Finance Bill

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2016 Commons Chamber

Amendment 180 deals with the impact of HMRC’s abandonment of its valuation check services for small and medium-sized enterprises. I am aware of the Minister’s earlier words of comfort and his opinion that this was not a matter of great significance because the service was poorly used. He suggested that it was of little consequence that it had been abandoned by HMRC in the past few weeks.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Given the reduction in the number of people employed by HMRC, and the level of satisfaction with the service it provides, does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is understandable that many businesses turn to professionals whom they employ themselves rather than relying on HMRC?

[Roger Mullin]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman, but the smallest enterprises—those employing perhaps their first or second employee and engaging in some kind of share ownership—are not in a position to pay a professional company £1,000 or £2,000 for the necessary valuation service, which was provided at no cost by HMRC. Organisations such as ProShare, which I think is based at University College London, have said that they are aware of a number of small businesses being discouraged from engaging in small-scale share ownership schemes precisely because the assistance that they were once afforded has been removed. If the demand for such services was so low, only a few people would have been needed to deliver them. The cost to the Government cannot therefore have been very great, so it seems somewhat perverse to abandon the service at a time when people are seeking to expand the number of share ownership schemes in society.

The hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West, for reasons that defy all understanding, did not think that our new clause 1 was dramatically superior to his new clause 3. No doubt he will attempt to convince the Committee of that argument later. New clause 1 proposes a review of the income tax treatment of workers providing services through intermediaries. We believe that this is particularly relevant in Scotland. The hon. Gentleman suggested earlier that the average return journey to and from work was 16.7 miles. Well, try telling that to people who live on the Isle of Skye and have to commute to places such as Fort William and Inverness. Try telling it to people who have to hop from island to island, such as the health workers who travel on ferries to service the islands and often need to stay overnight. Their situation is not remotely close to the average of 16 miles to travel to work.

A recent article in The Times Educational Supplement pointed out the proposal’s likely negative impact on the many aspects of the education sector that rely on people on particular types of contracts who do not enjoy the benefits of full-time employment. The Minister argued calmly, as he always does, that the change is a simply a matter of ensuring a level playing field. If he wanted a level playing field, he would be ensuring that workers employed through intermediaries benefit from sickness pay, holiday pay and many of the other advantages of full-time employment. They do not get those same benefits and cannot be compared with people in traditional forms of employment.

Indeed, I suspect that part of the problem is that the Government have misunderstood the needs of the modern labour market. People are no longer employed either in traditional ways or entirely self-employed in the way it is traditionally understood. Flexibilities in the labour market have developed in many ways over the past 10 or 20 years. Many such flexibilities play to and enable local economies, such as rural areas in Scotland or Northern Ireland, and specialist sectors, such as oil and gas, which need to import specialist services. These people might be based not in Scotland, but down here near London and may have to fly to provide their services. The proposal might have impacts that have not been thought through by the Government.