Finance (No. 2) Bill

Ian C. Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)]

Before speaking to clauses 66 and 67 and new clause 1, may I first say what a great pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Dawn? This is the last of a great number of Finance Bills in which you have played one role or another, and I have had the privilege of serving with you on a number of those occasions. This is the last afternoon on which you will be dealing with tax matters, having done so for an unconscionably long period, so I thank you for all that you have done over many years and for your service as Deputy Speaker and wish you a very happy retirement.

Clauses 66 and 67 set out the Bill’s provisions on VAT. Clause 66 refunds VAT to charities involved in co-ordinated search and rescue operations, air ambulance charities, hospice charities and blood bike medical courier charities. Clause 67 refunds the same levels of VAT to the strategic highways company—from 1 April it will take over the functions of the Highways Agency—as are paid to the Highways Agency itself. It is largely a tidying-up matter.

It is worth pointing out that refunding VAT will benefit around 400 charities that work alongside the emergency services, provide palliative care to terminally ill patients or support the national health service. The Hospice of St Francis in Berkhamsted in my constituency is very appreciative of the measure and thinks that it will make a significant difference to the service it can provide to my constituents in South West Hertfordshire. I suspect that clauses 66 and 67 will not cause great controversy in Committee, but I will of course be happy to take any questions on them.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

I am sure that we all welcome the clauses relating to VAT relief for hospices, which do such a tremendous job. Can the Financial Secretary help me by explaining how charities are selected and how VAT exemptions are secured? I have previously raised the case of a charity dealing with disabled people in Wrexham that provides transport services, which are subject to VAT under the current arrangements. The process of securing exemptions seems easier for ski lifts, for example, than for disabled people in my constituency, so I would be interested to find out how on earth one secures exemptions for worthy charities.

[Mr Gauke]

I have heard the hon. Gentleman make both points in the past, and if I remember correctly, I responded to an Adjournment debate on those matters. There are significant benefits in our tax system for charities, but the Government look at cases partly depending on the demands on the public finances and what is affordable. We have looked in particular at hospices. There is a particularly strong case there, and to some extent they are put at a disadvantage compared with parts of the NHS because of the irrecoverable VAT that they pay. This is a matter that any Government would keep under review. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, as a persistent Member, will raise the matter again if he has the opportunity to do so in future.

In new clause 1, the Opposition ask us to publish a report on the impact of the increase in the standard rate of VAT in 2010. No doubt, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) will set out her thinking on that, but let me make a pre-emptive strike, if the Prime Minister has not already done so. Before I turn to the details and the imposition of VAT in 2010, I shall briefly set out the context for that decision.

Let us be clear that we increased the standard rate of VAT in 2010 as a consequence of the mess that the Opposition left the public finances in and the fact that, although the previous Government had left a mess, they had not left behind a plan to clear it up. Of course, a tax impact information note was published by HM Revenue and Customs at the time of the June 2010 Budget, but let us look at the situation that we inherited. At that time, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility’s pre-Budget 2010 forecast revealed that the structural deficit—the part of the deficit that will not go away with the recovery—was higher than previously thought: around £9 billion or 0.6% of GDP higher in 2010-11. Debt repayments were forecast to reach more than £67 billion by 2014-15, more than was spent on defence or on schools in England. The UK had one of the highest deficits of any advanced economy, so this Government had to take urgent action to eliminate the bulk of the structural deficit, which is a necessary precondition for sustained economic growth.

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[Mr Gauke]

I will turn to that question in a moment, but before I do so, I shall say a little about this Government’s record.

High public debt can lead to a loss of market confidence and higher market interest rates, raising the cost of borrowing for families and businesses and discouraging investment and consumer spending. So what has our long-term economic plan delivered? Today public sector net borrowing as a percentage of GDP is forecast to have halved between 2009-10 and 2014-15. Latest data from the IMF show that this Government also reduced the structural deficit by more than half between 2010 and 2013. In fact, the UK’s structural deficit fell by 4.6% of GDP over 2010 to 2013—a larger reduction than any other country in the G7.

Since the autumn statement last year, the UK’s fiscal position has improved right across the forecast period, with higher receipts and lower debt interest. This Government have restored stability, put the public finances on a sustainable path and are about to put public sector net debt on to a declining path as a share of GDP.

[Ian Lucas]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Gauke]

Let me make a little more progress.

The previous Government failed to take decisive action to get our country moving again. Our record speaks for itself. Employment is now at its highest ever level. Economic growth is now firmly in place and at the Budget the OBR revised up its forecasts. The UK economy is forecast to grow by 2.5% in 2015, 2.3% in 2016, 2.3% in 2017, rising to 2.4% in 2019.

[Ian Lucas]

Is it not correct that in June 2010, when the Chancellor increased VAT, he said that he would eliminate the deficit by the end of this Parliament but has not done so? Despite the increase in VAT that he imposed, he failed in that aim. Why is that?

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[Mr Gauke]

We must not forget that Labour will put up gun licences—that is also on the list.

I note that the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), announced yesterday that she will “abolish the bedroom tax” and use the savings for something else. I am not sure that I understand how there can be savings from that measure.

[Ian Lucas]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Gauke]

I will give way one more time; I ought to press on.

[Ian Lucas]

The Minister’s case is that, because of the savings that the Government plan to make, there is no need to increase VAT. Why did the Chancellor not say that in his Budget statement?

[Mr Gauke]

What I have said is consistent with what the Chancellor has said again and again. Our plans do not require us to increase taxes for hard-working people, which is why we can rule out putting up VAT—[Interruption]—or extending it. The point the hon. Gentleman must answer is that his plans require taxes or borrowing to go up. He wants to ask hard questions about filling in fiscal black holes by raising taxes. They are questions for Labour Front Benchers, not for me, because our plans clearly do not need it.

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[Shabana Mahmood]

If the hon. Gentleman gives me a few minutes, I shall get on to that point very shortly. He will understand that the past performance and form of the people who sit opposite me today, the Conservatives, is the clearest and surest indicator. Unfunded tax cuts have already been promised and spending plans have been made that require a Government to cut further and faster in the early part of the next Parliament than they have in this Parliament, and that is the clearest indication we can get. They can do nothing else but put up VAT; that is their tax of choice when it comes to raising the tax revenues they are looking for.

As I have said, the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that the Government’s Budget plans mean that spending cuts after the election will be twice as deep as anything seen in the past five years. The cuts will go deeper and be made faster in the early part of the next Parliament than we have seen during the past five years. In reality, that will translate into extreme cuts to our crucial front-line public services, such as the police, defence and social care. The cuts will be so deep that they will be almost impossible to achieve, first, without putting the NHS at risk, and secondly, without making a further rise in VAT on the Tories’ watch simply inevitable.

Not only do the choices that the Government, and the Conservatives in particular, have made about spending and deficit reduction make such a VAT rise inevitable, regardless of the Prime Minister’s bluster today they are ingrained in their collective DNA. Before the 1979 general election, the then shadow Chancellor Geoffrey Howe said:

“We have absolutely no intention of doubling VAT.”

He specifically talked about doubling it. In his first Budget, however, he raised VAT from 8% to 15%. Conservative Members may take comfort from the fact that eight times two is 16, not 15, but they should not be proud of a seven percentage points rise in VAT or show off about its not being the eight percentage points rise that it might have been, given that such a rise had been absolutely ruled out and that there was no intention to double VAT. [Interruption.] Such a point brought no comfort to people who ended up paying the 15% rate of VAT, despite what the Financial Secretary, who is chuntering from a sedentary position, seems to think.

In 1991, Chancellor Norman Lamont increased VAT from 15% to 17.5%, claiming that his approach was “consistent” with the “strategy for tax reform” first set out by Geoffrey Howe in the 1979 Budget. Chancellor Lamont was correct that the approach was consistent: it was consistent with the approach of raising VAT rather than doing anything else. It seems that that approach may have slipped his mind, because just a year later, before the 1992 general election, Norman Lamont told Parliament that he

“again made it clear that the United Kingdom has no intention of changing our VAT rate.”—[Official Report, 13 June 1991; Vol. 192, c. 627W.]

That promise was reiterated by the former Prime Minister John Major, when he promised Parliament:

“There will be no VAT increase. Unlike the Labour party, we have published our spending plans and there is no need for us to raise VAT to meet them.”—[Official Report, 28 January 1992; Vol. 202, c. 808.]

He also said that year that he had

“no plans and no need to raise extra resources from value-added tax.”

The arguments then are almost exactly same as those we are hearing now.

Will Government Members remind us what happened after the 1992 election? There are no takers, because they know the answer: the Conservatives remember their consistent approach to raising VAT. The then Chancellor introduced VAT on domestic heating and fuel in the 1993 Budget, phasing it in at 8% from 1994. When he became Chancellor in 1993, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) refused to reverse that increase saying that

“no one is going to die from VAT on heating.”

That is a very bad way of making a point, because people have in fact ended up dying from the cold. We know that people, the elderly in particular, often have to choose between heating their home and eating. Had it not been for a Labour defeat in the House of Commons, under the Conservatives we would have seen VAT on electricity and gas bills increase to 17.5% in April 1995.

Twenty years later we find ourselves listening to a familiar story. Before the last general election, the Prime Minister, the then Leader of the Opposition, said:

“We have no plans to put up VAT, it’s not part of our plans.”

I like the double emphasis: say it twice, and that might make it true. The Chancellor, the then Shadow Chancellor, said:

“The plans we set out involved around 80 per cent of the work coming from spending restraint”—

cuts—

“and about 20 per cent from tax increases. The tax increases are already in place, the plans do not involve an increase in VAT.”

So such a rise was ruled out by the Prime Minister and by the Chancellor when they were in opposition. However, just weeks after taking office, like all the former Conservative Chancellors before him, the current Chancellor increased VAT to achieve his plans of 20% consolidation coming from tax increases and 80% coming from spending cuts. He said:

“To achieve that additional tightening while maintaining the right ‘four-to-one’ balance between spending and taxation means that I have to announce further tax rises today. On 4 January next year, the main rate of VAT will rise from 17.5% to 20%.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 177.]

There is no doubt that such a rise has hit family budgets hard. Despite knowing that that would happen, and that there would be a huge impact on the economy as a whole, the Chancellor chose to do what every Conservative Chancellor has always chosen to do—put up VAT. That is why we can say so emphatically—I say this to Liberal Democrat Members in particular—that if the Tories are elected at the general election in just a few weeks’ time, they will do it again. It is in their collective DNA, and ruling it out but then doing it is precisely what they have form on. That is their history, and I believe that they will honour their history if they are elected.

Analysis produced by the Treasury in July 2010 showed the estimated impact of a one percentage point rise in the standard rate of VAT. That analysis means that we know, for instance, that in the past four years the Government’s VAT rise has cost a single pensioner £500, a one-parent family £900, a pensioner couple £1,100 and a couple with children £1,800.

[Ian Lucas]

I do not want my hon. Friend to be too charitable to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, so may I remind her that in addition to the 2010 increase in the standard rate of VAT, the Chancellor made proposals in 2012, in the middle of his disastrous economic policy, to extend VAT through the pasty tax and the caravan tax? Not only did he increase VAT in 2010, but he went back to the well in 2012 when the policy was collapsing.

[Shabana Mahmood]

I was just about to make exactly that point. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that in 2012, having already done what all Conservative Chancellors do and put up VAT, the Chancellor sought to expand it by applying it to pasties and caravans in the so-called omnishambles Budget. I have always thought that it was a bit of a shame that that term from “The Thick of It” was used, because if the sequence of events that unfolded following that Budget had been presented to the scriptwriters of “The Thick of It”, they would not have touched it. They would have said that even for “The Thick of It” it was an unbelievable series of events. Yet that is what the Chancellor delivered. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the Chancellor tried to expand the scope of VAT, yet today the Conservatives wonder why nobody will believe what the Prime Minister said at Prime Minister’s questions.

We do not have to go back over the past 20 or 30 years. We can just look at the record of the current Chancellor and Prime Minister on VAT. They like to put it up, and they sought to expand its application. I noticed that earlier the Financial Secretary appeared to rule out an expansion of VAT, but I was not entirely sure whether he had done that deliberately. Will he intervene on me to confirm that not only will VAT not go up—that is according to the Prime Minister, although I do not believe it—but it will not be expanded? I wonder why the Financial Secretary is not biting my arm off to intervene and confirm that.

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I urge the Government to think about the proposal put forward by my Front-Bench team because it is really important to understand how VAT interacts and impacts in various situations. Is increasing VAT the best way of increasing income to the Treasury or does it have a negative impact because what happens is that people lose jobs and have less money to spend in the high streets? Many of the small communities in my East Lothian constituency have seen falls in profits, and many people with their own businesses needed tax credits, thus taking more money out of the Treasury. If their businesses had been doing better, they would have paid more into the Treasury. That is why it is so important to gain an understanding of the impact of VAT so that future Governments will be better informed.

[Ian Lucas]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I want to say first how much my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Mr Love), who is no longer in his place, has been valued in our economic debates. His contribution will be missed, and we all wish him well for the future.

The new clause is eminently reasonable, and it should not be a matter of dispute between the parties in the House that such a report would make a valuable contribution to any decision the Government take on VAT. We have had an interesting day on VAT because it was raised in Prime Minister’s questions. As hon. Members know—certainly the Minister will know—VAT is a subject in which I have an interest. Throughout this Parliament, I have pressed not just the Government Front-Bench team but the Labour Front-Bench team on the issue of VAT.

The Prime Minister is an honourable man. He has made a commitment from the Dispatch Box today that is different from the position outlined by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Treasury Select Committee only yesterday. I am interested to see the Treasury Minister nodding to confirm that there has, in fact, been a change in Government policy since yesterday. When I woke up this morning, I heard on the “Today” programme my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) questioning the Chancellor on the issue of VAT. I heard the Chancellor set out the same mantra that there were no plans to extend VAT or increase its rate. My understanding of what the Prime Minister said today is that he has given a cast-iron guarantee—to use a phrase that the Prime Minister has used before—not to extend or increase the rate of VAT.

So the position has changed today, and it is a change that I welcome. For that reason, I think that the information requested under the new clause would be valuable. It is always better for us all to have more information about the impact of tax changes. We know, of course, that this Government introduced this tax change in June 2010 when they said that they would eliminate the deficit by 2015. The plan—the “long-term economic plan” then—was to eliminate it by 2015, and part of the plan was to increase the rate of VAT. It would be valuable to know what happened as a result of the raising of VAT in January 2011. In my constituency, people are under real financial pressure, and VAT affects all of us.

[David Wright]

When the Chancellor decided to increase VAT, he must have asked Treasury officials to produce projections on its likely impact on the economy at that point. It would be interesting, would it not, to compare the projections given to him by Treasury officials with an official report, which this new clause suggests should be commissioned, to see whether the two tally up?

[Ian Lucas]

Indeed. My hon. Friend has made a very valid point. I think that we should all be interested to know what was the impact of the last Tory-Liberal Democrat increase in VAT, which was introduced in January 2011, because it should inform future policy. It seems extraordinary to me that that should be resisted.

According to the Office for National Statistics, the median salary in my constituency, Wrexham, has fallen by 7.4% in the last year. The town centre is, unfortunately, populated—like many other town centres throughout the country—by too many empty shops, and part of the reason for the emptying of those shops over the past few years has been a decrease in consumer activity. What VAT does—and this is why I am passionate about VAT—is take money out of the pockets of consumers on the high street and send it straight to the Treasury. It has a massive impact on local businesses. Those of us who run local businesses and employ people want to ensure that we have the best and fairest type of tax system to develop local economies.

That is why I want to know the impact of the 2011 VAT increase. I think that the Minister is a reasonable man. I cannot for the life of me understand why he does not want to have that information, or, if he has that information, why he does not want to share it with the House.

We have made a lot of progress today. The Prime Minister has been dragged, kicking and screaming, to a point at which he has ruled out a VAT increase by the Conservatives in the next Parliament—if he is ever in a position to make such a decision. That is major progress. It is certainly a change, not just from the Prime Minister’s position earlier in the current Parliament, but from the position that the Chancellor outlined in his Budget statement last Wednesday, when he set out the spending and taxation plans that he expected to be implemented. Why did he not tell us that the Tories were going to rule out a VAT increase in the next Parliament? That is what amazes me. What has happened between last week and this week? What happened yesterday?

What has happened, in my view, is that because the Labour party, in opposition, made a commitment not to increase VAT in the next Parliament, Lynton has been on the blower. He has said. “We are under pressure, Dave. We are under pressure, Prime Minister. We have to match the commitment that the Labour party has made. You have to rule out a VAT increase in the next Parliament.” So that is why the Prime Minister made his statement at the Dispatch Box today—a statement that I welcomed.

History will judge whether that promise will be kept. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) about the history of Conservative commitments on VAT: about what happens before elections, and about what happens after them. When I speak to my constituents over the next six weeks, I shall remind them of that record. I shall remind them of what the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats said before 2010 and what they did afterwards, and I shall remind them of what this Chancellor tried to do in 2012 with the pasty tax and the caravan tax.

The tax of choice for the Conservative party is VAT. History tells us that. If the Conservatives want to increase taxes, they increase VAT. The country will have to judge whether the commitment that the Prime Minister has given today is one that will stand the test of time.

[Sheila Gilmore]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I was also going to say that it was a pleasure to be in the company of so many Members who had participated in Finance Bill Committees during this Parliament, but one by one they have disappeared from the Chamber—even the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who has been one of the most assiduous Committee members—which is a shame as I was looking forward to hearing the usually very robust views they express, when we are upstairs in Committee at least. Presumably they have something else on their mind today.

The period we are in, which spans one VAT increase to possibly another, is a very interesting one. One of the things that the Government are trying to say—interestingly, some of the other parties are trying to say the same—is that there is no difference between the policies of the Government and the Opposition and that we would all have to make the same decisions. However, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has clearly stated that there is a huge difference between the forward plans of the Government and those of the Opposition. Our policies involve a different attitude towards spending cuts and tax increases in order to reduce the deficit over a period. That is what we said back in 2010; we were clear that we would be following a different pathway. We were not deficit deniers, as was sometimes suggested, but we were clear that we had a different view on how this could best be handled and that there would therefore be fairness in our measures. That remains the case because, prior to the Budget, the IFS said that, given our forward plans and taxation proposals, in contrast to the £55 billion of spending cuts the Conservatives would have to find, the Labour Opposition would be looking to make only £4 billion of spending cuts. More recently the IFS has said that in order to carry out our plans we would not need to make any further spending cuts in the forthcoming Government. So that is a very big difference in our policies. From that point of view, we are in a position to say not just that we would not increase VAT, but that we have a different and much fairer road to go down.

It is right for us to ask what the Government—whether the coalition or the Conservative party; it is not always clear—would be doing. Not only have they said that they need to find those spending cuts to carry out their deficit reduction proposals, but they have also suggested further tax reductions through the continued raising of the tax threshold. At no time since that announcement was made by the Prime Minister at the Conservative party conference has there been any clarity as to where that money would be coming from. So not only are they clearly tied to making substantial departmental spending cuts, but they have not shown us how they are going to close this financial gap. That is why people are saying, “We think it’s going to be VAT.” It is hard to tell where else it might come from. Of course, if it is coming from somewhere else, we would expect that to be said. So the Prime Minister stands up and says, “Oh no, we won’t be increasing VAT,” but the other half of that statement has not been made. We do not know how he is going to square this circle.