Sammy Wilson
Main Page: Sammy Wilson (Democratic Unionist Party - East Antrim)Department Debates - View all Sammy Wilson's debates with the HM Treasury
(3 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberI am very grateful for the suggestion. Now that the right hon. Gentleman has placed it on the public record, I will ask my officials to look more closely at it and to engage with him on it. He will know that we have already introduced, in a quite different context, a digital services tax. We are open to these potential ideas. We will be looking very carefully at this area. Intelligent and well thought through feedback is always of great interest to us.
The Government have been actively engaging with businesses and fully committed to providing them with the information and support needed to prepare for the end of the transition period in Northern Ireland. As was set out in the Command Paper, the Government’s position is that there should be no additional process, paperwork or restrictions on Northern Ireland goods arriving in the rest of the UK.
While I welcome the provisions of the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill debated yesterday, they do not cover the issue that the EU is demanding that goods coming into Northern Ireland have tariffs imposed on them until it is proven that they have not left Northern Ireland and gone into the EU. This is damaging to business, because it requires additional paperwork, will affect cash flow, and will put up costs. Given that the Government are committed to keeping Northern Ireland in the UK customs union, that the Act of Union says that there should be no tariffs on trade between countries within the United Kingdom, and that 75% of goods do not leave Northern Ireland once they enter anyhow, will the Minister give a commitment to ensuring in the Finance Bill that the EU demand for those tariffs to be collected will be removed so that Northern Ireland businesses are not disadvantaged?
As the right hon. Gentleman will know, these topics are currently very live matters of discussion between this country and the EU, and I am not going to comment on that. However, we are, as a Government, very engaged with this issue across a number of different Departments, and we will be looking to support the principles and positions set out in the protocol as we go forward.
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and I thank her for it. She will know that some of the interventions we have already put in place last through into next year, for example the removal of the need to pay business rates for businesses in hospitality, which has been particularly affected. She may be reassured to know that we recently introduced the new business support grant for businesses forced to close as a result of local lockdown, where the Joint Biosecurity Centre gold command has instituted that measure, and those grant payments will be available up to £1,500 per few weekly cycles.
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to highlight the importance of the aerospace industry to our economy. It is, in common with aerospace industries across the globe, suffering a deep depression in demand for all the obvious reasons. He can rest assured that we engage regularly with the companies in that sector. In particular, to support their future success, we are investing heavily in R&D alongside those companies to make sure we remain on the cutting edge of advanced manufacturing capability.