Beer and Pub Taxation

Debate between Simon Clarke and Alex Chalk

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Simon Clarke)]

I join hon. Members in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood). He has done the unusual thing of bringing half of Parliament along to a Westminster Hall debate, which is not only a great tribute to his popularity as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group, but a reflection of the importance that we all ascribe to this issue, which affects our communities.

I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. As has been said, there has been a tone of great unity on the issues. There is a clear consensus about the centrality of pubs and the beer industry, and about the solutions that exist in terms of making sure we help the sector to thrive long into the future. It must be said that asking elected representatives to talk about lowering the burden of tax on beer and pubs may be the nearest thing we ever get to motherhood and apple pie in this place, but it is a serious issue that goes to the heart of community life, as the hon. Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) said. Pubs are places to meet and socialise, and breweries are important regional employers.

In his delightful speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) reminisced about his trips to Stratford. As we know, Shakespeare has a line for everything, including the following from “A Winter’s Tale”:

“a quart of ale is a dish for a king.”

He was, of course, right—we can surely all agree on that. With that in mind, it is a great tribute to the United Kingdom that we have over 2,000 small breweries, and beer exports accounted for almost £500 million-worth of sales last year.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that, with a benign tax regime, independent British brewers can be an even greater exporting strength? The DEYA brewery in my constituency has achieved extraordinary international strength over the past five years. Has the time not come to back independent British brewers to go global?

[Mr Clarke]

I could not agree more, and that is the spirit of Brexit. We need to take advantage of opportunities to drive exports. It is something that we want to do across the piece to ensure that we deliver a successful economy, have a competitive business tax regime and support businesses large and small. That is what the Government have been intent on doing. Our employment allowance changes reduced national insurance contributions by up to £3,000 for over 1 million employers. We have cut corporation tax and frozen or cut beer duty in six of the last seven Budgets, which means that beer duty is now at its lowest level in real terms for over 30 years, and we have repeatedly given support to pubs through the business rates system.

Climate Change

Debate between Simon Clarke and Alex Chalk

Monday 24th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

I absolutely agree. No one can regard this as somebody else’s challenge, and that goes for the private sector as well as the public sector. Everyone will have to realign their expectations in the light of this commitment because it is genuinely groundbreaking. It is easy to underestimate the significance of what we are gathered to legislate for. This is a world-leading initiative by a developed nation. It is a profound statement of our commitment to a cleaner and greener world.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Clarke]

I will, but I promise not to take more than my allotted time.

[Alex Chalk]

My hon. Friend has campaigned so vigorously on this issue. He is right to say that this is world-leading legislation and that the UK is taking the lead, but does he agree that China, whose carbon emissions are something like 25 times that of the UK, really needs to play its part?

[Mr Clarke]

I do. That is not a counsel of despair. In many ways, we are setting a powerful example that other countries will be inspired to follow. By legislating for net zero, we start to create some of the economic opportunities that other countries will, in turn, be keen to seize. We can set a powerful moral and economic example for other countries to follow. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind words. He, too, has fought long and hard to make this happen, and I thank him for that.

On the economic opportunity, I will briefly bang the drum for carbon capture and storage. The CCC is absolutely clear in its report that we need to deliver CCS—[Interruption.] Contrary to what the hon. Member for Dundee West (Chris Law) said from a sedentary position, the Government are now taking CCS as an integral part of their green industrial strategy. We need to make sure that we get a number of clusters rolled out as quickly as possible, and one of those should be Teesside. I praise the work of the Teesside Collective, which is a pioneering group of industrial companies, all of whom want to see this happen, not least because there are certain industries such as steel, cement, plastics and fertilisers that emit CO₂ as an inextricable part of their production techniques. Even if we fully decarbonised our energy mix, those sectors would still need CCS to avoid contributing to our carbon emissions.

Finally, this is a wonderful example of how the UK can take a moral lead in the world after Brexit, and I praise how we are fighting to deliver the COP 26, alongside Italy, as part of our efforts. If we secure that, I hope we will make the drive for net zero an integral part of our prospectus for the conference.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Simon Clarke and Alex Chalk

Committee: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

That is exactly right. I, respectfully, completely agree with my right hon. Friend. What has been such a benefit of this debate is that we have identified a third category of rights that Members on both sides of the House recognise there is a real public benefit in adding to the corpus of rights enjoyed by the British people. I entirely agree that we should look at whether they can be added pro tem to the Human Rights Act.

My fundamental point is that, if we are inching our way towards a written constitution, retaining the charter, which is in effect a proto-constitution, on the basis of an amendment debated for just a few hours in this Chamber is entirely the wrong way to go about it. For that reason and that reason alone, I am supporting the Government.

[Mr Simon Clarke]

I rise to support the Bill, particularly in opposition to amendments 8 and 46, as well as new clause 16.

I want to establish from the outset that I am not in any way cavalier about the concept or the subject of human rights. They underpin a free and just society, and all parliamentarians should be vigilant in their defence. Today’s debate underscores the significance of that. However, to quote Oxford’s Professor Richard Ekins:

“There is a fundamental difference between human rights and human rights law. The Charter is one way to attempt to protect human rights, a poorly framed and…inept way at that.”

Contrary to what the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) said, I do not need the charter of fundamental rights to be proud of my country.

There are a number of reasons why I believe the incorporation of the charter of fundamental rights into our law would be the wrong thing to do. The first concerns the scope of the charter’s application. Article 51 states:

“The provisions of this Charter are addressed to the institutions, bodies, offices and agencies of the Union…and to the Member States only when they are implementing Union law.”

Needless to say, once we leave the Union, we will not be a member state. As has been observed, many of the charter rights are necessarily contingent on our EU membership, and still more are directed not towards member states, but the Union institutions and their policies. We have already touched on that, and I will not dwell on it further.

Let us follow the logic that we should incorporate the charter into UK law. How would this work? There seem to be two possible scenarios. First, if we were to approximate the charter’s original application, we could amend it in such a way that it applied solely to retained EU law. That is the substance of the amendments. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) has pointed out, that would lead to the bizarre situation whereby some parts of UK law would be subject to a different human rights regime. That is a recipe for confusion and disaster. Alternatively, we can amend the charter so that it increases its scope to cover all UK laws and institutions. I would hazard a guess that that is not exactly what our constituents were thinking of when they voted for Brexit.

Notwithstanding that basic point, either route would further complicate the relationship between the charter and the Human Rights Act. All transposed EU law will become subject to the Human Rights Act on transposition anyway, and having two parallel and perhaps in places contradictory constitutional Acts covering precisely the same issues in the same sphere of application would serve to undermine, rather than uphold, the rule of law. That is because charter rights, most seriously social rights, are so flexible and contested that they are vulnerable to a near infinite number of interpretations, which is precisely the problem.

When I worked for my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab), he would cite a quote from Montesquieu that was absolutely on point:

“Nor is there liberty if the power of judging is not separate from legislative power…If it were joined to legislative power, the power over the life and liberty of the citizens would be arbitrary, for the judge would be the legislator.”

Where we fail to legislate the judiciary fill the gaps. Rights creep has been a key objection from our constituents for many years, and rightly so. In at least two cases, British judges have gone beyond ECJ case law, relying on the charter to disapply Acts of Parliament. In Benkharbouche, parts of the State Immunity Act 1978 which protected embassies from immunity against employment law claims were set aside. In Vidal-Hall, part of the Data Protection Act 1998 was overridden, overturning a limitation on what damages could be recovered. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) said, this is properly a matter for the House to determine. The ECJ itself has overruled parts of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 by reference to the charter—a decision that puts the application of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 in serious doubt. That is not a small point. The process of striking down legislation under the charter goes far beyond the scope of the Human Rights Act, which allows the courts to make a declaration of incompatibility where there is a need to do so.

There is one final reason why we should resist charter incorporation, which is that to do so would probably be superfluous. We have heard from Ministers, who have struck a notably conciliatory tone, that the Government will provide detailed analysis of how each charter right will be addressed in a memorandum that is due on 5 December. If we are to go on to address what has been referred to as the third category of rights—rights that are not listed in the European convention on human rights and which are not rendered redundant by our leaving the EU—this process should be led by the elected House of Commons. That may very well be the right thing to do, but it is clear to everyone that retaining the charter is not the right vehicle by which to do it.

Lest we forget, the British public had no idea that the charter would evolve in the way that it has. Protocol 30 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union states that

“the Charter reaffirms the rights, freedoms and principles recognised in the Union and makes those rights more visible, but does not create new rights or principles”.

We have heard about The Beano, and about former Attorney-General Peter Goldsmith, who said in June 2004:

“The Charter is a consolidation of existing rights...It is not a mine for new human rights in this country.”

Crucially, in 2008, on Second Reading of the EU (Amendment) Bill that ratified the Lisbon treaty, David Miliband, told the House:

“The treaty records existing rights rather than creating new ones. A new legally binding protocol guarantees that nothing in the charter extends the ability of any court to strike down UK law”.—[Official Report, 21 January 2008; Vol. 470, c. 1250.]

Our constituents were given an inaccurate prospectus of how the charter would evolve, although I accept it was made in good faith at the time. In the light of that, my position is very clear that the charter should not be incorporated into our law to go on evolving in that way according to the whims of unelected judges.

Tonight we have an opportunity to reassert one final time what this House has been told for the best part of 18 years: the rights under which we live should have their origin in this House and, ultimately, in the British people, under whose authority we serve.