Finance Bill

Alex Burghart Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

A number of measures in the Bill will be very broadly supported by my constituents as they uphold some of the values that Members have raised, such as the importance of fairness in our economy. My constituents believe in hard work and fair play, and many measures in the Bill support those values. In particular, we intend to get more money out of non-doms and will raise money for the Exchequer so that we can put it into our prized public services.

That issue matters very much to me. For many years I worked at the Centre for Social Justice, an independent think-tank that was established to alleviate poverty and to look at its root causes. One thing we saw time and again was that where there are workless households, there is despair. That despair rubs off on children, diminishes parents’ mental health, and gradually eliminates people’s ability to get back into work—it gets them trapped in a vicious cycle.

That is why it is so important that this Government over the past seven years have built a recovery around work. We now have record employment in this country. That has become a phrase that we just knock off, but we fail to realise the human value of the fact that we now have more people in work than ever before. I know we are political opponents, but I would appreciate it if just once I could hear an Opposition Member welcome the fact that we have the lowest unemployment in our history. I will happily take an intervention if someone wants to welcome it now.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

We say that all the time. We always welcome it, but we just wish it was possible for the debate to include a consideration of the situation in a huge number of households where people are in work, as child poverty rates are rising and households are in poverty. Why does the Conservative party say nothing about that phenomenon, which is a huge part of life in Britain today?

[Alex Burghart]

I listened to the opening remarks in today’s debate and I did not hear anyone from the Opposition welcoming record employment, so I am glad to hear the hon. Gentleman do so now. If I gave him the opportunity, I am sure that he would also want to welcome the fact that inequality is decreasing and that a whole generation will benefit from growing up in households with work. It is a gift that keeps on giving. The number of children in workless households has decreased by a third since 2010, and the number of households in which no one has ever worked has fallen by 40% since the previous Labour Government were in office. In fact, we are nearly back at the all-time low that was reached under the Major Government. The gift of work enables families to get on with their lives and enables children to grow up in a home where they have the example of people in work. Those opportunities cannot be taken lightly.

I am pleased that the Government on whose Benches I sit continue to feed the economy, but we are not doing that by spending money that we do not have or by borrowing money from future generations. Instead, we are spending and living within our means. I am extremely pleased to see that essential value embodied in the Bill, which is why I shall be supporting it tonight.

Finance Bill

Alex Burghart Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 11th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Dowd]

Again, that goes to the heart of the issue. The Government are trying to focus on a particular moment in time, rather than taking into account the fact that a person might be out of employment for a long time.

We see a running theme of this Government in this Bill and so many of their other actions: they are removing powers from Parliament and giving them to Ministers. But other elements have been tacked on to the clause that are seemingly unconnected to the stated aims about payments in lieu of notice. It is clear that the Government are laying the ground so that workers who have already lost their jobs should pay tax on more of their termination payments. Is that the message that the Government are now sending to the likes of the BAE workers? Is it the message they want to send to the victims of redundancy? There can be no other explanation for this clause. It gives the Treasury powers through delegated legislation to raise or lower the tax-free threshold.

Changes to the tax-free allowance for termination payments were first mooted by the Office of Tax Simplification in 2013 when it cited such payments as an employee benefit that would merit further study. I find it rather peculiar that a payment to an employee who has just lost their job is considered as an employee benefit—how bizarre. It is as though a termination payment were some sort of added extra and a huge inconvenience for employers, when in fact that worker has just lost their job and this may well be the last payslip they receive for a long time. The Government have promised not to reduce the threshold, so it comes as a bitter pill that the Bill will allow them to do just that.

If there is no intention to reduce the threshold, Conservative Members should have no hesitation in voting for amendment 2, which would allow the threshold only to be increased through delegated legislation, removing the power to decrease the amount. I wait with bated breath for the Minister to keep the Government’s word and accept our amendment.

In the previous debate, the Minister went to great lengths to claim that the Government’s plans to give themselves the power to water down the tax-free threshold on termination payments, and to exclude injury to feelings from tax-free compensation payments, had nothing to do with attacks on those who have just lost their jobs. No, instead that is apparently part of some ambitious strategy that the Government have to tackle tax avoidance.

The Minister is so concerned about tax avoidance that he has claimed that

“when the Government find tax avoidance, we will clamp down on it.”—[Official Report, 6 September 2017; Vol. 628, c. 253.]

Such a bold assertion makes me wonder if the Minister has even read his own Finance Bill. Has he read clause 15, which we will debate later, through which his Government are loosening the rules to allow more non-doms to receive tax breaks if they use money from offshore tax havens to invest in the UK?

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that clause 15 will bring more money into this country, which is presumably a good thing, and something we can all agree on?

[Peter Dowd]

We will deal with that a little later. The hon. Gentleman may want to pay attention to my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), who will expose that fallacy.