Finance (No. 2) Bill

Stephen McPartland Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 21st February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

Another very well-informed point from a colleague about the great progress that women are making in the workplace with the support of this Government.

The headline point that I was keen to make is that this Government have a track record in reducing inequality. I am keen to ensure that we base what we say on the track record—the track record of improving the lives of people on the lowest incomes and of reducing inequality.

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is about not just incomes, but equality of opportunity and aspiration?

[Helen Whately]

I agree. We should not just look at the outcomes. The outcomes are a desired end but, in order to get to a better outcome, the key is to give people opportunities to make the most of their lives. In particular, we should help those who have a difficult start, or who find themselves in a difficult situation. They may need extra help to access the opportunities but, absolutely, opportunity is the key.

Rather than painting a picture that can mislead people into believing this illusion of a perfect world, we need to base claims on substantial policies. I know that it is controversial, but universal credit is making a difference in my constituency for people who want to work and who want to work more hours. I have heard many criticisms of the policy, but genuinely it is making a difference and giving people the opportunity to increase the work that they do. Improvements in the standard of education and the opportunities coming through thanks to the industrial strategy—these are the concrete policies that will make life better for people. That is how we reduce inequalities and that is why I am delighted to support the Government throughout this Finance Bill.

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[Rachel Maclean]

It is clear that we all take this matter extremely seriously.

Earlier I intervened on the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), who spoke from the Opposition Front Bench. She said that the Government have no teeth to act when companies do not publish the data. It is my understanding that the Government do have teeth to act. We have something called the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which can act when companies fail to publish the data. I urge Treasury Ministers to pay close attention to that.

From the work I have done in the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, I am aware that a number of companies have published the data. That is great news because it is now in the public domain. The Conservative Government made that happen, not the Labour Government. Now many more companies are following suit, and it is making a big difference to the employees of those companies. The Equality and Human Rights Commission can issue a notice and require implementation. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham) said, this is a complex issue.

I draw Members’ attention to the work of the 30% Club, set up by Helen Morrissey, who got a load of business leaders together and urged them to take voluntary action to put women on boards. Although there was absolutely no legal right or Government mandate, she found that the business leaders were all worried about reputational damage, culture and their image with their employees, and she saw significant changes across the board. I was an employer before I came into this House, so I know that addressing the issue is not simply a matter of passing laws in the Chamber or the Government carrying out a review. It is about a societal and cultural change. I am proud that our Government, led by our Prime Minister—the second female Conservative Prime Minister—are leading from the front on this issue, and that companies and businesses across the board are following suit.

The Government’s record speaks for itself. It is not just about slogans. It is about enacting policies that make a big difference. I worry that requiring analyses and placing additional burdens on the Treasury at this time—when it has a massive amount of priorities to deliver in order to make our tax system fairer and to achieve the progress and outcomes that we all want—would have the opposite effect. I have certainly seen for myself the danger of unintended consequences when we regulate and put more burdens on businesses.

I do not support new clause 9 and will not vote for it if there is a Division.

[Stephen McPartland]

It is a great pleasure to be called in this debate and to follow such wonderful speeches from my colleagues. I understand that the Treasury publishes the distributional analysis of the cumulative impact of the Government’s tax, welfare and public services.

I have never been shy about voting with the Opposition if I believe that they are right, but I do not believe they are right in this case. That is because the review that they are asking for, which focuses predominantly on households with different income levels, and issues around Treasury analysis, just provides more data and more analysis, and that is not going to help people on the lowest incomes or those from disadvantaged backgrounds to move forward in life. It seems to be very academic as opposed to actually helping people to push forward and achieve opportunities. For me, the real challenge in this country is inequality in opportunity and in life chances. At the moment, the best way of changing one’s life chances is still through getting a great education. I am proud of the Government’s record, with millions more children being educated in good or outstanding schools. We should all be proud of that on both sides of the House.

As I say, I am not shy about voting with the Opposition if I believe they are right. I have campaigned on—

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that in Hertfordshire we have seen a lot of investment in the schools sector, which is helping to achieve the sort of results that he is talking about, with, for example, Highfield School in my constituency being completely rebuilt recently?

[Stephen McPartland]

I do agree with my right hon. and learned Friend. I have another colleague from Hertfordshire here as well—my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami). We have seen massive investment in our area. I am very proud of the number of primary schools that have been expanded and rebuilt in my constituency. A couple of secondary schools have also been rebuilt, creating great opportunities for the pupils. I am also very proud that all the primary schools in my constituency are rated “good” or “outstanding”. It is probably one of the few constituencies in the country where that is the case. Four of my six secondary schools are good, and the other two we are currently dealing with. I hope that by the time of the next election I will be one of the few Members of Parliament where every single child in my constituency will be in a good or outstanding school.

I do not believe that new clause 9 provides equality of opportunity and equality of aspiration. It will do nothing to help people in my constituency from disadvantaged—

[Stella Creasy]

We are all concerned to see good schools, I think. Does the hon. Gentleman recall a former Prime Minister who argued that sunlight was the best form of disinfectant? Having the numbers to track why, disproportionately, young men from black and ethnic minority backgrounds do worse in our schools, for example, and whether Government policies are influencing that, or whether their parents’ income might be an issue, would help him to understand how he gets those better schools.

[Stephen McPartland]

The hon. Lady and I agree on a lot of things and disagree on others. We have debated issues across this Chamber and in Committee Rooms. I do not think that figures will help those children. Figures are just retrospective and talk about what is possibly happening.

[Dawn Butler]

I want to clarify something. Equality impact assessment is part of the public sector equality duty. It looks at the implementation of policies, assesses them, and sees whether they have helped or hindered progress. That is all that equality impact assessment does. It is a good thing. It is not an extra burden; it makes for good decision making.

[Stephen McPartland]

My difference of opinion with the Opposition is that I think that a good teacher probably makes a much bigger difference to a child’s education and chances in life than an impact assessment and something from the Treasury. With regard to forecasts from the Treasury and economists, stuff that we have seen over the past couple of years, and the nearly eight years I have been a Member of Parliament, shows that in reality those figures never seem to be right.

This is about equality of opportunity and equality of aspiration. I would like to talk about universal credit. I campaigned on some of the issues on universal credit. I believe that universal credit, as a product, is the right thing to do. It was supported by both parties in the sense of stopping the cliff edge for people who could not take on an extra hour or two of work because they lost all their benefit. The idea behind universal credit was that the benefit would be reduced over a certain period. I know that there are still live issues with the Treasury over the size of the take. I hope that the Minister is taking note of that, because I continue to raise it with the Chancellor. I think that the withdrawal rate is still too high.

Universal credit is doing more than new clause 9 would do to help people’s life chances—more than a document saying what has happened and people’s opinions of what could or could not have hindered the situation.

[Dawn Butler]

It is good governance to have a look at the impact of one’s policies on society.

[Stephen McPartland]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point, but I cannot support the new clause because it will not do anything to help people practically. It will just allow academics and economists to argue over moot points, whereas I am interested in actually helping people from disadvantaged backgrounds who want the opportunity to go off and aspire to achieve and to be anything they want to be. It is very sad, in this day and age, that we are discussing the fact that we need to identify whether certain sections of society need more support than others. We should be aiming to get to a society—

[Anneliese Dodds]

Given that, for example, over 80% of the social security cuts enacted by Conservative Governments have fallen on the shoulders of women, would it not have been helpful for those women, and indeed for us as decision makers, to know about that before the decisions to implement them were taken?

[Stephen McPartland]

The hon. Lady makes a very earnest point, but I cannot accept those figures.

A huge amount of money has gone into social care. At the moment, there are people in my constituency on fixed and low incomes who are very disappointed about the 3% that is going to be levied on their council tax for social care, because that will have a negative impact on their income, although it helps other sections of society and is the right thing to do. This new clause is about academics and economists as opposed to helping real people on the ground on a day-to-day basis. Some Labour Members are shaking their heads, but they got involved in politics for the same reason that I did, which is to help people to get on in life and achieve the best that they can. That is why I am a Conservative and why most people in this Chamber are Conservatives.

Returning briefly to the welfare system, as that is my area of expertise, we want a system that works. When we look at universal credit, the Treasury’s distributional analysis provides an analysis of the cumulative impact on welfare and public services. My view is very much about developing policies to help people get on in life. New clause 9 is just about providing some information on what has affected people in the past over a number of years, and by the time we are focused on the next Budget or other fiscal event, things have moved forward again.

[Bim Afolami]

My hon. Friend is making, as I think everybody knows, a very powerful speech. Does he agree that new clause 9 is indicative of the fundamental difference between Labour Members and Conservative Members? We care about action and doing things and improving people’s lives; they want more analysis.

[Stephen McPartland]

My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. We can see why he was selected to be the Member of Parliament for Hitchin and Harpenden. He stands up for his constituency incredibly well, as does my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald). I am proud that we have three Hertfordshire MPs who are speaking in this debate because we are interested in helping people to get on in life. As a result, we have incredibly low unemployment in our areas.

[Dawn Butler]

The hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) is absolutely right: this new clause does highlight the difference between the Government and the Opposition. The Government are intent on taking actions, regardless of whether they help, hinder or hurt people, whereas Labour Members want to ensure that we have policies that help society.

[Stephen McPartland]

The hon. Lady makes a very powerful point that I respect, but I assure her that I only vote for policy that I believe will help people, and if I do not believe that it will help people, I do not vote for it. I have voted against the Government for that reason. I have a record of doing that and will continue to do so.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

I am sure my hon. Friend agrees, as many would, that the Treasury produces excellent research documents, and research is an important thing, but are these further demands for research not indicative of the difference between the parties, which is that they are the researchers, and we are the doers?

[Stephen McPartland]

I could never disagree with my right hon. and learned Friend. He always makes a powerful point.

One of the biggest challenges in society is intergenerational fairness. I do not think that new clause 9 captures some of the issues we face as a society and the challenges facing different generations. There are some people living in large houses, paying high council tax rates and on very low fixed incomes. There are young people who may be considered quite affluent but still cannot afford to purchase a property in their part of the country. In a different part of the country, they could easily afford to purchase a property but may not be able to get a job, so cannot get a mortgage. Intergenerational fairness is incredibly important, and the Government have tried to spread wealth throughout the country through the northern powerhouse.

I think that the Conservative Government have tried very hard. They have not always got it right, and I have voted against them when I believed they have got it wrong, but they have tried consistently to help people get on in life and provide a welfare system that is a safety net for those who need it in times of difficulty.

In this country, education is still the best way out of poverty and the best opportunity people have to change their life chances. I am proud of what the Government have done to ensure that millions more children are being taught in good and outstanding schools. When it comes to the economy, we have record rates of employment, with people out there earning, paying tax and contributing to society.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I have listened to him for some time. He seems to be making quite a lengthy speech; I do not know if that is just a thing that is happening on the Government Benches at the moment. He talks about equality and people getting on in life. I respect the fact that he has rebelled against the Government when he sees fit. He spoke about the importance of a good education and people coming out of school and university, but does he share my concern that under-25s are not included in the national living wage? What does he think about that?

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[Stephen McPartland]

From my point of view, there are geographic issues with the national living wage. For instance, it is much more expensive to live in Hertfordshire. One shocking challenge we have in Hertfordshire—I imagine a lot of people in the rest of the country will not understand—is that my constituency is 19 minutes from King’s Cross, and as a result, we lose a lot of our young people to London. When I became a Member of Parliament, there were fewer than 200 apprentices a year starting work in Stevenage. We now have nearly 1,000 apprentices a year starting work in Stevenage. That was the only way of holding on to our young people.

On new clause 9 and distributional analysis of the cumulative impact, if a young person in Stevenage becomes an apprentice, the employer pays for them to get a level 4 degree. They will be earning £25,000 a year and not getting into debt in university. It is geographic.

[David Linden]

I declare an interest: I began my career as a modern apprentice. The reality is that under UK law at the moment, apprentices can still be paid as little as £3.50 per hour. How does that fit with building a country that works for everyone?

[Stephen McPartland]

In Hertfordshire, £3.50 an hour would not be acceptable. In Hertfordshire, employers have to pay far more than that to attract a young person, otherwise they just will not get them. That is the reality. I think I have the highest unemployment rate in Hertfordshire, at 1.6%.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I think it is quite important that the hon. Gentleman returns to the substance of the debate—new clause 9. Just mentioning it every now and then does not do the trick.

[Stephen McPartland]

You are very kind, Madam Deputy Speaker. I obviously had no intention of misleading you in trying to mention it now and again. New clause 9 and the Treasury publishing a distributional analysis of the cumulative impact of Government’s tax, welfare and public service spending is quite a wide-ranging topic. I was trying to make the point that I do not support new clause 9 because it seems academic, as opposed to helping people from different backgrounds to achieve their life chances. On that note, I shall conclude.

[Wes Streeting]

The speeches from Conservative Members have been so rousing that I have been moved to speak to take on the sheer absurdity of the arguments we have heard this afternoon. Member after Member has told us that they oppose new clause 9 because the Government already do this. If the Government already do this, why do they not support new clause 9?

The fact is that the Government do not already do this. What the Government do is publish an impact assessment with a distributional analysis of Budget measures by households depending on income. That measure was introduced by a previous Chancellor, until the current Chancellor’s predecessor decided it was politically inconvenient and got rid of it. The present Chancellor, to his credit, decided to bring it back. That assessment is interesting and useful. It informs Ministers when they are making decisions, but it does not cover the measures that new clause 9 addresses.

The fact is that the Government’s Budget and the Finance Bill are a reflection of their political priorities and tell the country about the problems the Government want to address and how they intend to do so through sufficient provision of resources. The simple fact is that if the Government made an equality impact assessment of their Budget measures, we may not be in a position where women in their 50s are being clobbered by changes to their state pension age at a time in their life when they have little time or opportunity to address it.

As a result of the Government’s refusal to listen to argument, evidence and reason, I see constituents in my surgery on a Friday afternoon—women in their 50s—who tell me that they have lost their job and are not able to access their pension when they expected. They had planned for retirement, and as a result, they can no longer make ends meet. There is nothing they can do about it at that stage. Had the Government considered the evidence, they might have made a different decision.

Had the Government assessed the equality impact of their Budget, we might not be in a position where disabled people have been consistently and repeatedly clobbered by changes to welfare and other areas of public policy. If, as local authorities do, the Government looked at the equality impact of their decision, they might seek to take steps to mitigate the impact on disabled people. Instead, nationally and locally, disabled people have too often had the books balanced on their backs, which is totally unjustifiable.

If the Government looked at the impact of their Budget measures on black and minority ethnic people, they might well take a different approach to the provision of resources in education to address the imbalances. They might also find, through analysis and research—words that have become anathema to this Government in their approach to public policy making—some surprises, such as the fact that detrimental changes to small businesses have a disproportionate impact on BME communities. They may choose to do something about it, or they may not, but at least their policy making would be better informed.

In the debate on this Bill, someone has to stand up and make the case for reasoned, evidence-based public policy making. It is a total disgrace that in the democratic discourse of this country, we now see the trashing of experts. We are warned that if we adopt new clause 9, academics may debate it—God forbid that people with some degree of expertise should debate the laws that we pass, because goodness knows it does not happen in this Chamber often enough. What is it about expertise and data that the Government are so afraid of? What it is about information that they find so terrifying?

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I put the Minister on notice. It may be that that we cannot tear up the contracts, but a Labour Government would get those companies around the table and make sure that they paid their dues. We would make sure that the excessive profits are brought back, so that teachers in our constituencies do not have to fund raise to pay for books and pencils for students while the companies report millions, if not billions, of pounds of profit at our expense. George Bernard Shaw was right: sometimes political necessity becomes a political mistake. The necessity here, now, is to act, and I urge the Minister to listen.

[Stephen McPartland]

I will keep my comments focused on the bank levy, PFI and tax evasion. Results speak far more than rhetoric, and it is important to put on the record that in 2016-17, the banking sector paid £27.3 billion in taxes, which was up 58% from the £17.3 billion that it paid in 2009-10. I understand that under the current proposals, the bank surcharge is expected to raise an additional £1.8 billion for the Exchequer.

I would like to talk briefly about PFI. I have a lot of sympathy for the comments made by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), but a one-size-fits-all approach is not appropriate. I have a lot of experience of PFI. In 2012, I launched a campaign because the last Labour Health Secretary signed a PFI deal for the Surgicentre in Stevenage to be built and operated by Carillion. As a result of the deal, when the centre was fully operational, 8,500 records were lost, leading to damaged eyesight for a large number of patients, and three people died. It was a complete nightmare.

As a result, I ran a long, hard campaign and persuaded the Health Secretary in 2013 to nationalise the facility and return it to my local hospital trust. A Conservative Member of Parliament therefore had a piece of the NHS nationalised that had been privatised by the last Labour Health Secretary, so if there is a specific issue, local Members of Parliament can go in there and create a change. I took Carillion on in 2012 and I won. As a result, I then worked with the GMB union. We launched a campaign to stop blacklisting among construction workers and we won again. It is important that individual Members of Parliament identify problems with PFI in their areas, so we can then work on and tackle those problems as individuals.

Turning to tax evasion, it is very important for people to look at what they can do as individuals. Again, back in 2012—I was obviously incredibly active at the time—I launched a campaign on tax transparency, before it was fashionable. In association with Christian Aid, I wrote to all FTSE 100 chief executives to ask whether they would commit to greater tax transparency and help developing countries around the world. In the drive towards globalisation, the situation is incredibly difficult—it is almost a race to the bottom in some areas—with regard to what each country will offer to allow large multinationals to move around.

I published all those results in The Daily Telegraph and on a website. This was all before tax evasion and tax transparency became far more fashionable. The Government got involved and I am very pleased that as a result, £160 billion has been raised since 2010 in additional tax revenue, tackling avoidance, evasion and non-compliance. For me, that is an additional £160 billion that has been invested in my local and national health service, and in my hospital that has been rebuilt and paid for by the Government, not by outside organisations or PFI. That money is being invested in children’s futures in my constituency. Individual Members of Parliament have a great opportunity to go out and create change in their areas, if there are specific issues that they can tackle, and it is possible to win on those issues.

[Kirsty Blackman]

I think that I was as surprised as you were, Madam Deputy Speaker, by the brevity of the speech by the hon. Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland). I very much appreciate it—it is great. I was willing the hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) to keep going for an extra 30 seconds to hit the half-hour mark. He was close, but did not quite get there.

I want to talk specifically about the bank levy, tax avoidance and evasion, and, briefly, PFI. We will support the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). I will not expand on that because she covered the issue broadly. On the bank levy, the position in our 2017 manifesto was that we did not support the reductions in the bank levy; we supported the reversal of those reductions. What the Labour party has proposed is a good way to tackle this, given, as has been said in exchanges across the House, that there is not an amendment of the law resolution, nor are we able to move some of the more exciting, more interesting things that we would have liked to move. I hope that the next time there is a Finance Bill, the Government choose to do that, and if we end up with the Labour party in charge, I hope that it will make that change and ensure that an amendment of the law resolution comes through in any Budget process and Finance Bill. That is the only way in which we can have a reasonable level of discussion on this issue.