Bank Profits: Windfall Tax

Debate between Jim Shannon and Richard Burgon

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

Today I am calling on the Government to introduce a windfall tax on the banks, which have exploited the cost of living crisis to make super-profits, just as the energy companies did before them. Such a tax could create much-needed funds to invest in our public services and to help bail out those hit hard by the ongoing economic crisis. Before I make the case for that, however, I want to look at where we are after 13 years of Tory misrule.

British economic growth was recently downgraded again. Britain has now seen well over a decade of economic stagnation. We are living through the largest fall in living standards since records began 75 years ago. This will be the first Parliament in history in which people are poorer at the end of it than at the beginning. What a record! Wages are set to be no higher in 2028 than they were 20 years before. That is the slowest wage growth in 200 years, and it has cost the average worker £10,700 a year in lost pay growth. Shockingly, 9 million younger workers have never worked in an economy where they have seen sustained average wage rises.

Income inequality in the UK is higher than in any other large European country. We have a much weaker economy and much lower living standards. That is the record of the Government’s agenda of austerity, deep public service cuts and trickle-down economics. They have created a social nightmare, too. Fourteen million people live in poverty, including over 4 million children. One in seven people is facing hunger, and 6 million households are in fuel poverty. As the cost of living crisis continues to hit families across the UK, this should be a time to bail them out. It should be a time of public investment to boost economic growth and living standards, and to rescue our public services. Instead, the Government are plotting another £20 billion-worth of cuts to public spending. I cannot think of a single policy that would cause more economic and social harm.

When we talk of a worsening economic and social crisis, we cannot forget the class politics of it all: how it affects the 99% and how it affects the 1%. We hear a lot about the cost of living crisis, but it is not a crisis for the elites. For them, it has been boom time. There have never been so many UK billionaires, and British billionaires have increased their wealth by £120 million every single day over the past decade. The profits of the UK’s largest companies are now 89% higher than before the pandemic. Bankers’ bonuses have hit record highs. Bosses’ pay at the largest 100 companies has been going up and up, and has increased by 16% in the past year.

One sector that has been doing very well out of the crisis is banking. Just like the oil and gas companies, the banks have used the crisis to line their pockets. While millions of people struggle to pay their mortgages and rents, the banks have been cashing in. Higher interest rates have enabled them to charge households more for mortgages and firms more for loans, but those higher interest rates have not been passed on to savers.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward the debate; I spoke to him beforehand. Does he not agree that the closure of high-street banks—there have been some 11 in my constituency of Strangford— especially in rural communities, has left a massive problem of rural isolation and that there should be a windfall tax on the banks making profits, with that money routed to the rural communities who have felt the brunt of the banks’ thirst for enhanced profits over service, which seems to be their calling card?

[Richard Burgon]

The hon. Member makes an important point. The example he gives of the closure of so many high-street banks, which disadvantages people in my community as well as in rural communities, just goes to show that the banks’ huge increase in profits has not been achieved through delivering a better service to consumers at all. Higher interest rates have not been passed on to savers; they have been hoarded by the banks, creating a windfall for them of many billions for doing nothing productive.

Such a transfer from the public to banks would be unjustifiable at any time, but it is especially so when so many people are struggling to cover the essentials and our public services are on their knees due to Tory cuts. The banks should face the same type of tax on their unearned and underserved windfalls as the energy companies.

The pre-tax profits of the big four banks—Lloyds, Barclays, HSBC and NatWest—show why that would be a just tax. In the first nine months of 2023, they made a staggering £41 billion in pre-tax profits, which is almost double the £23 billion they made in the same period last year, according to research by Unite the union. The question we must answer is this: will we allow the Government to claim that more austerity and cuts are inevitable and that public investment is unaffordable, or are we to build a better tax system that focuses on making the wealthiest pay their fair share?

[Richard Burgon]

The hon. Member makes a valuable intervention. I will come to how it was unjustifiable for the Government to reduce the surcharge in that way. Both approaches are possible and desirable, with yes, a windfall tax, but also reversing that cut.

If we build a fairer, better tax system that focuses on making the wealthiest pay their fair share, we can invest in rebuilding the economy so that it serves the majority of people, we can invest in renewing our public services, and we can give people back some hope. A windfall tax on unexpected and undeserved bank profits can play an important role in creating that fairer tax system. Banks are not reinvesting their profits in the economy; they are handing out huge pay and bonuses, which could go even higher, aided and abetted by the Government’s decision to scrap the bonus cap.

That all comes at a time when the banks are turning their backs on local communities. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned, bank branches have been disappearing from our high streets at an alarming rate. Since 2015, almost 6,000 branches have permanently closed their doors. At a time of deepening social crisis, while banks collect record profits, they have made it even more difficult for working people to access their finances and get financial advice.

[Jim Shannon]

Does the hon. Member not feel that there is something immoral about banks making high profits, closing branches and seeing their profit margins actually grow, while people are being left disadvantaged? There is something immoral about that. People are being disadvantaged, while others are making more.

[Richard Burgon]

The hon. Gentleman is completely correct: there is something immoral about the way that banks’ profits are soaring while they are not delivering a better service for their customers, particularly vulnerable customers—the less affluent, the disabled and the elderly. That is not how we should be going about things, and he makes an important moral case.

Based on the latest quarterly results, a windfall tax in the UK could raise between £4 billion and £16 billion this year from the profits of the big four banks alone, depending on the form that that windfall tax takes. That is billions of pounds that could be used to boost public investment and to tackle the soaring inequality that we are facing. Spain’s progressive Government offer us an example. They introduced a 4.8% windfall levy on certain bank incomes and commissions above a threshold of €800 million. Replicating that here could raise almost £4 billion this year. Even Margaret Thatcher introduced a form of windfall tax, with a 2.5% tax on banks’ non-interest-bearing deposits. In words that sound all too familiar today, Thatcher said that the banks had

“made their large profits as a result of our policy of high interest rates rather than because of increased efficiency or better service to the customer.”

Such a tax in the UK, according to Positive Money calculations, could raise up to £11 billion today, and a windfall tax, in whatever from, would be popular. According to a poll commissioned for the TUC, three quarters of the public support a windfall tax on banks’ excess profits, including 76% of people who voted Conservative in 2019.

Perhaps the simplest move—we heard this in an earlier intervention—would be to reverse the tax break for banks that the Government introduced in last year’s autumn statement. They slashed the bank profits surcharge from 8% to 3%, saying that this was to cushion them against the impact of higher corporation tax rates. But this surcharge, along with the banking levy, was one of the special taxes raised on banks after the financial crash due to the greater risks that banks posed to our wider economic stability. The risk they pose clearly still remains and so too should the surcharge.

The TUC general secretary, Paul Nowak, rightly described the slashing of the surcharge as starving our public services of much-needed funds at the worst possible time. Reversing it could provide key funds to, for example, introduce universal free school meals, scrap the two-child cap or fund a proper pay raise for junior doctors. The TUC estimates that the Treasury will lose at least £1.5 billion a year over the next four years, although it believes that it is likely to be more given the recent boost to bank profits.

Positive Money estimates that reversing cuts to both the bank surcharge and the levy could raise more than £4 billion this year. We need to be clear about this: it was a political choice for the Prime Minister to slash the surcharge on the banks just as it was a political choice to scrap the cap on bankers’ bonuses. Doing so is a sign of what is so wrong in our current taxation system.

It is clear that more of the same Tory dogma of the past 13 years of cuts and trickle-down economics is not the answer. All that that would succeed in doing is deepen the social crisis that is harming so many families in Britain. It is time that we put a stop to that. It is time to tackle the tax perks handed to the wealthy. The banks were bailed out when they were in trouble during the 2007 global financial crisis. It is now time for them to be taxed fairly to help bail out communities that are suffering because of the Tory party’s focus on building an economy that serves the wealthy few while the vast majority fall ever further behind. A windfall tax on bank profits is a just policy, it is economically sound and it would be welcomed by people across this country. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Enabling the Public to call a General Election

Debate between Jim Shannon and Richard Burgon

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I have secured today’s debate to open the discussion on adopting new constitutional mechanisms that could allow the people to directly call a general election. That would apply in scenarios where the vast majority have lost faith in the Government, as they clearly have now, but our parliamentary system fails to respond to their wishes. It is a scar on our democracy that there is currently no mechanism at all for people to do that. The debate is the first stage in my push for such a mechanism. The next stage will be to seek to progress a new Bill through Parliament in the coming weeks in line with my proposal, which I will detail later in the speech.

Such a Bill will not get us the general election that we need right now.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for introducing the debate. There is no doubt that Members have conflicting views about calling a general election. There are two key issues for my constituents: the cost of living and the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, which is currently going through Westminster. Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that, after a period of instability, it is time to give the Prime Minister and his Government a chance to deliver on their promises and maintain the legislative process on which they were elected?

[Richard Burgon]

I thank the hon. Member, who is ever assiduous in attending and contributing to these important debates, for his intervention. My opinion is that this Government have had more than enough chances to deliver, and while we disagree on the need for a general election now, I will make some wider points that he might be interested in considering.

I hope that this discussion will help to kick-start a conversation about why we need to modernise our democracy to empower ordinary people and prevent an unrepresentative Government or unrepresentative Governments from clinging on to power when people have had enough. Of course, such a mechanism should only be able to be used in extraordinary times, but the current crisis shows why it is needed.

Such a Bill is part of a series of measures that we need to restore trust in our democracy. For example, last year I introduced a Bill seeking to ban MPs from taking second jobs. My latest proposal is for a form of recall mechanism, and it is a response to the political crisis we face. We have had two new Prime Ministers since the public last had their say at the 2019 election. Just 80,000 Conservative party members put one of those Prime Ministers into Downing Street, and even fewer people had a say with her successor, who was chosen solely by Conservative MPs. Both these Prime Ministers have been intent on tearing up the promises that their party was elected on in 2019. For example, who voted in the 2019 election for the new wave of austerity that looks set to be announced later this week?

This Government have no mandate. They have also undermined political trust. Institute for Public Policy Research findings on levels of trust in our politics should concern every single Member of this House. It found that trust in politicians is at the lowest level on record, with two in three now seeing politicians as “merely out for themselves” and just 4% of British people believing that parliamentarians are doing their best for the country. No one side in this House can take satisfaction from this. Voters across the political spectrum are united in their distrust: 67% of remain voters, 68% of leave voters, 64% of Conservative voters and 69% of Labour voters believe that politicians are merely out for themselves.

Trust, I am afraid, is in free fall. The 9% fall we have witnessed over the last 18 months shows a rapid acceleration of growing distrust. In comparison, it took seven years for the previous drop of 9 percentage points, and 42 years before that. The IPPR warns that a decrease in trust in politicians is profoundly disturbing. It is linked to long-term damaging consequences such as lower voter turnout, especially among under-represented groups. The Office for National Statistics reports similar concerns with trust in our democratic institutions. Deep reform of our economy and politics will be needed to address this.

It is clear that our democracy is not fit for purpose, and there are two ways of dealing with this crisis of democracy. There is the method of this Government, which is to attack hard-won civil liberties and curtail democratic rights. This authoritarian drift combines anti-trade union legislation with draconian attacks on the right to peaceful protest and voter suppression through the introduction of voter ID, which will target black, Asian and minority ethnic and working-class voters. This authoritarian approach has even led to police arresting journalists covering protests. The alternative is to strengthen democratic rights and modernise our democratic processes.

That brings me on to my proposal, which is a form of recall procedure through a verified petition to call a general election. The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance describes such recall processes as a form of “direct democracy” and a

“political instrument through which the electorate in a particular electoral jurisdiction can express their dissatisfaction.”

It adds that

“the procedure of the recall is associated with the idea that representatives must remain accountable to the people who elected them.”

So, voters should be able to terminate the mandate before the end of a term when their representatives fall short of expectations.

Welp and Whitehead explain in their 2020 book “The Politics of Recall” that

“The idea of ‘recall’ elections is not a last minute ‘add on’ to principles of representative government, but a logical strand of thought interwoven into its foundational reasoning.”

In the same book, Matt Qvortrup traces the development of the recall in the history of political philosophy from the Roman republic to the present day. While I do not have time today to recount the history of recalls in full, I would like to highlight that movements that did so much in the development of our own democracy envisaged mechanisms with echoes of what I am proposing today. During the English revolution, the leading Leveller, Lieutenant Colonel John Lilburne, championed recall as one of the democratic correctives to the risk of an oppressive, overbearing Parliament. The Chartists envisioned annual elections, with the arguments given then not so different from those offered by contemporary movements in favour of recall. There was even a provision for the recall of congressmen by their voters in the first draft of the American constitution written by James Madison.

Later in the United States, the Socialist Labour party and the Populist party pushed that idea as we approached the 20th century. Recall was then included in the new charter of the city of Los Angeles in 1903, and within a decade, it had been taken up by 200 cities and three states. Switzerland was the first modern liberal democracy to introduce recall at the end of the 19th century, although only at a sub-national level.

In the post-war era, recall was used as part of a series of direct democratic provisions in Japan from 1947 to empower citizens with the right to initiate petitions to dissolve local assemblies, recall individual assembly members and recall mayors or governors. More recently, the push for recall has been linked with the introduction of democracy. After the demise of Latin American dictatorships in the 1980s, recall increased its presence and integrated representative democracy with participatory democracy. Likewise, Germany and Poland introduced recall powers after the fall of the Berlin wall.

New Wealth Taxes

Debate between Jim Shannon and Richard Burgon

Tuesday 14th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Richard Burgon]

I encourage the right hon. Gentleman to read the report I have here. It is by some top academics and makes a compelling case for a wealth tax in the UK. I will return to that point in greater detail later in my remarks.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is not about someone getting more money for doing their job; it is about the obscenity of people getting large amounts of money when others are getting smaller amounts of money. People get six-figure dividends when others live on £10 an hour. That obscene disparity is the issue.

[Richard Burgon]

I could not agree more. We are talking about multibillion-pound enterprises with people at the top hoovering up the wealth, while others do not receive anything. Only yesterday, I and colleagues visited a picket line in Wakefield, where bus drivers are on strike; they are calling for £13.40 an hour. Many people will be surprised that they are not already on at least that sum.

To address our rigged economic model, we must first acknowledge that trickle-down economics has been a lie. Wealth is not trickling down; it is being funnelled up into fewer and fewer hands. That is a consequence of 40 years of deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing, driving down working conditions, the weakening of trade unions and lower taxes on the rich. Contrary to what is said by the spin doctors of the right, decades of keeping taxes low for the very rich has not boosted economic growth. In fact, research by the London School of Economics and King’s College London looking at tax cuts over the past 50 years shows that lower taxes on the rich has led to higher income inequality because the top 1% has captured almost all of the gains, while there has been almost no effect on boosting economic growth.

Inequality and hardship are not just at the heart of our system—it is how our system is designed and how it functions. Poverty and inequality are structural and institutionalised. That is why we need a debate on wealth taxes. A wealth tax is an idea whose time has come.

Last year, the Secretary-General of the United Nations called on Governments to consider a wealth tax on those who had profited during the pandemic, to reduce extreme inequalities. The OECD has argued that there is a strong case for addressing wealth inequality through the tax system. The group Patriotic Millionaires has called on the Chancellor to introduce a wealth tax, saying:

“We know where you can find that money—tax wealth holders like us.”

Oxfam has also called for a wealth tax to rein in extreme wealth and monopoly power.