Budget Resolutions

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Over the weekend, I got chatting to a shop assistant. She had a cough, so I asked whether she was able to stay at home until she felt better. She said no, because if she did not come in, her shifts would be cut, and if her shifts were cut, she would not be able to pay her rent. That is happening to working people all over the country and, as we stand on the precipice of a crisis unlike anything that has happened in my life, we needed a Budget that rose to the challenge, one that protected the working class from the worst effects of the coronavirus outbreak.

But the Budget does not do that. It does not even undo the damage of the past 10 years, during which the Conservative party has systematically weakened our defences, run down our public services, pushed down the most vulnerable and cut down the power of working people, leaving millions insecure and on the edge. Now, the NHS is on its knees. Doctors and nurses are already pushed to the limit. The social security system is already broken. As this crisis makes social care more urgent than ever, the Budget ignored it. The elderly, the sick and disabled are being abandoned.

This crisis exposes the worst features of our rotten system: price gougers exploit it to make fortunes at our expense; private hospitals charge the Government millions for the NHS to use their beds; workers face mass layoffs; and insecure jobs force people to work, even when they are ill. Let us be clear: a market approach to the outbreak will condemn working-class people to decimation.

It is not found in this Budget, but there is an alternative, and it can be seen in the example of Denmark, where the Government have negotiated a deal between trade unions and employers to protect wages and prevent lay-offs. That alternative approaches the crisis with solidarity, equality and a belief in collective action. It confronts the challenges that we face together, with a plan that puts people before profit and public health before private property.

This is what we could do: guarantee economic security for everyone; give statutory sick pay to all workers at a decent rate, so that no one has to choose between health and hardship; suspend rent, mortgage and utility payments, so that no one is evicted, has their home repossessed or has their services cut just because they are sick; support local authorities and food banks to distribute food, so that no one goes hungry; equip our NHS to deal with the emergency by bringing hospital cleaners in-house and paying them the real living wage—they are at the frontline and they deserve protection; requisition private hospitals, rent free, because our need is more important than their profits; and repurpose manufacturing plants, because our hospitals need ventilators.

In this crisis, we cannot let the vulnerable suffer the most. We need to prevent a catastrophe in immigration detention by releasing detainees before the virus rips through those inhumane cages; bring abandoned homes into public use to give homeless people a roof over their heads; scrap the universal credit five-week wait, uplift the payment, end the benefits cap and suspend all sanctions; and give social care the same funding promise as the NHS has.

This crisis brings into focus our interdependence. We need each other. The chief executive officer is nothing without the factory worker, the bus driver or the nurse. An injury to one is an injury to all, as the old trade union saying goes, and none of us are safe until all of us are safe. This is an urgent demand to the Government: protect the vulnerable, guarantee support to all workers and make those with the broadest shoulders pay their fair share.

Tax Avoidance and Evasion

Zarah Sultana Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Members for West Bromwich East (Nicola Richards) and for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) on their maiden speeches. They both spoke warmly of two constituencies that I know very well, as a west midlands girl myself.

There are a lot of things that I found very surprising on becoming an MP. I do not think I will ever find it normal being called “ma’am” or having doors opened for me. But some of it is unnerving as well. Before I was elected, I did not know that big businesses sent gifts to MPs—gifts that always seemed to be accompanied by requests. The other week, Heathrow sent me a food hamper, along with an ask. It wanted me to support its third runway—as if some shortbread biscuits would drown out the warnings of the climate emergency. Google recently sent me a gift as well. It was not much, but it got me thinking about corporate lobbying. It reminded me that, according to the Tax Justice Network, in 2018 Google avoided £1.5 billion in tax, and in 2016 it reached a deal with the Government, after dozens of meetings with Ministers, to secure an effective tax rate of just 3% on profits estimated to be more than £7 billion.

Now, I might have missed it, but I do not think that doctors and nurses or factory workers and cleaners in Coventry South were offered private meetings with Ministers to create tailor-made sweetheart packages to reduce their taxes, yet this is a premium service that is given to big business. So it often seems to be a case of one rule for billionaires and big business and another rule for everyone else. I think the whole web of dinners, gifts, receptions and donations has something to do with that, because the super-rich do not spend their money on MPs out of generosity and out of the goodness of their hearts—they want something in return. Let us be honest: this wealth is used to buy influence in this House; to get this place to serve their interests and not the interests of our constituents. Under the Conservatives, it looks to me like their investment is paying off, because by the end of this Parliament the Government are on course to have handed out almost £100 billion in tax breaks and corporate giveaways. Corporate taxation has been slashed to one of the lowest rates in the world. An estimated £90 billion of tax is still being dodged every year.

Perhaps it is me—perhaps I am being cynical and a bit jaded beyond my years—but when the Minister gets up and says that his Government will tackle tax avoidance, I am sorry, but I am going to find that difficult to believe. I find it difficult because I know that time and time again we have heard Conservative Ministers talk the talk on being tough on tax for the cameras but backslide when those cameras are switched off. That is what happened when the Panama and Paradise papers revealed an industrial scale of tax dodging.

When the Minister talks tough, I find it difficult to believe him because I know that the super-rich donors who fund his party are also exploiting tax loopholes, and that they expect a return on their investment too. I find it difficult because I know that the billionaire press barons who often act as the propaganda wing of the Conservative party are in on it too. The owner of the Daily Mail has profited from being a non-dom—an exclusive status that lets the ultra-wealthy reside in the UK but pay no tax on offshore income and investments. The owners of The Daily Telegraph are reportedly based in Monaco and the Channel Islands. As for the owner of The Sun—well, his company was found by a 2008 US report to have 152 subsidiaries, including 62 in the British Virgin Islands, 33 in the Caymans, and 15 in Mauritius. I know that these billionaire press barons do not copy and paste Conservative press releases into their papers for nothing. I would be honest with the Chancellor if he was here but he is not, so all I will say is that after spending a career working with hedge funds and associates who avoid tax, I am sure he will understand that I have trust issues with him as well.

To conclude, the truth is that my constituents cannot trust this Government on tax dodgers. They cannot trust a party that has cut taxes for the super-rich, takes their donations and lets them hoard their wealth and hide it. The British public cannot trust a party that has slashed the services they rely on, only to blame the NHS waiting lists and overcrowded classrooms on migrants. It is not migrants who rob the public purse of billions of pounds. It is not migrants who buy influence and subvert democracy, and it is not migrants who let hospitals crumble and schools fall into ruin. It is the tax dodgers and the billionaire press barons, and it is the Tory Government, who serve the interests of the 1%, not the British people.