Finance (No. 2) Bill

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I have heard the hon. Gentleman make both points in the past, and if I remember correctly, I responded to an Adjournment debate on those matters. There are significant benefits in our tax system for charities, but the Government look at cases partly depending on the demands on the public finances and what is affordable. We have looked in particular at hospices. There is a particularly strong case there, and to some extent they are put at a disadvantage compared with parts of the NHS because of the irrecoverable VAT that they pay. This is a matter that any Government would keep under review. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, as a persistent Member, will raise the matter again if he has the opportunity to do so in future.

In new clause 1, the Opposition ask us to publish a report on the impact of the increase in the standard rate of VAT in 2010. No doubt, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) will set out her thinking on that, but let me make a pre-emptive strike, if the Prime Minister has not already done so. Before I turn to the details and the imposition of VAT in 2010, I shall briefly set out the context for that decision.

Let us be clear that we increased the standard rate of VAT in 2010 as a consequence of the mess that the Opposition left the public finances in and the fact that, although the previous Government had left a mess, they had not left behind a plan to clear it up. Of course, a tax impact information note was published by HM Revenue and Customs at the time of the June 2010 Budget, but let us look at the situation that we inherited. At that time, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility’s pre-Budget 2010 forecast revealed that the structural deficit—the part of the deficit that will not go away with the recovery—was higher than previously thought: around £9 billion or 0.6% of GDP higher in 2010-11. Debt repayments were forecast to reach more than £67 billion by 2014-15, more than was spent on defence or on schools in England. The UK had one of the highest deficits of any advanced economy, so this Government had to take urgent action to eliminate the bulk of the structural deficit, which is a necessary precondition for sustained economic growth.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

The Minister referred to the Prime Minister’s pre-emptive strike, but he will be well aware that similar statements were made before the last election. Does not the whole VAT issue illustrate the difference between the parties? The Labour Government’s response to an economic recession was to stimulate the economy by reducing VAT. The response of the incoming Government was to deflate the economy by increasing VAT.

[Mr Gauke]

The previous Government brought VAT back up. We know from his memoirs that the then Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), believed that a Labour Government after 2010 should increase VAT. A Budget document was even published showing VAT going up to, I believe, 18.5%. I know that that was published by mistake, but it clearly shows that serious consideration was given to that. The previous Labour Government recognised that taxes would have to increase. They had proposals to increase employers national insurance contributions, or the jobs tax. Given that there is such uncertainty about the Opposition’s plans for what they would do in government, the question is whether they would rule out increasing employers national insurance contributions.

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[Ian Lucas]

Indeed. My hon. Friend has made a very valid point. I think that we should all be interested to know what was the impact of the last Tory-Liberal Democrat increase in VAT, which was introduced in January 2011, because it should inform future policy. It seems extraordinary to me that that should be resisted.

According to the Office for National Statistics, the median salary in my constituency, Wrexham, has fallen by 7.4% in the last year. The town centre is, unfortunately, populated—like many other town centres throughout the country—by too many empty shops, and part of the reason for the emptying of those shops over the past few years has been a decrease in consumer activity. What VAT does—and this is why I am passionate about VAT—is take money out of the pockets of consumers on the high street and send it straight to the Treasury. It has a massive impact on local businesses. Those of us who run local businesses and employ people want to ensure that we have the best and fairest type of tax system to develop local economies.

That is why I want to know the impact of the 2011 VAT increase. I think that the Minister is a reasonable man. I cannot for the life of me understand why he does not want to have that information, or, if he has that information, why he does not want to share it with the House.

We have made a lot of progress today. The Prime Minister has been dragged, kicking and screaming, to a point at which he has ruled out a VAT increase by the Conservatives in the next Parliament—if he is ever in a position to make such a decision. That is major progress. It is certainly a change, not just from the Prime Minister’s position earlier in the current Parliament, but from the position that the Chancellor outlined in his Budget statement last Wednesday, when he set out the spending and taxation plans that he expected to be implemented. Why did he not tell us that the Tories were going to rule out a VAT increase in the next Parliament? That is what amazes me. What has happened between last week and this week? What happened yesterday?

What has happened, in my view, is that because the Labour party, in opposition, made a commitment not to increase VAT in the next Parliament, Lynton has been on the blower. He has said. “We are under pressure, Dave. We are under pressure, Prime Minister. We have to match the commitment that the Labour party has made. You have to rule out a VAT increase in the next Parliament.” So that is why the Prime Minister made his statement at the Dispatch Box today—a statement that I welcomed.

History will judge whether that promise will be kept. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) about the history of Conservative commitments on VAT: about what happens before elections, and about what happens after them. When I speak to my constituents over the next six weeks, I shall remind them of that record. I shall remind them of what the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats said before 2010 and what they did afterwards, and I shall remind them of what this Chancellor tried to do in 2012 with the pasty tax and the caravan tax.

The tax of choice for the Conservative party is VAT. History tells us that. If the Conservatives want to increase taxes, they increase VAT. The country will have to judge whether the commitment that the Prime Minister has given today is one that will stand the test of time.

[Sheila Gilmore]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I was also going to say that it was a pleasure to be in the company of so many Members who had participated in Finance Bill Committees during this Parliament, but one by one they have disappeared from the Chamber—even the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who has been one of the most assiduous Committee members—which is a shame as I was looking forward to hearing the usually very robust views they express, when we are upstairs in Committee at least. Presumably they have something else on their mind today.

The period we are in, which spans one VAT increase to possibly another, is a very interesting one. One of the things that the Government are trying to say—interestingly, some of the other parties are trying to say the same—is that there is no difference between the policies of the Government and the Opposition and that we would all have to make the same decisions. However, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has clearly stated that there is a huge difference between the forward plans of the Government and those of the Opposition. Our policies involve a different attitude towards spending cuts and tax increases in order to reduce the deficit over a period. That is what we said back in 2010; we were clear that we would be following a different pathway. We were not deficit deniers, as was sometimes suggested, but we were clear that we had a different view on how this could best be handled and that there would therefore be fairness in our measures. That remains the case because, prior to the Budget, the IFS said that, given our forward plans and taxation proposals, in contrast to the £55 billion of spending cuts the Conservatives would have to find, the Labour Opposition would be looking to make only £4 billion of spending cuts. More recently the IFS has said that in order to carry out our plans we would not need to make any further spending cuts in the forthcoming Government. So that is a very big difference in our policies. From that point of view, we are in a position to say not just that we would not increase VAT, but that we have a different and much fairer road to go down.

It is right for us to ask what the Government—whether the coalition or the Conservative party; it is not always clear—would be doing. Not only have they said that they need to find those spending cuts to carry out their deficit reduction proposals, but they have also suggested further tax reductions through the continued raising of the tax threshold. At no time since that announcement was made by the Prime Minister at the Conservative party conference has there been any clarity as to where that money would be coming from. So not only are they clearly tied to making substantial departmental spending cuts, but they have not shown us how they are going to close this financial gap. That is why people are saying, “We think it’s going to be VAT.” It is hard to tell where else it might come from. Of course, if it is coming from somewhere else, we would expect that to be said. So the Prime Minister stands up and says, “Oh no, we won’t be increasing VAT,” but the other half of that statement has not been made. We do not know how he is going to square this circle.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

As we saw in 2010, what the Prime Minister says this side of an election is not necessarily the same as what then happens in future Conservative Budgets. Has my hon. Friend also pondered the quandary that they might stick to their pledge not to increase VAT this time, but they have not ruled out extending the scope of VAT to currently exempt items?

[Sheila Gilmore]

That is clearly another way the Conservatives might seek to close this gap they have opened up for themselves.



We need to know a lot more about this going forward, and so do the electorate. As hon. Members have said, VAT is a regressive tax. Even though those who have bigger spending power sometimes spend more and so may, in cash terms, spend more in VAT. It is a regressive tax, as are all these indirect taxes. Our position on this is clearly different: we do not believe it is right that people on low incomes should be taxed, in effect, to give other people tax cuts.

We have said a great deal about the 50p issue, which we will discuss later this afternoon, but one of my big concerns for some considerable time has been that low-paid workers already under the tax threshold were being offered nothing from the Government, who constantly talk about raising the tax threshold further. They have no plans to help those people any more. Those people face a real risk that if VAT is increased, they will end up paying the price of a reduction in income tax from which they will not benefit by one penny.

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[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. Of course the position she sets out is exactly what we saw in the early part of this Parliament when VAT was increased and a number of other measures were put in place. At that point, inflation hit about 5.5%, which then allowed the Government to say, “Aren’t we wonderful? We have just put pensions up by the biggest ever amount.” But that increase would have come even under the old system—even under a system that was simply tracking pensions to inflation—because of the inflation rate. Pensioners were not getting some amazing extra increase that year; there was a simple tracking of what had happened, largely because of the VAT issue.

Not only have many of those low-paid people not got any further gain to get if the tax threshold keeps increasing, but they have actually lost out at the same time, because one thing that has helped to pay for all this has been the reductions in things such as tax credits. Many low-paid people lost more in tax credits than they gained in the rise in the tax threshold. The Government keep endlessly repeating that low-paid people are the ones who have benefited, but that has not been the case in practice for many of these people, particularly those with families and children—they have particularly suffered. For them, the Budget is a bit of non-event and it will continue to be so.

That is why the £12 billion of welfare cuts that have been pencilled in for some two years now in various statements by the Treasury, and by the Chancellor in particular, are very important. Part of that approach might be to cut away further the support given to people in work, perhaps through the tax credits system, at some future point. Tax credit is to be replaced by universal credit, but the issue remains much the same in terms of how it tapers off and where the losses might come.

We already know that in many respects universal credit will be less beneficial for a lot of people in work, as they increase the hours of work they do. So how much of this £12 billion will come from that source? Again, people may be given a little bit with one hand, through the increase in the tax threshold, but find that they lose as a result of what the other hand is taking. We just do not know because we have been given no detail; it has been deliberately withheld, although one suspects that someone, somewhere has a plan. It would be strange if they did not have a plan. If, under welfare cuts, we are taking away things such as support for people who are in work, it is extremely important.

The other area is housing benefit, because, again, that is increasingly being claimed by people who are in work, not just by people who are out of work. Those people who are in work will be hurt again if there are further attempts to reduce the housing benefit bill, by eroding the amounts that individuals get. Again, we have this lack of clarity and detail. It is understandable why some of us are extremely suspicious about the alacrity with which the Prime Minister wished to distance himself from a VAT increase. For all the talk about a long-term economic plan, we have a lack of any clear policy and detail about what the Conservatives will do if they are re-elected. I hope that they will not be in government, so perhaps they do not need to give any detail, but the people who will be voting in a few weeks’ time deserve to know such things.

We should not be in the position that we were in before the 2010 election when we were promised things, such as that there would be no VAT increase, that were undone very, very quickly. I do not think that people were told about the scale of the reductions that would be made.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a very good speech. She has returned to the point about the scale of the cuts. Is she as concerned as I am about that? My local council has been cut by 43% since 2010. We now have 1,000 people losing their social care packages this year. Is it not very frightening that what we face in the next couple of years are cuts that are deeper than anything we have seen before? I find that prospect frightening for social care and local services, which are already crippled, and for policing—for keeping our local community safe. Does she feel that way, too? We have already seen what has happened—

[The Temporary Chair (Mr Hood)]

Order.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. Clearly, those are the kinds of concern that people have.

On the VAT proposals, the changes and exemptions that the Government may wish to make for some worthy cause are welcome. I am talking here about the help for organisations such as hospices. But there is scope to go further. I will say something now that, although not Front-Bench policy, is perfectly legitimate to raise in Committee. As someone who has been very involved in housing, I know that the housing world is keen to see VAT relief on improving and restoring properties.

VAT can make refurbishing properties more expensive than rebuilding. Demolition and rebuild has become a cheaper option than preserving some of our properties. Having worked with many housing associations, I know that there have been times when they have wanted to do that kind of refurbishment and preservation work, but they had to do a massive upgrade behind that to bring the homes up to the required standard. Such a VAT exemption is something for which the housing world has campaigned for a long time. As we all want to increase sustainability, I hope that that is an issue that my own Front-Bench team will reconsider when they are in government.

[Lyn Brown]

I understand that we are not talking to a benevolent Government here, but as my hon. Friend is listing what she would like to see VAT removed from, I would like to include sanitary products. I know that many of my constituents think that, as those are not luxury goods, they should be exempt from VAT. I just thought that I would add that to the list of things that should have VAT removed.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I think that campaign has taken off again, having been going for a considerable number of years.

[Lyn Brown]

Decades.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Indeed. As the current campaigners have noted, there is no VAT on shaving cream, but there is on sanitary products, which suggests—

[Lyn Brown]

It suggests that men made the law.

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[Sheila Gilmore]

Yes, it is gender-made law. We will all have received a considerable number of e-mails about that recently, and I am sure that the campaigners would be pleased to hear the Minister commit at least to reviewing the situation.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

On that issue, growing a beard is an option for a man, but being unhygienic is not an option for a woman. My local food bank is increasingly having to offer women sanitary products because they simply cannot afford them.

[Sheila Gilmore]

That is a very interesting piece of information, and it is something that people should bear in mind—

[The Temporary Chair (Mr Hood)]

Order. It is very interesting, but we are straying a wee bit from what we are supposed to be debating.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Thank you for your guidance, Mr Hood. I am sure that you would not want me to stray on to the whole issue of food banks, which would probably take us to midnight.

In conclusion, new clause 1 would provide us with an opportunity to look at the impact of VAT changes over this Parliament. We believe that they have been regressive and that many of our constituents have been affected, and we are concerned about the future. We need to look very carefully at what has happened before any decisions are made on further increases. We are always taken to task for proposing new clauses to Finance Bills that would set up reviews, and I understand that there are technical difficulties. I am sure that current Government Members will have the same difficulty when they come to scrutinise a Finance Bill in opposition in the next Parliament. Perhaps we will then make the alternative criticisms.

It is important that we fully understand the impact of the VAT changes, and not just through some kind of impact assessment that is done theoretically, but through an assessment of what has actually happened; they are not always the same thing. However, such proposals have been turned down in every Finance Bill I have encountered in this Parliament. The hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke)—he has still not returned to his seat—and I are obviously similar; we are either terribly keen to serve on Finance Bill Committees, or we are such a soft touch that when our Front Bench teams or Whips ask, “Wouldn’t you like to serve on the Finance Bill Committee?”, we say, “Oh, all right then.” Some of us have certainly done our stints on Finance Bill Committees, and I am sure that we all hope to be able to do so again from a governmental position.

[Mr Gauke]

We have had a lively debate and heard contributions from a number of Members who could be described as Finance Bill recidivists. I am delighted that so many of them were able to participate on this, the last occasion to debate tax matters in this Parliament. The hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) talked about VAT on sanitary products. Under EU law, we are permitted to have a reduced rate for sanitary products—indeed, it has been reduced to 5%—but they are not among the products for which we can have a zero rate under EU law. Consequently, without changes at EU level, it is not possible to reduce it further. I have a lot of sympathy with the argument that is made on that point, but it would need to be addressed at EU level.

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[Ian Swales]

Another thing that the Government have done is to move towards localising business rates again. Certainly my part of the world, which had huge industrial sites such as the one I have mentioned, was pretty nonplussed when all that money was collected by a Government in the 1980s, taken to the centre and then doled out in different proportions. We need to move towards more localisation, not least to incentivise councils to drive economic development. I would argue that that has not been happening sufficiently in some parts of the country, and I live in one of them.

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, and there is also the issue about where people live, where they work and what services they use. The south-west has a particular issue when its population doubles every summer, because people may not make a contribution through taxes paid directly in the south-west, but they are using services there. There is another whole argument to be had about the location of rates versus how they are collected.

I will not detain the Committee long. The Government are on the right track with corporation tax. Let us put it this way: there is plenty of work for the next Parliament to do, and I shall watch with interest from afar.

[Sheila Gilmore]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales), because we have served together on a number of Finance Bill Committees during the past five years. The debates on the details of a Finance Bill in Public Bill Committee are often better than those on the parts of the Bill taken on the Floor of the House. The theory is that the debates on the more important and bigger parts of the Bill are taken in the Chamber and then the Bill goes upstairs, but the Public Bill Committee often allows us to have quite fruitful debates on many of the issues.

One thing that has been very clear during this Government—perhaps this has always been the case, but it seems to be growing—is that all the political parties are falling over themselves to talk about the importance of small and medium-sized businesses, and we are all the friends of small business. Small businesses are probably very pleased to hear politicians talk so much about them, but then the issue becomes one of whether it is talk or action. It is very easy to praise small businesses, but such businesses, especially new ones, sometimes feel that the system is set against them.

One new business in my constituency involved two young women who set up a fitness studio. They went into premises on what was effectively a redevelopment area after our old hospital had been relocated. Largely because of the financial crash and the recession, the whole redevelopment took longer than expected, so the population to support new businesses had not arrived at the expected rate. Although they got a rent holiday for the first 18 months from the developer who was renting them their premises, which was welcome, they were struggling with business rates. Oddly, even though my local council said that it wanted to encourage economic development and had particularly encouraged the redevelopment of that site, it was not particularly forthcoming with help for a new business.

Those young women were not in the region of having to worry about corporation tax—that was not where their business was. They had to worry about the rates. It was touch and go, but I was pleased to see recently that they are still there and have managed to overcome their initial difficulties. Some of the other redevelopment is beginning to happen, so I hope that they will continue to be successful. However, we do not always join the dots either locally or nationally. Things such as rates are essential for a lot of small businesses, and we have to support such businesses to the greatest extent that we can.

I have some sympathy with the hon. Gentleman in his points about business rates being retained locally. We have to work through the conflict between that and redistribution to ensure that different areas of the country are assisted in developing. When I was on the council in Edinburgh, we often raised the issue. It was and still is an expanding city, and it generates a lot of business. We have big events that generate worldwide attention, and a lot of businesses feel that they bear the cost of all that without necessarily seeing the rates coming back to the city. It is all very well to say that we get rates in because we have events such as the festival and big tourist attractions, but sometimes it feels that the rates are not coming back. I understand the tension between that and looking at the region or country as a whole and trying to build wealth. It is not easy, but we have to incentivise businesses as far as possible to feel that keeping on growing is to their advantage as well as to wider advantage.

Politicians and political parties must not just pay lip service to the importance of small business. We must do specific things to assist, and that is what amendment 2, moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), is intended to do.

The hon. Member for Redcar probably has a different view of economics from mine, but he appeared to be of the view that if a company is making a profit, it will be ploughing it back in the right directions. I do not think that is necessarily always the case. Big businesses in particular should make a good contribution to our society, and we have to ensure that they do. I urge the House to support the amendment.

[Fiona O’Donnell]

It is a pleasure to see you back in the Chair, Mr Hood.

I wish to talk particularly about the rural economy and the opportunities that the Government might be missing, given the importance of small and medium-sized enterprises to rural economies. Given that this may be my last contribution in this Parliament, I also want to reflect briefly on the political situation in Scotland.

We have had more than one eclipse in Scotland in recent weeks. It seems to be a daily occurrence that Alex Salmond’s moon blocks out Nicola Sturgeon’s sun. At one time, the current leader of the Scottish National party—people might easily be confused as to who that is these days, but I remind them that it is Nicola Sturgeon—did a U-turn on the SNP’s proposal in its White Paper “Scotland’s Future” to reduce corporation tax by 3%. I welcome that, because I do not think it would have been a progressive move or have provided the right environment for the stability, job creation, employment rights and pay and conditions that we want in a fair, modern and successful Scotland. The Minister may wish to reflect on that and the debate that went on around the referendum, because the measure was not popular with working people or businesses—certainly not with SMEs that would not have seen any benefit.

The Financial Secretary said that he does not want to do anything to risk the recovery, but I urge him to think about what more his Government can do to aid recovery in rural areas. Most of the conversation and discourse I have heard from Government Members—for example in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill Committee—was about employment rights. The Minister seemed to think that the way to help small businesses was to erode workers’ rights, but I think that has the opposite effect because it can be more difficult for them to recruit staff.

Much as I admire the beautiful city of Edinburgh, our capital, I am concerned that so many people from my rural constituency commute there for work. At a time when the population of East Lothian is set to grow at the fastest rate of anywhere in Scotland, with 10,000 more homes, we need jobs in our own communities. We must look at the impact that the Budget will have on SMEs with 50 or more employees, and we are asking the Government to pause and reflect on what that impact might be.

We are losing many skills in local, rural and remote economies, especially in the construction industry—that relates to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) about difficulties with lending. Small construction firms are finding it very difficult to access lending, which means that they are disadvantaged when it comes to procurement contracts. If they take on small housing developments in the community, the people working on the construction sites will often be local young men and women who are benefiting from an apprenticeship and learning skills, and they will be spending money in that local community. The healthy cycle of the rural economy is thus given new impetus and energy. Will the Minister at least reflect on that?

When small businesses fail, it does not make the headlines in the same way as when a large manufacturing company announces job losses. The news about Longannet, which is across the water from my constituency and where many of my constituents are employed, is deeply concerning. When a small business fails, it does not make the headlines in the same way, but for the rural economy and community it can be devastating. The village where I live in East Lothian, Pencaitland, has two village shops and a pub, and the thought that any of those could fold at any time would have a devastating impact on our community. At that point, community cohesion goes and the place becomes just a dormitory, somewhere people go to lay down their head at night, rather than the vibrant community we want.

We have heard much about devolution during this Parliament. When it comes to how we support and drive growth in the SME sector, we need to trust people at local authority and community level to make decisions about how businesses are supported, how they grow and create jobs and wealth, and how they provide sustainability. We must trust the people who know the area and the skill requirements to make those decisions. Talking about who gets to vote on what Bill does not have the same impact; it does not empower. It may take power away from individual MPs, but it does not empower communities, which is what devolution should be about.

I ask the Financial Secretary to consider the intervention I made on my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood who spoke from the Opposition Front Bench. What evidence do the Government have that cutting corporation tax will create more jobs than supporting SMEs, particularly in the rural context?

I am very grateful to Members who have been sitting patiently and silently for allowing me to make this pitch on behalf of the rural economy. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments.