reliefs.

While the debate is about job creation, I want to flag, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree pointed out, that the global pandemic we are in seems to be a bit of a cover for certain companies to behave badly. British Airways and Virgin spring to mind as using the coronavirus job retention scheme—the clue is in the name—to do the very opposite. Having accepted furlough funds from the public purse, they are now using coronavirus as a cover for restructuring plans—plans they were always itching to execute—while they believe the eyes of the world are diverted elsewhere. I say to the Minister that we need a sector-specific deal for aviation.

The situation is the same for the creative, cultural and arts sector. I represent many constituents who work in it. Not for nothing was Ealing long-called a BBC borough. The Questors theatre—the jewel in our crown—is the biggest amateur dramatic venue in the country and it has written to me. It is about to go under. Its rateable value is too high to get any of the reliefs. That is another plea to the Minister.

We were told that, when we left the EU, we would be world-beating on employment rights, and that our rights could exceed those of the bloc after Brexit, but now, with IR35, we are heading for zero employment rights. The Government always said that this would not be a race to the bottom, so they need to put their money where their mouth is. There is nothing like a global pandemic to concentrate the mind. We have heard slogans such as, “We’re all in this together”. To stop all these Government utterances from being just hollow words, we need action. Snappy slogans are not enough.