Self-employed Persons: Financial Support

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and one that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is aware of. I am sure that he will be happy to have further discussions with him in the coming days. My hon. Friend is right, the pub and restaurant trade having collapsed, there is not only food that would have been provided to them, but capacity in our fishing catch, because of the quota rules.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I know that the Minister has been sent out with a new three-word slogan from the Government’s three-word slogan unit, namely, “Help is coming”, but may I remind him that the previous one was, “Whatever it takes”? That is what the Government pledged, and it should apply to self-employed people too. He just said that, in the coming days, there will be some further clarity. There is fear across the House that we might not sit next week, and that the Government may be getting to the point where they do not have to come back to the House to account for what they are doing for the self-employed. What assurance will he give us that whatever “Help is coming”, it will constitute “Whatever it takes” and will be equivalent to what is being offered to employed people?

[Steve Barclay]

I am very happy to make it a six-word slogan, if the hon. Gentleman prefers: “Help is coming”, and we will do, “Whatever it takes”. As to whether the House will sit, that is not an issue for the Government, as he well knows as an experienced Member of the House. Whether the House sits—whether Ministers are called to answer questions—is a matter for the Chair, and not for Ministers. In fact, we had an urgent question last week, and we have one here, so that suggests that Mr Speaker is keen to ensure, quite properly, that Ministers are held to account.

Coronavirus: Employment Support

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I have taken that up urgently with the industry. Businesses take out business relief, and then about 5% take out insurance for non-specified diseases, and 5% for specified diseases. We have made sure that for those that have taken insurance for specified diseases, that will be triggered by the Government’s announcement this week, and the other package of measures will support businesses that do not have that insurance. We cannot retrofit contractual obligations to insurance companies.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The Minister is a decent man, but there is a feeling across the Chamber that Treasury Ministers, and the Chancellor in particular, find it difficult to empathise with the situation that people find themselves in and do not speak human very well. I appeal to Ministers to show a bit more understanding of the predicament facing freelancers and the self-employed who have lost all their work, and perhaps take on board simple ideas, such as that of the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark). Reverse the polarity—it usually works.

[John Glen]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman wishes to criticise the tone of my response. I am clear that this is an unprecedented crisis. The Government have made a series of announcements, and will be making further announcements. A range of sensible suggestions have been made, many of which we are already examining urgently.

In response to specific questions about technical matters, I have had to use quite complex and unfamiliar constructions. If I did not do that, I would not be answering the question. If I used too many soundbites, I would be criticised in another way. We will do everything we can to take on board the questions that have been raised today to come forward with a comprehensive package that all our constituents will see as effective.

Economic Update

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

My right hon. Friend the Environment Secretary is engaging actively with supermarkets to make sure that all aspects of our food supply are secure, including deliveries and ensuring that everyone receives the food that they need during this time.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The Chancellor needs to be more than a desiccated calculating machine. When he answers questions, we need to hear talk about people, not just packages. Will he look at early-day motion 302, which I tabled and which advocates a universal basic income—particularly for freelancers and the self-employed—as a temporary measure during this crisis, and will he pledge to return to the House, rather than just making an announcement through the press, to tell us what he is going to do about these employment measures?

[Rishi Sunak]

The hon. Gentleman talks about packages to support business. They are not divorced from people’s circumstances; they are directly helping people’s circumstances. The way to help people is to secure their employment, now and in the future, and that is what these packages are designed to do, which is why they will make a real difference to people on the ground.

Apprenticeship Levy

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the effectiveness of the apprenticeship levy.

It is almost exactly 10 years since I secured my first debate, which was on apprenticeships, in this very Chamber. Ten years on from the arrival of the new coalition Government, with that a huge and welcome emphasis on apprenticeships, and three years on from the introduction of the apprenticeship levy, today’s debate is a good opportunity to review how the levy was introduced, what it aimed to achieve and how the levy process has gone so far.

However, let me first go back to 2010 as a starting point. At that time, I and various colleagues, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who is beside me today, were desperately keen to recognise the value of apprenticeships, to restore their role in our nation as a key motivator and opportunity for social mobility, to improve the opportunities for our manufacturers, and to introduce apprenticeships into many of the service sectors where they did not then exist. We were looking for a renaissance of apprenticeships, and a boosting and strengthening of them, and we did that, broadly, in the first five years of the Government that was formed in 2010. Then there was the introduction of the levy.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I well remember that debate in 2010, not least because it had to be postponed because the Minister did not turn up on time, and so was held later. However, as the Minister with responsibility for apprenticeships immediately prior to the 2010 election, I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would care to acknowledge that there was a big expansion of apprenticeships up to 2010, just as I would acknowledge the increase that happened thereafter. However, is not one of the problems with the current apprenticeship levy that it is too rigid, so lots of industries, including creative industries such as the film industry, find it impossible to offer apprenticeships?

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Gentleman is kind to recall that first debate; in fact, I had a printer problem and so, in addition to the Minister, I myself was late—it was a promising start to a promising career.

[Kevin Brennan]

I left that bit out.

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Gentleman kindly glossed over that. Some of the points he made about the flexibility of the apprenticeship levy are important, and I promise that I will come on to them.

In that debate—I have reviewed what I said then—all of us recognised that some work on apprenticeships had been done under the Government in which the hon. Gentleman served. There was no doubt about that, but we needed to put a rocket-boost into the system, and I think the figures confirm that we did, with 2 million apprenticeships being created between 2010 and 2015. Businesses and Government organisations, together with what the Government introduced by way of funding, made a huge difference. However, let us not go over that too much, because I want to see where we are today.

I will start with what the aims of the apprenticeship levy were. It is fair to say that the Government wanted to double the investment in apprenticeships, from roughly £1.2 billion to £2.5 billion, and at the same time deliver on their commitment in the 2010 manifesto to take the number of apprenticeships from 2 million to 3 million by 2020. Right at the beginning, there was also a quality expectation—an ambition to raise the level of the apprenticeships that were being studied for and to have more higher apprentices, who in turn would contribute to some sectors where we had and still have key competitive advantages—cyber and aerospace are obvious examples. In addition, there was certainly the implication of reducing the costs to the taxpayer by getting a greater contribution from the larger employers in particular.

Beer Taxation and Pubs

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered beer taxation and pubs.

I am delighted to have secured this important debate, alongside the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans), and I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating us this time.

In the short time that I have available, I hope to set out a compelling case as to why the Minister should recommend to the Chancellor that he cut beer duty in future Budgets, reform business rates and continue to look at new ways of reducing the disproportionate tax burden on pubs and breweries. Representing a Black Country constituency as I do, and as chair of the all-party parliamentary beer group—the largest Back-Bench all-party group in this House—I know what an important issue this is for many of our constituents. My own Dudley South constituency is home to three very distinct and individual brewers: Bathams, dating back to the 1860s; Black Country Ales, which is a much more recent and fast-growing brewery; and Ma Pardoes, one of the original Campaign for Real Ale breweries.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his great work as chair of the all-party parliamentary beer group, of which—like many other hon. Members—I am a member. Does he agree that, although it is very welcome that the Government extended rates relief to pubs, it is disappointing that they did not also extend it to small music venues, where people often also drink the occasional beer?

[Mike Wood]

Of course, the business rates relief extension was part of the support for high streets and community pubs in particular. I think there is a particular value to that, but I certainly would not be opposed to the kind of measures to which the hon. Gentleman has referred.

When we last debated beer duty in this House—in Westminster Hall in October 2017—I said that there were 75 pubs in my constituency. I am afraid that there are now only 73, despite my very best efforts.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The points my hon. Friend makes are well made, and of course this is about getting the balance right. The Government recognise that plastic packaging can play an important role, but we want to reduce the environmental impact of single-use plastic waste and encourage more sustainable forms of plastic packaging that can be recycled. The packaging tax will encourage businesses to use more recycled plastic in the production of packaging and will therefore drive a more sustainable packaging industry.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

My 10-year-old constituent Emily Haines wrote to me about this issue, and she assured me she had not just copied and pasted. Indeed, when I wrote back to her by hand, her father emailed me to say that he had no idea that his daughter had written to me on this subject. So may I ask the Chancellor not to listen to those who say that he should in any way dilute what he is doing on single-use plastics? Indeed, he should do more and do as Emily says: introduce “tough new taxes” to make sure that we deal with this environmental scourge.

[Mr Hammond]

That is what we are doing. This will be the world’s first plastic tax and it is carefully designed to go with the grain of the market: to incentivise manufacturers to use more recycled plastic in their packaging. Because of that, it creates an effective market for packaging and, together with the producer responsibility note system, will transform the way in which plastic packaging enters the circular economy in this country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hammond]

I agree with my hon. Friend on this. Forecasting has had a bit of a bad rap in this House over the past couple of years, but this report was interesting, because it showed that economic forecasts in fact have a good track record of delivering, and we should pay attention to what the experts are telling us.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

T6. It is Independent Venue Week. Such venues are the research and development to a £4.5 billion music industry, but a third of them have closed in the past decade. Why is the Chancellor, who has Runnymede Jazz Club in his constituency, giving a rates discount to pubs but not to music venues? Will he look at that again?

[Mr Speaker]

Let us hear about the jazz situation in Runnymede.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 8th January 2019 Commons Chamber

There has been some suggestion that the Government might accept amendment 7 at some point today in order to avoid defeat. Usually the Opposition would welcome that, but unfortunately, if that capitulation comes, it will show that the Government have absolutely no strategy for anything other than surviving until the end of each day. I have begun to think that they will accept almost any amendment to a Finance Bill to avoid defeat, regardless of what it proposes or of how incoherent it would make the legislation, because that is the only objective they seem able to pursue. That is no strategy for delivering the most important decision this country has taken for 70 years. That is why the Opposition have tabled new clauses 3 and 7 and amendment 1 to address some other serious issues in the Bill.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Given that the Business Secretary said in the House earlier that no deal should not be contemplated, and that my hon. Friend is outlining the possibility of the Government accepting amendment 7, would it not be right for the Government to say clearly at the end of business today that they are ruling out no deal because it would be so damaging to this country?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We all know that several members of the Government take that view, even though they may not be able to say it on the record. They are quite clear as to what no deal would mean, and they would not contemplate going down that route. It would be far simpler and far better to get to a position where ruling out no deal was clearly the Government’s intent.

New clause 3 would oblige the Government to publish a review of the fiscal and economic effects of the exercise of the powers in clause 89, as well as the differences between exercising those powers in Great Britain and in Northern Ireland. As we edge closer to the reality of crashing out without a deal, clause 89 is not simply hypothetical. We are now just two and a half months away from the UK’s exit without an agreement. It is therefore of critical importance that we have a full and transparent view of the implications of a clause of this kind.

Business Banking Fraud

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Wragg]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. I pay tribute to the police and crime commissioner, but I also wish to pay tribute to a couple of people who I believe are here in the Gallery today. Instead of the authorities investigating, it was left to a couple of music producers from Cambridge, Paul and Nikki Turner, to crack the case. I hope they are here in Parliament. They are still fighting for compensation for other victims of the crime.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I endorse what has been said about Anthony Stansfeld.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is not just about RBS, as some people seem to think? My constituent, Mike McGrath, went out of business because of his treatment by Lloyds bank.

[Mr Wragg]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct: it was systemic across the whole business lending sector. He is right to put that on the record.

The Turners’ reward for bringing the case to the bank’s attention back in 2007 was to be branded conspiracy theorists. The bank—first as HBOS, then as Lloyds—tried to evict them from their home 22 times, spending more on legal action than the value of the home itself. It sent a top partner from one of the country’s best regarded law firms to Cambridge county court to watch the hearings. The Turnbull report, which details a comprehensive cover-up of the fraud from within the bank, notes lawyers as saying that, once the Turners were out of their home, they would have to accept their fate. This was not the pursuit of justice but a witch hunt to silence whistleblowers.

The Turners approached the Financial Standards Authority, the Serious Fraud Office and the Treasury. Indeed, there was a debate in this very room in June 2009, during which Members urged the authorities to investigate. However, all they encountered was denials and deflection. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) pointed out, the case was eventually taken seriously only after Thames Valley police recognised that a crime had been committed. The investigation took seven years to complete and the resource of 151 officers and staff, and it cost £7 million, with only £2 million eventually recovered from the Home Office. Thames Valley police stated that they could have done it in half the time and for half the money, if only the bank had co-operated fully. Unfortunately, the scale and difficulty of investigating the fraud only serves as a warning to other cash-strapped police forces: “Investigate at your peril”.

The reality is that white-collar crimes such as this are expensive and difficult to prosecute, and the agencies responsible for fighting economic crime simply do not have the necessary resources to tackle complex, mid-tier banking fraud. The SFO takes on only a small number of very large cases and has a budget of £53 million. The National Crime Agency’s economic crime command has a budget of £10 million, and the newly established National Economic Crime Centre has a budget of just £6 million. Compared with the sheer scale of fraud in the United Kingdom, which is estimated at more than £190 billion a year, and given the potential for consequential losses, these investigative budgets are, frankly, insignificant.

For those who may think that this is a one-off, it is important to note that the processes employed by HBOS in this case—turnaround units, business valuations and the use of insolvency—are exactly the same tactics seen in the case of other complaints that the all-party parliamentary group on fair business banking has investigated. Such complaints were found to be commonplace, as the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) alluded to, across most financial institutions. The system is ripe for abuse, and we have serious concerns about it.

At this point, I pay tribute to the incredible dedication of the co-chairs of the all-party group, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) and the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb). In addition, I thank the group’s officers and members for their significant work in running a thorough inquiry into how so many SMEs were abused by their banks, exposing the scale of the issue and the mechanisms by which the frauds were conducted. The APPG has produced an important report that identifies the shortcomings in the current investigative tools and bodies and makes vital recommendations as to how we might start to unpick this sorry mess.

I reiterate the APPG’s calls for a full public inquiry into the treatment of businesses by financial institutions. There are currently more than 10 different inquiries looking at different, isolated issues. It is time that we had a holistic approach and investigated the system as a whole.

Banking Misconduct and the FCA

Lord Brennan of Canton Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

This is an important debate and I congratulate all the hon. Members who have contributed to it so far. Banks occupy a very special and important position in our economy and society. Without them, the economy could not function efficiently. However, they also operate in such a way that they borrow short and lend long, and they always have done. As a result, banks hold a degree of responsibility and trust when they take people’s moneys into their care. I am afraid that over the past few decades, as other hon. Members have described, a culture has been allowed to develop under Governments of different colours to allow banks to basically follow the principle that “Greed is good,” as so well elucidated in 1980s film “Wall Street”. Ultimately, everything that has been described today—the disasters that have been brought upon our constituents—has been born out of the greed of bankers operating not in the interests of our constituents, but to line their own pockets.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that the situation is 10 times worse when the bank no longer exists? I have constituents who are still trying to work through HBOS, which is now part of Lloyds, which has washed its hands of it.

[Kevin Brennan]

I absolutely accept that; it is completely the case. I want to mention briefly some of my constituents who have been affected by what has been described today and by other practices that should be incorporated in the public inquiry that other hon. Members have called for. By the way, RBS has today been fined $4.9 billion by the American authorities for its activities when it was expecting to pay something like $12 billion, so if there is concern in the Treasury about the cost of a public inquiry, we have $7.1 billion available, given the assumption that was made by RBS, that could be levied on just one of the banks that we are talking about today to cover the cost of any public inquiry. I hope that the Treasury boffins have taken notice of that statistic.

My constituent Mike McGrath was also a victim of the kind of asset stripping we have heard about today. He can show quite clearly that Lloyds bank lied to the Financial Ombudsman Service to obtain a favourable judgment for itself and so that my constituents’ complaint was not upheld. The decision arrived at by the Financial Ombudsman Service was based on the probability of the evidence, but that evidence was incomplete, inconclusive or contradictory because Lloyds bank did not provide all the evidence that it should have done to the Financial Ombudsman Service. There was detrimental evidence that would have allowed the adjudicator to find in favour of my constituent—as the law should require them to do. Customers should have the right to complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service and get it to adjudicate quickly, fairly and at little cost. That is why it exists, but Lloyds bank, and I believe others have done the same, has concealed detrimental evidence to prevent that from happening. This left my constituent with the only option of expensive court litigation, which he could little afford, having been ruined and bankrupted by his own bank.

This allowed Lloyds Wholesale Banking Recoveries in Bristol, with the aid of their appointed Law of Property Act receiver, Alder King, which we heard about earlier from my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens), to strip the customer’s assets, knowing that the customer had in fact given the true account of the facts to the FOS and would have had their complaint upheld had Lloyds bank been truthful. My constituent can show that this has happened on more than one occasion. He believes not only that there should be a public inquiry, but that the Treasury Committee should look at the wider issues that have been raised in this debate and by this scandal for all the people who have been affected by different banks’ actions when the banks were bailed out by the Government.

Banks are still engaged in other practices that should be part of any inquiry. That includes what a constituent, Mr Iqbal Hassan, came to see me about last week—the way that a bank can suddenly close down their customers’ bank accounts without any notice. In his case, he simply got a text message saying that there were insufficient funds in his bank account and that it had been frozen. He then showed me the letter of apology he received from the bank. The letter gave absolutely no explanation of why the bank—it was Barclays bank in this case— had shut down his bank account. In fact, it said that it did not know why it had happened, but then, a day after that, it closed it completely. Many practices of that kind are going on.

There is also the negligence of banks in relation to customers being defrauded, often over the telephone. They rely on the concept of gross negligence on the part of their customers, which is completely unacceptable. A constituent—I will not name them here, because it is very difficult when this happens—at first lost over £40,000 as a result of this kind of fraud. Fortunately, through the help that I was able to give and through the help of people like Richard Emery—I commend him for his work on this kind of banking fraud—we were able to recover most of my constituent’s money. However, there are many similar cases in which Members’ constituents are not being refunded money that has been transferred from their accounts to accounts in other banks, which are taking no responsibility for giving harbour to criminals by holding their accounts and paying out money that has been stolen from our constituents.

We should have a public inquiry, and I urge the Minister to talk to his Treasury Minister colleagues about it. I know that he may not be able to make an announcement during today’s debate, but I hope he will go away and talk to his colleagues about the requirement for a proper, fully empowered public inquiry to investigate this scandal.