Fuel Costs

Mark Tami Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

There has been a change since the general election. We spent the last Parliament trying to persuade the Labour Government to do something about this problem, and they steadfastly refused to do so. Now, we hear warm words from the new Government, but unfortunately we have yet to see any real action. That is the problem. Those on both Front Benches talked about the practicalities of this or that measure, and how they would have to look into them further, and I could hear the sound of things being thrown furiously at television screens up and down the country by people who are suffering now because of high fuel prices. It will be no good if it takes a year for any action to be taken, because, in that time, many of the businesses that are suffering now will no longer be in operation. That is important to the local economies of the areas concerned.

The Minister and others have talked about the need to pay down the deficit and to encourage growth. That is all true, but the growth in rural areas comes through small and medium-sized enterprises—the very businesses that are suffering most, as a result not only of fuel duty but of higher VAT and all the other factors affecting the economy. High fuel costs are strangling small businesses which have to transport goods into and out of their businesses by road, as there is no alternative. People have talked about transporting goods by rail, but in many areas such as my own, there is no realistic prospect of that happening. I have a rail line in my constituency; it goes up the whole of the east coast. Unfortunately, however, there are no freight depots on it. It is therefore impossible to use it for those purposes, and those businesses have to use the roads.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case. Does he agree that those same areas are also being hard hit by the rise in domestic oil prices? Are they not facing a double whammy in that regard?

[Mr Weir]

Indeed; I will come to that point later if I have time.

It is not only the businesses but their employees and the other people who live in the rural areas who are suffering in many ways. My constituency comprises small towns and villages, and many people have to travel to get to work. They have to use their cars to do so.

Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Mark Tami Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

If the Minister did not know the strength of feeling on the Labour Benches about this Bill before, he does now. It will hit children, women and families unfairly, it will hit the poorest in our society the hardest and it will undo the positive steps that the previous Labour Government took to tackle inequality. I say to him, on behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends, that it is a bad Bill and that we will oppose it this evening in the Lobby. As the Minister has said, it removes eligibility for child trust funds, abandons the saving gateway and abolishes the health in pregnancy grant, each of which was a progressive measure of the previous Labour Government and was welcomed by groups that tackle inequality. Each of those measures is being jettisoned by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats not as a matter of deficit reduction but as a matter of dogma. As my right hon. and hon. Friends have said in interventions, there has been no impact assessment. Not content with taking a gamble in the spending review on our jobs and growth, the Government have made choices that are unfair and that will hit the poorest in society the hardest.

Clause 1 concerns child trust funds, which were introduced by the Labour Government for three main reasons: to promote saving, to encourage financial education and to ensure that in future all young people would have a financial asset at the age of 18. The CTF scheme is having a positive effect. Between April 2008 and April 2009, a massive 823,504 CTF vouchers were issued—70,000 a month. More than 74% of those accounts were opened by parents and more than £2 billion is now held in those funds. At the end of this year, there will be 6 million child trust fund accounts for which the Minister will abolish contributions for the future.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is clear that Government Members are ashamed of this terrible Bill as there is hardly anyone on the Government Benches to link themselves with it?

[Mr Hanson]

I give credit to the Minister for defending the indefensible, and I look forward in particular to hearing Liberal Democrat Members and others defend the removal of these grants, trust funds and the saving gateway, all of which help the poorest in our society.

Draft EU Budget 2011

Mark Tami Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Cash]

With great respect to my hon. Friend, with whom I have had many useful discussions on this matter over the years, I do not agree for the reason that I have already given. It all depends on whether, as a result of the forthcoming negotiations, we achieve a blocking minority in the vote on the conciliation agreement. That agreement has not yet been mentioned, but regrettably it is integral to the procedures that we now face.

I fear that there might be a slight misunderstanding, because I suspect that all Members on the Government side of the House—or even all those in the Chamber—and many people in the Conservative party and the country at large, would agree with both amendments. The distinction I am drawing between them is simply that in the real world we must address such matters in a certain fashion. I do not want to advance my amendment simply because it is mine. It will not do any good if we go too far in merely expressing a sentiment with which everyone agrees, if the consequence of doing so is a counter-productive result. That is why I am taking the position outlined in amendment (a). I urge my hon. Friends—not for my sake, but simply for the sake of ensuring that we get things right—to support it.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is part of a coalition Government—or at least part of a coalition. What discussions has he had with his Lib Dem colleagues on the grand plan that he is setting out to skewer the EU budget?

[Mr Cash]

As a matter of fact, it is pretty obvious that I am not a member of the coalition Government, so let us dispense with that idea straight away. In my votes over the past few weeks, I have probably demonstrated that I have certain reservations about the situation, but I am not going further down that path now.

If the European Parliament is allowed to get away with this, it will add fuel to fire of the riots and demonstrations that are already sweeping many cities in different countries throughout Europe. Those countries face problems of immigration, economic stress and high unemployment, and wilfully to attempt to increase the EU budget when the whole thing needs to be rejected is, to my mind, irresponsible. If the EU Parliament persists, it cannot be regarded as a serious and responsible Parliament. That is my concern.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Mark Tami Excerpts

Monday 11th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

I will give way in a moment. If we reach the stage where we have an appropriate analysis of how our economy got to be in this situation, we will stand a far better chance of having a reasonable discourse about how we can best move forward, rather than having this gross caricature being made by those on the Government Benches.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

The Government seem to forget that when they were in opposition they promised to match our spending. The Liberal Democrats have great cheek to say now that they did not support the increased level of borrowing—I recall that they certainly did.

[Ms Eagle]

That is true. Clearly, the Chancellor and Prime Minister are on record, up to and including in 2008, as doing precisely what my hon. Friend says and supporting our spending commitments as they were at the time.

Although the recovery remains distinctly fragile, the June Budget took a huge and risky gamble with it. Since then, confidence in the UK’s economic prospects has fallen off a cliff and business surveys, such as that by Deloitte which I asked the Exchequer Secretary about, demonstrate that economic sentiment is darkening. There are increasing signs that the tentative recovery is stalling and that the economic storm clouds are gathering once more.

Finance Bill

Mark Tami Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Redwood]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am all in favour of more oversight by this House, and the more informed a debate we can have about this and other issues the better. Public debate in Britain has been stifled in recent years for all sorts of political reasons that we need not go into. It is better if we can bring such debates out into the open, but we need collectively to think through what avoidance is and what evasion is. If we do not know that, we cannot hope to guess its scale or optimise our measures for dealing with the features of it that we do not like. I am trying to deal with avoidance, on which I believe there is more scope for disagreement than on evasion, which we are all against.

I return to the point that some people’s avoidance is a bad practice and other people’s is common sense. Let us take another example of a matter on which the Government encourage avoidance. I gave one from personal tax, but we ought to be concentrating on corporation tax. The previous Labour Government were keen to encourage avoidance of corporation tax because they wanted companies to invest—a perfectly worthy aim. They said to companies, “If you invest more than you otherwise would do, that is an allowance against your corporation tax so that you will be able to avoid some tax in order to invest more.” One debate that the Committee will have is whether this Government are cracking down too much on investment avoidance by removing some of that allowance and giving everybody the benefit of a lower rate. I hope that Opposition Members will see that they are not as pure as they think they are on avoidance, and that there are certain types of avoidance that they see as a very good thing. It is a well-known feature of many tax structures to encourage avoidance in order to encourage good works or change conduct.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about avoidance all the time, but is it not about the Government giving companies incentives to invest, rather than allowing them to avoid tax?

[Mr Redwood]

The hon. Gentleman has made my point beautifully. I have just said that one man’s avoidance is another man’s tax incentive—that is exactly the point that I am trying to make. There are good types of avoidance and bad types. Sometimes all the parties in the House agree that a certain type of avoidance is bad, and then it is in our own gift, because we are the legislature, to table business on any day to stop that tax avoidance in its tracks by changing legislation explicitly and clearly to send a signal. At other times we come together to legislate in favour of tax avoidance, because there are things that we wish to encourage. As he rightly says, sometimes the best thing to do is to give people a lower tax bill to encourage such procedures. That is surely encouragement of tax avoidance of a benign kind and a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

[Mark Tami]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Redwood]

The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but what else is it? Why are people investing more than they otherwise would have done? Because they are allowed to avoid tax and pay less tax than they otherwise would.