National Insurance Contributions Bill

John Bercow Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Mr Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 5, page 2, line 20, clause 4, leave out ‘2013’ and insert ‘2012’.

Amendment 6, line 20, at end insert

‘The Treasury will carry out a review of the Regional Secondary Contributions Holiday before 5 December 2011 and may extend the relevant period until 5 September 2013.’.

[Mr Hanson]

The clue to the proposed changes before us is in the words that the Clerk read out, “not amended in the Public Bill Committee”. The proposals were reflected on and discussed in Committee, and I hope that the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury has had time, with a good break behind him over Christmas, to reflect on the common sense in them.

I would find it amazing if the Minister were not able to accept new clause 1, because it simply asks for information that, if he looks carefully, he knows I could table questions—with probably more work for him and his officials—to secure in due course. It is important that he assesses the scheme to ensure that we have a national insurance holiday, which, under the current Bill, includes the whole United Kingdom minus three regions—London, the east and the south-east.

The Opposition support, welcome and recognise the Government’s objectives in seeking to use the mechanism of forgoing national insurance income to encourage businesses, but it is important that the Government, the Opposition and, indeed, the House, who endorse that proposal, know its impact over the relevant period.

New clause 1 asks the House to ensure that, following Royal Assent, there is an annual report to Parliament on the outcomes of the scheme, meaning that between now and 2013 we would potentially have three annual reports with the information outlined in the new clause. Essentially, that would include the total sum of national insurance expenditure saved by businesses under the scheme by constituency, but, if the Minister wanted to reflect on the proposal and have it brought back in another place, I would be happy for the information to be listed by sub-region or by region. The information would also include the number of businesses availing themselves of the secondary contributions holidays, the number of employees in each business and the total expenditure saved by businesses under the scheme.

I tabled new clause 1 for several reasons. It is important that we know the facts. The Minister said in Committee that he expects about 400,000 businesses to take part in the scheme during its operation. That figure is a valuable indication and a good benchmark by which we can judge the success of the scheme. When the Committee sat before Christmas, we were already effectively five to six months into the operation of the scheme and about 1,100 businesses had applied for it. An annual review to Parliament would not only have provided an indication of whether Parliament should pass the Bill but would have ensured that we know exactly the take-up of the scheme. New clause 1 refers to the fact that we would also know the take-up by constituency and by businesses.

That is important for two reasons. We need to know the trajectory of the take-up. Is the figure of 1,100 to date what was expected? What will the trajectory be for those businesses in 2011 and 2012? If we have our first annual report in, let us say, December 2011—when the scheme will have been operating for 18 months—what will the take-up of the scheme be? Is the trajectory for the remaining two years likely to mean we get to the 400,000 figure that the Minister has mentioned? An annual report would provide transparency and openness, to which the Government are committed, on those issues and those take-ups. There would be nothing in the report that I could not ask the Minister in a parliamentary question in December this year, next year or the year after. It would simply be good business for the Government to supply that information as a whole.

It is important to consider the number of businesses in each constituency, and we will return to the exclusion of London, the south-east and the east region when we discuss other amendments. Given the deprivation in many of the London constituencies represented by my hon. Friends in the Chamber this afternoon, we feel particularly strongly about that matter. The Bill will have a significant impact on 400,000 businesses across the remainder of the United Kingdom, but will it and the proposed holiday impact on areas that have the highest public sector employment, which is the Minister’s primary objective, and areas of high deprivation and unemployment?

We discussed unemployment and deprivation in areas of the United Kingdom a number of times in Committee. For the purposes of explanation, I shall randomly look at constituencies that currently benefit from the national holiday under the scheme and will benefit if the scheme goes ahead. The annual report is important because unemployment in the Tatton constituency of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is about 2.1%, in the Richmond constituency of the Foreign Secretary it is about 1.8% and in the Rushcliffe constituency of the Justice Secretary it is about 2%.

It is important that we look at where the scheme ultimately is taken up and who will benefit. If businesses are opening in Tatton, Rushcliffe, Richmond and, indeed, other constituencies with low unemployment, that is all well and good, but it will not tackle deprivation in Manchester Central, Liverpool, Riverside or Newcastle upon Tyne East, which ultimately also might benefit from the scheme. For transparency, it is important that the Minister produces an annual report showing not only how many people and businesses have taken up the scheme, but in which constituencies it was taken up outside London, the south-east and the east region.