Finance Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Stella Creasy and Peter Dowd

Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 24th October 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Stella Creasy]

Yes, that is the concern. There is a lot of evidence that the exemption, which lets staff run their own tips scheme—it is like staff in a small café sharing the money in the jar, but across a large restaurant chain—is being used by major employers to avoid paying national insurance and, indeed, pension obligations further down the line, especially given auto-enrolment.

Another issue to which the amendments relate is the variations in charges that employers apply to employees for administering such schemes. Some restaurant chains will pass on 100% of the tips paid to a member of staff, while others will charge up to 20% in administration fees for doing it through an electronic system. Clearly, that is not fair and I warrant that customers have never had a restaurant explain to them how much they will charge the employee to pass on the tip that customers want to give them. The amendments are designed to help us understand what is going on.

I hope that the Minister will have strong words with his colleagues in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, because if, as we fear, a tax take is being avoided and the lowest-paid people in our country are being exploited as a result, surely we all agree that we need to do something about that. That is why I tabled the amendments. Indeed, 18 months ago, many of us took part in a Government consultation on precisely those issues—that is, how to ensure a fair system for administering tips, service charges and gratuities. I have to tell the Minister that, 18 months on, the Government have not even published the results of that consultation, let alone looked at what could be done to make sure that neither the Exchequer nor the employer is being short-changed.

The Bill offers the Minister an opportunity to make progress on an issue that his ministerial colleagues have kicked into the long grass. If we are digitising records, we can ask employers to clarify precisely what is being collected in tips, service charges and gratuities, and what is income. The amendments address exactly that point: they simply propose that an employer should record the different forms of income—with electronic systems that should be a relatively easy thing to do—and an employee would then be able to access that information.

That is important because if someone is self-employed and working in restaurants—my colleagues from north of the border have mentioned people administering their own tax records—they ought to know what their liabilities are. At present, however, someone who is part of a tronc system does not necessarily know what they are being paid in tips, gratuities and service charges. These simple amendments ask the employer to set out precisely the different streams of income, which their computer systems will easily collate for them, so that our tax system acts more efficiently.

If the Minister is not prepared to accept the amendments and acknowledge the need to make progress—we are, after all, talking about the poorest-paid employees in our country—will he commit to asking his ministerial colleagues in BEIS why it is that, 18 months on, when so many people have provided information about how we could solve the problems, nothing has happened? Indeed, I have regularly asked when the consultation results might at least be published, but the answer has always been, “Sometime in the future.” I am sure that the Minister would agree that the people who serve him a cup of coffee in a restaurant deserve better service from us in making sure that they are not exploited.

Amendment 10 relates to an issue that has come up very little in this Committee—we should correct that—namely the Japanese knotweed that is Brexit, which has taken up so much of our time. I appreciate that the Minister will say that the amendment is not needed because he has published a White Paper on how customs and VAT should fit together. However, having read that White Paper, I must draw attention to an omission from it.

I am sure that Government Members will judge me because I have become slightly obsessed with things such as the 13th directive on VAT, and I am sure they would all like to do a pub quiz on it too. Normal VAT rules allow that businesses registered in the UK can recover UK VAT. People understand that: for most businesses, VAT compliance is one of their biggest pieces of work. The issue with the 13th directive, which the amendment addresses, is the question of what happens when businesses trade in Europe. After all, Europe is still the primary market for the vast majority of businesses: 63% of members of the Federation of Small Businesses have said that Europe is their priority market. That means that if a salesman goes to Sweden and stays in a hotel, the hotel might charge VAT and there is no way that that business would be able to deduct Swedish VAT on its UK VAT return. At the moment, however, under the single market procedures, there is a process by which foreign VAT can be recovered directly from the country in which it was incurred.

For those Members who are VAT geeks, that provision is in articles 170 and 171 of Council directive 2006/112/EC, the prime VAT directive. I will, of course, pass that detail on to Hansard. The detailed rules are in Council directive 2008/9/EC. That is implemented in our own domestic legislation, in section 39 of the Value Added Tax Act 1994 and regulation 20 of the Value Added Tax Regulations 1995. In practice, that means that each European state is obligated to make a VAT refund. Obviously, there are rules on that, but it works pretty straightforwardly through an online electronic system, which is why it is relevant to the charge under discussion. I can see the Whip wondering where I am going with this, but there is a direct connection.

A similar scheme applies across the EU to businesses that are not established in the EU. That is the 13th VAT directive, which is implemented by section 39(2)(b) of the 1994 Act and is a more complicated system. The amendment is simple. When we leave the EU, we will no longer be able to rely on the simplicity of the intra-country VAT collection scheme that has helped businesses in Britain to trade and provide services, particularly in Europe. We will, therefore, need to move to the 13th directive, or we may move to something else. The customs White Paper, for instance, mentions an “innovative” scheme, but I am pretty sure that other countries, for which the intra-country scheme works well, would not be particularly willing to undertake such innovation. I think they would be happy for us to move to the 13th directive.

I am concerned that there is a lot of evidence that the 13th directive and its administration is not very effective for countries outside the EU. In particular, the 13th directive states that member states must refund VAT to foreign traders. It also states:

“Member states may make the refunds…conditional upon the granting by third states of comparable advantages regarding turnover and taxes.”

One could argue that the Bill’s introduction of an online electronic system provides a comparable advantage, but my amendment asks the simple question being asked by many businesses, including local businesses in my constituency, which are starting to panic about how they will manage their VAT returns in future. How will the proposed electronic scheme fit in with regard to both the current regulations relating to intra-EU VAT refunds and the 13th directive?

Having looked at the Minister’s document, I am concerned that, although it talks a lot about what the UK will do, it does not talk a lot about the 13th directive and what it will mean for British businesses. Page 19 refers to contingency in case there is no deal—of course, we all know that that is a sensitive question for the Cabinet—but what British businesses need to know now is, if they are going to continue to trade in Europe, how they can do that in a cost-effective and red-tape-free way?

One of the more bizarre elements of Brexit is that we seem to be arguing about red tape as though the other side wants more of it, and those of us who wanted to stay in the European Union are bad for wanting less of it. This issue is a great example of that challenge, where being part of the European Union had simplified a process for British businesses. A quarter of FSB members have said that the introduction of any tariff or complication with trading with Europe would put them off trading altogether. We need this Bill to match what is going to happen in future, so that businesses using an online system will not have to change it very quickly as a result of the rules of the 13th directive implemented by other countries making it harder for them to use.

If the Minister will not accept my very simple amendment asking him to set out just how this Bill will impact on the 13th directive, will he commit to discussing with British businesses what the directive might mean for them in terms of VAT compliance and recouping their costs, and what the consequences for them will be in terms of administering the scheme? All small businesses in our constituencies that are looking at that future trading relationship will want to know how much additional paperwork they are going to get, and they deserve an answer.

[Peter Dowd]

I will to speak to clauses 60 and 61, schedule 14 and clause 62 together, as they represent a package of measures that would introduce powers and regulations surrounding digital reporting and record keeping for both VAT and income tax.

The Opposition’s concerns about the Government’s plans for making tax digital are well-versed. We raised them on Second Reading of the March Finance Bill, before they were dropped, and raised them again in the debate on the Ways and Means resolution for this Bill, as well as on its Second Reading. We fully support digitalised tax reporting, which we can all agree has the potential to drastically reduce the amount of time individuals and business owners will have to spend filling out long and complicated tax returns. We could also free up some of HMRC’s time, so that it is better spent clamping down on tax avoidance.

Finance Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Stella Creasy and Peter Dowd

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 19th October 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Howarth. I am looking forward to this debate because it is something all of us across the House feel concerned about. I recognise that we are debating the Finance Bill. I reassure you that the amendments and the majority of what I will talk about today are about taxation and, in particular, the requirements of the legislation. I just want briefly to set out how that fits into the context of the concerns that are shared across the House about private finance and the cost to the public sector of borrowing to be able to build the infrastructure that we all know we need.

To be clear, Governments of all colours have used private finance and continue to do so. The private finance initiative and private finance 2 schemes are little different from each other. It is recognised that questions about the companies involved and the role of taxation in the decision to use PFI or PF2 to fund public infrastructure are questions for all of us, because we see in our constituencies the problems that are caused.

I note that the constituency of the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar now has repayments of £169 million as a result of private finance. The constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle, the shadow Minister, has £423 million-worth of repayments required under private finance contracts. I would describe private finance as the hire purchase of the public sector—indeed the legal loan sharks of the public sector— because the companies offer credit to the public sector, but at a high cost. In particular, the cost of the credit—the taxation that will come from the companies involved—is part of the decision to go with them. That is specifically part of the Green Book calculations. I am looking forward to the Minister telling us what has happened to those Green Book calculations, which were supposedly withdrawn in 2013 but I understand are still being used by Departments for private finance deals, to understand how tax plays a part in the decision to use private finance companies. The idea is that this form of credit may be more expensive but that the companies will repay us in taxation in the UK. That forms part of the decision to use them. The widespread evidence now is that those companies are not paying UK taxes, and that they are benefiting from changes in our tax regime over the past 20 or 30 years. That should trouble all of us because we are not getting the value for money that the deals were supposed to be.

One of my concerns that I hope the Minister will address is that PF2 also pays little regard to the question of where the companies are situated and how much tax they pay. I have therefore tabled two amendments—in fact, three; one is about defining private finance companies—to understand what kind of deal we are getting from those companies and how we as taxpayers and those who represent taxpayers can get a better deal for the British public.

For the avoidance of doubt, the debate is not about not using private finance. One day, I hope that we will have another debate—I am sure the Minister will look forward to it as much as he is looking forward to this one—about the alternatives to private finance. There is a role for private finance, but the question is, if we are getting a bad deal and if the companies are not honouring the obligations that we as taxpayers assigned to them, what can we do about it?

Clearly, the PFI companies are making huge profit. Research from the Centre for Health and the Public Interest shows that over the next five years almost £1 billion in taxpayer funds will go to PFI companies in the form of pre-tax profits. That is 22% of the extra £4.5 billion given to the Department of Health alone.

In my constituency I see at first hand the impact of this. Whipps Cross University Hospital is technically in the constituency next door, but serves my local community—it is part of Barts, which has the biggest PFI contract in the country: £1 billion-worth of build, £7 billion to be repaid. The hospital is paying back £150 million a year in PFI charges, more than 50% of which is interest alone on the loan. The hospital downgraded the nurses’ post to try to save money, and so found that many nurses left. It therefore faced a higher agency bill.

It is clear that PFI and the cost of those loans drives problems. It is also clear that those companies make what I would term excessive profits. That is where new clause 1 begins to try to offer us some answers. If the companies make excessive profits, that is not part of the contract that we signed with them. The National Audit Office has been incredibly critical of how taxation played a role in decisions about private finance companies, but that has not been realised.

Also, not that many companies are involved, yet the tax returns are huge. Just eight companies own or appear to have equity stakes in 92% of all the PFI contracts in the NHS. Innisfree manages Barts, which is my local hospital, and it has just 25 staff but stands to make £18 billion over the coming years. It might be thought, therefore, that companies of that size and stature would pay a substantial amount of tax—I see that the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar can predict where I am going with this; sadly, it does not appear to be the case.

Indeed, many of the companies seem to report little or no tax in the UK. One of the simple reasons for that is that many of them are not registered in the UK. That is crucial because the provisions in the Bill to give those companies a relief on paying tax on the interest that they get from shareholder debt are predicated on the idea that they are UK companies. That is the starting point for amendments 5 and 6. The Bill will bring in a cap on the amount of relief that companies can claim against interest. However, there is a public sector exemption, for public sector infrastructure companies, and it will substantially benefit the companies in question.

Having been a Member of this House for seven years, I have always assumed that when such a provision is introduced we will be able to debate its merits. I note that the restrictions in relation to the measure mean that we cannot stop it, or ask whether we are being wise and whether, given that we know the companies do not necessarily pay the tax it was assumed they would in the UK, we are getting their tax situation right. We cannot stop the measure, but we can certainly ask just how much the companies are going to benefit from it.

Amendments 5 and 6 are intended to enable taxpayers to understand how much the companies will benefit from the exemption, and how much extra money they will be able to write off against their tax bill, thus paying little tax in the future. It matters very much to the companies, because most are heavily indebted to their shareholders. They use a model involving 80% to 90% senior debt; the rest is equity loans in terms of the products that they offer. PF2 will change that very little. The amount of debt that they carry, and therefore the amount of interest that they can trade off, which the measure will allow them to do, will be relevant to their ability to give returns to their shareholders.

It is clear that those companies give their shareholders substantial returns, and will be able to fund that through such tax relief. Indeed, the shareholders’ returns are 28% on their sales—more than double the 12% to 15% that was predicted in the business cases. Between 2000 and 2016 the total value of sales of shares in PFI companies was £17 billion. It is notable that in 2016 100% of equity transactions involving those companies were to offshore infrastructure funds in Jersey, Guernsey and Luxembourg. That is based on a sample of 334 projects.

Those companies are going to get a substantial tax relief from the exemption. Yet they do not pay tax in the UK—or, certainly, there is a lot of evidence that they do not. It is an exemption that will enable them to continue to justify paying little or no tax; they will be able to write off the interest on their loans and projects against it. Yet taxpayers are not benefiting from the tax that they said they would pay.

New clause 1 goes to the heart of that question. Those companies signed up for public sector contracts, with particular rates of tax at the time they were finalised. Yet, as we know, corporation tax has varied substantially over the past decade. The debate is not about what the right level of corporation tax is; it is about a simple principle. If a company has signed up to pay a certain rate of tax, and the tax rate changes, it clearly benefits from that. We signed up to the deals for taxpayers, however, on the basis that they would pay a certain rate of tax. That tax rate will now change. New clause 1, again, asks just how much the companies are benefiting from the changes.

I know that the Minister will tell me that there are various anti-discriminatory clauses in the PFI and indeed the PF2 contracts. I agree with him. Therefore, how we might start to reclaim some of that excessive profit is a tricky question, but there is a strong case that, if a company has signed up in good faith to a particular rate of tax, surely that is the rate of tax that it should pay. That is written into the contract, it is part of the business case in the Green Book that is made on these sorts of deals. We as taxpayers have an expectation. Indeed, I would expect the Minister to have a series of sums reflecting the amount of money that would be paid back that he would write off against the large sums that I talked about. However, given that the corporation tax situation has moved from some of these companies nominally paying 28% to their paying 19% or less, that is clearly a substantial discount on what they were expected to pay. New clause 1 asks us to do what, frankly, at the moment we do not do as a country—understand what the difference is between what we expected to get in from tax from these companies and what we will get in.

It is always troubling to me that the Treasury does not seem to have a central database either of how much we were paying to take on these loans—particularly the rates of return, which we know are substantially higher than the rate of borrowing on the public sector—or of the taxation these companies are paying back versus what they were expected to pay back. New clause 1 would get to the heart of that matter and it sits alongside amendments 5 and 6 in trying to understand where these companies are making excessive profits from the public sector.

I am sure that the Minister will tell me that this is a dreadful attack on the private sector and that we should not be saying that these companies are ripping the British public off and that they are legal loan sharks. However, I ask him: if he will not accept the amendments, will he commit to gathering the data about how much these companies have paid in tax, how much difference these have made to the value-for-money case for these businesses, and therefore how our communities will be able to pay back the sums involved?

I am sure that the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar would love to have £169 million to invest in his local community; there are many worthy causes that I am sure he would support. I am sure that the hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden would be interested in the £170 million that I believe Stevenage, near his constituency, will have to pay out to PFI companies. That money could be invested in the public infrastructure that we so desperately need.

I am sure that all of us would agree that we expect these companies to pay their tax, as they signed up to in these contracts, yet it is clear that they do not. So if the Minister is not prepared to accept these incredibly reasonable amendments in this environment, I hope that he will set out precisely what he is going to do to get our tax money back. All of us and all of our constituents need and deserve nothing less.

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

It is again a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Mr Howarth.

I thank my hon. Friend for tabling the amendment, which seeks a review of the effect that the measures we are discussing will have on PFI companies. The Government blithely assert, including in their notes on the Bill, that companies involved in public benefit infrastructure spending are an inherently low risk for tax avoidance. That is an odd claim, especially in the light of what my hon. Friend has said. We know that some PFI companies have engaged in profit shifting to non-UK jurisdictions. It does not make sense to say that just because the profits of a company are extracted from public investment it cannot seek to be paid in a way that is fiscally undesirable.

No one should bemoan the huge public infrastructure investment that the last Labour Government enabled. It was fixing many of the problems left from years of neglect in the public sector. All Governments have taken part in PFI. When PFI was in effect the only game in town, so to speak, many public authorities took up the chance to make the investment they needed; my hon. Friend identified some in my constituency that benefited from such investment. However, we know that some contracts have produced excessive costs for the public sector, where direct borrowing could have produced much lower ongoing costs and provided for more direct influence over the quality of some ancillary services. Therefore, it is right that a review be used to work out whether we should be privileging PFI companies with exemptions from these measures at the same time as knowing that they often benefit from guaranteed profits at the public expense.