Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stephen Lloyd and Mel Stride

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

T3. As the Ministers on the Treasury Bench know, there are strongly held and differing views about the fairness of the implementation of the Treasury’s 2019 loan charge. Recent media reports have identified the severe impact that this huge retrospective charge is having on the mental health of some contractors, and I have real concerns for their wellbeing. Will the Minister commit to setting up a 24-hour helpline to provide support for individuals caught in this trap?

[Mel Stride]

The issue that the hon. Gentleman identifies is an important element of the tax avoidance that has been happening in our country. The vast majority of people pay the correct level of tax, but there have been schemes, such as the disguised remuneration schemes to which he refers, through which essentially very little tax indeed has been paid. The Government believe that that is wrong and that we should act to clean up the arrangements. We have given individuals until April 2019 to do exactly that. On the support that he mentions, HMRC’s door is of course always open for individuals in that situation to have discussions. I would urge all those individuals to make contact with HMRC to find a sensible way forward.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Stephen Lloyd and Mel Stride

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 18th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

Conservative Members believe that it is better for commercial organisations to be left to run their own businesses. They tend to do it rather better than Ministers, dare I say—although I think I could be quite handy at running a bank or two; who knows?

The issue of bank closures is very important. We are working hard to reinvigorate our post offices and to ensure that the banking facilities that they provide—which are available, typically, to more than 90% of personal and business customers—are promoted in all the 11,500 branches in the United Kingdom.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

A constituent who came to my community surgery on Saturday made a simple suggestion that I thought might well work. Banks face structural challenges, and many are closing, especially in rural areas. Why do the Government not encourage three or four banks to work together to establish a single branch in an area where there are currently no branches? Such a collegiate approach would solve the banking problems of rural areas in particular.

[Mel Stride]

The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting idea, but I would argue that that is already effectively in practice in the form of the post office: post offices are able to deal with the customers of the major banks, to take cash, and to offer banking services—albeit not the full range, but certainly the most basic and most important to local communities—and, as I said earlier, there are more than 11,500 of them across the UK.