Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Debate between Ed Davey and Rosie Winterton(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that point of order. As he says, there was a statement about this issue earlier. I am afraid that it is, in fact, not a matter for the Chair to rule on this particular aspect of TikTok and anybody’s name on it, but the right hon. Gentleman has obviously put his point on the record. I am sure that if Members sitting on the Treasury Bench feel that there is anything they need to feed back to any particular Department, they will do so. I think that we had probably better leave it at that, frankly.
Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. At Prime Minister’s questions last week, I raised the case of Jean, after her grieving grandson asked me to raise it in Parliament in order to highlight the tragic impact of long ambulance delays. After speaking with Jean’s grandson last night, I now understand that some of the details provided to me, which I relayed to this House, were not accurate. While the substantive point remains—Jean did call for an ambulance and was told that she would have to wait for at least eight hours—Jean did not pay for her parking, and she did not die within the first hour of arriving at the hospital. I wish to correct the record by withdrawing those particular remarks.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that point of order about what is obviously a very sad case that he raised at PMQs. I am grateful to him for coming to the House—I presume that this is as soon as he knew that the information had been incorrect. I am sure that the whole House appreciates the fact that he has corrected the record. Thank you.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Ed Davey and Rosie Winterton(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I thank the hon. Lady for her point of order. The Chair is not responsible for points made by right hon. and hon. Members, but she has put her concerns on the record, so I suggest we leave it at that.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I think this is becoming a continuation of Prime Minister’s questions, so we will leave it at that.
Point of Order
Debate between Ed Davey and Rosie Winterton(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I call Ed Davey, on a point of order in connection with the Code of Conduct, to rectify a failure to declare.
Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to apologise to the House for not declaring my interest when tabling two parliamentary questions last year: one on 13 May and one on 4 June. I tabled the questions because of my long-standing interest in climate change, and as a result of constituency casework. An administrative oversight resulted in a breach of the rules, and for that I am sorry. I have put in place measures to ensure a similar mistake cannot be made again. I wish to put on record my thanks to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards for her time and care in rectifying this matter.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I thank the right hon. Member for his point of order. There will be no further points of order on this issue.
Budget Resolutions
Debate between Ed Davey and Rosie Winterton(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. I think I am supposed to respond to a point of order. That was not really a point of order, however; it was a matter of continued debate.
Ed Davey
I am very happy to debate fracking, and my record and the Government’s record on it. Thanks to the tough environmental regulation that we passed, particularly the seismicity regulation, we in the Liberal Democrats did more to stop fracking. I had Conservative Ministers shouting their case, day in and day out, saying that I should go faster, but I slowed it down and it is not happening. The record will show not only that there is no fracking industry in the UK but that there is a massive renewables industry, and that is thanks to the Liberal Democrats.
As we debate the need to level up—[Interruption.]
Ed Davey
Conservative Members do not like it, Madam Deputy Speaker, but they are going to have to learn to live with it.
As we debate the need to level up, anyone would have thought that the Government would want to save jobs in our energy-intensive industries, most of which are big employers outside London and the south-east. But no; there was no help at all in the Budget for the energy-intensive industries. The Government could have used money from a windfall tax on gas producers, as we would have done, to help those industries to decarbonise and to invest in the technologies of the future. This is yet another missed opportunity on climate change from the Conservatives. We can have a greener and fairer society, investing in climate action and helping the fuel poor, but we will not get it with this Conservative Chancellor and this Conservative Government.
Point of Order
Debate between Ed Davey and Rosie Winterton(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Earlier today, the Court of Appeal handed down an historic and fantastic ruling, judging that the Government’s Heathrow expansion decision was unlawful because it did not take account of the Government’s legally binding commitments on climate change. The Secretary of State for Transport has tweeted that the Government “won’t appeal” against the ruling, but the Government’s transport policy is now in confusion and chaos, along with their climate change policy. Could you, Madam Deputy Speaker, through the Chair, use your good offices to ask the Government to make a statement to this House as soon as possible on how they take this decision forward? We hope that the Government will confirm that the expansion of Heathrow has now been consigned to the dustbin of history.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order, which, as I am sure he realises, is not a point of order for the Chair. I can inform him that the Leader of the House was asked about this issue during the business statement earlier, and I believe I am right in saying that he said that a written ministerial statement was going to be issued. In the meantime, I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench will have heard the right hon. Gentleman’s request for an oral statement and he will, no doubt, be pursuing this in the ways with which he is well acquainted.
Loan Charge
Debate between Ed Davey and Rosie Winterton
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman: it is about time that the Government listened. Regardless of the issue, retrospective legislation can be a dangerous thing. In some instances it might be justifiable, but by and large and in principle, it is a very dangerous thing. The other point that has emerged from this debate is that those who encouraged people in their employ to get involved in such schemes should be the ones to pay up, not the victim. Does he not agree?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
May I just point out that interventions must be short? Please remember that interventions mean that other people have less time to speak.
Sir Edward Davey
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Let me take his point on retrospection into the substance of my speech.
Everybody has paid tribute to the Minister and I join in that, but I urge him to look at the retrospection issue. The all-party group has spoken to tax professionals and has read a lot of material. There is a debate about whether aspects of this are retrospective or not, and about where the retrospection lies. One group has been hit by the loan charge where the retrospective nature has been proven beyond doubt: taxpayers who have had their tax returned to the Treasury with DOTAS added—sometimes even without DOTAS added—and who have come clean on everything they have been doing. HMRC has accepted that and has not opened an inquiry. Their cases have been closed and time has passed. Under section 9 of the Taxes Management Act 1970, we have been giving taxpayers in that situation total protection from HMRC coming back to them. That has been true for decades. Indeed, we have signed international conventions to say that that is the way individuals should be treated. Yet here we are, going back on that. To be clear to the Minister, all the tax professionals we talked to believe that for closed cases, that was a transgression. Indeed, I asked them if they could find any example on the statute book ever of a Government passing a law to override taxpayer protections and they could not.
When the Government responded to that clause with a review, their argument against all the advice was that the charge was not retrospective because it was a charge on the loan as of now—the outstanding loan. That is interesting, because they had never before proven that loanable income. That was the whole point of this whole debacle. Moreover, the loans were taken out in the past. We might not call it retrospective and we might call it retroactive, but frankly it is the same thing for the ordinary person. The reply to the amendment to the Finance (No. 3) Bill was therefore simply not good enough; it was wrong. This is a breach in the rule of law, particularly for those people with closed tax years. At the very, very least, the Government should not apply the loan charge to those people; that is the recommendation of the all-party group.
We then come to people with open tax years. Sometimes there has been an inquiry years before—15 or 20 years ago. For many taxpayers, it was not really clear what that was. There was a little form. They were not told what their rights were or what they should do in response. They just sat there, and some of them did not even know there was an open inquiry. Those open inquiries have lasted for years, with, as the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) said, HMRC doing nothing. Surely that is HMRC incompetence, not mistakes by taxpayers. They are now paying because HMRC could not administer the tax system over that period, and tried and failed to get the law right. I am sorry, but HMRC cannot penalise our constituents with tax bills of tens of thousands of pounds because it could not do its job properly. That is not acceptable.
Leaving the EU: Negotiations
Debate between Ed Davey and Rosie Winterton(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. The hon. Gentleman really must not use the word “you”, and let us not carry on with this sort of exchange.
Sir Edward Davey
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I know what was in the Liberal Democrat manifesto. In 2005, like all parties, we argued for a referendum on the European constitution. In 2015, we said that if there was a big change affecting sovereignty and powers, we would have a referendum. What happened afterwards was completely different, and the hon. Gentleman ought to know that.
I was saying that I detect that the demand for a people’s vote—a final say on the deal—is growing louder and louder. There are many reasons why I think that; it is not just evidence from the polls and from people talking to me around the country. I think it is a reaction to the chaos of this Conservative Government. If I were a Conservative MP, I would be embarrassed by the Government; I do not think we have been so badly governed since the second world war—probably before.
The Government simply cannot make up their mind about how to deal with the biggest issue of the day. They are totally split. The chaos of the past 48 hours beggars belief. It is pretty clear that the Chequers statement will not stand the test of time. The European Research Group, the hard-line Brexiteers, and some Tory remainers reject it and Brussels is saying that it is unacceptable. It is pretty clear that, after two years of effort, this chaotic Government cannot manage it. That is why we tabled this motion.
As one of my colleagues said earlier, people are sick and tired of Conservative Ministers, and indeed MPs, putting their personal or party interests above the nation’s. As my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) said, when we talk to some colleagues outside the Chamber, they admit that Brexit is a disaster.