Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Hughes and Oliver Heald

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

2. How many successful prosecutions for tax evasion the Serious Fraud Office has completed in each of the last five years.

[The Solicitor-General (Oliver Heald)]

It is the Crown Prosecution Service rather than the Serious Fraud Office that prosecutes tax evasion cases. The records of the Crown Prosecution Service show that in 2008-09 there were 226 convictions, and the latest figures, up to November 2012, show 349.

[Simon Hughes]

We had a major debate on tax avoidance yesterday, and I think the country and Parliament want us to be very tough on tax evasion. Can the Solicitor-General assure us that the Government and the Crown Prosecution Service will concentrate on large national and international companies, and not on the small fish, so that ordinary people realise that they are not being singled out when much bigger prizes are available from much naughtier people?

[The Solicitor-General]

I can certainly give my right hon. Friend the assurance that from top to bottom the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who has given us a target of increasing prosecutions fivefold, and all parts of Government will tackle this issue hard. From the point of view of the Attorney-General’s office, my right hon. Friend may be interested to know that we have been referring cases where sentences are unduly lenient to the Court of Appeal. It has recently been established that seven years’ imprisonment should be the starting point for significant tax fraud cases.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Simon Hughes and Oliver Heald

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Heald]

My hon. Friend is right to be concerned about that.

The Joint Committee took evidence from Australian senators. The Australian system is similar to that proposed in the Bill. Senator Ursula Stephens from the governing Labour party told us:

“I am allocated a number of seats that are not held by the Government in the lower House in my state. I look after those constituents who do not have a government representative. Those people might come to me about issues and legislation.”

Senator Lee Rhiannon from the Australian Greens said:

“we have nine Senators and only one Member in the House of Representatives. The issue of working with constituents is very important for us and it takes up quite a bit of time.”

Senator Michael Ronaldson of the Opposition Liberal Party said:

“I do not think that you can make the assumption that you will not be engaged in constituency-type work, particularly if the elected Lords in an area—as Senator Stephens said—come from the other party. If you are a Member of the non-ruling party, the Lords might find that they have more people knocking on their doors than they might otherwise have anticipated.”

When the Clerk of the House gave evidence, he spoke of the danger of “constituency case tourism”. We must try to avoid such constituency conflicts.

[Simon Hughes]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern. That is a real issue, and I think it will have to be addressed if we proceed with the Bill. There are ways in which it could be dealt with: for example, it could be agreed that Ministers would deal only with Members of the House of Commons when it came to constituency casework.

[Oliver Heald]

That issue is not addressed in the Bill.

I mentioned the Clerk of the House a moment ago, and he has appeared on cue!

The power of the people is in this House, not at the other end of the building. That is why, when we are arguing with the Lords about a Bill, they always give way eventually. When I was a Whip, I went down there and had discussions with them, as many other Members will have done. In the end, they say, “You are the elected House; you have your way.” I recall hardly any occasions during my time here when, in the end, they have not caved in, because we are the elected House.

I believe in efficient and effective government. I think that it is something the Conservative party has stood for over the years. We have given this country more than 250 years of good government—or, at least, we have given a lot of it during that period. [Laughter.] I remember the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) saying “It must be healed.” I agree: it must be Heald.

Following the proposed changes, we will struggle to have effective government. The Parliament Acts cannot be used on every occasion. It is a nuclear option. We rely on the Lords’ giving way, but the fact is that without conventions and arrangements between the Houses —some means of ensuring that we always prevail in the end—it will be more difficult to ensure that we have effective government in this country. When a party makes promises in its manifesto, it will not be able to deliver on them. When we experience a crisis, as we have recently, it will be difficult to introduce urgent measures with the necessary speed.

Let me make a suggestion. It is in the Joint Committee report, the alternative report and in my pamphlet, which can be read on the website of the Society of Conservative Lawyers. Let us see whether we can avoid regional elections which provide a geographical power base, which would mean the people at the other end of the building representing a group of constituents from an area. Let us consider indirect election. There are various different models. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) mentioned the German model, and the right hon. Member for Neath mentioned the secondary mandate model. There are ways of doing this.

I support reform and I think that we should do it, but I do not agree with the Bill, and I believe that it needs to be looked at again.

Work and Pensions (CSR)

Debate between Simon Hughes and Oliver Heald

Thursday 4th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Heald]

I would contest what the hon. Lady says. Of course, it is true—I see the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) in his place, and I have a long connection with his constituency—that there are areas in London that have gentrified and changed over time; I agree. However, the sector of the market that we are discussing—the private rented sector—is not the one that the hon. Lady is really talking about. The private rented sector is the area of the market where people do not stay for 27 years. They move, regularly. It is a sector of the market in which people stay for a year or two. Something like 40 per cent. of that market is people who have been in their homes for less than three years.

[Simon Hughes]

The hon. Gentleman is right; he knows Southwark as I do. However, the pattern is not uniform, and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) has a good case. To give one example, just over the bridge is a square called West square, where former Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers have lived. However, some of the houses, which are all privately owned, have been lived in by working-class families, who lived there all their lives. They are privately owned and rented, and have continued with private tenants. Scattered throughout my constituency, as well as Westminster and every London borough, are considerable numbers of people who have been for between 10 and 50 years in private sector rented accommodation, and who do not want to move.

[Mr Heald]

The hon. Gentleman knows Southwark like the back of his hand, and I accept that there are people who have been in the private rented sector for many years, but that is not the overall picture of that sector of the market, which is one of shorter-term lets. Of course, the nature of the contracts on those properties is short term.

Of course there should not be undue hardship. I agree with the hon. Members for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) and for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck), and with my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, about that. That is why there is a fund to deal with cases of hardship. The Government have not gone into it saying, “This will be a harsh regime, with no possible exceptions.” They have set aside £140 million to deal with those problems.

I think that it is wrong to overstate the problems against the background of the very difficult economic position that the country is in and the need to make cuts—any Government would have had to make cuts. There is a third point, which is that there must be fairness. We are all in it together, and I think that the balance that the Government have achieved is fair. It is wrong to view what is being done as though the overall ambition were to cut back the size of the state. The overall ambition is to get people into work. If we do that, that is how we will cut the welfare bills. I think that, with the economy and the measures that are being taken, things are looking quite encouraging.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. I am present almost by accident, because my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott) would normally have been the Liberal Democrat spokesperson. In many ways, she is a greater expert than me. I am afraid that I have broken the spell—there would have been women leading for all three main parties, together with the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Miss Begg) and the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel). We men would have had to muscle our way in. I apologise for that, but I hope that in spite of my lack of technical expertise, I can none the less share something from my experience. Like the hon. Member for Aberdeen South and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Mr Heald), I am one of the old hands in such a debate.

I welcome the Minister to her post, and I endorse what was said earlier. The approach taken by the Secretary of State and the Minister responsible for pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb) has shown encouraging, progressive and challenging new thinking that looks to restructure an important Department. I welcome the opportunity to look at how that will be done.

I speak not only as an old-school Liberal, with Beveridge and Lloyd George as my political forebears, but as someone who has lived and represented the inner city for all of my time in this place, and half of my life. I know how important it is to have a strong welfare state, but that we must always encourage those who can to find and stay in good-quality work.

A friend of mine, the deputy head of a primary school in Leeds, once showed me how they were taking 10-year-olds to do work experience in their final year of primary school. More than half the youngsters in that school had nobody at home who went to work, so a role model who worked was missing in their lives. I hope that at the end of the five-year coalition programme, difficult though it will be in some areas because of our financial position, we will have a more equal society, a greater percentage of people in work and a higher skill base, but that we will still always protect the poor and the vulnerable from falling through the safety net.

I commend the single Work programme. I have long felt the need to pull together the ways in which people are assisted into work. From my constituency experience, I have to say that the system has not been working. As the Government implement the single Work programme, I ask them to take heed of what is stated in the coalition agreement:

“We will realign contracts with welfare to work service providers to reflect more closely the results they achieve in getting people back into work.”

The disparate contract system has not worked, and there have been some poor providers. It has been a mixed scene, and we need a more reliable network of ways in which people can go into the system.

I also commend the ambitious plan for a system of universal credit. That is what we should aim for. The system has seemed complicated, and if it is complicated for us and the Department, it will be doubly complicated for people who have to navigate themselves through it as users, often during other pressures in their lives as well.

From my experience, the “tell us once” initiative, is beginning to work. That is when someone reports a death—a bereavement—and all the systems of government are notified. That approach needs to be expanded at central and local government level so that people can feed into the system.

I am not in the Chamber to give a eulogy or a set of plaudits, because there are one or two things that the Government should take on board and improve. However, some things are really encouraging, as was the speech by the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham).

The first point in the relevant part of the Liberal Democrat manifesto is immediately to restore the link between the basic state pension and earnings:

“We will uprate the state pension annually by whichever is the higher of growth in earnings, growth in prices or 2.5 per cent.”

One of the first announcements made in the Budget and reflected in the comprehensive spending review—proving that the coalition is a partnership and that both parties contribute—was that pensions will be linked to earnings again. That is welcome because it is an important subject and one of the biggest issues that pensioners have raised with me in Parliament ever since the link was broken under Mrs Thatcher’s Government.

It is important that we are moving towards equality in pension age, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Aberdeen South, but it is right for that limit to be set at a higher level. Frighteningly, I heard the other day that average life expectancy for men is now 88. That is extremely disturbing in many respects, although of course we welcome people of that age and beyond. If life expectancy is 88 for men, it will be older for women because women are more resilient and better able to survive, do well and keep working than men.

I welcome the fact that winter fuel payments have been maintained, which was a manifesto pledge made during the election. I know that the issue is controversial and debatable, but in the end that pledge was honoured. All those initiatives are welcome, especially those relating to pensions and elderly people.

The announcement on child tax credit was good, as that will help families with children to have the funding they need. It is good that we have not backed away from our ambitions on child poverty. In her intervention, the Minister rightly said that we must start by saying how we will ensure that things do not get worse. The Labour Government were disappointing in many social ambitions, such as those on fuel poverty, child poverty and so on. They let the gap between the rich and poor widen. It is important that we hold on to our ambitions and, as the Minister said, seek to build on them and take our youngsters out of poverty.

I thought it was understandable and right to try to deal with the child benefit issue, although I know that it is controversial, particularly in the Conservative party. I understand the difficulties and I do not pretend that there is a perfect cut-off in terms of the wage level at which the benefit is set, or the choice between a one-wage or two-wage family. We can come to different conclusions about that, but there is a good case for saying that people on high incomes should not get the same level of universal benefits as everybody else. I understand the logic behind the argument for universal benefits, but when hard choices have to be made and budgets saved, everybody must share the responsibility.

I am glad that we will have permanent cold weather payments, rather than the rabbit-out-of-a-hat payments that we had under the Labour Government, when if we were lucky one year, there was an announcement. That change is positive.

I am pleased that there will be additional money for youngsters as part of the pupil premium. That scheme crosses Departments in relevance, and means that poor and disadvantaged youngsters will be better supported when they are under five, as well as when they go to primary school.

I have a couple of concerns, which I flagged up with the Deputy Prime Minister and this morning in the Department with my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate and Lord Freud. As I pointed out in an intervention on the hon. Member for Aberdeen South, I want the Department to look again at future legislation relating to the 10% automatic cut in jobseeker’s allowance after one year of unemployment. That decision is not sustainable for some people. I understand the incentive argument, but there are some areas—they may be very different from my constituency—where there are few jobs and people have to travel a long way to find them. There are no opportunities, however hard people try. To say that there should be a reduction in the benefit seems harsh, and I hope that the Government will revisit that.

I shall make one other substantive point before leaving the Minister with a final thought or two. There may be a moment for another colleague to intervene. For me, the real issue of the moment is the housing benefit debate. I am conscious that coming down the track are regulations that will change housing benefit for next year. I shall concentrate on one of the proposals, in respect of which I hope that there is some scope for modification without breaking the superstructure of the plan and which is of more national, UK-wide significance than the capping issue. That is of more significance in central London, where of course I have an interest. I am referring to the proposal to reduce the housing benefit payment from the 50th percentile of the rents in the broad rental market area to the 30th percentile next year.

I hope that the Government will reconsider the proposal, because there are all sorts of reasons why it may not deliver the ability for people to find housing in the community they come from, and communities are important. As the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire knows, there are communities just as much in Southwark, Westminster, Chelsea and Hounslow as there are in any other part of the country. To expect someone to move from a place that they are renting—I could cite West square, just over the bridge in Southwark, or it could be Covent Garden—and where they have lived all their life to somewhere four boroughs away, where they have no relatives, no friends, no links, no community and no history, is unreasonable.

I understand some of the issues, but there are ways in which the Government could be positive in dealing with them. As I understand it, 70% of the housing benefit claims in Blackpool are in the private sector, so by definition if the level is lowered, that has a huge effect on the market. Of course there is a difference between a place such as Blackpool and a place at the bottom of the league table such as Southwark, which is 31st out of the 33 London authorities and where only 13% of housing benefit claims are in the private sector. There, a Government change does not automatically change the culture of landlords and the market. I hope that the Government will bear that in mind.

Where demand exceeds supply, by definition there will not be available supply in a place around the corner for someone to move to. In addition, there are people whom we should not be asking to move when there are significant reductions in their benefits. I have seen the figures in the Government’s own impact study, which they produced in July. It states that the estimated percentage of losers varies from 71% in London to 90% in Yorkshire and the Humber, and the average loss per loser varies from £7 a week at the bottom end to £17 a week in the London region. Those are significant changes. Suddenly to have to find £17 extra a week in London, for example, may just not be possible, however careful people are with their household budget.

My suggestion is that the Government should consider, first, phasing any change, rather than going from the 50th percentile to the 30th. I know that it is not happening on one day, because it happens over a year on the date of the anniversary of the renewal of the claim. Secondly, they could consider treating people who are already in housing and recipients of benefit differently from new claimants. I am happy to continue to engage in debate with Ministers, as are other colleagues, to try to find a way forward. I am trying to be non-partisan; I am not making party political points, but I think that there must be a new way of being able to deal with what is an impending problem.

There are concerns among colleagues from around the country about the age for the shared room rate being put up from 25 to 35 in areas where accommodation is very difficult to find. I just pass that on, so that it can be on the agenda. There are also concerns about the transfer of council tax benefit administration to local authorities in due course, with a reduction in the amount available. That will be on the agenda of the Minister and her colleagues and the Department for Communities and Local Government.

The one thing we need to do as we implement some very radical but very good policies is to ensure that as people may be losing jobs in the public sector for a while and we are trying to create jobs in the private sector, we have in place organisations and people to assist them in moving from one form of employment to another in a very organised local and regional way. I have started to talk to colleagues about that. There is willingness on the part of the Government to consider it. If we are really to ensure that people do not feel frightened and insecure but feel encouraged and supported, we need not just changes in structure, but support systems to help people to make the life transitions from one form of work to another, or from no work to work, which are very important.

[Mr Heald]

On the idea of phasing, is the hon. Gentleman thinking that we would go to the 40th percentile? What is his idea?

[Simon Hughes]

I am seeking to explore ideas. It may be possible to move in the first place to the 40th percentile and later to the 30th. I am conscious that we do not want to force people to move twice. I do not think that would happen if there were much smaller reductions in the benefit and therefore people’s budgets were less hugely affected. I do not pretend that there is only one answer, but I am keen that we ensure that we are not uprooting people and assuming that they can find somewhere. This is all about predictive markets and how the market will respond. It is very difficult to know what the outcomes will be. Whatever the experts say, I do not think that we can predict things with surety. Therefore we need to err on the side of caution rather than risk, because we are dealing with people’s lives and homes, and for people with insecure lives and insecure incomes, having secure homes is very important.