Support for Self-employed and Freelance Workers

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

For the sake of transparency, I refer hon. Members to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. At the point when I was elected to this House, I was still self-employed and, with a bit of cross-over to complete a couple of projects, I remained so before I completely ceased trading much earlier this year.

As someone who was self-employed for 15 years, I come to this debate understanding what self-employed people go through and the risks they take, often putting their own homes on the line in order to build a business. Most importantly, I speak in this debate because there are some 12,000 people registered as self-employed in my constituency of Buckingham.

The self-employed and those who take the risk to start their own business will always have my absolute respect and admiration. They are the wealth creators, not just for themselves but for the supply chains and services they use to go about their trade or profession. They are the vital disrupters who propel competition and innovate. Those who take this worthy entrepreneurial path do so, as I have mentioned, at serious personal risk: their own homes are on the line. It is because of that very risk that when crisis or disaster strikes, such as we have seen with coronavirus, they are left the most vulnerable if their trade cannot continue through no fault of their own.

I want to put on record my absolute thanks and gratitude to the Government for making available a support package that has supported 4,300 self-employed people in my constituency, receiving grants worth a total of £14.5 million. It must be acknowledged that this Government’s covid support scheme for the self-employed has been among the most generous in the world. However, like so many other hon. and right hon. Members, I have heard far too many stories of those who have fallen through the gaps.

Each and every freelancer, contractor, self-employed businessman or woman who has come to my surgeries or written to me has a different story to tell, and that is important because it speaks to the diversity and vibrancy of entrepreneurialism and how it works and thrives. Not everybody fits into the sort of box that I fear HMRC officials would deeply love them to neatly sit in. Our challenge is how we make up for those losses if we are to come together as a country and bounce back.

I have argued in the past and written to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and my other hon. and right hon. Friends in the Treasury calling for a support package. However, if such a retrospective package cannot be delivered, I urge my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary and the whole Treasury team, as they look to the upcoming Budget, to look at ways in which we can stimulate the self-employed sector and ensure that we are recognising them in the tax system, including the risks they take and the costs they incur. For example, the value of every invoice is not necessarily profit—there is cost in there that needs to be taken into account—and dividends are a legal and legitimate way in which people have paid themselves, on the advice of their accountants, for many decades.

Let us find a way to support all our self-employed, freelancers and owner directors of limited companies, and give them the stimulus to grow our economy.

Stamp Duty Land Tax (Temporary Relief) Bill

Greg Smith Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 13th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood). I fully agree with his comments.

This House has in recent months been required very necessarily to pass legislation to restrict our freedoms in order to defeat the virus, so it is an absolute pleasure to speak in support of an emergency measure that expands freedom. There is no more important asset to any individual or family in this country than the roof over their heads. The ability, under the provisions of the Bill, to purchase a home worth up to £500,000 without the burden of any stamp duty at all will not only support our economic bounce-back but, more importantly, bring the dream of home ownership a step closer for thousands of first-time buyers, give those who may be downsizing the confidence that they will not unnecessarily lose thousands of their precious savings, and enable growing families to move up the ladder.

This morning, I spoke to estate agents in my constituency —including Brian Russell of Russell & Butler in the town of Buckingham—and the news of the temporary stamp duty cut has been warmly received, with massive interest from buyers and sellers over the past few days. With 75% of the properties currently on that particular estate agent’s books being under £500,000, it goes without saying just how significant this tax cut is locally in Buckinghamshire.

Last Friday, I was pleased to visit Barratt Homes and David Wilson Homes at their development at Kingsbrook near Broughton in my constituency to see the measures that they have put into place to ensure that house building continues at pace in a covid-secure way. Their sales team reported that they are seeing people coming back through the doors again, enthused by the stamp duty holiday.

House of Commons Library data shows that across my constituency the median value of house prices last September was £395,000, albeit with some significant variance in different parts of the constituency, with homes around Worminghall, Long Crendon and Cuddington having the highest median value of £575,000 and the median in Buckingham north at £287,500. That says to me that no matter where people want to live and move across the 335 square miles of the beautiful Buckingham constituency, the Bill is worth many thousands of pounds, if not tens of thousands of pounds, to potential buyers. As many Members have said, if people are buying homes and keeping that market buoyant, that can only be good news for the economy as a whole—for the three quarters of a million jobs supported by the house building sector alone, not to mention our estate agents, removal firms, decorators, plumbers, kitchen fitters, landscapers and the wide array of retailers and suppliers that benefit most from people moving home, from furniture makers such as Ercol and Hypnos beds in Princes Risborough in the south of my constituency, to interior companies such as Secret Messages Interiors in Buckingham or Mood Home and Lifestyle in Winslow, which I visited recently. Even the lawyers—even the lawyers, Madam Deputy Speaker—benefit.

The economic chain set off by house building cannot be stated often enough. However, stamp duty changes alone may not complete the picture. The estate agents I have spoken to over the past few days have advised me that there are other factors hampering the full recovery of the housing market, particularly for first-time buyers, the most significant of those being a banking sector that is making it harder to borrow. While mortgage lending clearly falls outside the scope of the Bill, in order to achieve the aim of the Bill, it is vital that the banking sector and lenders are listening and that they get behind what the Government are trying to do—a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) made in his intervention.

There are no 95% loan-to-value mortgages available for first-time buyers today. Only three lenders even offer 90% loan-to-value mortgages, so the majority of first-time buyers face the daunting prospect of raising at least a 15% deposit. That is £75,000 for a £500,000 four-bedroom home in Steeple Claydon or £52,500 on a £350,000 three-bedroom cottage in Tingewick. The stamp duty reduction on those two examples for first-time buyers is a massive boost, saving £10,000 in the case of the £500,000 home and £2,500 in the case of the £350,000 home. It undoubtedly closes the gap, but the wider point is that we are still talking about enormous sums of money—years and years of savings and sacrifice. To boost the market further, the banks must start to be more realistic about permitting 90% and 95% loan-to-value mortgages once more, to truly open up the market.

Most property transactions currently take an average of 16 weeks, which is much longer than it needs to be. We are only 38 weeks from the end of this temporary stamp duty cut, so time is of the essence to make the most of it. If any accompanying deregulation to speed up transactions can be brought forward, that will only help many more thousands of aspiring homeowners and movers.

In conclusion, this Bill is enormously welcome. It is bold in its aim of boosting our housing market and supporting people to achieve home ownership. I will be voting for it with great enthusiasm, but at the same time, I encourage my right hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench to seriously consider other measures that we could bring forward to make it even stronger. Who knows? Perhaps this tax-cutting pilot, once proved so successful, could become a more permanent feature of the housing market.

The Economy

Greg Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper).  It is rare for a Conservative to agree with a Liberal Democrat on much, but I agree with her on pubs. Even before covid, too many of our pubs were shutting down, particularly in village communities and small towns, with the Bell at Bierton and the George and Dragon in Princes Risborough in my constituency being two examples. I hope that all our local pubs will take part in the “eat out to help out scheme” and that we will all encourage our constituents to use village pubs and town pubs, as well as local shops and businesses. Now that they have reopened, it is crunch time, and if we want them to have a prosperous future, it is vital that we all support them.

I very much welcome the announcements made by the Chancellor today. This is yet another set of unprecedented measures to support our economy, retaining jobs and creating new ones, while ensuring that there are opportunities for young people in particular to enter the workplace and learn the skills they need. It is vital that we get our economy moving again at speed and, as the Chancellor said, return our public finances to a sustainable footing. Jobs are critical to both those outcomes, for the financial security of individuals and families and the flow of revenue into the Treasury. As the Chancellor prepares for the autumn Budget, I urge him to ensure that we keep taxes low on both individuals and businesses, because no high-tax economy has ever successfully come out of a financial crisis.

I have one particular ask for my constituency. We are lucky to have two key hubs of technological innovators that are already creating the jobs of the future. They are part of the Aylesbury Vale enterprise zone, and the sites at Westcott and Silverstone Park are critical for our continued economic growth. It is because of their enterprise zone status that they have been so successful and instrumental in attracting inward investment, but that status is due to expire in March 2021. As businesses consider whether to invest, it would be life-changing for that enterprise zone status and tax relief period to be extended by at least a year, or perhaps through to 2024, to ensure that they can be part of the future prosperity of Buckinghamshire and the wider UK economy.

Economic Update

Greg Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I believe our approach represents a sensible, coherent, co-ordinated and comprehensive way to tackle the problem. We have a range of targeted measures, each of which will make a significant difference to those on the ground, but as I said, we stand ready to do more and are indeed actively doing extra things.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the enormous package of measures outlined by the Chancellor. This morning, I spoke to Energy Generator Hire in Kimble Wick in my constituency, which has lost most of its order book and is uncertain about the future. Can he confirm whether event hire companies are included in the envelope of leisure and hospitality?

[Rishi Sunak]

Those that have business properties will be eligible both for the relief and the grant, which will cover a significant number of events companies that have premises. Obviously, if they do not have premises, they will not qualify for business rates relief, but should be eligible for some of the other measures that I have outlined today.[Official Report, 29 September 2020, Vol. 681, c. 4MC.]