Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate his Department has made of the value of the illicit tobacco trade in the UK in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Estimates of tax revenue losses associated with illicit tobacco are published every year. The latest estimates, for the years 2006/7 to 2014/15, are published in ‘Tobacco Tax Gap estimates 2014-15’.
This can be accessed via the GOV.UK website:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/tobacco-tax-gap-estimates
HM Revenue and Customs makes no other estimate of the value of the illicit tobacco trade.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will place in the Library a timescale for the introduction of the proposed exit payment cap for the public sector.
Answered by Greg Hands - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The public sector exit payment cap will come into effect at a date after the Enterprise Bill has received Royal Assent. The Enterprise Bill is currently expected to receive Royal Assent by May 2016. A set of secondary regulations which will give effect to the public sector exit payment cap are currently expected to come into force during autumn 2016.
In the response to the consultation the Government stated that ‘the government would request Legislative Consent Motions from the Devolved Administrations where appropriate, however it would be for the Devolved Administrations to decide the approach they wish to take to this measure.’
On 7 December 2015 the Northern Ireland Assembly declined to agree a Legislative Consent Motion. Subsequently, no provisions relating to Northern Ireland are included in the clauses relating to exit payments.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate he has made of the number of public sector workers who (a) have been made redundant in the last five years and (b) will be made redundant in the next five years.
Answered by Greg Hands - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The information requested on the number of public sector workers who have been made redundant in the past is available in the publication “Whole of Government Accounts”.The figures for 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 are published in Note 7 of the relevant Whole of Government Accounts under the section titled ‘Civil Service and Other Compensation Schemes- Exit Packages’ available on the following website: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/whole-of-government-accounts
The Government does not forecast redundancy figures. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) publishes forecast changes in general government employment. These can be found in Table 1.12 of the Economic and Fiscal Outlook, Supplementary Tables here:
http://budgetresponsibility.org.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-november-2015/
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether his Department will agree to Legislative Consent Motions to the devolved government on the issue of public sector exit payments.
Answered by Greg Hands - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The public sector exit payment cap will come into effect at a date after the Enterprise Bill has received Royal Assent. The Enterprise Bill is currently expected to receive Royal Assent by May 2016. A set of secondary regulations which will give effect to the public sector exit payment cap are currently expected to come into force during autumn 2016.
In the response to the consultation the Government stated that ‘the government would request Legislative Consent Motions from the Devolved Administrations where appropriate, however it would be for the Devolved Administrations to decide the approach they wish to take to this measure.’
On 7 December 2015 the Northern Ireland Assembly declined to agree a Legislative Consent Motion. Subsequently, no provisions relating to Northern Ireland are included in the clauses relating to exit payments.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether any of the devolved administrations have refused to consent to the provisions dealing with public sector exit payments contained within the Enterprise Bill.
Answered by Greg Hands - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The public sector exit payment cap will come into effect at a date after the Enterprise Bill has received Royal Assent. The Enterprise Bill is currently expected to receive Royal Assent by May 2016. A set of secondary regulations which will give effect to the public sector exit payment cap are currently expected to come into force during autumn 2016.
In the response to the consultation the Government stated that ‘the government would request Legislative Consent Motions from the Devolved Administrations where appropriate, however it would be for the Devolved Administrations to decide the approach they wish to take to this measure.’
On 7 December 2015 the Northern Ireland Assembly declined to agree a Legislative Consent Motion. Subsequently, no provisions relating to Northern Ireland are included in the clauses relating to exit payments.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the effect of the proposed public sector exit payments cap on public sector employers' flexibility to restructure their workforce.
Answered by Greg Hands - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The Government maintains that £95,000 is a significant amount of money for anyone to be receiving for an exit, while the large majority of exit payments are already significantly below the level of the cap. Voluntary redundancy and workforce restructuring is not contingent upon access to six-figure exit payments. As such, we do not expect the cap to have a widespread impact on the take-up of voluntary redundancy, and believe the cap will enable public sector employers to retain the tools to effectively make organisational changes to their workforce whilst offering those made redundant generous provisions for loss of employment.
The consultation on the public sector exit payment cap ran from 31 July to 27 August 2015, and received over 4000 responses. These responses included representations from public sector organisations. The Government will publish draft regulations and invite comment on them in due course.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will consult public sector organisations which would be affected by the proposed exit payment cap on the technical considerations of that cap.
Answered by Greg Hands - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The Government maintains that £95,000 is a significant amount of money for anyone to be receiving for an exit, while the large majority of exit payments are already significantly below the level of the cap. Voluntary redundancy and workforce restructuring is not contingent upon access to six-figure exit payments. As such, we do not expect the cap to have a widespread impact on the take-up of voluntary redundancy, and believe the cap will enable public sector employers to retain the tools to effectively make organisational changes to their workforce whilst offering those made redundant generous provisions for loss of employment.
The consultation on the public sector exit payment cap ran from 31 July to 27 August 2015, and received over 4000 responses. These responses included representations from public sector organisations. The Government will publish draft regulations and invite comment on them in due course.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, for what reasons Bradford and Bingley, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Northern Rock as publicly-funded banks are exempted from the public sector exit payments cap in the provisions of the Enterprise Bill.
Answered by Greg Hands - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The Government’s partial ownership of Bradford and Bingley, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Northern Rock as is a temporary measure following the financial crisis and they will be returned to the private sector in due course. The Government believes this is fundamentally different to public sector bodies that receive ongoing funding from the taxpayer.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether his Department has carried out benchmarking of the public sector exit payment cap against comparable private sector roles.
Answered by Greg Hands - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
At the 2015 Spending Review the Government announced it will consult on further cross public sector action on exit payment terms. This consultation will provide a good opportunity to collect further information on the trends in the level of exit payments between the private and public sector.
Exit payment terms vary significantly across the private sector, and there will be examples of terms that match or even exceed those in the public sector. However, the Government has seen no evidence that redundancy terms such as employer-funded early retirement, which are widely available across the public sector and often cost employers tens, or even hundreds of thousands of pounds per person, are replicated to anything like the same extent in the private sector.
The precise number of those affected by the public sector exit payment cap will depend on the number and type of exits in coming years.
However, as the average cost of an exit in the public sector in recent years has been around £25,000 the vast majority of exits are below the level of the cap. For example, less than 2% of recent exits in local government were above the level of the cap.
Asked by: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether his Department has made an assessment of the number of workers who would be affected if the exit payments cap for public sector workers was set at any other amount than £95,000.
Answered by Greg Hands - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
At the 2015 Spending Review the Government announced it will consult on further cross public sector action on exit payment terms. This consultation will provide a good opportunity to collect further information on the trends in the level of exit payments between the private and public sector.
Exit payment terms vary significantly across the private sector, and there will be examples of terms that match or even exceed those in the public sector. However, the Government has seen no evidence that redundancy terms such as employer-funded early retirement, which are widely available across the public sector and often cost employers tens, or even hundreds of thousands of pounds per person, are replicated to anything like the same extent in the private sector.
The precise number of those affected by the public sector exit payment cap will depend on the number and type of exits in coming years.
However, as the average cost of an exit in the public sector in recent years has been around £25,000 the vast majority of exits are below the level of the cap. For example, less than 2% of recent exits in local government were above the level of the cap.