Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stephen Timms and Matt Hancock

Thursday 5th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

T6. Work programme providers say that their participants can hardly ever get on to an apprenticeship, and that surely cannot be right. It may partly explain why the Work programme has been so disappointing. Does the Minister agree that more should be done to open up apprenticeships to unemployed people?

[Matthew Hancock]

A huge proportion of apprenticeships are undertaken by people who were previously unemployed. Of course, every apprenticeship is a job, and in order to get a job someone needs to have an employer willing to take them on. There are many other schemes, such as the traineeships, that Work programme providers work with in order to prepare people for getting a job. Ultimately, an apprenticeship is a job and is therefore a successful outcome for a Work programme person.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stephen Timms and Matt Hancock

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

I do agree. I have already heard of the work that my hon. Friend has been doing in supporting Truro and Penwith college and Cornwall college. Improving our nation’s skills is vital for our economic prospects, but learning has intrinsic value in its own right. Henry Ford said:

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays young”,

so I hope that I have discovered the secret of eternal youth.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Community learning flourished under the previous Government and is at risk under this one. In warmly welcoming the new Minister to his role and congratulating him, may I ask him to look at my recent letter to his predecessor about LymeNet community learning centre in Lyme Regis, which was set up in 1999? I saw its great work on visiting the Axminster Methodist church job club over the summer. Rural areas cannot afford the loss of community learning that is now on the cards.

[Matthew Hancock]

I look forward to reading that letter, but I would say this: the budget for community learning has been protected in difficult fiscal times, and that shows the Government’s intentions in this area.

Finance Bill

Debate between Stephen Timms and Matt Hancock

Monday 12th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms]

No, we were successful in maintaining a competitive business tax system in the UK. It is true, of course, that if a company goes to Ireland, it will pay a much lower rate of corporation than it would in the UK, but that rate of corporation tax in Ireland is lower than in any G7 country. Our commitment was to keep the UK’s corporation tax rate the lowest in the G7, and that is what we successfully did. It was important that we did so.

There is debate about whether the £40 billion figure is correct. I believe that HMRC did a serious and careful analysis. I also think there should be more discussion with people such as Richard Murphy. I believe his figure for the tax gap on corporation tax was about £12 billion—not vastly more than the £9 billion or so in the HMRC figure. Richard Murphy also makes the point that there is uncertainty—perhaps more uncertainty—about that figure than some of the others that he estimates. Continuing discussion between people such as the tax justice campaign and HMRC is important so that we make these figures as accurate as possible. I very much hope that the Minister will confirm that it is his intention regularly to update the analysis that has been published, to be frank and robust in publication and to discuss the issues with the tax justice campaign, which takes a different view, and the TUC, which has also taken a close interest. Ultimately, it is in everyone’s interest to have the best possible information available. I hope that the Minister will reassure us on that.

[Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman has just admitted that since 1997, in respect of avoidance or evasion of corporation tax, the tax gap was reduced by only £3 billion. Does he not agree, then, that it is wrong to go around the country telling people that the entire deficit could be dealt with if we just got to grips with this one issue? It is, of course, important to get to grips with it, but it will not on its own resolve the deficit. Is it not wrong to tell people that it could?

[Stephen Timms]

I am sorry if I misled the hon. Gentleman into thinking that the figure was reduced by only £3 billion as result of the previous Government’s efforts. I did not say that at all. I would be happy to go through in more detail the efforts of the previous Government on this issue, but the crucial initiative was the disclosure regime, which we introduced in 2004 to great howls of protest, yet it has undoubtedly saved many billions in tax that would otherwise not have been collected. The total figure is certainly a great deal more than £3 billion. As to whether addressing this problem could be the sole solution to the problem of the deficit, however, I agree that it could not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Hancock]

The right hon. Gentleman may have misheard my earlier comment. Can he be surprised about the Chancellor’s comments when page 101 of the Red Book states that the bank levy raises £2.5 billion and the corporation tax cut in 2013-14 will cost £700 million? It is therefore no surprise that the bank levy raises more than the cut in corporation tax to the banks. That is precisely the point that I made earlier.

[Stephen Timms]

I am not sure about the figure of £700 million. I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not telling us that the reduction in corporation tax will decrease that tax take by £700 million. That is incorrect—perhaps he was citing a partial figure. However, that is why we need a report. I would genuinely like to know the impact specifically on the banking sector of a four percentage point reduction—it was not long ago that the banks accounted for a quarter of all the corporation tax receipts that the Exchequer collected—compared with the £2 billion cost of the levy.