Wine Duty

Debate between Stephen McPartland and Will Quince

Tuesday 5th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered wine duty.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Henderson. I am pleased to have secured this important debate the day before my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer delivers the Budget statement to the House. I am grateful to the Minister for responding. I know he will take very seriously the points I will make further to our correspondence on this issue. I would also like to thank the unusually great number of right hon. and hon. Members present for supporting this 30-minute Westminster Hall debate. I hope the Minister has noticed the strength of feeling on this important subject.

I applied for this debate as a result of meeting the chief executive officer of Majestic Wine, which is the UK’s largest specialist wine retailer, with more than 200 stores across the UK, including a large store in my constituency. They raised a number of concerns relating to wine duty that I felt were important for the House to hear and reflect on. The UK is a major global hub for wine and spirits. It is the world’s second largest importer of wine by volume and value, and the largest exporter of spirits. It supports over 390,000 jobs, £69 billion in economy activity and £8.6 billion in excise duty revenue.

Like all businesses, those across the wine supply chain have had to confront some tough trading conditions over recent years, but a number of the challenges they face are unique to the wine and spirit trade, and these were brought to my attention by Majestic. The challenges faced by Majestic and other similar businesses stem primarily from the new alcohol excise system, which was introduced last year. In particular I am referring to the impact of the historic duty increases and the changes to the way wine duty is calculated. The introduction of the new duty regime last August followed a review of the inherited EU duty rules. When the review was announced, it was welcomed across the drinks industry, which backed wholeheartedly the aims of the review, which were to make the new duty system fairer, simpler, less distortive and easier to administer.

Sadly, particularly for wine and spirit businesses, the new regime is not fairer. In fact, in many ways it has reinforced the existing market distortions. For wine businesses, the new system is anything but simpler to administer—in fact, it is exactly the opposite. The new system that was introduced on 1 August 2023 levies excise duty on all alcoholic products according to strength, but at different rates. This reinforces pre-existing market distortions by continuing to tax wine and spirits more harshly than other categories of alcoholic drink.

When introducing the new system, the Government recognised the impact it would have on wine businesses and rightly put in place a temporary easement mechanism that pegged the amount payable for wines in the range of 11.5% to 14.5% at the amount payable on a wine of 12.5% alcohol by volume. That amount is currently £2.67 per bottle. Wines falling within this easement mechanism account for 85% of the wine sold in the UK market. That is 1.1 million out of 1.3 million bottles sold. This easement is set to end on 1 February 2025.

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. I represent the Wine Society, which is headquartered in Stevenage and is a large organisation struggling under this pressure. It will cost it £300,000 to £400,000 to upgrade its systems. It is being asked to price wine before the level of alcohol is known, as wine is an agricultural product, and it is having to re-evaluate the range of wines it is able to output, which is having a knock-on effect on the supply chain. Does my hon. Friend agree that this seems to be a difficult case of unintended consequences, and if the easement he refers to were to be made permanent rather than temporary, it could solve the problem?

[Will Quince]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention. He is right to champion the cause of the Wine Society, which is based in his constituency. There is both a significant cost implication and an administrative burden for such organisations, so the impact of these changes should not be understated.

The easement that is set to end on 1 February 2025 will affect wine businesses ranging from major retailers such as the big supermarkets to specialist retailers such as Majestic. However, as my right hon. Friend has just alluded to, there are also thousands of independent wine merchants who have all said that having to implement fully the strength-based system would impose significant costs, running to many millions of pounds, both in the short term and once the necessary systems are established.

Universal Credit: Delayed Roll-Out

Debate between Stephen McPartland and Will Quince

Tuesday 4th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

The hon. Lady says that I should be embarrassed. I will never be embarrassed about putting the most vulnerable and disadvantaged people in our society first, and neither will the Government. She talked about cost. As I have said, this is up to £500 million of additional money that will go into the pockets of our claimants. When she referred to the pilot, she was conflating two very separate issues. She also said that people were scared. Perhaps if members of the Labour party desisted from their scaremongering and spent more time in our jobcentres speaking to work coaches, they would have a better understanding of universal credit and how well it is working.

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

I am certainly no fan of the Department for Work and Pensions and its campaign to improve universal credit, but I do know that this Minister cares about making universal credit work, and this Minister has my full backing to make it work—and I have worked with many Ministers over the last 10 years. Will he tell me clearly, however, whether my constituents will be better off or worse off because of the way in which the migration works?

[Will Quince]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for his kind words. The answer is a categorical yes: his constituents will be better off. Under our forecasting, around 900,000 people will now be eligible for transitional protection, and as a result they will be better off.

Tourism: East of England

Debate between Stephen McPartland and Will Quince

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Will Quince]

Although my speech is somewhat Colchester-centric, of course I would advise anybody coming to sample our heritage and tourist attractions, who choose to base themselves in Colchester for all sorts of reasons, to use it as a base to go and experience other places with considerably wealthy heritage and tourist attractions. Ipswich is one of those, just a bit further up the A12.

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

Stevenage is also in the east of England. It is a little further up the A1(M) and also on the east coast main line. We also have wonderful culture and heritage, despite being the first new town. Rooks Nest is the basis of E. M. Forster’s novel, “Howard’s End”. We also have Knebworth House, which has a great history. There is lots of culture around the whole of the east of England.

[Will Quince]

I used to live in my hon. Friend’s constituency, so I have sampled a number of the tourist attractions with my wife, and I hope to do so again. Knebworth House hosts a number of festivals throughout the year and is a popular attraction. Clearly, we are building on fertile ground when investing in the east of England, and Colchester in particular.

Delay Repay: Great Eastern Main Line

Debate between Stephen McPartland and Will Quince

Wednesday 30th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Fares are an interesting point. Of course everyone would like to see rail fares come down, but most people say that they want their fare to represent better value for money. We are fortunate that we are getting a brand new fleet of trains, at a cost of some £1.4 billion, but to set that in context, we have waited in some cases 40 years for it. Some of our rolling stock is decades old—in fact, I think some of it even breaches standards in 2019, so it needs to be replaced in any event.

I think the public are clear about what they want: punctual services. In the unfortunate event that that is not possible, adequate compensation for the delay must be available. I would be the first to argue that we should focus our efforts on improving the reliability of the service. Rail users would rather not face delays than receive compensation.

I have raised this issue numerous times with Greater Anglia, which has assured me and colleagues that it is investing more than £20 million in improving the performance of its existing trains. As I mentioned, it is also engaged in a £1.4 billion investment programme over the next two years to replace its current models with new trains, the first of which are due to enter service on the line this year. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), that will increase capacity on our line, with 1,043 carriages available compared with 937 at the moment. That is good news. It is long overdue—sadly, like some of the trains leaving Colchester—but I welcome these announcements.

We must not forget Network Rail, as most of the delays on our line fall under its remit. Members of Parliament from across our region, ably led by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), have called for repair and renewal work on our line as part of the great eastern main line taskforce. We have helped to secure £2 billion as a funding settlement for our line, and we will start to see the benefits of these works in reduced delays and disruption.

I wish to touch on the sensitive and incredibly sad issue of suicide, as I know that fatalities on the line are often the cause of the longest delays. I want to reassure rail users that Members of Parliament from across this House on our line have been working closely with Greater Anglia, Network Rail and the Department to do all we can to put measures in place to try to reduce and minimise the number of people who are, tragically, taking their own lives on our lines.

I hope I have set out why there are good reasons for optimism. I appreciate that I was relatively disparaging about our rail service to start with, but a lot of constituents would feel exactly the same.

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

Although we are in the same region, I have a different rail line, with a huge variety of rail providers involved on that line. We have had a 100% increase in capacity, lots more seats, a huge range of wi-fi on some of the trains, yet passengers remain frustrated about value for money and the challenges on punctuality. How does my hon. Friend feel we can tackle that value for money problem?

[Will Quince]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I used to live in his constituency, so I know that rail line well. I understand that the trains have improved somewhat since I lived there. When we ask rail users what they want, most of them say that they want reliability, a punctual service, a plug socket and to be able to get a seat. Ideally, they would also like wi-fi. So speed is important, but it is usually a factor that is further down the list. Those are basically the core component of what people want and expect in terms of value for money, and I hope the Minister will address that in a little more detail.

As I said, I hope I have set out why there are good reasons for optimism about the great eastern main line. We have an entire new fleet of trains coming, with a significant investment in rail infrastructure, which should lead to a reduction in disruption and delays. However, that cannot and must not be used as an argument against the rapid introduction of Delay Repay 15 on the great eastern main line.

On 13 October, we had some welcome news from the Department, as the Secretary of State announced an improved compensation scheme—Delay Repay 15. Under this scheme, passengers are able to claim 25% of the cost of a single fare tickets for delays of between 15 and 29 minutes. The scheme would go a long way towards incentivising improved efficiencies in the franchise and compensating commuters for the inconvenience suffered as a result of delayed services. Delay Repay 15 has already been rolled out on Thameslink, Southern and the Great Northern franchises, but not on the great eastern main line under Greater Anglia.

As I know from my own train journeys between Colchester and Liverpool Street, the smallest delay to a daily commute can cause, over time, significant disruption to our professional lives, especially in the mornings, and significance inconveniences to our private lives in the evening—it can make the difference between being able to tuck one’s kids into bed at night or not. We should not underestimate the importance of that. Ultimately, like most of my fellow rail users, I would rather the reliability of the service be vastly improved first, but I know that my constituents would also welcome the introduction of improved compensation rights.

Knife Crime (Sentencing)

Debate between Stephen McPartland and Will Quince

Wednesday 4th May 2016 Westminster Hall

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered sentencing for knife crime.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), for being here to respond on behalf of the Government.

In this House we are all deeply concerned about rising levels of knife crime. When I was elected in May last year, I pledged to my constituents that I would do all I could to address the scourge of knife crime. Why? Because Colchester has seen too many young lives destroyed by crimes involving weapons. Many in this House will be aware of the tragic murders of James Attfield and Nahid Almanea, both of whom lost their life far too early. Two weeks ago an individual was convicted of their murders, and he has been sentenced to 27 years.

Too many people, particularly our young people, still find it acceptable to carry blades and knives. They wrongly believe that doing so will keep them safe, but let us be clear that carrying a knife does not keep people safe; it is illegal and it puts them and others in grave danger.

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing such an important debate. Does he agree that education is a huge part of addressing the knife crime problem? Many young people consider themselves to be safe when carrying a knife. I am the chairman of the all-party child and youth crime group, and we have done work demonstrating that a lot of the knives are taken off those children and used against them.

[Will Quince]

My hon. Friend is right that education plays a key role, and I will return to that later in my speech. We have to get the message out loud and clear that, statistically, people are far more likely to be the victim of a knife crime if they are carrying a knife themselves.

What is troubling about the case involving James Attfield and Nahid Almanea is not just that the perpetrator was only 15 at the time of the murders but that, on 26 March 2014, he was in court being given a youth referral order for criminal damage and robbery at knifepoint. Seventy-two hours later, he stabbed James Attfield 102 times. Three months later, he brutally murdered Nahid Almanea with a knife.

I understand that, under our legal system, judges decide the appropriate action in each case, taking into account a number of different factors, including the facts of the case, the age of the offender, the maximum penalty and any sentencing guidelines.