National Insurance Contributions (Termination Awards and Sporting Testimonials) Bill (First sitting)

Thelma Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Laura Smith]

Q So we can get some of that information from you. Brilliant, thank you.

Simon Smith: Yes. I think it is publicly available. There is a full list of the respondents to the consultation on termination payments at the back of the consultation document.

[Thelma Walker (Colne Valley) (Lab)]

Q It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms McDonagh. There is concern among trade unions that this means downward pressure on the amount received by people losing their jobs, who are, by definition, in a time of need. What are your comments on that?

Robert Jenrick: I tried to answer that earlier. We all understand that, regardless of income, losing your job is a very difficult period in your life. People of all income levels can live to their income and have commitments and so on. I do not for one moment underestimate the difficulty that that situation presents to individuals and their families. However, this measure is targeted at higher earners. We have the £30,000 threshold, which takes out the majority of termination payments. Around 20% of those individuals receiving a termination payment will be affected by this, so 80% will not be affected.

Those who are affected will be individuals in the higher income brackets, as we said earlier—those in the top two or three income deciles. They will be higher rate or additional rate taxpayers. I do not diminish the fact that for higher rate taxpayers, losing your job is a very difficult period in your life which puts all manner of pressures on you and your family. It is worth noting, at least, that this is a measure that is unlikely to impact those on lower incomes.

[Thelma Walker]

Q And there are conversations to be had with the trade unions about this.

Robert Jenrick: As I said, we have consulted on this and I believe that they took part. They have had an opportunity to have their views known and listened to by the Treasury, as have business groups.

[Kirsty Blackman]

Q Moving on to sporting testimonials, I am not somebody who goes to a huge number of live sports matches of any kind. How much do people generally pay for a ticket to a sporting testimonial?

Robert Jenrick: There is no easy answer. There is immense variation in events; they vary from a sporting testimonial at Wembley stadium for a premiership footballer to ones at my local football club in Newark for a player who has retired after a 10-year career. You see a complete range of prices for sporting events. We have evidence on the amount raised by the average sporting testimonial that is affected by the Bill from a piece of work that HMRC and the Treasury did in 2013. I believe it was £72,000. Obviously, many much smaller testimonials go below that, such as the one I have just described in the small club in my constituency. Finding the evidence on more substantial testimonials is not easy, because there is no central point of collection for it, but after doing a trawl for evidence in the public domain, we came to the conclusion that the amount is about £72,000 a year. As you will probably have seen, there is a threshold in the Bill of £100,000, so the vast majority of sporting testimonials will not be caught by this measure.