Loan Charge
Debate between Greg Hands and Justine Greening
Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)
Like many other Members, I have a number of affected constituents. When one of them first came to see me in my surgery, I listened. It was a complex tax case and it soon became clear that the way in which it was being handled was genuinely not how I had been used to seeing things dealt with during my time as a Treasury Minister. I and many of my colleagues, including my next-door neighbour, the Minister for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond), are right to raise our concerns, not least because of the very personal impact the issue is having on thousands of people around the country who have this hanging over them without anything being done to resolve the situation, other than those who represent them setting out how much of an impact it is having on their lives.
I have young constituents who are contractors and have been unwittingly caught up in this. They did all the right things, including asking their accountant and checking whether a QC had approved a scheme. An older gentleman who is caught up in it is looking at having to sell his home. He is in his 70s and clearly has no ability to go back into the workplace to even begin to recoup some of the money that HMRC is now claiming he should pay.
There are a number of issues, but in the end it comes down to how we in this House, and HMRC, look at the concept of fairness in taxation. I think that HMRC has simply got it wrong and is striking the wrong balance. I agree that the Financial Secretary is a talented Minister, but in the end it is these more challenging areas of policy that make or break a reputation, rather than the ability to do a brilliant job from day to day on turning around constituency casework where, as others have said, he is almost unparalleled in his assiduousness. I hope that he will use his talent to find a way through and to come up with a compromise to achieve a quick resolution.
The approach being taken circumvents taxpayer protections on time limits on HMRC inquiries, as many have said. The bottom line is that, overwhelmingly, people declared these arrangements transparently. They sent in their tax returns and, as has been said, some were given tax rebates. They were given no indication that HMRC was ever going to come back to those years.
Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)
I am also an ex-Treasury Minister and my right hon. Friend’s neighbour. Could she comment on the unusual nature of the situation? One of my constituents has had £300,000 assessed, so the average of £13,000 can mask some of the very large numbers involved.
National Policy Statement: Airports
Debate between Greg Hands and Justine Greening(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Greg Hands
I wholly agree with my hon. Friend. It is perfectly possible to show where the flight paths are going to be or are likely to be. I conducted my own consultation, because both Heathrow and the Department for Transport initially refused to do a consultation in my Chelsea and Fulham constituency. I eventually had them come to the constituency, but even then they were unwilling to provide such basic information.
The pledge to build a freight hub is absolute madness when we already have excellent freight hubs that are well away from population centres, such as those at East Midlands airport and Stansted. Surely freight hubs should be created away from population centres, not in the middle of urban environments. The Secretary of State’s argument centres on this essential proposition: that the UK needs a hub airport—and by implication only one—to compete. I fundamentally disagree. A hub airport suits Heathrow and it suits the British Airways’ business models, but those are not the same as the national interest.
Most hub airports tend to be in medium-sized cities, and there is a reason for that. I fundamentally believe that London is best served by its five airports. It is about the difference between a city of 8 million to 10 million people and a city with a population of 1 million, 2 million or 3 million. New York has three large airports, as does Moscow, and Tokyo has two large hub airports. Most successful hub airports are in medium-sized cities. The Secretary of State gave the examples of Frankfurt and Amsterdam on Conservative Home this morning, but those are both cities with a population of fewer than 1 million. They cannot generate that level of traffic themselves, so they need to hub to create and boost their connectivity. It is not a choice for them; it is a choice for London.
Why should London prefer a set of orbital airports? The answer returns to the question of the size of London, with its 8 million, and growing, population. Travel times across London to one hub airport will very often exceed the two-hour median flight time. That is why, while Amsterdam and Frankfurt need a hub, London needs a set of orbital airports.
The related question is on connectivity, and it is not just about Heathrow but about London’s airports as a whole. Much has been made of Frankfurt and Amsterdam overtaking Heathrow in respect of connectivity, but that misses the point. What about the whole nation’s connectivity? And Heathrow is actually already pretty well connected. It may surprise people to know that 10 Chinese cities—Beijing, Shanghai, Changsha, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Qingdao, Sanya, Wuhan and Xian—are currently connected directly to Heathrow each day. And to London as a whole, 28 US cities are connected to London airports, along with 13 Polish cities, seven in India and eight in Canada—more than either Frankfurt or Amsterdam. The growth of destinations served by London airports has been huge, and they have been point-to-point flights. The direction of modern aviation is towards point-to-point direct flights.
Justine Greening
My right hon. Friend is making important points. We have just seen the very first non-stop direct flight from Sydney to London. Does he agree that there is no reason for people to want to hub unnecessarily, and that it is therefore wrong to have a 20th century hub strategy instead of a 21st century direct strategy?
Greg Hands
My right hon. Friend makes a very important point about the introduction of the first point-to-point flight from Australia to London. It returns to my point about what is in not just my constituency’s interests but London’s interests as a whole and the national interest. Creating the super-hub at Heathrow clearly suits the interests of British Airways and of Heathrow. I have nothing against that. I am a Conservative and have nothing against companies doing well, but we should not equate that with the national interest.
I promised to say a few words about night flights.