Oral Answers to Questions
Toby Perkins Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Philip Hammond
As I said in my recent spring statement, the Government remain committed to the northern powerhouse and to Northern Powerhouse Rail, and I am working on the TransPennine rail upgrade with my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
Mel Stride
It is largely companies that fall due to the loan charge, rather than individuals—of the 6,000 cases currently being settled, 85% by value relate to companies. HMRC has always been clear that appropriate payment arrangements will be in place to ensure that those outstanding amounts of tax, which after all have been avoided, aggressively and in a contrived way, can be settled sensibly.
Beer Taxation and Pubs
Toby Perkins Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Mike Wood
My right hon. Friend pre-empts the later part of my speech, and the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North is similarly indicating that she may just touch upon this topic later. Yes, the rise in the number and variety of smaller breweries, and particularly craft breweries, over the last decade and a half has been one of the key features of the sector. This is partly down to the success of the small brewer’s relief.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. He is absolutely right about rural pubs. However, the importance of the last pub on the council estates in many of our towns is often overlooked. The last pub has closed on many of those estates, and that has a huge impact on the facilities available for people to get together. Although I entirely support what he says about rural pubs, let us make sure that we do not forget the issue with regards to council estates.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Mr Perkins, if you want to speak, we are on a five-minute limit. I do not want to have to drop people down the list; I want everybody to have the same fair chance. If those who are speaking would take fewer interventions, it would help us all.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main), who called at the end of her speech for more to be done to support our pubs—the theme of this entire debate.
Pubs are absolutely crucial to our communities and certainly to my constituency. Chesterfield has 105 pubs, and 1,419 people there rely on beer and pubs for their employment. In Chesterfield alone, £15 million goes into the local economy through wages paid to people who work in our pubs. Alongside the economic value that pubs provide—we have talked about the huge tax contribution that they make—pubs also make an incredibly important social contribution. As we have heard from other hon. Members, when a pub closes on an estate there is no longer a focal point for the community.
What is the first thing that comes to mind when we think about soap operas? We think of The Rovers Return or the Queen Vic, which are the hub of their communities. When people visit our country, the first thing they want to do is visit the local and have a pint of British ale. We cannot overestimate the incredibly important role that pubs play in our social fabric.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is making a wonderful speech. In the market town of Otley in my constituency, there are two grade II listed pubs—the Black Bull Inn and The White Swan, operated by Star Pubs & Bars. It has ruined the heritage of those pubs. Does my hon. Friend agree that that goes against the heritage and tourism that we need to engender? Should we not have more local powers to ensure that that sort of thing cannot happen to grade II listed heritage pubs?
Toby Perkins
I certainly feel strongly that the owner or landlord of a pub is its custodian for the local community. Pubs valued by a community have often been lost as a result of the irresponsibility or inadequacy of the people who have run them. When pubs close, that has a huge impact on the local community. Sometimes, we have got too bogged down with the numbers; where pubs close is also important. We have heard about the importance of rural pubs, and I mentioned previously the importance of pubs on the local estate.
The Brampton Mile is a famous area in Chesterfield with 17 pubs within a single mile. Some have attempted to visit them all in a single night—I cannot entirely remember how it ended, but it started well. When a pub closes in an area with a huge number of pubs, the impact may not be the same, but when there is only one pub in an area, it is incredibly important, and we feel strongly about that. Some 243 people in Chesterfield signed the “Long Live the Local” petition.
Here in Parliament, we recognise how important pubs are. The hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) who started the debate, is chair of the all-party parliamentary beer group. I am chair of the all-party parliamentary pubs group. This year, we held the first ever parliamentary pub of the year competition. I was delighted that so many MPs entered. There was a fantastic array of entries. My own entry, the Chesterfield Arms in Chesterfield, was a finalist, but was ultimately defeated by the Four Elms pub in Cardiff, Central. It was an event in which we came together and celebrated the role that pubs play in our communities.
There are always claims that if the Government only taxed businesses less, the pubs would do better. As a former shadow Business Minister I recognise the extent to which such calls are heard. The Government were elected in 2015 on a manifesto that promised a fundamental review of business rates. I appreciate that that commitment disappeared from the 2017 manifesto, but the Government have not considered themselves to be held to many items in that manifesto. The system of business rates disincentivises investment, whether in pubs, manufacturing or retail. When people make their premises better they pay a higher tax bill, which flies in the face of the sort of investment that we all want to see. I would love the Government to put less focus on reducing corporation tax at the expense of business rates. Corporation tax is businesses paying tax on profits that they have made, whereas business rates are a tax on owning a property. At a time when pubs and so many retail units are closing, the taxation policy achieves the opposite of what the Government intend.
If I had more time, I would talk about the pubs code, and I look forward to the review that the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst), is undertaking. Pubs are crucial to our communities, and I am delighted that this debate has taken place. May we all continue to trumpet that crucial role.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Robert Jenrick)
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for securing this debate. As numerous Members have noted, it has felt rather like finding a good pub on a long walk when we are feeling weary and looking for a welcome break. The debate has been conducted in a very good-humoured manner throughout. I was first elected at the end of the coalition Government, and pubs was the only vote I believe that that Government lost in all those years, whereas today we are united on this topic but it is just all the other votes we seem to be losing.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) for sponsoring the debate. Like the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), he spoke about the Black Country’s long association with beer and brewing. I grew up in the shadow of Banks’s brewery in Wolverhampton and spent my teenage years, like the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), working in pubs that my hon. Friend’s constituents might drive out to Staffordshire and Shropshire to visit. I also thank the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) for her contribution; I have had a few drinks near her constituency in the Potteries, not least on the night I lost my first election in 2010. Given the scale of the result I probably should have drunk a pint from the Titanic Brewery.
But I do not want to be too negative about what we find today, because there are many great positives about beer and the brewing industry across the United Kingdom, many of which have been heard over the past couple of hours, not least the flowering of the British craft beer industry. That has brought fresh life to the market, creating a new generation of entrepreneurs, many of whom I know from my own constituency, a former brewing town, Newark-on-Trent, which has seen several new breweries created in recent years. This has given people across the length and breadth of the country unprecedented choice and, as we have heard, word has spread across the world and exports have risen very significantly.
Toby Perkins
The Minister is right that the small business brewing relief is an example of Government forgoing a bit of tax and a huge industry flowering on the back of that. Might he take note of that example for some of his other decisions?
Robert Jenrick
It certainly is, and I will talk shortly about the relief the hon. Gentleman mentions, which has played a significant part in that flowering and which I believe we can make better and fit for purpose for the future.
The value of beer exports has risen now to £500 million a year, and we heard earlier about the tremendous results also with respect to Scotch whisky and other spirits.
Small brewer’s relief gives the smallest brewers across the country a 50% reduction in duty and, as we have heard, it has helped fuel the explosion in the number of local breweries; we now have over 2,000 breweries across the country. At the autumn Budget we announced a review of this relief to give brewers the opportunity to share their thoughts on a relief that is now 17 years old and which has not been reviewed systematically over the course of that period. We have opened the review and had over 500 responses which we will carefully consider and report back on in due course.
Our motives at the Treasury have not been to extract more revenue from the sector, and certainly not to end the relief. However, for some of the reasons that the hon. Member for Keighley (John Grogan) and others mentioned, there is some evidence that although the relief has been hugely positive in some respects, it has limited the growth of some businesses that would like to expand and employ more people and that are concerned about the cliff edge that the relief creates. I hope that we will be able to work with breweries and organisations such as the Society of Independent Brewers to work through that and to do something positive for the industry.
With respect to beer duty, we have taken a number of steps over the past nine years to improve the situation in a country that has been widely acknowledged to have high levels of alcohol taxation. We removed the beer escalator, and we have either cut or frozen beer duty in six of the last seven fiscal events, so that the duty on a pint is lower now than it was in 2012. In real terms, this long-term and significant action by the Government has kept prices low for everyone, in contrast to the period from 1997 to 2010, during which beer duty increased by 60%. This was underlined at the most recent Budget with another freeze on beer duty, meaning that the price of a typical pint of beer is now 2p lower than if prices had risen with inflation. I appreciate that there is always more that we could do this respect.
We are also focusing on other alcohol, such as cider and spirits. My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant) talked about the importance of spirits to his constituency and to many others across Scotland. The hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) talked about their importance to the wider Scottish economy. She also asked me a question about post-duty point dilution. We have given this matter considerable thought for some time, and we announced at the Budget that we will be bringing this practice to an end from April 2020. She also asked, as did the hon. Member for Oxford East, about a wider review of alcohol duty more generally. This is a complex area, and there are clearly no easy answers. There are certainly few answers that are fiscally neutral and that would create no losers, which would be important to many who work or own businesses in the sector. It is perhaps premature to conduct a review at this moment, because the greatest flexibility will be available to us after we leave the European Union. A future Chancellor might then have the choice to take action.
We heard from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) about responsible drinking, and they asked whether we could lower the duty on low-alcohol beers. We are somewhat constrained in that respect by EU law. The EU alcohol structures directive sets the maximum threshold for reduced duty on low-alcohol beer at 2.8%. Her Majesty’s Government charge a reduced duty of 6p a pint on beers with a strength between 1.2% and 2.8%. Until we leave the EU, we cannot raise the threshold for low-alcohol beer above 2.8%, but this is something that we will work on with our partners across Europe, and we could have further flexibility in the years ahead. The Government have taken action in some specific circumstances—with respect to white cider, for example—and our approach is that we will continue to take action as necessary where there is clear evidence that certain alcohol duty rates are causing difficulties for society.
We have heard a great deal about pubs, which are, as we heard from numerous colleagues, the bedrock of many rural and urban communities. As the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) rightly highlighted, they boost the economy, create jobs and, crucially, act as hubs for our communities. We have heard about their importance in tackling loneliness, and about the issues for older people, whether older gentlemen or others. They are great places for people to work and start their careers in. The pub industry currently employs about 450,000 people, many of whom are younger people, as has been said.
Draft Merchant Shipping (Marine Equipment) (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019
Toby Perkins Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Ms Ghani
As has been noted, the regulations will ensure continuity on EU exit for UK conformity assessment bodies and manufacturers wishing to gain access to the UK market. They make no changes to how conformity assessment bodies conduct conformity assessment activities or to the underpinning standards that marine equipment must meet before it is accepted on the UK market or placed on board UK ships. Therefore, the assumption that standards are somehow being lowered is incorrect. The standards will continue to be kept as we leave the EU.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I am grateful for the Minister’s reassurance. As regulations change in the EU after we have left, will we keep pace with those regulations or will we have to change our regulations off our own bat, alongside whatever the EU does?
Ms Ghani
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. He will know that it is not just the EU that guides maritime. Maritime is a global sector, and the IMO, which has the highest standards, is just across the river from us. We are part of the high ambition coalition, so as a country we are a driving force on maritime regulations and standards. Given that we lead that group and are trying to bring the rest of the world up to our high standards, it would not make sense at any point to lower standards.
In response to another point about the reduction in standards, I mentioned in my opening statement that the regulations retain the existing international standards that apply to marine equipment. They in no way undermine, devalue or reduce standards, and I find it peculiar that the hon. Member for Huddersfield, who made a number of interventions, assumes that the act of Brexit alone will create a dire situation on our waters. I think he should come to terms with what we are trying to do.
HMRC Estate Transformation
Toby Perkins Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Mel Stride
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to be as passionate as she is about protecting the existing workforce and making sure that we do not lose the workforce’s vital skills. That is why we have taken this approach. We are ensuring that the new locations are viable for those from the old. For example, we are assisting those who need to travel by meeting some of their travel costs over three to five years. We very much want to keep the high level of skills in the organisation.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
Businesses in Chesterfield that I have spoken to that have had cause to query HMRC judgments have found the organisation monolithic and unresponsive to their queries. Does the Minister have any assessment of how many successful businesses go bankrupt or have a huge financial deficit as a result of a lack of experience in HMRC, and what will he do about that?
Mel Stride
If we look at all the metrics, we can see that HMRC is doing extremely well on customer service at the moment, including time taken to answer telephone calls. There is always more to do, and we will continue to work at this, but it has a good record to date.
Points of Order
Toby Perkins Excerpts(6 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. The only thing I would say to the Chancellor is why doesn’t he answer the question? It is pretty clear that he knows the Tory county council has played a blinder by throwing people out of work. That tells you a lot about this economy.
Mr Speaker
I am sure it is a genuine point of order, not one of frustration or a Treasury question that was not asked. We look forward to hearing the hon. Gentleman.
Toby Perkins
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I wanted to clarify and correct the record in relation to something I said yesterday. The House will have heard me ask the Education Secretary about Brookfield Community School in Chesterfield, an outstanding local authority school that was forced into being an academy. I said yesterday that it now required improvement and that the governing body was being replaced. I have subsequently been told that I misinformed the House: the school has actually been rated as inadequate, with serious failings. So I wanted to make the House aware, at the earliest possible opportunity, that things are even worse under the Tories’ education policy.
Mr Speaker
That is notably candid of the hon. Gentleman. It is certainly not, it has to be admitted, an expression of frustration. He has put his point on the record and I thank him for doing so.
Oral Answers to Questions
Toby Perkins Excerpts(6 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Philip Hammond
In 2010, the Government inherited the largest Budget deficit since the second world war, at 9.9% of GDP. Our balanced approach to fiscal policy means that we have significantly reduced the deficit by over four fifths, to 1.9% of GDP last year. That has had benefits for all our constituencies, as the economy has continued to grow. My hon. Friend’s constituents will have seen that benefit: in the north-west, more than 268,000 more people are in employment over that period, and there are 93,000 more businesses.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
Elizabeth Truss
When the Conservatives came into government in 2010, the vast majority of money spent locally was raised centrally, damaging accountability. We have now switched that around, and more money—the vast majority of it—is being raised locally. Of course, we have recently given councils more power to raise council tax, to meet growing demand in areas such as social care and children’s services, and we will continue to look at that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Toby Perkins Excerpts(6 years, 11 months ago)
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Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
John Glen
I am familiar with the hon. Gentleman’s situation and his correspondence with the Financial Conduct Authority. I believe that he has met FCA representatives. The FCA has strong powers to ban products. It has unlimited fines at its disposal and it can order repayments. As the hon. Gentleman knows, 51% of applicants for loans will receive the advertised rate, and those are the terms that the FCA works to.
Business of the House
Toby Perkins Excerpts(6 years, 11 months ago)
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Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
The Government’s welcome review of fixed-odds betting terminals will enable them to change the stakes and many other aspects of FOBT policy without the need for primary legislation. That is welcome, as we do not want the changes to be delayed any further, but it will leave a democratic deficit. Will the Government allow a debate in Government time on the issues relating to FOBTs so that we can ensure that this crucial issue is properly debated?
Paul Maynard
We have already had several debates in the House on FOBTs, which I know from my casework are an important issue in my constituency. I urge the hon. Gentleman to apply for all sorts of debates so that we can keep exploring the issue further. An announcement is coming in due course; perhaps his work will hasten its arrival.
Taxation: Beer and Pubs
Toby Perkins Excerpts(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) on securing this incredibly important debate and the vigour with which he is going about his role as chair of the all-party parliamentary beer group. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on pubs, I also feel very strongly about the issues that have been raised.
I am not going to repeat all the statistics that the hon. Gentleman laid out. We have already heard many of the financial arguments as to why pubs matter, but the community point is also important. I support the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) about the importance of inner-city pubs. We are seeing so many of them close. We often think about village pubs, but too little is said about those pubs in our communities and on our estates that have really struggled.
It is definitely the case that the pub is the safest place to drink, because there are other things to do there, people do not drink as fast, they have other people around and it is a much more self-regulating environment. That was brought home to me strongly at a meeting I had with a publican who runs the Harley’s bar in Staveley in my constituency. One of his customers had been a regular attender, but stopped going. The publican met him outside the pub as the man was coming back from Morrison’s with bottles of whisky in his bag, and asked him why he was not coming into the pub any more. The man said, “I can’t afford to come in the pub any more.” The publican said that within six months the guy had drunk himself to death, because all those regulating forces were no longer there. The story that we need to get out there is that the pub is by far the safest place for us to drink.
The point about pubs being a big employer of both the young and women has been well made, as has the point about the importance of the pub for tax revenues. I welcome the fact that the campaigning of a wide range of groups finally persuaded the Chancellor to end the beer duty escalator and to cut beer duty between 2013 and 2015. I take issue slightly with what the hon. Member for Dudley South said, because this is a story that I like to tell. The truth of the matter is that the Chancellor who raised most through the beer duty escalator was not Ed Balls but George Osborne. George Osborne took the escalator that Ed Balls had introduced in 2008 and 2009 and escalated it again in 2010, again in 2011 and again in 2012. I support the fact that he ultimately got rid of it, but he milked that cow just as much as Ed Balls did—let us not be in any doubt about that. There was also the big increase in VAT, which has a big impact on our tourism businesses.
The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero), and repeated by the hon. Gentleman, about the importance of small breweries’ relief is incredibly important. I really support the fact that the Government have kept that relief.
Albert Owen (in the Chair)
Order. We now resume the debate. Mr Perkins has 41 seconds left, but I will be generous and give him a minute to gather his thoughts. Mrs Anne Main will follow and will have four minutes.
Toby Perkins
I will finish with this. We have spoken a lot about beer duty and VAT, but it is crucial that the issue of business rates is addressed in the Budget. Every member of the Conservative party who stood in the 2015 election stood on a manifesto of a comprehensive review of business rates. That seemed to disappear from the 2017 manifesto, but the issue of business rates is crucial. We have the most expensive corporate property tax in all of Europe, and no Government who theoretically profess to be a low-tax Government can continue to see business rates going up in the way that they have. I urge the Government to get away from an over-reliance on business rates at the expense of corporation tax cuts and bring down business rates for our pubs instead.
John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)
I think that the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) has tempted many of us to renew our acquaintance with pubs in the borders. It is a particular pleasure to take part in the debate, as it was secured by a true champion of the pub—the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood).
Having retired in 2010 from chairmanship of the all-party group on beer and from Parliament, I might have thought that my days of speaking in such debates were long gone; so I am delighted to say a few words today. In those days I represented the constituency of Selby, which included Tadcaster—still the only town in England that can boast three major brewers. In Keighley, which I now represent, there is one major brewer—Timothy Taylor’s, which dates back to 1858. It is a byword for quality in the beer industry, with brewers who trained at that icon of higher education in brewing, Heriot- Watt University—perhaps the leading university in the field. There was a minor hiccup in relations between Timothy Taylor’s and the all-party group when I voted—it seems so long ago—to ban fox hunting. The then managing director, Charles Dent, promptly resigned his involvement with the group. I can assure the House that this summer in typical Yorkshire fashion, over a pint at Headingley, we let bygones be bygones. I am very much in dialogue with Timothy Taylor’s. There are also breweries such as Wharfedale, Bridgehouse, Wishbone, Haworth steam brewery, Ilkley and, just outside the constituency, Goose Eye.
There has been a lot of talk about statistics; I want to underline just two. One in seven of all the jobs created since 2010 have been in this sector. What has not so far been expressed is how quickly people can rise up this industry; it is, if not unique, then certainly renowned for that. Some £1 billion from Yorkshire goes in taxation from the pubs and brewing industry to the Exchequer—about the same amount that goes from Northern Ireland, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said. If only we had a Yorkshire Mayor spending that money! We truly would have devolution.
I want to make four quick points. We should encourage beer exports, and there has been quite a movement towards that from the industry. Some have suggested that export sales should be excluded from the brewers’ volume for duty purposes, as a way of encouraging exports. That should be considered.
The hon. Member for Dudley South was right that under the Labour Government and under the coalition, the beer duty escalator did a great deal of harm. It is good to see the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) in his place, because he achieved what I certainly did not, and I hope that future chairs of the all-party beer group will achieve similar things. He got rid of the beer duty escalator. This is a crucial year for the reputation of the Conservative party and its relationship to the beer industry. Will those three years be known as the Burton interregnum or will we have not just beer duty relief, but rate relief? We clearly need an extension of £1,000 to £5,000 on rate relief this year.
Turning to small breweries’ duty relief, Gordon Brown has been agonising in recent days about his lack of empathy. Whatever the truth of that, he will always be known as the friend of small brewers—it is one of his great legacies—because of that massive change to our economy. At some stage, we will have to look at whether that can be extended. Many family brewers are losing out. They feel that they do not have the advantage of the duty rate relief and do not have the economies of scale that big brewers have.
Toby Perkins
And because my hon. Friend wants to hear what I have to say, I am sure. On the important point about the relief for small breweries, does he agree that although the policy is excellent, its impact sometimes means that brewers cannot grow any more as they will no longer come under it? Perhaps some kind of tapering to allow brewers to go from small to big would be helpful.
Albert Owen (in the Chair)
The hon. Gentleman does not have to take the full minute.
Oral Answers to Questions
Toby Perkins Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Hammond
Yes. The UK oil and gas sector has made a huge contribution to the UK economy, having paid over £330 billion in total in production taxes to date, and supporting over 300,000 jobs. In the next phase of the life of the North sea basin, as many fields come towards the end of their life, we are working with the industry to ensure that we extract every drop of oil and gas that it is economic to extract, that we enable decommissioning, and enable end-of-life fields to be operated in the most effective way.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
17. Much of the growth is due to the fact that we are spending more on imports, due to the low cost of the pound. The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal that our trade in goods deficit has risen by £2.6 billion over the past quarter and now stands at a staggering £34.4 billion. Does not the extra cost of imports have an impact on the cost of our exports and affect our productivity?