Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether HMRC have a role in investigating allegations of Landfill Disposals Tax fraud in Wales.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Shadow Exchequer Secretary (Treasury)
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has no role in investigating allegations of Landfill Disposals Tax fraud in Wales. However, HMRC does work collaboratively with the Welsh Revenue Authority and Joint Unit for Waste Crime to discuss and share intelligence to address cross-border issues.
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent steps he has taken to tackle landfill tax fraud.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Shadow Exchequer Secretary (Treasury)
Over the last year HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has deployed additional resources to tackle landfill tax fraud and support the Joint Unit of Waste Crime (JUWC) and other agencies to identify and tackle wider waste crime. HMRC has created a new team to monitor high risk waste producers to deter misdescription at source and reduce non-compliance across the sector. It has increased compliance activity with landfill site operators to ensure they are complying with legislative requirements.
The government set out in the Landfill Tax Call for Evidence that as part of its Landfill Tax Review it would consider options for structural changes to the tax and the potential impacts on Landfill Tax fraud. This is alongside wider environmental regulatory reforms designed to improve compliance and tackle waste crime.
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent estimate he has made of the amount of revenue lost to the Exchequer through landfill tax fraud in the last 12 months.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Shadow Exchequer Secretary (Treasury)
HM Revenue & Customs publishes estimates of the amount of Landfill Tax revenue lost as part of its annual Measuring Tax Gaps report. The most recent estimate gives a Landfill Tax gap of 18.4% of the theoretical Landfill Tax liability, or £150 million in the 2021 to 2022 tax year. The Landfill Tax gap is based on an experimental methodology and has high uncertainty.
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he plans to make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing new measures to help support businesses participating in the emissions trading scheme.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Shadow Exchequer Secretary (Treasury)
The Government is committed to supporting decarbonisation. That is why it protects sectors included in the Emissions Trading Scheme against carbon leakage by allocating free allowances, with installations vulnerable to carbon leakage receiving up to 100% of their emissions allowances for free based on sector benchmarks.
The Government also delivers compensation for the majority of indirect electricity costs imposed by the ETS and CPS on the UK’s most electricity-intensive businesses, through a compensation scheme, which is worth approximately £120 million a year.
In addition, the Government offers a range of support schemes for industry to decarbonise, such as the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF), which supports industrial sites with high energy use to transition to a low carbon future. Applications for phase 3 of the Fund, which is worth £185m, were launched in January 2024.
Lastly, at Spring Budget 2023, the Chancellor announced an unprecedented up to £20 billion for the early development of CCUS to help meet the Government’s climate commitments.
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he plans to make an assessment of the potential merits of providing relief from the emissions trading scheme to businesses that export products to external markets.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Shadow Exchequer Secretary (Treasury)
The UK is a world leader on carbon pricing. That is why we have an ambitious carbon pricing system, which ensures that polluters pay for their emissions.
Those businesses are protected from carbon leakage in the form of free allowances under the Emissions Trading Scheme, and from 2027, some UK sectors will be protected from carbon leakage by a UK CBAM. The CBAM is a charge on imports and is unlikely to be a suitable tool to address the carbon leakage risk related to exported goods.
The government will continue to assess the impact of carbon pricing on carbon leakage risk for UK industry, including for businesses that export products abroad.
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he plans to undertake a review of the criteria used to determine which industries are included in its carbon border adjustment mechanism proposals.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Shadow Exchequer Secretary (Treasury)
The government will implement a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) from 1 January 2027 to ensure that UK decarbonisation efforts lead to a true reduction in global emissions. The CBAM will apply a carbon price to relevant imported goods at risk of carbon leakage from the following sectors: aluminium, cement, ceramics, fertiliser, glass, hydrogen, iron & steel.
In making the decision around the initial sectoral scope of the UK CBAM, the government looked primarily at three factors: inclusion in the UK ETS as the purpose of the CBAM is to ensure a comparable treatment of imported goods and domestic products from a carbon pricing perspective, carbon leakage risk, and feasibility and effectiveness.
The scope of the UK CBAM will be kept under review. Further details on the design and delivery of a UK CBAM, including the precise list of products in scope within the announced sectors, will be the subject of consultation in 2024.
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the level of draught relief for (a) beer and (b) cider.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Shadow Exchequer Secretary (Treasury)
Under the new alcohol duty system, Draught Relief provides a 9.2% duty reduction on draught beer and cider products below 8.5% alcohol by volume. This ensures that there will always be a lower duty rate for draught products to recognise the value of our great British pubs. This means that every pint, in every pub across the UK pays less duty than their supermarket equivalent - this is the Government's Brexit Pubs Guarantee.
The Government is closely monitoring the impact of the recent reforms, including Draught Relief, and will evaluate the impact of the new rates and structures three years after the changes took effect on 1 August 2023. This will allow time to understand the impacts on the alcohol market, and for HMRC to gather useful and accurate data with which to evaluate the effects of the reform.
As with all taxes, the Government keeps the alcohol duty system under review during its yearly Budget process.
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Plan for Jobs in supporting people into work.
Answered by Simon Clarke
The success of our Plan for Jobs is playing a key role in spreading opportunity across the country.
The Government protected 11.7 million jobs through the pandemic, as well as moving millions of job seekers into work and supporting young people through programmes like kickstart and our apprenticeships offer.
It’s clear our plan is working. 2 million fewer people are out of work than originally feared, and the unemployment rate remains close to a near 50 year low.
We will continue to build on this success with our Way to Work campaign, which aims to support 500,000 jobseekers into work by the end of June.
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate he has made of the number of people furloughed continuously from 1 March 2020.
Answered by Lucy Frazer
There has been no estimate made of the number of people on furlough continuously from 1 March 2020.
The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) was announced on 20 March 2020 and the number of jobs on furlough increased substantially after that date.
HMRC has published statistics on the CJRS, the latest release being published on 9 September 2021. The statistics include figures on the number of employments supported since the scheme started in March 2020. These statistics can be found on GOV.UK: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/coronavirus-job-retention-scheme-statistics-9-september-2021.
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent assessment she has made on the potential effect of the Job Retention Scheme on (a) vacancies and (b) recruitment in the UK labour market.
Answered by Jesse Norman
The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) aims to support jobs, reduce the risk of permanent business closures (supporting those that had temporarily ceased or reduced trading) and reduce the risk of large losses in incomes, through wage support to furloughed employees.
The number of employees on the CJRS has continued to fall as restrictions have eased. According to provisional data from HMRC, 3.4m employments remained on the CJRS at the end of April from 675,000 employers, down from 4.3m employments at the end of March from almost 765,000 employers. This fall was accounted for by a fall in the number of employments on the CJRS on a full time basis; from 2.9m at the end of March to 2.0m at the end of April.
According to the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) data, vacancies rose by 49,000 on the quarter to stand at 657,000 in the three months to April, marking the eighth consecutive month of quarterly growth. Timelier online job advert data from Adzuna suggest that postings were 27 per cent above February 2020 levels at the end of May. According to early estimates from HMRC’s Real-Time Information (RTI), the number of paid employees increased by 97,000 in April, marking the fifth consecutive month of growth.