Tax Credits
Owen Smith Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend brings me on, quite handily, to my very next point. When tax credits first came in, their aim was entirely noble, but they quickly soared out of control. The total cost more than trebled between 1999 and 2010, ending up costing £30 billion in 2010. Scandalously, while spending spiralled under the previous Government, in-work poverty actually rose by 20%. Now, we can kick a problem down the road or we can do something about it. We chose to do something about it. Our reforms do not abolish tax credit or anything close.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
Will the Minister confirm that the average tax credit bill to the Exchequer under Labour was £22 billion, whereas under the Conservative party, it has been £30 billion? So it has gone up on this Government’s watch.
Damian Hinds
I heard the hon. Gentleman make this extraordinary point on “Newsnight” last night. He talks about an average. If we have an upwards curve, and we draw a line through it, of course it is going to be lower in the middle than at the end. The point is the bill kept on rising—
Damian Hinds
Will the hon. Gentleman let me answer? The point is it kept on rising, with particular spikes just before 2003 and 2010.
Damian Hinds
I am conscious of time and know that many people want to speak.
Perhaps most important is the wider effect of the national living wage. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that as the national living wage imposes upward pressure further up the scale, 6 million people will get a pay rise. That effect starts now, but it will continue rising right up to the end of the decade. We are not just talking about a lower welfare, lower tax, higher wage economy; we are seeing it happen.
Owen Smith
The Minister has made the point repeatedly that the new national minimum wage is meant to offset the reduction in tax credits. What proportion of those on tax credits are currently on the national minimum wage? I suspect I will not get the answer, so I will tell him. It is 25%.
Damian Hinds
The hon. Gentleman’s intervention is timely. Had he been listening—that might sound as I did not mean it to sound—he would have heard me talk about the wider effects of the national living wage. It affects not just people on the national minimum wage, but a much wider distribution. Most economists estimate that it would extend about 25% up the income scale.
Damian Hinds
It does answer the question. The hon. Gentleman was suggesting that this proportion would not benefit from a national living wage, which is incorrect. A lot of people who are not on today’s minimum wage will also benefit to a sum of about—[Interruption.] I am asked how many—the estimate is that about 6 million people will benefit directly or indirectly.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
We have heard from more than 50 Members in this extraordinary debate, which I think is a measure of how vital it has been, and how much we need to understand properly the full impact of the changes that the Government are proposing. Running through so many of the speeches has been the message that politics is always about choices: what are we going to prioritise; who are we going to stand up for; and what, as the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) said in her brave and heartfelt speech, do we stand for? This debate has laid bare those fundamental choices.
The simple question that the Government must face tonight, and the simple question that will be asked right across Britain, is this: is the Conservative party what it says it is? Is it a party for the workers, with the interests of the workers at its heart, or is it a party that has its own self-interest at its heart and that is set tonight to dock the pay of workers across Britain? It cannot be both—even this most Janus-faced of Governments cannot turn both ways at once. It cannot be the party of workers while cutting workers’ pay. Each Conservative Member will need to answer for how they vote this evening, because there is no plausible defence for a policy that will take, on average, £1,300 from the pockets of working families, and with 70% of the losses falling on working mothers. It is a Tory tax on workers, and a Tory tax on working mums.
How do the Government justify that? As we have heard from successive speakers today, they say that the tax credits bill has gone up and that it has to be cut. Well, it has gone up on the Tories’ watch. They say that the minimum wage increase will compensate, but let us have none of this nonsense about a bogus living wage.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Greg Hands)
Let me tell the hon. Gentleman that under the previous Labour Government the tax credit bill went up from £10 billion to some £30 billion and is now down to £25 billion, so I am afraid that it has not gone up on our watch. [Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I presume that Conservative Members would want to hear their own Front Bencher, and I am sure that the rest of us would like to hear the Labour Front Bencher now.
Owen Smith
I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I have heard this nonsense from the Government several times; I heard it from the Exchequer Secretary earlier today. The truth is that when this variation of tax and child credits came in in 2003-04, the original bill was £19 billion. It went up to about £23 billion under Labour, and then in 2009, after the crash, it went up to £29 billion. Under the Chief Secretary’s Government, it has been £30 billion each year, so the largest bill we have paid for tax credits has been under the Tories. Why is that? It is because the low-welfare, low-tax, high-wage economy that he talks about is a myth—the Tories have failed to deliver it. Instead, we have a tax credit system that is a vital lifeline for working people on low and middle incomes who have relied on it to make ends meet over the past few years and still rely on it. The Tories will be pulling the rug out from under those people if they persist with this policy tonight. They know that none of the measures they have talked about—the personal income tax rise or the childcare provision—will offset the vast losses we have seen. It is an absolute con, just as it was a con from the Prime Minister when he told the country that he was not going to cut any tax credits.
I would like to be able to point to a Government impact assessment that would tell us the truth of this, but it is so thin it is barely worth mentioning. It is about as useful and reliable as a Volkswagen engine test. However, we have not needed an assessment because we have had one from the Chief Secretary’s own Back Benchers. Successive Back Benchers have stood up today and offered their view—their impact assessment—of what this Government are going to do to our constituents, and to Conservative constituents, across this country. I referred earlier to the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen), who made a scintillating speech. I will quote a few words for the delectation of the Chief Secretary. She said that these measures were “betraying who we are”—that is, who the Conservatives are. She said that they would lead to working people having to choose between heating and eating.
The hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) gave another excellent speech in which he said that his blue-collar city opposes these reforms. He pleaded with his Front Benchers, as a compassionate Conservative, to think again. The hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) talked about the impact we would see on carers and on people on low incomes. The hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) said that as a one-nation Conservative he could not support these reforms without significant mitigation. We heard interventions from the hon. Members for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy). Those are just some of the Conservative Members who are opposed to these measures.
Greg Hands
The hon. Gentleman has not mentioned the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), the Chairman of the Select Committee, who called on his own hon. Friends to take more action on the £4.4 billion savings gap that has arisen as a result of Labour deciding that it is against these reforms.
Owen Smith
Let me start with that number of 4.4 billion, because about 4.4 thousand of the Chief Secretary’s constituents will be hit by these changes. The real question he should be answering is what he says to his constituents about the cut they are going to have. He mentions my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), who of course spoke with great eloquence and knowledge. The crucial thing he said was, “Think again. Mitigate these measures. Understand that your mitigation measures are not going to work or offset the losses.”
Frank Field
What I said in my speech was that I hoped we would soon be able to debate a motion of the House, and that is what will happen when we have a full day’s debate on Thursday week. I also said that that is when we should make proposals for how to pay for it. I did not say we should do that in today’s debate.
Owen Smith
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his eloquent intervention. He reports accurately his own words, even if the Chief Secretary did not.
Let me be clear: tonight’s vote may not be a binding vote, but it does allow Members on both sides of the House to send a message to Conservative Front Benchers. These measures are a tax on working people.
The Government say that the national minimum wage increase, welcome though it is, will offset the changes, but it will not for a cleaner who is on £13,500, who will lose £7,000 over the term of this Parliament, or for a secretary with two children who is on £22,000, who will lose £9,500. Those are not small sums of money; for those people on low and middle incomes, they are enormous sums of money. It ill becomes the Government to dismiss, with the stroke of a pen, the concerns not only of their own Back Benchers, but of this country’s ordinary working people.
Too many Labour Members—far too many for me to list them all—have spoken today with great passion and conviction about their knowledge of their constituencies, the contents of their postbags and how the proposal will affect their people. The Government should read their speeches and listen carefully to the views of Members.
It is not just the Opposition who oppose the proposal. The Mayor of London—the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson)—and the bloke who is going to fail to succeed him on behalf of the Tories are both opposed to it. For heaven’s sake, even the Bow Group—I thought it had disappeared in 1980, before the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) was Chancellor of the Exchequer—says that the proposal represents a crisis for entrepreneurial Britain and that it will hit the self-employed. The Adam Smith Institute, the Murdoch press and, from what I have seen, most Tory Back Benchers are also opposed to it.
I urge the Government to think again; to look to their conscience and understand the damage they are going to do to the working people of this country; and to please vote with us tonight and offer some solutions in the forthcoming autumn statement.
Greg Hands
I will not be giving way for a while.
Tax credits were introduced to help those on the very lowest incomes—a noble aim and one that we support—but the system spiralled out of control. Spending on tax credits more than trebled in real terms under Labour. By 2010, nine in 10 families with children, including MPs, were eligible for tax credits. Even now, the figure is six in 10, and the latest reforms will bring it down to five in 10.
It is not even as if Labour’s spending worked: following the introduction of tax credits, in-work poverty rose by some 20%. Members need not take just my word for that; I am going to quote in detail Alistair Darling, who has been referred to this evening and who was one of my predecessors as Chief Secretary at a time when the modern tax credit system was being planned. He was interviewed this summer for an article in The Spectator entitled, “Alistair Darling: why I changed my mind on tax credits”. Crucially, it appeared after the summer Budget introduced by the Chancellor. The Spectator asked him:
“So your tax credits had the unintended consequence of keeping low wages down?”
“Undoubtedly,” replied Darling. The last Labour Chancellor said:
“Well, undoubtedly… I think it was a good policy when it was introduced”.
He went on:
“As Keynes famously said: when the facts change, you change your mind.”
Owen Smith
I am really enjoying the Chief Secretary reading excerpts from The Spectator, but will he answer the fundamental question? Will he confirm that 3 million people in this country will be £1,300 on average worse off as a result of these changes? Let us not hear about the past; he should tell us about the future.
Greg Hands
I can confirm that we have got down the cost per household of the budget deficit from about £6,000 per household per annum to about £3,500 per household per annum. Those sort of figures show what reforms we are introducing.
Greg Hands
I will not give way.
This Government’s mandate is to get our spending down, run a surplus and get our national debt down, and these reforms are a crucial part of that. That is what we were elected to do, and that is what the House agreed just last week. In particular, our general election mandate is to make reforms to reduce the welfare bill by £12 billion.
Greg Hands
No, I am not giving way. I have just said I was not giving way. [Interruption.] I gave way to the hon. Gentleman as well.
Our reforms to tax credits will account for £4.4 billion in the next financial year. This is the key question for the Opposition, which they have ducked during the last five hours of debate: if they do not want to reform tax credits, where will that money come from? Will they borrow more and saddle our children with still higher debt, or will they cut other services, such as schools or the NHS? I ask the Opposition: what would they do?
Wales Bill
Owen Smith Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
The Minister is right: there is no confusion. He clarified the position in Committee. Does he agree, though, that the people of Wales might think it slightly peculiar that a Tory Member of the European Parliament who lives in England should be deemed a Welsh taxpayer?
Mr Gauke
All I can say is that Wales has a very good MEP in Kay Swinburne and I am delighted that she has been re-elected—[Interruption.] Indeed: by the people of Wales.
I return to the new clauses and amendments before us. However rare the circumstances that I set out a moment ago might be, the potential hardship that a delay in the calculation of entitlements would cause to individuals makes it essential that we make these amendments to cater for such circumstances.
Amendments 2 to 5 are consequential and relate primarily to the commencement of the new clause. As I said, these amendments are minor and technical, but they address an important set of circumstances that could have a serious impact on some of the most vulnerable in society. I urge all hon. Members to support them.
On Government amendment 1, clause 6 gives effect to the Silk Commission’s recommendation that the Welsh Government should be funded from a combination of a block grant and some devolved taxes, with the clause conferring the required competence on the Assembly to legislate for these devolved taxes. Amendment 1 slightly alters new section 116A of GOWA, inserted by clause 6, to correct the possibly misleading impression that those taxes listed in chapters 3 and 4 of part 4A are the only taxes for which the Assembly has competence. The Assembly already has competence for local taxation, which includes council tax and business rates, and this minor amendment clarifies the position.
On amendments 11 and 12, we have been working closely with the Welsh Government in relation to Welsh funding. In particular, the Government recognise that there has been convergence between the levels of funding in Wales and England since devolution, and that this is a significant concern in Wales. As a result, in October 2012 we agreed to implement a joint process to review the levels of funding in Wales and England in advance of each spending review. If convergence is forecast to occur during a spending review period, options will be discussed to address the issue in a fair and affordable manner, based on a shared understanding of all the available evidence.
In advance of the 2013 spending round, a joint review was therefore undertaken by the two Governments and the outcome set out in a written ministerial statement. The review determined that funding levels are not expected to converge during the period to 2015-16. In fact, an element of divergence is forecast to occur. The review also determined that relative funding levels in Wales are within the range recommended by the Holtham Commission. These arrangements ensure that we have a shared understanding of funding levels in Wales, and that a process is in place to consider options if convergence is forecast to resume. There is therefore a firm basis for proceeding with the new financial powers in the Bill, and I hope that when the opportunity arises, hon. Members will withdraw amendments 11 and 12, but I look forward to hearing them make their case.
I turn now to amendments 9 and 10. When it comes to the extent of income tax devolution in Wales, there is a careful judgment to make. Devolving an element of income tax would increase the financial accountability of the Assembly and the Welsh Government in three important ways. First, it would enable the Assembly to fund more of the spending for which it is responsible. Secondly, the Welsh Government’s budget would be directly linked to their economic decisions in areas such as education, skills, housing and planning. Thirdly, the Welsh Government would be able to vary the levels of tax and spending in Wales. However, creating the link between the Welsh Government’s decisions and their budget involves transferring some risk to the Welsh Government. Specifically, the Welsh Government’s budget would benefit if the income tax base grew faster in Wales than the UK average, but would be adversely affected if growth in Wales was slower.
The larger the proportion of income tax we devolve, the greater the potential impact on the Welsh Government’s budget. Devolving 15p of income tax would increase the size of these impacts by 50%, compared to devolving 10p. Devolving all income tax to Wales, which is the stated aim of amendment 9, would increase the potential impacts even further.
Owen Smith
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to do battle once more with the Exchequer Secretary, who seems to have been permanently seconded to the Wales Office—he is like a ringer, to use football parlance. We welcome him and the opportunity he now has to clarify some of the things that he was unable to clarify when we last debated the Bill.
On income tax, the Opposition’s priority is very clear: we believe that we ought to have a fair and progressive tax system across the whole UK. For us that means reinstating the 50p rate and having a starting rate of 10p. That will be far fairer for the people of Wales, and indeed the people of every other part of the UK, than the tax cuts for millionaires that the Exchequer Secretary has overseen at the Treasury.
In the context of the Bill, we have three further priorities. Our first priority—this is why we will support the Bill this evening—is to ensure that Wales has access to borrowing powers in order to offset the £1.6 billion that the Conservatives have cut from the budget for Wales. That is linked to the taxation powers set out in the Bill.
Our second priority is to ensure that Wales is not further disadvantaged by potential additional cuts to the block grant that might be associated with the transfer of tax powers, as we heard a moment ago from the Exchequer Secretary, and as I will test in a moment.
Our third priority is to test properly the costs and benefits to Wales of the transfer of additional powers, particularly in respect of tax, because one of the truths about the Bill thus far is that the Government cannot really be taking this seriously. If they took it seriously and thought that it would really benefit Wales, they would have done a bit of the work to determine what the net costs and benefits would be for Wales. They have undertaken no such analysis, which I think calls into question the seriousness with which they address it.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
The hon. Gentleman has outlined three priorities. May I ask him, perhaps a little cheekily, which of those priorities is his priority?
Owen Smith
If I understand the hon. Gentleman’s question correctly, the answer is borrowing powers for Wales, because we have seen £1.6 billion cut from the budget for Wales, which is money that could usefully be made up by borrowing. Of course, all the tax powers set out in the Bill—income tax and, more immediately, stamp duty and landfill tax and other minor taxes—are directly associated with those borrowing powers. We are keen to see those borrowing powers afforded to Wales, and therefore to see the Bill passed.
However, we have never said that income tax-varying powers are a Labour priority for Wales. We remain sceptical about the benefits they would afford to Wales. Our scepticism is entirely factually based. The Silk commission’s report looks extensively at the revenues Wales receives from taxes and compares them with expenditure in Wales. It determines, to put it in blunt terms, that Wales currently spends around £35 billion in public moneys and nets in revenues from tax receipts of around £17 billion. That leaves a significant deficit that would need to be made up by a Welsh Government, were they to be reliant to a greater extent on their own tax receipts.
The Minister explained a moment ago that, under the terms of the formula outlined in the Bill and in some of the explanatory material, Wales would of course benefit if the growth of GDP in Wales outstripped that of England, but he also said that it
“would be adversely affected if growth in Wales was slower.”
Although in recent years the rate of GDP growth has been faster in Wales than in England, he will know that historically—if we look at the past 20 years, for example, and certainly over any longer period—the rate has been lower in Wales than in England, for all the obvious demographic and industrial reasons. We need to be certain that Wales would not be worse off, in both the short and the long term. We remain suspicious that tax competition, which seems to be the Government’s driving ideological imperative on the matter, will not benefit Wales, for the reasons I have given.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
As someone who represents a border constituency, I think that my hon. Friend touches on a very important area. Tax competition, which might mean people moving their office across the border to take advantage of where the rate was better, will not do the overall economy in England or Wales any good.
Owen Smith
Absolutely. On previous occasions in the House I have outlined the difference between Wales and Scotland, in terms of the populous nature of our border, as well as the far greater problems that we will experience in Wales. I will touch on that later.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
I agree with my hon. Friend on the Front Bench. There is an ideological difference between the idea that tax competition will inspire a race to prosperity and to the top, from which everyone benefits, and the opposite, in which nations and regions compete with each other in a race to the bottom. We do not want that for our constituents.
Owen Smith
I entirely agree. I have been at pains throughout our deliberations to make it clear that, in this Bill, we are being accommodating with regard to borrowing that we understand, but there are real concerns—they are not frivolous—about the benefit for our constituents of Wales having powers that could be misused, particularly by the Conservative party, to cut taxes in Wales in order to engender tax competition across the UK. We think that would bring little benefit but many risks.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
Is the hon. Gentleman telling us that he is absolutely against lower taxes in Wales, and is he therefore ruling out any Labour Administration using these powers to reduce taxes in Wales at all?
Owen Smith
The latter part of that question would of course be a matter for the First Minister, were those taxes to be devolved to Wales, but I think that I have been absolutely clear that we are not in favour of Wales undercutting the rest of Britain to afford benefits to itself. We do not think that would be beneficial to Wales in the long term. Let me be clear: were that to happen, we do not imagine that Wales would continue to enjoy the same degree of welcome support that we receive from the rest of the UK.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
I am now thoroughly confused about the hon. Gentleman’s position. If he is in favour, as I think he is, of devolving these tax powers, but not of their being used to reduce taxes, he can only be in favour of them being used to put taxes up. Is he really saying that he wants Wales to have tax powers, but only so that people living in Wales can pay higher taxes than those living anywhere else in the United Kingdom?
Owen Smith
That is a misrepresentation of my position, but I have come to expect little else from the hon. Gentleman or, as he is also known, the shadow shadow Welsh Secretary—well, shadow shadow Foreign Secretary. [Interruption.] Maybe, but he seems to be auditioning these days for the Welsh Secretary’s job. Perhaps he will move on to the Foreign Secretary’s position at a later stage.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
Can the hon. Gentleman clarify whether the Labour party in the Assembly will be pushing for an early referendum on tax-varying powers?
Owen Smith
It was well worth waiting for the Secretary of State to intervene, but I think that the answer is no. Had he been paying attention, he would know that the First Minister has been very clear—[Interruption.] He says “Ah!”, but I think that there is no surprise in hearing that the First Minister has said that income tax-varying powers for Wales are not a priority, for all the reasons I have enumerated many times in this Chamber. If the Secretary of State was to debate some of these issues with me, rather than standing behind the Exchequer Secretary when it comes to all these detailed parts of his brief, perhaps we would have a clearer idea of his understanding of these issues.
Jonathan Edwards
Is the hon. Gentleman therefore concerned that the 22 local authorities in Wales can all put forward different levels of business rates?
Owen Smith
That is a tendentious and off-piste point, and I do not intend to busy the Chamber by bothering to respond to it.
We are still suspicious of the Government’s motives, not least because the leader of the Conservative party in Wales, Andrew R.T. Davies, has said explicitly that he wants to cut taxes for the wealthiest people in Wales. That is what we suspect that the Tory party would do if, heaven forfend, it were ever to assume power in Wales. We also still have suspicions that the Government are not really serious about doing this for Wales; in truth, we feel that it is more evidence that Wales is of interest to them only as a stick with which to try to beat the wider Labour party. We have heard this on health, on housing, and on education. Again, their perspective is to try to drive wedges into gaps that do not exist.
If the Government were serious about this, they would have undertaken some of the work that they have done in Scotland. When we last met here to debate this Bill on 6 May, we were anticipating a report by the Government—in fact, it was late by then—on the costs of implementing a similar scheme in Scotland. It did not come out on 30 March, as promised, but on 6 May—on the day, slightly unfortunately, of our debate. The report is entitled “Second Annual Report on the Implementation and Operation of Part 3 (Financial Provisions) of the Scotland Act 2012”. It contains welcome news, because it concludes that the total cost for Scotland will not be the £40 million to £45 million originally anticipated, but a mere £35 million to £40 million. That is what it will cost not Her Majesty’s Government but the Scottish Government to implement a separate Scottish tax regime.
One would have thought that if the Government were serious about implementing this, the cost to Wales should be measured, but the Treasury and the Wales Office have undertaken no such analysis. That is particularly troubling because of the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), who is no longer in his seat. There is more complexity in implementing this scheme in Wales because of the greater population density on the border between England and Wales—on either side of Offa’s Dyke, or the line between life and death, as the Prime Minister refers to it. Just 4% of the Scottish population and 0.5% of the English population live within 25 miles of the Scottish border, whereas 48% of the Welsh population and fully 10% of the English population live within 25 miles of the Welsh border.
In Scotland, such measures would potentially affect just 450,000 people who travel back and forth across the border, whereas in Wales the number is likely to be closer to 6.5 million. The implementation costs for Wales are therefore likely to be greater, if not the volume of communication that the Government will have to undertake. Were they serious about this, we might have heard some analysis from them today, but we have heard not a jot.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
I would like some clarity about the Opposition’s position. We are being told that they will vote in favour of the Bill, which is very good news, but the whole discussion on income tax devolution to Wales suggests that they are completely against it. There will inevitably be differences—we know that the border areas are more difficult in Wales than in Scotland—but the Opposition’s entire rhetoric suggests that they are against the devolution of financial accountability to Wales.
Owen Smith
I say again that we will support these measures. We will not press amendments 10 and 11 to a vote because we see value in greater accountability and, in particular, in the borrowing powers that are associated with income tax and other taxes. Nevertheless, there are all sorts of reasonable questions to be asked about the impact on the hon. Gentleman’s constituents and mine. The Government are being remiss, if not incompetent, in failing to deal with those questions and failing to come to this House with a proper explanation of what they think the impact will be, as opposed to using the issue merely as a stick with which to beat Labour.
Mr David Jones
I think that everyone in the House is now even more confused as a consequence of what the hon. Gentleman has said. He said that he sees the value of borrowing powers associated with income tax, but given that Labour will never hold a referendum on income tax powers, how does he hope to access those borrowing powers?
Owen Smith
I suspect that that reveals why the Secretary of State cannot speak to his own Bill and instead relies on the Exchequer Secretary. The Secretary of State will know, of course, that irrespective of whether there is a referendum in future, the volume of income tax powers to be extended to Wales has a direct link to the amount of borrowing, because the Government have chosen to introduce a different rationale for affording Wales borrowing powers from that which they used for Scotland. The Scotland Act 1998 draws a connection between the amount of capital expenditure—the budget for capital—and the amount of borrowing. In this Bill, for some reason, the Government have chosen to pursue a different rationale, whereby the ratio of borrowing is to be equal to the ratio of income tax devolution. It is very important that the Government consider amendment 10, because it would increase the volume of income tax that could potentially be exercised by the Welsh Government, and should therefore, under the logic employed by the Government, increase the amount of borrowing above the £500 million that is currently envisaged.
Mr Gauke
In moving on to borrowing, the shadow Secretary of State is finding whole new areas in which he is confusing the House. Does he not appreciate that there is a link between the revenue streams that the Welsh Government will have independently, including income tax, and the maximum borrowing levels that they will have? If an element of income tax is devolved, the borrowing cap will be higher than if it is not devolved. Does he understand that, and, if so, will he attempt to reconcile it with his earlier comments?
Owen Smith
I will forgive the Exchequer Secretary’s slightly patronising tone and simply say that I absolutely understand it. Perhaps he has not understood my point. Why does this Bill draw a causal connection between the quantum of income tax and other taxes to be devolved to Wales on the one hand, and the amount of borrowing that can be afforded to the Welsh Government on the other, when that rationale was not employed explicitly in the Scotland Act? Would he like to come to the Dispatch Box and tell us why that is different? Obviously there is no explanation—none whatsoever. Clearly, the Government have chosen to employ a totally different rationale in order to justify the lower level of borrowing that they will give to the Welsh.
The shift from 10p to 15p would not only increase the amount of borrowing that Carwyn Jones’ Government could undertake to fill the £1.6 billion gap left by this Government, but afford greater symmetry between what Labour is proposing in Scotland and what we are proposing in Wales. That shift is another positive thing about the Bill, although it will be superseded by the next Labour Government introducing even greater tax devolution in Scotland.
Owen Smith
I can see that the Secretary of State is champing at the bit. Why he did not simply do this in the first place is beyond me.
Owen Smith
Absolutely, so perhaps the Secretary of State could come back to the Dispatch Box to explain why that connection was never made in Scotland, and why, in Scotland, the powers relating to the amount of borrowing were a function of the capital expenditure budget. Can he explain why that difference occurred? Obviously, he cannot, so once again, we know that the Government have simply made it up as they went along.
My last point deals with our fair funding amendments. We remain convinced that the Government do not intend to provide fair funding for Wales, and that any extension of devolution of taxation to Wales ought to be subject to a clear understanding, and agreement by the Welsh Government that the fair funding issue has been dealt with. The Exchequer Secretary acknowledged earlier that the issue of convergence has been accepted by the Government in the floor that has been put beneath the Barnett formula. The Holtham commission said that there was a shortfall of about £300 million—perhaps it is now as little as £150 million—in Wales, but we are convinced that the Welsh Government ought to be the arbiter of whether that fair funding test has been met. That is why we would encourage the Government to adopt our proposal of a back-stop power for the Welsh Government to determine whether fair funding is afforded to Wales.
Jonathan Edwards
Diolch yn fawr, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to serve under your guidance as we discuss this vital Bill, which will empower the Welsh Government with an element of fiscal responsibility for the first time. I would have hoped that all MPs representing Welsh constituencies were united in the view that one of our major roles as elected Members is to ensure that the Welsh economy is able to perform far better than it has in the recent past. Considering the incredible wealth inequalities that exist within the UK, with Welsh communities all too often at the bottom of the wealth league, I would have hoped that every political party was united in a mission to turn around the decades of neglect served upon Wales by successive UK Governments.
Far too many politicians in Wales rejoice at the underperformance of the Welsh economy, as it enables them to preach that Wales is far too poor, too small and too weak to succeed as an independent country. Their assertions are plainly ridiculous; Wales has all the ingredients to be a successful nation. We are a country that is rich in natural resources. Our people are highly talented, producing global leaders in science, academia, sport, culture and economics. The real question we should ask ourselves in Wales is: how do we find ourselves in such a predicament? Are we, as a people, content to languish at the bottom of every performance table and at the top of all poverty measurements?
If I was a unionist, I would be ashamed of the fact that gross value added per head in inner London is 12 times larger than that in west Wales and the valleys—the communities I represent. Westminster is not working for Wales, which is why my party believes that the potential of the people of Wales can be achieved only if our own democratic institution has the tools to move our country forward. History shows that changing the colour of the Government in Westminster will make no difference: the Westminster parties are all signed up to the same economic agenda that has failed Wales for far too long, and the people of Wales increasingly understand that. All polling indicates that they want the National Assembly empowered with more political responsibility. A poll by the Silk commission found that 64% believed that income tax should be devolved to the Welsh Government, so it is disappointing, to say the least, that the efforts of Plaid Cymru to improve and strengthen the Bill in Committee hit the infamous Westminster wall. In Committee, we endeavoured to preserve the integrity of the proposals of the Silk commission, which of course were the foundation for this Bill. Disappointingly, all the Westminster parties reneged on the cross-party agreement that had been made during the commission. The Bill undermines what was agreed in the Silk commission, cherry-picking from a comprehensive package. On more powers for Wales, the three Westminster parties are three peas in a pod, despite the protestations of their representatives in the National Assembly.
In Committee, Plaid Cymru put forward sensible and reasonable amendments that would have improved the Bill. Those included removing the damaging lockstep on the proposed income tax-sharing arrangement between the UK and Welsh Governments; inflation-proofing the borrowing powers included in the Bill; and empowering the Welsh Government to issue bonds and tax credits, as has been done in Scotland. We also tabled a series of constitutional amendments on matters as simple as enabling the National Assembly to determine its own name; to set its own number of elected Members; and to determine its own electoral system. Needless to say, none of the amendments was accepted by the UK Government and neither would Labour offer its support, preferring instead to table wrecking amendments that would further dilute the effectiveness of this Bill. I suspect that has something to do with the anti-devolution cabal currently ruling the roost in the Labour Westminster shadow Wales Office.
Mr Jones
Yes, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding me about that important point. I can tell the House that I have engaged with the Department of Health, and that NHS England is continuing its efforts to work constructively with the Welsh Government to find a solution to the problems faced by English patients, such as my hon. Friend’s constituents, who access NHS services in Wales. Work on resolving the issues raised by the cross-border protocol is continuing, and it is hoped that this work will conclude by the end of this year.
Owen Smith
Can the Secretary of State also inform the House on the relative performance of the NHS on either side of that border? What is the difference between, for example, the Wye Valley NHS Trust and the Aneurin Bevan health board on cancer waiting times? My understanding is that in Wales the targets are rather more stringent, and are being met.
Mr Jones
I could rehearse the remarks that were made on the last occasion we discussed this issue, but the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) was making was that his constituents access the health service in Wales. They wish to access the English health service, but at the moment they have difficulty doing so. I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would want to facilitate my hon. Friend’s constituents’ access to the English health service, rather than continuing to snipe.
Owen Smith
I echo the Secretary of State’s thanks to colleagues from all parts of the House who have engaged in debate and scrutiny of this Bill on the Floor of the House over what feels like quite a long period of time. We have had a constructive set of discussions, which have revealed some of the divisions between Ministers and their Conservative colleagues in the Welsh Assembly and exposed the clarity of the Opposition’s support for devolution.
I join the Secretary of State in thanking Paul Silk and the members of his commission for preparing the groundwork for this Bill, and also for reflecting on the future of Welsh devolution, not just in respect of fiscal powers but beyond that. I am sure that we will debate the measures in the second part of the Silk report at some future stage.
Labour supports much of this Bill, and will not oppose it on Third Reading. In particular, we support the Government’s decision to afford Wales borrowing powers. I have said on many occasions in this House that, in not being able to borrow, Wales has been at a disadvantage compared with other parts of the UK. We have acknowledged that that was a mistake of previous devolution legislation. Wales is a legislature that should be able to borrow in order to invest in vital infrastructure. It is welcome that the Government have recognised that, and are moving to afford Wales those borrowing powers. It is a shame that the borrowing powers are not the same as those that will be enjoyed in Scotland, but, overall, we are supportive of the measure.
We are supportive, too, of the proposal to devolve stamp duty, land tax, landfill tax and other minor taxes. Business rates are also to be fully devolved to Wales. We look forward to the Welsh Government, with their progressive values, using those powers in a fair and progressive manner to deliver, hopefully, innovative and progressive solutions for Welsh people in respect of land and businesses taxes.
I also welcome the move towards a more symmetrical position between Wales and Scotland. Wales is not Scotland, and the history of our two countries is very different. The way in which we came to support devolution is very different, and I have often said that. That asymmetry can be explained by our different histories and the different degrees of support for devolution in Wales and Scotland at the point of the initial referendum. However, that position has changed, which could be due in part to the impending referendum in Scotland. The Secretary of State rightly referred to it as a momentous moment for British democracy and for our country. It is right that we consider how things have moved, and why people’s support for Welsh devolution has strengthened. It seems increasingly clear to us, and also to the Government, that a more symmetrical system of devolution might add to the stability of the devolution settlement and diminish the cause of separatism.
We are disappointed that the Government have failed in this Bill to undertake any serious analysis of how the costs and benefits of tax devolution will be weighed for Wales. Any Government who were truly serious about affording these powers to another Parliament and Assembly should have undertaken that sort of analysis. Indeed, this Government did undertake that sort of analysis in respect of the Scottish proposals to take on taxation powers. I cannot therefore understand why the Government and the Secretary of State for Wales in particular have refused to insist that colleagues in the Treasury undertake a similar measure for Wales.
The argument has been made that a considerable gap is now expected between the passing of the Bill and the adoption of these powers, but there was a considerable gap—three years or so—between the passing of the Scotland Act 1998 and the uptake of its powers, and that did not prevent the Government from seeing the necessity of undertaking the work in advance.
It is also disappointing that the Government have failed to offer any real guarantee about whether Wales will be better or worse off under these provisions. We still do not know whether the block grant will be eroded over time. Initially, it will be protected, but the Exchequer Secretary told us again here today that if Welsh gross domestic product and revenues grew more slowly than those of England, Wales would have less money over time to spend on vital public services. Given the problems of meeting the demand for public services in Wales because of our specific demographics and history, and of a £1.6 billion cut to the Welsh budget since the Conservatives came to power, it would be better for the Government to give some sort of guarantee to the Welsh people that they would not be worse off.
Jonathan Edwards
Does not that point indicate that the hon. Gentleman has no faith in the Labour party’s abilities to improve the Welsh economy while in control of the Welsh Government ?
Owen Smith
No, it does not indicate that at all. It indicates that we are not fantasists. We understand the fiscal reality of Wales, which expends £35 billion a year in public expenditure and raises £17 billion a year in tax revenues, leaving a very large shortfall. We understand that that shortfall is made up by virtue of our being part of a generous Union that shares risks and pools rewards across the UK. Our fear is, of course, that Plaid Cymru Members wish to use this—honourably, from their perspective, as they believe in a separate, independent Wales—to fuel their cause of separatism. We are not interested in fuelling their separatist cause. That is why we have asked questions about the Bill.
We are concerned that the Government have failed to take this opportunity today to use the Bill to take forward the reserved powers model. For the reasons that I mentioned earlier, we think that it would be beneficial for Wales to be placed on a similar footing to Scotland in respect of the devolution model, and the Government could have taken that step in the Bill.
The biggest failing relates to the measuring of benefits and costs to Wales. We will now need to rely on noble Members of another place to undertake further scrutiny of the long-term impact on Wales of the volatility of tax revenues and of the costs of establishing an Exchequer function for Wales. The reason why the Government have not undertaken such scrutiny is that, I fear, they are not terribly interested in Wales. If they were more interested in Wales, they would not have implemented £1.6 billion-worth of cuts. If they were interested in Wales, they would not constantly mislead the public, as we have heard this evening, and seek to divide and rule in Britain when it comes to the respective merits of our health care systems, housing, education and all manner of other things where the Secretary of State chooses to bad-mouth Wales. If they were genuinely interested in assisting Wales, he would have demanded that the Exchequer Secretary undertake a similar analysis to the one that he undertook with Scotland.
The bit of the Bill in which the Government are most interested—as I suspect are nationalist hon. Members—is the bit on dual candidacy. We have heard eloquent and compelling arguments from Labour Members as to why it is right that we banned dual candidacy. It is not right for losers to be turned into winners, as was the case in Clwyd West, in the Secretary of State’s seat. The public do not understand how political alchemy is used to transform people who have been rejected under first past the post, and to put them back into office via the back door. The Secretary of State and his colleagues have wholly failed to explain why they are doing that, other than for narrow party political advantage.
It is fair to say that we have not had many laughs here in the last couple of days, debating this rather dry and dusty devolution Bill. One thing that has amused me is the attempt to paint my party, and indeed me, as somehow anti-devolution. That is as amusing as it is risible because, of course, the Labour party is the party of devolution. We campaigned for it for 100 years; we delivered it, and we will continue to deliver it. We have concerns about tax-varying powers because we do not want them turned to what we think would be malign intent—to fuel the separation of Wales from England. The Secretary of State is right to say that we face a very important choice in Britain; the Scottish people face an important choice. We do not want to fuel separation by encouraging tax competition, with one part of Britain undercutting another in a race to the bottom. That is anathema to Labour values and anathema to the values of the people of Wales.
Wales Bill
Owen Smith Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting contribution. I agree about the need to consider the impact in other parts of Britain, including Northern Ireland, of asymmetry in taxation. He says he is sanguine about the prospect of these powers being exercised in Wales, but would he be sanguine about lower taxes for higher rate taxpayers potentially attracting to Wales higher rate taxpayers who contribute to the local economy of the Forest of Dean?
Mr Harper
I have a couple of responses. First, because I was present for our interesting debate on the first day of Committee, I know that the so-called lockstep provisions in the Bill mean—this is my understanding; I am sure the Exchequer Secretary will correct me if I am wrong—that it would be impossible to reduce the higher rate of taxation without also reducing the other rates in lockstep.
I would be delighted if taxes generally were reduced. Government raise too much money and spend too much of people’s money, and I am very pleased that in his recent Budget the Chancellor was able to increase the personal allowance again to allow my constituents to keep more of their money. I think they generally spend it better than even the Exchequer Secretary can spend it. I want my constituents to keep more of their money and keep his grubby mitts off it, but of course we have challenges to deal with, such as the deficit that we inherited, so increasing those tax cuts will not be possible. Cutting taxes generally would be helpful, and if cutting taxes in Wales meant that we saw lower taxes across the United Kingdom, that would be an entirely welcome prospect.
Owen Smith
Cutting taxes in Wales would not necessarily lead to lower taxes across the whole of the UK. The hon. Government is right about the lockstep provisions being designed to mitigate the effect of cutting taxes only for the wealthiest. However, if taxes were cut, as the Secretary of State has said he wants to do, for taxpayers in Wales, would that not be a potential disbenefit to the hon. Gentleman’s part of the world, should people move in order to avail themselves of those lower tax rates in Wales?
Mr Harper
No. That would create pressure on the Chancellor to make sure that tax rates were lowered. I am grateful to note that the hon. Gentleman appears to have become a convert to lower taxes and that will lead to an interesting conversation with members of his shadow team, who appear to be wedded to higher taxes. Creating an incentive to put downward pressure on taxation not just in Wales but across the United Kingdom would be welcome. There are many pressures from interest groups and from individuals campaigning for Government to spend more money. We all know that there is no such thing as Government money; there is only money belonging to taxpayers. It is either money belonging to taxpayers today that we relieve them of or, if we borrow money, we relieve future taxpayers of money. Lower taxes mean that people keep more of their own money. I am very content with that. I just want to make sure that it works properly.
On the point about higher rate tax, I had an entire debate in Westminster Hall on this to make it clear that I thought the priority for the Treasury when cutting taxes was to focus on those on median incomes—those in the middle. That is why I welcomed the changes to the personal allowance in the Budget, which in the context of the changes that we have made over the past four years deliver more of the benefit to those on middle and lower incomes than those at the higher end. My priority is focusing on those on middle incomes.
Mr Harper
I am grateful for the intervention from my hon. Friend, who chairs the Welsh Affairs Committee. He has put me in two minds. I am not sure whether to welcome his pessimism about the way he thinks the Welsh Assembly Government and the Welsh Assembly will behave, and look forward to the incredible opportunities that he sets out. If the Welsh Government do not learn from history and if they think it sensible to raise taxes, whether landfill taxes, stamp duty land tax or income tax, the flipside of the proposal from the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) is that rather than attracting people to go and work and live in Wales, the effect may be the one that my hon. Friend suggests.
If any businesses currently located in Wales want to relocate to the Forest of Dean, they will be made incredibly welcome. I will personally talk to the local council to smooth their way, and if residents want to come and live in the Forest of Dean, they will find a very good quality of life. If they want to pay their taxes in England, I certainly will not stop them. It seems that I can have it both ways. If the Welsh Assembly behaves in the way my hon. Friend fears, it will be good for my constituency. But to be serious for a moment, he puts his finger on it: he worries about the impact on Wales. I trust to some extent the good sense of voters in Wales.
By not devolving the tax powers that are set out clearly in the clauses that we are debating today, one of the problems is that the Welsh Assembly Government have to worry only about spending money, not about raising it, which leads to the consequences that my hon. Friend sets out. The Welsh Assembly Government do not have to think carefully about the price to be paid. If politicians’ minds are focused on the price to be paid, whether it is individuals choosing to leave Wales or entrepreneurs choosing either not to set up their businesses in Wales or to move existing businesses to more hospitable parts of the United Kingdom, that will concentrate minds well, even if the Government there are not of that mind to start off with. It may also create political opportunities for parties that do behave in such a way to make inroads in the Welsh Assembly elections and in parliamentary elections to this House.
Owen Smith
The hon. Gentleman is being generous with his time, even if he is slightly misrepresenting what I said earlier. The proposal to cut taxes in Wales rested on the prospect of a Conservative Government, led by his Front-Bench spokesmen’s colleagues in Wales. As he is talking about inward investment and business investment, would he like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Welsh Government on a 244% increase in foreign direct investment into Wales, higher than in any other part of Britain?
Mr Harper
I always congratulate people on bringing investment into the United Kingdom. I am sure that the Welsh Government work hard to do that. But I am also sure that those businesses are mindful of the competitive corporation tax regime created by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, which has provided a good base in the United Kingdom from which to do business. That competitive corporation tax regime does not just benefit companies in England; it also benefits companies in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. That competitive tax regime is one that we want to see go further.
Mr Harper
I do not doubt that businesses can operate in that way. What I do not want to see is businesses that today are operating perfectly happily, attracting customers from both sides of the border, finding that the Government’s intervention will impose a complicated regime. We all know the refrain, “I’m from Whitehall and I’m here to help you”—I assume that “I’m from Cardiff Bay and I’m here to help you” is greeted with the same warm delight in Wales. If they happen to have land on both sides of what is currently not a border, as far as they are concerned, I do not want them suddenly to be faced with a complicated taxation regime that will require them to hire expensive accountants to deal with it.
My plea to the Minister is therefore this: recognising that we would have to deal with that land in different ways, can we ensure that whatever administrative system is put in place is as straightforward as possible, and not just for HMRC, but for my constituents and those in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) who might operate on both sides of the border?
Notwithstanding my concerns about some of the amendments that have been tabled, I generally welcome the devolution of these taxation powers to the Welsh Assembly, because I think that democratic institutions that spend money also ought to raise it.
Owen Smith
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Primarolo. I rise to speak to amendment 40 to clause 6, which stands in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith); amendments 7 and 8 to clauses 14 and 17 respectively, which deal with minor taxes; and amendment 43 to clause 28, which relates to reserved powers. It is also worth bearing in mind the amendment to clause 28 that we tabled last week, on what we described as the fair funding lock, which is relevant to that part of my remarks today.
All these amendments relate to the theme of stability and symmetry. Our contention is that although devolution has, for all sorts of reasons—historical, political appetite and timing—developed in an asymmetrical fashion across the UK, which has often been desirable and necessary, on both sides of the House we recognise that it is potentially undesirable for that degree of asymmetry to continue in future. It is undesirable because with it has come a certain instability in our devolution settlement. It is not a pressing problem of instability that has in any way threatened the existence of the UK, until recent months and years, but it is increasingly problematic. That instability and asymmetry has traditionally been exploited by nationalists in Wales and Scotland in good faith and with good intentions, from their perspective, but has led them to ratchet up demands for new and varied powers in Wales and Scotland, setting one part of Britain against another in seeking to extract benefit from their objectives of independence for Wales and Scotland through asymmetry of the settlement.
In recent months, another party has joined them in seeking to divide some parts of Britain from others and to separate people in one country of Britain from those in another for party political gain and ideology. That is the Conservative party, which has recently become a zealous if late convert to the cause of tax devolution and competition, and sees an ideological and legitimate benefit for a party that believes in low taxation, the Laffer curve and the logic behind the comments by the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). It thinks that, from a relatively low political base in Wales, it has the potential to expand its presence by arguing that it is a low-taxation party in Wales.
I was intrigued to hear how sanguine the hon. Member for Forest of Dean is about the prospect of his constituents enjoying higher tax rates than those on the Welsh side of the border in the unlikely event of a Conservative Government in Wales. I am not sure that his constituents would be as sanguine as he is about the difference of a few yards making a 10% difference, potentially, in the tax rate enjoyed by them, compared with their neighbours.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
I suspect that my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) was relaxed because he had read the hon. Gentleman’s speech at the Llandudno conference in which he said that the 4,000 taxpayers in Wales who are currently paying the 45% rate should be paying a 50% rate.
Owen Smith
I will happily restate for the record our view that we ought to have a fair rate of taxation in Britain. That is why we have pledged that the next Labour Government will reintroduce a 50p rate in Wales and throughout the UK. Our proposal is directly relevant to the amendment, which is about symmetry between the powers enjoyed in Wales and in Scotland—
Owen Smith
I will give way in a moment, if the hon. Gentleman will calm down. I will finish my point and then the Floor will be his.
We want to future-proof the legislation so that, in the event of a Labour Government in Britain—we have already pledged in Scotland to take forward the Scottish devolution proposals and to extend the amount of income tax that can be devolved and the powers relating to that tax—the Chancellor would be forced to consider the benefits of symmetry and extending it throughout the UK.
Guto Bebb
Was the hon. Gentleman not rabble-rousing in his speech at Llandudno when he made it clear that a Labour Government in Wales would have the right to increase the tax rate to 50%? If he is concerned about tax competition, surely a 50% rate in Wales and a 45% rate in the rest of the UK would be problematic for the Welsh economy.
Owen Smith
I am not sure I was rabble-rousing. I would never describe the representatives of the Welsh Labour party as a rabble, although they may have been roused by my speech, and I trust they were. It is fair to say that they were reported as having been roused by my speech and I thank the hon. Gentleman for drawing that to the Committee’s attention. I am happy to repeat the view I expressed in that speech: that our worry is that the Conservative party has an established track record of cutting taxes for the wealthiest people, not just in Wales but throughout the UK, and is increasingly happy to support them and to act on their behalf. In the event of the Labour party winning the trust of people across Britain and winning the next election, we would like a Welsh Government to give the Welsh people, through their Assembly, the ability to deliver a progressive rate of taxation in Wales in keeping with the progressive values of the Welsh people. There is nothing wrong with that.
Mr Harper
I want to come back to the hon. Gentleman’s point about whether I would be relaxed about delivering a lower rate of tax. Depending on whether there would then be a reduction in revenues, and that had some consequences, I would have no problem with a lower rate of tax. One of the things my constituents find annoying about the current settlement is that they see money being spent without there being any connection with its having to be raised; it all just comes from the centre. I think that if the taxing and the spending are connected, constituents will be relaxed about it. Given what the hon. Gentleman said, if a Labour Government remain in Wales there is clearly no prospect of lower taxes in any event.
Owen Smith
I do not accept the premise of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. Taxpayers in Wales elect a National Assembly that has a democratic mandate to exercise its powers in respect of taxation, just as his Government do currently. I have never accepted the argument that the only way to give accountability to the National Assembly is through its having powers to raise taxes as well as spend them. I accept that intellectually there is a clear line to be drawn between taxation and representation, and that an increased level of financial accountability is afforded if taxes are being raised as well as spent. That is why we do not oppose that aspect of the Bill. Let me be clear, though, that Labour does not favour—as do, clearly, the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench—tax competition within Britain. We are believers in the Union and in the ability to pool risk and share rewards across Britain. That fundamental belief is undermined, in my view and that of the Opposition, by tax competition that would see lower rates set in Wales compared with those in England, Scotland or Northern Ireland.
We are sanguine about supporting these tax powers, given the correlation the Government have drawn with borrowing, which we think absolutely vital. We are equally sanguine about the fact that Wales—given that Scotland has already moved on to this perspective as a result of the Scotland Act 2012, passed by this Government—ought to enjoy similar powers. However, we will not go on to say that we need to cut taxes in Wales to undercut England, because we do not believe in Wales undercutting the English.
Mr Harper
Is there not a point about symmetry? The hon. Gentleman seems to be saying that the three parts of the UK with devolved Administrations need to move together in terms of the powers they have and the decisions they make. Surely the logic of devolution, particularly in the way that his party delivered it, was that there was a different settlement in those three parts of the UK. I accept that avoiding asymmetry might be a desirable outcome, but is it not a bit late for him to take that view, given the three different types of devolution that his party delivered in government?
Owen Smith
That is precisely what I said in my opening remarks. We have a tradition of asymmetry that results from history and the relative degree of appetite for these powers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland at the point at which we introduced them. Given that the Conservative and Unionist party is increasingly exploiting that asymmetry for narrow party political ends and risking tax competition within Britain, we worry that we need to move towards a more symmetrical system. In truth, that is what this Bill does. It puts Wales and Scotland on a more symmetrical footing in respect of taxation policy. It puts Wales on precisely the same footing that Scotland will be on after 2016. We support that. Our amendment says that if Scotland were to go further, as it would be likely to do under a Labour Government, we would afford people in Wales the ability to move to a similar position.
Guto Bebb
I think the hon. Gentleman is either confused or has been misreported. The speech he made in Llandudno specifically stated that Wales would have the power independently to reinstate the 50% tax rate. If he is concerned about tax competition, then surely he can see that a 50% tax rate in Wales—whereas it is 45% over the border, 45 minutes from my constituency—would create a disadvantage for Welsh taxpayers.
Owen Smith
I have not been misrepresented or misreported—that is precisely what I said and in no way, shape or form is it confused. It is a reflection of our abiding concern that the Tory party seeks to cut taxes for the wealthiest people in Wales. That is not a progressive tax system and it does not reflect the views and values of the people of Wales. Therefore, if we were in power in Westminster and Scotland took on greater tax powers, we would afford the Welsh people a similar opportunity.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
The hon. Gentleman said a moment ago that he did not believe that Wales should undercut England. In other words, he does not believe that Wales should have a lower level of income tax than England. Does he also believe that Wales should not have a higher level of income tax than England?
Owen Smith
No. That is why I said what I said and why we have tabled amendment 40. In the event of further cuts by a Tory Government to the taxes of the wealthiest people in Wales and England, we would afford the Welsh people the ability to set a more progressive rate and to reintroduce the 50p rate in Wales, just as we propose to do across the rest of the UK.
We are, of course, discussing a hypothetical point to an extent, because in the event of there being a Labour Government in Westminster—which is the only way Wales would enjoy these additional powers, unless the Secretary of State intends to amend the Bill—we would reintroduce the 50p rate right across the UK. The issue would then be a moot point in Wales.
Mr Gauke
This might be a hypothetical point, but it is interesting and revealing that, while the shadow Secretary of State is ruling out ever using income tax powers in Wales to reduce taxes, he is certainly not ruling out using them to increase taxes. As he is well aware, under the powers in the Bill, if he increased taxes at the additional rate, he would also increase the basic rate.
Owen Smith
Indeed. That should come as no surprise to anyone. The Exchequer Secretary, in his rather tortuous remarks, is attempting to put words into my mouth. I said in my speech in Llandudno—I say it again today—that in the event of a Labour Government in Westminster, we would afford the Welsh people the ability to put up the top rate of tax and reinstate the 50p rate in Wales. That is very simple.
Owen Smith
I will give way in a moment. We are not talking about increasing the basic rate or the top rate; we are talking about increasing the additional rate of tax. [Interruption.] No, it is called the additional rate.
Owen Smith
From a sedentary position, the Exchequer Secretary draws a distinction between the higher rate and the top rate. I fully accept that what I mean is the higher rate, by which I mean the 40% rate, as opposed to the additional rate of 45%.
Wayne David
Does my hon. Friend agree that the essential point is that, although we have asymmetrical devolution in the United Kingdom—there is a great deal of variation between the devolution settlements in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—we still have one British economy? Having variation is one thing, but having huge divergence is something else altogether.
Owen Smith
The essential point we are making is that we, unlike the Conservative party, are not in favour of tax competition. We are not in favour of one part of the UK undercutting another, but the Secretary of State and the Tory party are. It is very simple.
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Leaving aside the escape route that the hon. Gentleman has prepared for himself with his hypothetical point, is he not recommending tax competition?
Owen Smith
No, I am not recommending tax competition. If the hon. Gentleman would like a further tutorial later, I will happily give him one on tax policy or anything else he likes.
None of the changes would of course come into effect unless what Labour has referred to as the triple lock is met. First, as the Bill lays out, we would need certainty that Wales was not worse off. We still have serious questions about whether Wales would be worse off—versus the Barnett formula and the block grant that we currently enjoy—if tax powers are taken. Secondly, we would need to be absolutely certain that there was fair funding for Wales, hence our fair funding lock. We are not talking about it today, but we did so briefly during the first day in Committee. For the changes to apply, Welsh Ministers would need to be satisfied that funding arrangements were fair before they triggered a referendum on exercising the powers. Thirdly, we would of course need such a referendum. As I said earlier, if the powers were exercised, they would be designed to mitigate the dangers of further Tory tax cuts for the wealthiest.
Amendments 7 and 8 on minor taxes and their volatility are probing amendments, unlike amendment 40, which we will push to a vote. Fundamentally, we broadly support the provisions—we certainly support the borrowing associated with the devolution of such powers and taxes to Wales—but we have significant concerns about how the powers will work, about the volume of these taxes and about how the Government have drawn a causal link between the devolution of these taxes and borrowing powers. The hon. Member for Forest of Dean raised other questions about the workability of the taxes and the manner in which they would be deployed.
On the connection drawn between powers and borrowing, I said on Second Reading and on previous occasions that the Government have yet to explain why they arrived at a rationale for associating powers with borrowing that is different from the one used in the Scotland Act. The Exchequer Secretary will know that the Scotland Act drew a connection between the capital budget for Scotland in respect of borrowing and the amount of borrowing allowed each year. The overall capital budget for Scotland is £2.3 billion, so borrowing of £220 million per year is allowed up to that ceiling. Why this Bill draws a different line between these taxes and the amount of borrowing has never been explained, and we remain convinced that the figure was just plucked out of thin air. If the Minister wanted to explain where the figure of £500 million came from and the basis from which it was derived, we would be very grateful.
As an indication of how the amount of money is significant—we support it—but perhaps not enough, Jane Hutt, the Minister for Finance, has announced only today an important package of funding on infrastructure, including £220 million for a new specialist cancer hospital at Velindre. I am sure all hon. Members welcome that, but it is a measure of how little £500 million buys these days. It is therefore incumbent on the Government to explain how they arrived at that figure.
We understand that the Government have made provision in the Bill such that the amount of money will not go down, even in the event of a reduction in the amount of taxes taken by the Welsh Assembly—that is guarded against—but the Minister will know that stamp duty and landfill taxes are especially volatile. In particular, stamp duty land tax is extraordinarily volatile year on year. For example, in Wales during the past five years it has been between £55 million and £130 million. Indeed, that difference of 60% occurred in just one year.
Mr Harper
On the capital borrowing level of £500 million—I think the hon. Gentleman was asking how the Government had arrived at that figure—I may be wrong, but I believe I touched on this on Second Reading. In the “Wales Bill: Financial Empowerment and Accountability” document, there is a quite extensive section on how the Government arrived at that figure. It was partly through allowing the Welsh Assembly Government to proceed with improvements to the M4. Is the hon. Gentleman seeking further details on that, because I thought the document was quite comprehensive?
Owen Smith
The point I was making—I hesitate to repeat it—was that there is a clear rationale in the Scotland Act 2012: a percentage of the overall capital budget for Scotland could be drawn down every year up to a maximum that was equal to the amount of the capital budget. The difference for Wales is that we have a direct line drawn with respect to the amount of taxes. We heard the Government describe it on Second Reading as relatively generous, because the overall amount of landfill tax and stamp duty land tax is around £200 million a year on average and the amount of borrowing is £500 million, so it could be seen as a 2:1 benefit for Wales. However, as I say, a different justification was used for Scotland, and it has never been clear from where that £500 million figure was derived. I suspect that the £500 million was a read-across from the £500 million previously enjoyed by the Welsh Development Agency, but if the Minister would like to tell us otherwise, we would be grateful.
Landfill tax is less volatile than stamp duty land tax, but in 2009-10 its yield fell by £100 million across the UK and by several million pounds in Wales. The whole point about landfill tax is that it is designed to reduce. As the amount of recycling done by local authorities in particular increases, the revenue from landfill tax will reduce; it is a disincentivising tax. It strikes me as particularly curious to attach a direct line between that particular tax and stamp duty, given its volatility, and the amount of borrowing, given that the Government now concede that the amount required by Wales is significant.
On the complexity of these taxes, I thought that the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) provided an interesting example of the pub in Chester, which has one bar in one country and another bar in the other. Having sampled the warm welcome of hostelries in Chester, I know that that is an excellent pub doing extremely well, but if the landlord came to sell it, how exactly would the Treasury decide which room was in which country and in which country the relative rate of stamp duty land tax or whatever tax it is in a devolved Administration or devolved setting in Wales would be paid?
There are no estimates of the number of houses in Wales in similar circumstances. Many properties are on one side of the border, but the land attached to them, included when the house is sold, is on the other side of the border. Our view is that the Treasury ought to have done a little more homework on just how many properties will be affected and what the relative degree of difficulty would be in implementation. I see the Exchequer Secretary shaking his head. We know that businesses were consulted on the potential complexities of different rates of income tax, but to my knowledge, no analysis has been undertaken by the Treasury in respect of stamp duty land tax or landfill tax, which I think is a bit remiss on the Treasury’s part.
Amendment 43 on reserved powers simply calls on the Secretary of State to issue a report
“on the further legislative steps needed to move to a model of reserved powers for the National Assembly for Wales”.
The hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb), who is no longer in his place, referred to the conference in Llandudno that was addressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), who made a further announcement about our intention to move to a symmetrical model of devolution as between Wales and Scotland.
In effect, that would mean that powers would be assumed to be devolved to the Welsh Assembly unless they were specifically reserved to the UK Parliament. That would hold many benefits for Wales. In particular, it would stop a Conservative Secretary of State, such as the one that we have currently, continually referring Welsh legislation to the Supreme Court. On three occasions, the Secretary of State has either sought to refer or succeeded in referring legislation to the Supreme Court, at a cost of about £150,000 a time. We do not know precisely how much it has cost. The Exchequer Secretary must know, so it would be good if he told us.
Mr Harper
The Secretary of State will no doubt correct me if I am wrong, but it seems to me that all he is doing in referring matters to the Supreme Court is ensuring that the legislative balance between this place and the Welsh Assembly is upheld, and that the legislation that sets out that balance is not trespassed upon. To follow the hon. Gentleman’s logic, he is presumably saying that if, God forbid, he were ever Secretary of State and the Welsh Assembly Government tried to move the devolution settlement unilaterally, he would simply acquiesce and not defend the rights of this place or the primary legislation that it has passed.
Owen Smith
That was the justification that the Secretary of State used at the time and he would no doubt use it again today. Our view and the view of many people in Wales is that what he did in respect of the Agricultural Wages Board was a party political attempt to tie the hands of the Welsh Assembly by arguing that it was employment legislation and not legislation that related to agriculture, which is devolved to Wales. Many of the learned counsel who offered their opinions on the matter backed the view of the National Assembly for Wales. We will wait to see what the ruling is. My point is simply that a shift from the conferred powers model to a reserved powers model would militate against such apparent confusion on the part of the Secretary of State and ensure that we had greater clarity about where the line lies between the powers of this House and the powers of the National Assembly.
Mr Mark Williams
I concur with much of what the hon. Gentleman has said about reserved powers. However, does he agree that the issue is less about party politics than about the clarity in the devolved settlement? That is why some parties are committed to having the reserved powers model in our manifestos. That is the conclusion that most people have reached after Silk II.
Owen Smith
Indeed; the hon. Gentleman’s party and my party are committed to having that in our manifestos. We see significant benefits in putting Wales in a symmetrical position to Scotland in respect of powers and in tying the hands of future Conservative Secretaries of State who might employ the same argument to tie the hands of the Welsh Assembly Government.
Mr Williams
Will the hon. Gentleman concede that Silk II found that the issue was about the clarity in the devolution settlement, rather than about party political motives and posturing?
Owen Smith
Absolutely; Silk said precisely that. I am saying today for the clarity of the Committee that we believe that the current Government employed the argument for party political purposes. They attempted to stop the Welsh Government doing what they wanted to do, which was to maintain the Agricultural Wages Board for Wales. That would have had significant benefits for some of the lowest paid workers in Wales. On that basis, I believe we can say firmly that Wales would be better off if we moved to a reserved powers model, with the greater clarity and additional safeguards that it would bring.
Finally, Madam Chair—[Interruption.] I beg your pardon, Sir Roger; I did not see you slip into the Chair, but it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once more. On the background to these clauses, we did not have much chance to discuss the so-called fair funding lock. The ability of the Welsh Labour Ministers in Cardiff Bay to determine whether they think the funding settlement for Wales is fair and adequate, in advance of their moving to adopt any of the powers of income tax—or any of the other taxes—is an important test. I hope that the Government will rise to that challenge at some point in the future.
Wayne David
I rise to support amendment 7. I recognise that it is a probing amendment, but it is nevertheless important to discuss the volatility of stamp duty land tax revenues in Wales. I will also speak to amendment 43 and the need to move to a reserved powers model for the National Assembly for Wales. I am aware that those two issues are not really related, but both are in this group of amendments, and in my view both are extremely important.
As the Silk report states, stamp duty land tax is a “relatively volatile tax”. Indeed, as the director of CBI Wales said only last year, SDLT raised about £210 million in Wales in 2007, but only £115 million in 2008-09. That is a relatively small amount, accounting for about 2% of the Welsh block grant, but a variation from £115 million to £210 million in two years is not insignificant. As Silk himself stated, the devolution of stamp duty land tax could pose potential risks for the Welsh budget.
Let me be clear: I am in favour of the devolution of stamp duty land tax, but I would like reassurance from the Minister about precisely how that volatility will be managed. The essential point is that devolving SDLT has consequences for the block grant, which would be reduced by the amount of SDLT collected in Wales. I would like a fuller and clearer explanation from the Minister about exactly how the block grant offset will be determined. Will borrowed resources be used to meet any shortfall when the receipts from land tax are less than expected? Does the Minister agree with the Silk report that the value of the deduction should be decided between the UK and Welsh Governments, and not by the UK Government unilaterally? I suggest that the deduction should take into account the volatility of the tax and the forecast revenue in Wales. I would therefore like specific reassurances from the Minister that these admittedly esoteric but nevertheless extremely important issues will be clearly addressed, so that we know precisely what we have before us.
My second point is about whether we move from a conferred powers model of devolution for Wales to a reserved powers model. In my view, there is no perfect model of devolution. In Northern Ireland and Scotland there is a reserved powers model, but—let us be honest—those models have their problems. We will all have heard about Scotland and Antarctica. For those who are not au fait with that problem, there was an issue of whether Antarctica was included in the devolution model for Scotland. It was not on the reserved powers list, and therefore the assumption was that it was devolved to Scotland in issuing licences and permits for people to operate in Antarctica when they were based in Scotland. Of course, that was an oversight by drafters, and it was put right retrospectively. I simply cite that example to show that there is no perfect model of devolution. We can cite other difficulties that arose when Scotland adopted the reserved powers model, but the fact that no model is perfect does not mean that a reserved powers model for Wales would not be a huge step forward. It would be a huge step forward, because we have heard—very eloquently—from the shadow Secretary of State about numerous examples of issues that have been taken to the Supreme Court by the Wales Office. At root, the problem is a lack of clarity, which would not exist if we had more clearly defined the reserved powers model.
We are all concerned about the Conservative party’s determination to prevent the Welsh Government from introducing measures to protect Welsh agriculture workers, and the case for moving to a reserved powers model has been well put by the UK’s Changing Union project. Under the title “The benefits of a ‘Reserved powers’ model of devolution”, it said:
“A ‘Reserved powers’ model of devolution would benefit Wales and the UK as a whole. A ‘Reserved powers’ model would provide much greater clarity about the legislative powers of the National Assembly for Wales. This will benefit civil society organisations, politicians, civil servants and the general public—in short the democratic process as a whole. A ‘Reserved powers’ model would place the relationship between Cardiff and London on a more stable, adult footing and help reduce the number of unnecessary disputes”—
which have been alluded to already in this debate—
“between the two levels of government. A ‘Reserved powers’ model of devolution for Wales would place Welsh devolution on the same footing as devolution for Scotland and Northern Ireland making it far more likely the UK will be able to develop more effective mechanisms to manage intergovernmental relations between central government and the devolved territories.”
That is an effective summation of the strong case for moving to a reserved powers model. I emphasise that there is no ideal model of devolution. Inevitably, devolution is a dynamic, but if we had this model, it would be far better than what we have at the moment.
Mr Gauke
I am sure that my hon. Friend is right. As I have said, our intention is to work constructively. It will be for the Assembly to choose whether to make use of HMRC’s expertise, which is obviously considerable, but should it wish to do so, I think it reasonable for the UK Government to reserve the right to ensure that no demands are placed on HMRC that could disrupt the important work that it does throughout the United Kingdom, including in Wales.
Amendment 40, tabled by the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith), seeks to place a duty on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to review
“the benefits of symmetry in the devolution of taxes between Wales and Scotland”
whenever a tax is devolved to either. It requires the Government to assess whether a tax that is being devolved to Wales should also be devolved to Scotland, and vice versa. I understand the intention of the amendment, but it fails to take into account the fact that key principles of tax devolution already exist. The UK Government have adhered to those principles, and we would expect future Governments to do so. They state that any changes should be evidence-based, and should be considered in a UK context. An assessment of the UK context would include an assessment of whether symmetry with the other devolved Administrations was desirable.
The amendment seeks to impose an unnecessary statutory basis on a process that the Government would undertake as a matter of course when considering the case for devolving further taxes to either Scotland or Wales. It could, indeed, lengthen the process of devolving new taxes in the future by placing a superfluous statutory requirement on the Government. I do not believe that it is necessary, or would improve the procedure for adding new taxes that is set out in the Bill. It may well be that the hon. Gentleman simply wants to probe Ministers to establish whether this or a future Government would take the issue of symmetry into account, but I do not find the argument for a statutory basis persuasive.
Owen Smith
We are indeed keen to ensure that the Chancellor has a statutory obligation to consider the benefits of symmetry across the piece on a statutory footing, but let me take up the Minister’s reference to the need for an evidence base to support taxation policy. Does he agree that it would have been wise of the Treasury to undertake some form of detailed behavioural analysis of the impact of tax competition in respect of income tax, or indeed any analysis of the impact that stamp duty land tax or landfill tax might have on behaviour?
Mr Gauke
I shall deal with stamp duty land tax and landfill tax later in my speech. As for income tax, I am tempted to explain to the hon. Gentleman yet again about the lockstep attributes of our reforms. He has expressed concern about tax competition, but it seems to me from his earlier remarks that he does not believe in it, and that, if he had a chance to seek greater tax competitiveness for any part of the United Kingdom, including Wales, he would not do so. Indeed, he seems to be advocating a policy of “tax uncompetitiveness” for Wales. However, I must not detain the Committee too long on that subject.
Mr Gauke
What we want is greater devolution in terms of income tax. When we debated the subject last week, I explained in some detail why we thought that it was a good thing, primarily because it would increase the accountability of the Welsh Government to the Welsh people, which I would expect Members in all parts of the Committee to want.
Amendments 32 and 33 were tabled by members of Plaid Cymru. Clause 6 introduces an important new power to devolve further tax powers to the Assembly via an Order in Council. The power has a broad scope, and can apply to brand-new taxes and to existing UK-wide taxes. The clause sets out the process for making such an order, which would need to be approved by both the House of Commons and the other place, as well as by the Assembly. Amendment 33 would remove Parliament from the process, so that the order would need to be passed only by the Assembly.
We recognise that it is important to give the Assembly and the Welsh Government the economic levers that are needed to generate growth in the Welsh economy, including the ability to introduce new taxes. We also recognise that—although this would depend on the proposal under consideration—if we are to proceed in a timely manner, it would be advantageous to be able to devolve further taxes without requiring primary legislation. However, a balance needs to be struck. Tax devolution should not be at the expense of reducing the overall tax receipts or competitiveness of the United Kingdom as a whole.
That last point is particularly important. As we stated in the Command Paper that accompanied the Bill, we would assess any proposals for further tax devolution against a number of criteria. For example, we would consider whether any new tax would affect the UK’s wider economic policy, impose disproportionate burdens on businesses or individuals, or create new tax avoidance opportunities. In short, the criteria would ensure that any new tax would not be to the detriment of the UK as a whole.
It is important for the devolution of further tax powers to take place in the constructive and collaborative manner that led to the Bill. It is therefore right for the resulting legislative process similarly to involve both the Assembly and Parliament, so that the proposal can be considered from the perspectives of both Wales and the wider UK. It would not be right for either to be able to legislate to devolve further taxes without the agreement of the other.
Owen Smith
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way to me for the second time. He said a moment ago that the Treasury would be concerned if any reductions in taxes in Wales led to reduced receipts for the Exchequer. Does he not agree with the Secretary of State that a Conservative Government in Wales should cut taxes, or does he think that that would necessarily always lead to higher receipts?
Mr Harper
I want to say a few words about clauses 19 and 20 and the overall powers for current and capital borrowing, but let me first touch on the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams). His answer to my question was my reading of the situation, too: the Treasury would, in effect, stand behind any bonds or other such borrowing. That is why, if he were to press the amendments to a vote, I could not support them. If the Treasury is going to stand behind such borrowing, it must have some control over the level of borrowing entered into.
We talked earlier about linking spending and accountability. If Welsh Ministers are to be able to borrow money, they must be accountable for repaying it from a revenue stream, and must be able to persuade the markets, based on the rate of interest they are paying, that they can do so. Alternatively, if the Treasury is going to stand behind such borrowing, Treasury Ministers and this House of Commons must have some control over the level of it. It might be possible to set a framework, and not every individual piece of borrowing might have to be sanctioned, but the Treasury must be in control of the overall level because otherwise, it is a one-way bet: people can just borrow the money and not have to worry about the rates they are paying if they know that the Treasury will pay it back. I can see why a Treasury Minister could not sign up to a blank cheque such as that, but frankly, I do not see why any Member of this House should, either.
In the previous debate, the shadow Secretary of State said that he was not sure how Ministers had come up with the borrowing figures. I briefly alluded to that issue in my intervention, and it was raised by the hon. Member for Swansea East (Mrs James) on Second Reading. Clause 19 amends existing borrowing powers, and clause 20 repeals such powers. Changes are made to current borrowing powers and a new section is inserted that deals with the capital requirements.
I hope you will forgive me, Sir Roger, if I mention an excellent document that is, I suspect, on the Table: the “Wales Bill: Financial Empowerment and Accountability”, published by the Government in March. People often criticise Ministers for not showing their workings—the phrase we used in the previous debate—and although I am financially qualified, I do not think that one has to be to be able to follow the document’s rather sensible reasoning. It deals with the borrowing powers amended in clause 19 and makes it clear that Welsh Ministers have the power to borrow £500 million—the limit previously set in the Government of Wales Act.
Effectively, that is the limit inherited from the previous Government, and within it, the Treasury has agreed that the Welsh Government can borrow up to £200 million each year. As the document says, the Welsh Government’s powers are being extended to comprise both in-year and “across years” current borrowing. As I read it, that extends the Welsh Government’s flexibility to borrow to deal with their current expenditure. The Bill enables Welsh Ministers to borrow money from the national loans fund, to which the hon. Member for Arfon referred, and to deal with differences in the outturn of taxes and receipts for the devolved taxes by borrowing across a number of years. Such “across years” borrowing must be repaid within four years. The overall limit can be varied both upwards and downwards—but not below the initial £500 million limit—through secondary legislation. The £500 million limit inherited from the previous regime is therefore kept in place.
That seems clear, as are the capital borrowing powers. The two taxes we discussed when considering the previous group of amendments—stamp duty land tax and landfill tax—are being devolved. The Government estimate that the revenue stream, which will support the borrowing, will be about £200 million a year. The capital borrowing powers will come in at the same time as the new devolved taxes: in April 2018.
The statutory capital borrowing limit is also set at £500 million—higher, interestingly, than if it had been set solely with reference to the tax-to-borrowing ratio that applies in Scotland. As I said on Second Reading, this is a more generous regime than the one applying to Scotland. The shadow Secretary of State referred in an earlier debate to keeping a symmetrical arrangement between Wales and Scotland. If we did that, using the same tax-to-borrowing ratio, the Welsh Government would be able to borrow only some £100 million. In Scotland, the capital borrowing limit is just over £2 billion, with about £5 billion of tax revenue. The Government have allowed the Welsh Government to borrow £500 million in advance—I think this information was elicited on Second Reading by my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), the Chairman of the Welsh Affairs Committee—to enable them to proceed with improvements to the M4, should they choose to do so.
Owen Smith
The hon. Gentleman will know, as he has obviously read all these documents extensively, that the documents on the Scotland Act made no reference to the line drawn between the ratio of funds and taxes to be devolved, and the quantum of borrowing. Instead, a direct line was drawn between the capital budget for Scotland and the amount of borrowing. That was the point I was making, so I presume that he, like me, does not understand why a different rationale is being applied in the Wales Bill from that applied in the Scotland Act.
Mr Harper
I was listening carefully to the shadow Secretary of State but I did not quite follow him. I set out the Scottish Government’s capital borrowing limit, which is £2.2 billion, and they take responsibility for tax revenues of about £5 billion. The ratio between the two is slightly less than 1:2. If we used the same ratio in Wales, the Welsh Government would have a limit of about £100 million. I accept that the Secretary of State for Wales and colleagues in the Treasury have adopted a more generous approach, but I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman, as a Member of Parliament representing a Welsh constituency and as shadow Welsh Secretary, would welcome this asymmetry rather than—if I am following his argument—being critical of it.
Owen Smith
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that if a similar rationale were employed in this Bill to that which was employed in Scotland, the borrowing limit would be nearer £1.3 billion in total—£130 million a year—reflecting the £1.3 billion capital budget in Wales, which, as I say for the fourth time, was the rationale that was employed in respect of the Scotland Act, not the ratio between the borrowing and the amount of devolved taxation, as has been post hoc used as a justification in this Bill?
Mr Harper
I do not follow that argument at all. If I may pick up the point that I was making to the hon. Member for Arfon, the point we were debating on bonds was about repaying the money. If Ministers are going to devolve borrowing power to Welsh Ministers, it must reflect the revenue that Welsh Ministers have some influence over; otherwise, it would amount to enabling Welsh Ministers to borrow money, effectively, against taxes raised by central Government, and there is no accountability there. We then get back to the problem that we started with: Ministers could borrow to spend, no doubt on projects that they would deem to be popular, but there would be no accountability because the money would be largely repaid not through the taxes that had been devolved to Welsh Ministers, but through taxes controlled by Treasury Ministers, and that would set up perverse incentives.
If the Welsh Government are to be given borrowing powers, they should reflect the revenue stream that those Ministers are in control of. If the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) is arguing for more borrowing powers, therefore, he would obviously want to devolve some more taxes to go along with them; otherwise, it is just Welsh Ministers writing cheques on UK taxpayers, which ultimately the Treasury has to stand behind.
As I was saying before I gave way to the hon. Gentleman, my understanding was that the increase in the capital borrowing limit was intended specifically to allow the Welsh Government, in advance of the devolution of an element of income tax, to proceed with improvements to the M4, which I remember from Second Reading would be welcomed by my hon. Friends the Members for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) and for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns). I am sure that although the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) is being very inscrutable, she would welcome such improvements. Oh no, she is shaking her head—she does not welcome improvements to the M4. That will be news to her constituents; I thought she did.
The Bill also contains a power that enables the UK Government to vary—have I provoked the hon. Lady? No, I have not. It enables the UK Government to vary the overall limit both upwards and downwards. A joint process is in place between the two Governments to ensure a level of convergence. That seems sensible. That limit will be set at a level that the UK Government consider appropriate, based on an assessment of economic and fiscal circumstances and the impact of inflation. Amendment 5 has been tabled by Plaid Cymru. Paragraph 91 of the note that the Government have produced states that among the things the two Governments will consider when looking at the borrowing limit will be the impact of inflation on the real value of the limit. Given that both Governments will be participating in this collaborative process, that should mean that the limit can be kept at a real-terms level. I hope the hon. Member for Arfon will welcome that.
The final area is the independent revenue stream over which the Government have control. I argued earlier that borrowing must be related to the level of income.
The Government’s note explains comprehensively how the current borrowing and capital borrowing powers, which are set out clearly in clauses 19 and 20, were arrived at. I think I have set out clearly why I would not support the amendments tabled by Plaid Cymru on the ability to issue bonds, and the ability to keep borrowing levels at real-terms levels is covered in the Government document. I am happy to support clauses 19 and 20 but not the amendments in the group.
Alun Cairns
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making that point, but we will have to disagree. The Welsh Office at the time had exactly those responsibilities for transport, health and education. In the first Government of Wales Bill, the powers that the Welsh Assembly inherited were the same powers as had been held by the Welsh Office, which subsequently became the Wales Office. Additional powers have subsequently been granted, but they have been minuscule in proportion to the additional funding that has been provided. Out of a much smaller Barnett block grant, there was ambition for major capital projects. That ambition has gone.
I suspect I know why the right hon. Gentleman is a little bit uncomfortable. It is worth running through some of the history of the improvements that are needed in the M4 corridor. The then Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks), committed to building that road. It was the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) who cancelled it after the 1997 general election. It was later proposed by the coalition Administration in Cardiff Bay—the coalition between Labour and Plaid Cymru—and the Transport Minister who cancelled it and who said that the Administration could not fund it was Ieuan Wyn Jones, the Plaid Cymru Assembly Member for Anglesey. That demonstrates the priority that the relevant parties have assigned to that much needed infrastructure improvement.
The Chancellor has pointed out on several occasions the need for improvement. He named the project in statements and in the Budget on one occasion to provide encouragement to the Welsh Government to improve this vital artery into south Wales.
Owen Smith
The hon. Gentleman’s argument would have more force were it not for the fact that only today in the Welsh Assembly the Minister for Finance, Jane Hutt, announced £1 billion-worth of further spending on infrastructure, several hundred million pounds on the Heads of the Valleys road, and £200 million on a new cancer hospital at Velindre that will no doubt benefit the hon. Gentleman’s constituents. Far be it from me to suggest that he might be out of date and no longer keeping up with matters in the Assembly, but that would appear to be the case.
Alun Cairns
Not at all. I welcome those announcements. I wish there had been an announcement about improvement to the infrastructure in my constituency, and I wish there was to be improvement to the main infrastructure coming into Wales along the M4 corridor, but today’s announcements are obviously positive. However, we need to underline the delays that take place on that artery, that investment is essential and that borrowing powers need to be granted. Improvement should have taken place well before now. The original commitment was made pre-1997 but the Labour Administration cancelled it and the Welsh-led Labour Administration have not built it since. We should consider the delays, the accident records, the damage to the south Wales economy, and the hauliers based in my constituency who have had to set up on the Avonmouth side of the border because of the lack of investment and ambition over the past 15 years on the part of the Welsh Labour Administration.
David T. C. Davies
I do not know whether this will surprise the hon. Gentleman, but I have not carried out in-depth research into every single health board in the whole of England. [Interruption.] No sir, I have not. I do not have the time because I am seeing so many constituents who are trying to get these treatments in England, having looked over the border and seen much higher standards of service.
In Wales, 42% of patients wait over six weeks for diagnostic tests; in England, only 1.8% of patients do so. One in seven people in Wales is on a waiting list. People wait three months longer for hip or knee replacements in Wales than they do in England. People are twice as likely to die of a hospital infection in Wales as they are in England. That is an absolutely shocking set of statistics. No cancer drug programme is available in Wales, unlike in England. People have to wait longer for ambulances in Wales than they do in England. I do not need to go and research the details of every single health board in England because I already know that the standard of service is far higher in England. It is not just me saying that: it has come out in reports such as those by the National Audit Office and, recently, the Nuffield Trust.
Owen Smith
The hon. Gentleman is giving an interesting though not entirely factual speech. Does he accept that in respect of cancer waiting times, for example, in his area of Monmouthshire there is a more stringent target for patients starting treatment within 62 days, and a higher proportion of patients meet that target than in England? Further, given that he speaks of information in reports, would he care to reflect on the 10-year study by the Nuffield Trust that concluded only a few weeks ago that everything he has said is untrue—that no one country in Britain is steaming ahead and no one country is lagging behind?
David T. C. Davies
The hon. Gentleman ought to be aware that I was citing the Nuffield Trust when I gave the statistics saying, for example, that 42% of patients in Wales have to wait more than six weeks for diagnostic tests as opposed to 1.8% in England. Of course, diagnostic tests are very important in treating cancer.
When it comes to allocating the blame for this, I do not blame doctors and nurses, and it is something of a fallacy to suggest that any Government Member has done so. I blame the leadership of the NHS in Wales and the decisions that have been taken over a period of years by Ministers in the National Assembly for Wales. If we are going to offer some praise to Labour, I will offer it to the previous Labour Government, who pioneered in England some of the reforms that this coalition Government have built on. That Government were happy to bring the private sector into the health service in England.
I recently spoke to a doctor down in Newport who specialises in conducting tests for bowel cancer. He gets a lot of patients coming to him from England whose treatment is being paid for by the NHS. I suppose that it comes down to specialisation. This is what he does, he is good at it, and it is what he specialises in. He gets people in and out quickly and deals with them efficiently and at a cheaper rate than the NHS would be able to. He gets a lot of patients coming in from England, but none from Wales, because of the dogmatic resistance to any use whatsoever of the private sector.
I am often characterised as being a right-wing Conservative—I suppose I am, and I am quite happy with that—but I do not want a privatised NHS or people having to pay to use the NHS. However, as somebody who has had to use it myself on quite a few occasions, I have no problem whatsoever with whether my treatment comes from somebody employed by the state or by the private sector, as long as I am getting the highest possible standard of treatment. That is a common-sense view that most people would adopt.
Owen Smith
Does the hon. Gentleman think that his constituents should have a lesser standard of cancer care and a lower target, as they do over the border in the neighbouring English constituency, or does he think it is good that in Wales we have a higher standard and a higher set of targets?
David T. C. Davies
I absolutely think that my constituents deserve the highest standard of care possible. There is a very easy way for them to get that, and that is for them to be able to choose it.
David T. C. Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Labour Members, or at least their colleagues in the National Assembly for Wales, are incredibly reluctant to deal with the issues and go into the detail in the same way as my hon. Friend. We have seen that in the decision of the Assembly’s Health and Social Care Committee to start taking votes on which witnesses they are prepared to listen to and which they are not. As somebody who has chaired a Select Committee for a number of years, I have heard witnesses give all sorts of evidence. I have often sat through whole inquiries in which I have disagreed with virtually every single word of evidence I have heard, but I never try to prevent people from coming in, because I believe that if people have something to say, we should welcome them, and that if I happen to have a different view, I can put it to them and challenge them on the facts. I have never heard of anything as outrageous as a Select Committee, which is supposed to operate in a non-political fashion, taking votes to bar people from giving evidence. That is absolutely disgraceful behaviour.
That is also reflected in the behaviour of some Assembly Ministers, who, rather than make the arguments the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) is trying to make, decry anyone who criticises the NHS as being anti-Welsh. There is nothing anti-Welsh about Members of Parliament for Welsh constituencies trying to demand the best possible health care for their constituents. I also thoroughly welcome the support I have received from the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary, who have rightly spoken out about this issue because they believe it is wrong and disgraceful that people in one part of the United Kingdom receive health care that is so much worse than that received by people in another part of the United Kingdom.
Owen Smith
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is being very generous with his time. Would he care to dissociate himself from the Prime Minister’s recent ludicrous description of Offa’s Dyke as a
“line between life and death”?
In the light of the Nuffield Trust report, which suggested that that is absolute nonsense, will the hon. Gentleman dissociate himself from those remarks or will he continue to scaremonger, just as the Prime Minister has done?
David T. C. Davies
When people are twice as likely to die of a hospital infection in Wales than they are in England, I am very happy to associate myself with every single word the Prime Minister says and I hope he will continue to draw attention to the shambolic level of health care we are putting up with in Wales.
David T. C. Davies
I will give way one more time, because I am not afraid to have the debate, unlike members of the Health and Social Care Committee in the Welsh Assembly.
Owen Smith
Excellent. I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman wants to trade facts. Would he like to commend the National Assembly for Wales for the fact that, on cancer and all the major tumour types, the rate of improvement for one and five-year survival times in Wales has been better than that in England?
David T. C. Davies
If the shadow Secretary of State is so confident that things are good in Wales, he will have no problem backing my amendment, because it is very simple. It would mean that any patient in Wales would have the right to seek treatment in England, with the cost of their treatment being deducted from the block grant of the National Assembly for Wales. Similarly, any patient from England who fancied waiting twice as long as their neighbours could seek treatment in Wales and the money could be added to the block grant. This is not about taking powers away from the Welsh Assembly; it is about giving the Welsh Assembly an opportunity to show how confident it really is in the standards of national health care it is delivering. If the hon. Gentleman is so convinced that his colleagues in the Assembly are doing a good job, he will have no problem at all supporting my amendment. It would not result in a problem, would it? There would be no cut in the block grant, because in the hon. Gentleman’s world nobody would try to leave Wales in order to seek treatment in England.
We all know that the reality is that hundreds, even thousands, of people who are currently patients in Wales want to be treated in England. Is it not a disgrace that Mark Drakeford, the Health Minister, is trying to skew the facts by saying, “Well, there are hundreds of people in England receiving treatment in Wales”? There are, but they do not want to have their treatment in Wales. They have set up an action group to demand the right to be repatriated to England, and I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) will address that.
David T. C. Davies
I have given way enough times. I look forward to my amendment receiving the support of Labour Members. It is about creating competition between health services and I do not think there is anything wrong with that. It is about delivering patient choice and, most importantly, it is about recreating a national health service. The Conservative and Unionist party will also be the party of the national health service—the truly national British health service—at the next election, and I look forward to the support of Labour Members.
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. Of course, the ombudsman service deals with the things that go wrong, and the points made by my hon. Friends were about the things that go wrong in the health service. It may or may not be true that the ombudsman service is a better system for clearing those things up, but we are trying to avoid them going wrong in the first place. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about community health councils. We used to have them in England and they were abolished by the Labour Government, which was a very bad idea. I suspect that he voted for getting rid of them, and I wish that he had not done so.
On the performance of the NHS in Wales, I shall limit myself to what I said when we debated the issue on Second Reading—[Interruption.] The shadow Secretary of State cannot help himself. All I want to do is point out that I referred to mortality statistics in that debate, and I made the point that they were worse in hospitals in Wales. The Hansard reporters then note an interruption, which was the barracking from Opposition Members claiming that I was smearing Wales—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) says it again. Actually, if he read the Hansard report for that debate, he would know that all I was doing was quoting the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), who said:
“The second warning sign, said Francis, is the level of mortality statistics. In fact, they appear to be dangerously high in many hospitals in Wales.”—[Official Report, 5 March 2014; Vol. 576, c. 930.]
All I was doing was putting on the record a fact—the hon. Member for Llanelli said that we are allowed to do that—that was cited by a senior Labour Member, and I am accused of smearing the health service. If that is the level of debate we are going to have, we will not get very far.
Owen Smith
Has the hon. Gentleman reflected, in the period since he made those remarks, on the 10-year longitudinal study carried out by the Nuffield Trust? It looked at all the indicators applicable across all four health areas of the UK and concluded that no one country is steaming ahead and no one country is lagging behind.
Mr Harper
No, I have not, because all I did was quote a Labour Member. They were not my words, but I was accused of smearing the NHS in Wales, which I did not do.
I was surprised to note that the hon. Member for Llanelli, after we had had our lengthy debate on day one of consideration of the Bill in Committee, tweeted that I was spending a lot of time on the Wales Bill and she wondered what my constituents would make of it. Well, the thousands of my constituents who are forced to be treated by the NHS in Wales against their wishes—that is not my view or assessment of the NHS in Wales—will, I suspect, be grateful that I am raising these concerns in the House on their behalf with Ministers, so that they can get better health care and a choice of where they are treated.
Amendments 17 and 18 are about improving the transparency of the agreements that govern cross-border services—the cross-border principles that were agreed by Ministers in the Department of Health and in the Welsh Assembly Government, together with the accompanying protocol that was sorted out by officials in NHS England and NHS Wales, supposedly based on those principles. The budgetary protocols will improve the transparency of the system.
New clause 3, also in my name, is an exact copy—with the appropriate changes—of the language that is in the Health and Social Care Act 2012. It puts a legal duty on commissioners in England, when making commissioning decisions, to consider the impact of their decisions on the provision of services to people who reside in Wales—and we have heard several examples from Members of constituents who live in Wales and receive services in England. There is no such reciprocal duty, and new clause 3 would provide that Welsh commissioners had to have regard to the likely impact of their commissioning decisions. If my constituents were receiving services in Wales and Welsh commissioners were making decisions that would have an impact on those services, they would have a legal duty to consider how my constituents would be affected. All I am asking for is parity between commissioners.
Owen Smith
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that one reason that provision was included in the Act was to mitigate the risk that commissioning groups in England would choose to decommission traditional services being provided by other parts of the NHS in England, such as tertiary care, and choose BUPA, Spire or some other private provider that might not be bound by the same protocols and memorandum of understanding to provide those services to Wales—a significant concern to those of us who looked at the Health and Social Care Bill? It remains a significant concern in a privatised NHS in England.
Mr Harper
I do not share that concern. The hon. Gentleman has all these scare stories about privatising the NHS, which are complete and utter nonsense. Since the provision exists, and commissioners in England have to have regard—rightly—to the impact of their decisions on Welsh residents, all I am asking for is a reciprocal duty on commissioners in Wales if they provide services to residents in England. That is nothing more than common fairness.
Hon. Members may be wondering why my constituents would care about the NHS in Wales. I shall set out briefly why it matters. I have some 6,000 constituents who reside in England in my constituency. The only GP surgeries that are conveniently located for them are branch surgeries whose main practices are located in Wales and registered with the NHS in Wales, so even though my constituents go to a GP surgery in England, they are being treated by GPs who are registered in Wales. Following decisions made by the Welsh Government and commissioners in Wales, my constituents find that their choices about where to have secondary care are increasingly limited. That is becoming a real problem. We have made some progress by liaising with the Aneurin Bevan health board, for example, but I am conscious that it could revert at any time to the previous situation. I want the issue to be sorted out permanently.
The cross-border principles that were agreed by Ministers of both Governments provide that cross-border commissioning should reflect the legal rights of patients in their country of residence. That is all I am asking for. What seems to have happened is that the protocol, the detailed arrangements agreed by NHS England and NHS Wales, did not quite reflect what Ministers in both Governments—to be fair—had agreed. My constituents are asking for nothing more than their legal rights under the NHS constitution and according to the Health and Social Care Act 2012. They want to be able to exercise the choice that my hon. Friends the Members for Aberconwy and for Monmouth set out.
My constituents have the option of being treated in Wales and, given what the shadow Secretary of State has said about the quality of services, they may want to be treated in Wales. But what they do not want is to be forced to be treated in Wales if they wish, for whatever reason—better treatment or any other preference—to be treated in England. They are English residents and they should have that right. That is all my amendments would achieve, and I hope that the Minister will address that.
Owen Smith
Much as we are enjoying the extended audition by the hon. Gentleman for the post of Secretary of State for Wales, can he point us to the evidence showing that thousands of his constituents are so concerned about treatment in Wales, or is this just an anecdote?
Mr Harper
I do not know where to start with that rather childish intervention. There is no vacancy, because my right hon. Friend is doing an outstandingly good job as Secretary of State for Wales, and I hope he continues in his post for a long time. He is doing an awful lot better than the shadow Secretary of State would do if, God forbid, he were ever to get the job.
I am concerned because my constituents are affected by the not very well thought-through devolution settlement—[Interruption.] The evidence is constituency correspondence, a very well attended public meeting with hundreds of local residents, and a very active local campaigning group. This is a real issue in my constituency and thousands of constituents are affected by it. I am doing my job as their Member of Parliament by setting out their views. I have been very reasonable in my argument and I look forward to the Secretary of State’s response. He is a Secretary of State who listens to and deals with issues brought to him by Members of Parliament—unlike the shadow Secretary of State—and I look forward to his response to the debate.
Mr Jones
Actually, it is for every elected representative to express concern when a service as important as health is affected. When the devolved Administration are not delivering an adequate standard of health care, it is entirely appropriate for every elected representative to draw attention to that.
Owen Smith
Does the Secretary of State agree with the Prime Minister that Offa’s Dyke is
“the line between life and death”?
Mr Jones
I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister that in England there is a cancer drugs fund, and in Wales there is not. I can tell the hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman should listen to this. Constituents of mine have died because they have not had access to cancer drugs, because they live in Wales. If the hon. Gentleman considers that an acceptable state of affairs, shame on him.
There is a significant lack of resources in Wales compared with England. For example, Wales has no cancer drugs fund. As the hon. Gentleman will know, a recent study conducted by Bristol university showed that Welsh patients were seven times less likely to have access to cancer drugs than those in England. There is a litany of failure in relation to Welsh health services. Almost everybody who lives in Wales can give examples of such failures. Only today, the Western Mail reported that complaints to health boards in Wales had increased by more than 40% between 2009-10 and 2012-13.
However, the Labour party is simply not listening. The First Minister and his Cabinet are presiding over what looks increasingly like a shambles. Health care in Wales is moving backwards. That is, quite simply, unacceptable—
Mr Jones
No, I will not. The hon. Gentleman can listen.
Crucially, it is also both alarming and worrying for people in Wales who need to use those services.
The Welsh Labour Government in Cardiff are not only failing thousands of patients in Wales, but failing hard-working professionals who are every bit as competent and dedicated as those in any other part of the country. It is in that context that we are debating the amendments tabled by my hon. Friends the Member for Monmouth and for Aberconwy.
Mr Jones
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention.
Amendments 12, 13 and 14 seek to shine a light on the organisation and funding of cross-border health services—services provided in England to patients living in Wales and vice versa. I shall not dwell on the intended legislative effects of these amendments, but rather on the intentions behind them. I know this is an issue of real importance to many Members who have spoken this evening, and I would like to reassure the Committee that I share the concerns about the operation of the current system.
My hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean has also spoken to his amendments 17 and 18, which would require both the Secretary of State and the Welsh Ministers to include in their annual reports on the implementation of the Bill’s financial provisions details on the costs and effectiveness of cross-border services. His proposed new clause 3, which reflects concerns he has expressed over many months to me and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health, would require the Welsh Ministers to consider the impact of their decisions on the provision of health services to people who live in England but who are registered with Welsh GPs.
Current funding arrangements are set out in the protocol for cross-border health care. I entirely agree that there is concern about the practicality and deliverability of these arrangements as they operate on the ground. Everyone should receive the best possible health care regardless of where they live or where their GP is registered. As we have heard, health services in Wales are falling short in many respects of the standards we expect. That is a matter for the Assembly, and in particular the Welsh Government, urgently to address.
The Welsh Government’s policy of referring patients registered with Welsh GPs for treatment in Wales only created more difficulties for English patients, such as the constituents of my hon. Friend, who are registered with Welsh GPs. I am pleased, however, that following discussions between the Wales Office and the Welsh Government some local health boards in Wales have reviewed this policy and have exempted English residents. I know this falls short of patient choice, but it is at least a step in the right direction.
Improving the cross-border protocol is the responsibility of both the Welsh and the United Kingdom Governments and I can assure the House that this Government are determined to tackle the protocol shortcomings and ensure better cross-border health services. It is only right that we ensure that the health care of people living close to the border does not suffer merely because of where they happen to live. It is in this mechanism that the greatest potential for real change lies, and that is why we are reviewing it to ensure it really does meet the needs of people on both sides of the border. Work is under way, led by the—
Owen Smith
On a point of order, Mr Crausby. Is it in order for the Secretary of State—who we have not heard from for, I think, fully 245 minutes—to dwell for almost the entirety of his speech today on continuing the war on Wales and the Welsh NHS, none of which is addressed in this Bill, which is meant to be about the financial circumstances post-the Silk commission as they relate to Wales, not the NHS in Wales?
The Temporary Chair (Mr David Crausby)
The Minister is addressing the clauses. It is up to him what he says in his speech.
Wales Bill
Owen Smith Excerpts(10 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 9, page 1, line 5, leave out subsection (1) and insert—
‘(1) GOWA 2006 is amended as follows.
(2) Leave out subsection 3(1) and insert in substitution—
“( ) The poll at an election to the National Assembly for Wales is to be held on a Thursday on a date to be determined by a Resolution of the National Assembly for Wales.”.
( ) Subsection 3(2) is amended by—
(a) leaving out “If the poll is to be held on the first Thursday in May”; and
(b) in paragraph 2(a) by leaving out “that day” and inserting “polling day”.
( ) Leave out sections 4 and 5.
( ) Section 13 is amended by inserting after subsection (1)(c)—
“(1A) The order may not include provision about the date of an election to the Assembly.”.’.
The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dawn Primarolo)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 30, page 1, line 6, at end insert ‘and after the words “order under”, insert ‘section 1A or’.
Amendment 10, page 1, line 8, at end add—
‘(3) A Resolution of the National Assembly for Wales under subsection (1) may not determine a date for the poll at an election to the Assembly that is the same as the date known or reasonably expected for a parliamentary general election as derived from the provisions of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011.’.
Amendment 31, page 1, line 8, at end add—
‘(3) After section 3(1) of the GOWA 2006 insert—
(1A) A poll for an ordinary general election to the National Assembly for Wales may not be held within six months of the date of a general election to the United Kingdom Parliament.”.’.
Clause stand part.
Owen Smith
It is a pleasure to serve under your Bristolian and neighbourly chairmanship, Ms Primarolo.
Clause 1 relates to the timing of elections to the National Assembly for Wales. It is a response to the five-year term that has now been established for elections to this House. Our amendments 9 and 10 are probing amendments that seek to explore the Government’s willingness to concede the principle that the Assembly needs to have greater control and command over elections to it. That is what we are testing with our amendments.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
I am pleased the hon. Gentleman said that these were probing amendments, but I notice that he has not troubled the Committee with an explanatory note, which is disappointing. My reading of the amendment is that it removes any necessity for an election to be held to the National Assembly. It allows the National Assembly for Wales to have no more elections ever. It appears to be the “Labour doesn’t want to have an election ever again in Wales” amendment.
Owen Smith
I hoped that we would have a serious debate today and serious interventions from colleagues across the Chamber. Obviously it is not the intention or the effect of the amendment to get rid of elections to the National Assembly for Wales, not least because we want those elections not to coincide with the changes made in the House by the hon. Gentleman when he was pushing through the gerrymandering legislation relating to elections to the House and the five-year term that we now endure. “Endure” is the right word, given how little business is being brought forward by the Government and how little work we have to do in the House. Today we have an important and serious Bill before us and I hope the hon. Gentleman will engage with it in a serious manner.
Owen Smith
No. We all want to get on with the serious business before the Committee, not nonsensical point-scoring.
These are probing amendments. They explore the extent to which the Government agree with us that, in principle, it should be with the consent of the National Assembly that changes are made to elections that affect it.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
I, too, am glad that these are probing amendments. I very much agree with the principle that the hon. Gentleman is establishing that these responsibilities should be devolved to the National Assembly, but what safeguards does he envisage operating there to ensure that gerrymandering, of which he has, sadly, accused the Government, could not occur in the National Assembly?
Owen Smith
The clear principle to which we are responding with these amendments was outlined by the Welsh Government in their response to the Green Paper produced two years ago. For the information of the Committee, that stated that
“no change to the Assembly’s current electoral arrangements should be made without the Assembly’s consent. This is the fundamental constitutional principle in issue. It is a necessary consequence of a constitution based upon the principle of devolution.”
That is a clear expression from the Welsh Government on the centrality of their view in any changes to legislation which affect the elections to their Chamber—to the Assembly in Wales. That is something we wish to explore today with the Government.
Clearly, the Bill arises from the shift to a five-year fixed-term Parliament for this place. Three separate pieces of legislation needed to be amended as a consequence—the Scotland Act 1998, the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2014, and now the Government of Wales Act 1998. Labour is not opposed to fixed-term Parliaments, as the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) will recall. In previous manifestos, including the last manifesto, Labour has consistently pledged to shift to fixed-term Parliaments, but we have consistently said that a five-year fixed term for any institution was too long.
Jonathan Evans (Cardiff North) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the tone with which he started his speech. Will he explain the rationale for his sticking with a Thursday? Since he is aiming to give responsibility to the National Assembly and to let it decide the issue entirely, why does he say that the poll should be held on a Thursday? He will be aware of a growing body of opinion among those who undertake electoral research, who look to examples on the continent, where elections are held at weekends—traditionally on Sundays—or opportunities when people may be able to participate more in the electoral process. Perhaps he can help us to understand why, since he is putting the proposition that it is entirely a matter for the National Assembly, he has restricted polling day to a Thursday.
Owen Smith
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea. I had not spotted that you had arrived, for which I apologise.
The simple answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question is that this is, of course, the custom, practice and protocol in British elections for all institutions. I hear what he says about the interesting debate about whether, in an era of great cynicism towards and disinterest in and disengagement from politics, we ought to expand people’s opportunities to vote. Labour Members are looking seriously at that and have already suggested that it ought to be looked at, but for the purposes of this Bill and the principle under discussion, as opposed to the issue raised by the hon. Gentleman, it seemed simpler to stick to the customary practice of a Thursday. That is why we did not suggest a change.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
Perhaps the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans) will have an opportunity to table a probing amendment on that issue. Why does the Bill refer to five years? I understand that that is how this Parliament currently operates, but is there now an accepted body of wisdom that says that five years should be the default position of any democratic Assembly or Parliament?
Owen Smith
The reality is that the accepted, orthodox wisdom of electoral experts around the world, certainly in Britain, is that five years is probably too long and that four years would be more appropriate. Certainly in the history of this place, four years has been not the norm, but the exception. Ordinarily, over the long term, elections to this place have taken place rather more frequently than that. Our primary concern—this reflects the view of all parties in the National Assembly for Wales, particularly the Welsh Labour Government—was to ensure that the elections for this House and those for the National Assembly did not coincide on the same day, which would have been the case without the changes introduced by this Bill. Nevertheless, it struck us as important to probe the Government’s view of the degree of consent they ought to seek from the National Assembly and the respect they ought to show to devolution when making changes to an election that is not ours. I think that the view of most people—it is certainly the view of most experts—is that five years is too long.
Mr Harper
On Second Reading, the hon. Gentleman responded to a question asked by, I think, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) by kind of giving the impression that Labour’s policy, if it were returned to power, would be to revert to a four-year term for this House and amend the Fixed-term Parliament Act 2011. Will the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith), for the convenience of the Committee, confirm that?
Owen Smith
The hon. Gentleman claims that I implied that, but I do not think I have been explicit on the matter, either then or now. When we last debated the issue, we were clear that the majority opinion is that four years is better than five. Another orthodox opinion in Britain and elsewhere is that too many changes to constitutional matters are bad for the electorate and that constantly chopping and changing for partisan reasons—as the hon. Gentleman did when introducing the 2011 Act—is bad for democracy in Britain. In the light of that, and in a period in which people are disengaged from politics, we may choose not to be partisan and not to pursue that sort of strategy when we win the next election.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I want to refer to the point made by the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans). There is a great deal of virtue in considering holding elections on days other than a Thursday. That is the practice in other countries. Perhaps the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) can help the Committee with his historical knowledge: have elections in the UK always been held on Thursdays? I seem to remember that at some point in our history they were not.
Owen Smith
I believe that the hon. Gentleman is right. Elections have not always been held on a Thursday. However, in recent memory and certainly in the last century, elections have mainly been held on a Thursday, which is why we are sticking to it in amendment 9. That is not the substantive point that we are trying to make; it is an interesting debating point, but not one that we need to bother the Committee with any longer.
With that, I conclude my remarks on our amendments to clause 1. We do not intend to put them to the vote, but we want to hear the Government’s views on the need for them to engage properly with, seek proper consent from and pay proper respect to the devolved Administration in Cardiff.
Mr Harper
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea.
I want to pick up the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) on his response to my intervention. I was deadly serious. If he wants to intervene, I will happily take his intervention, but I am afraid that his amendment would do exactly what I said it would do. It would amend section 3(1) of the Government of Wales Act 2006, which states that a poll
“at an ordinary general election is to be held on the first Thursday in May in the fourth calendar year following”
the previous one. In other words, the provision insists that there has to be an election every four years. His and his hon. Friends’ amendment would remove section 3(1) of Government of Wales Act and simply provide that the poll
“at an election to the National Assembly for Wales is to be held on a Thursday on a date to be determined by a Resolution of the National Assembly for Wales.”
That does not leave in the legislation any requirement for a periodic election. If the amendment were put into law and the National Assembly for Wales did not set a date for an election, there would never be such an election. An accurate characterisation of his amendment is that it is a “Labour party governs Wales for ever” amendment. Under his provision, if any party with a majority in the National Assembly for Wales simply does not set a date, there will be no election, and no back-stop in legislation would insist on an election. I absolutely accept that that may not have been the hon. Gentleman’s intention, but that is the effect of his amendment.
Owen Smith
As I have said, that effect was not our intention. I will not repeat myself, but I will say that were it our intention to stop more elections to the National Assembly for Wales, that would be a pretty peculiar thing for us to do because although we currently govern as a minority Government in Wales, we of course anticipate governing as a majority Government in Wales in the near future. I look forward to more elections in Wales, especially given the polls showing that both the hon. Gentleman’s party and the Liberal Democrats are failing badly.
Mr Harper
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for confirming that that effect was not the intention of his amendment. However, as I have said, that would be its effect, and the Committee obviously has to consider the amendment on the amendment paper—the one he drafted and tabled—not one that he probably now wishes he had drafted. As I have said, it is not sensible to give the National Assembly for Wales the power to do exactly what the amendment suggests, which is to have no back-stop at all.
I am now even more confused about the Labour party’s policy on term limits. The hon. Gentleman is quite right that, during the passage of the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, his party did not disagree with the concept of fixed terms. It was very clear that it did not support five-year terms, but preferred four-year terms. On Second Reading just a few weeks ago, he made it clear in response to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) that he wanted to move to four-year terms. I suggested that the hon. Member for Pontypridd ought perhaps to have a word with his party leader, and it sounds from his slightly more nuanced response that he has had such a conversation and been told that under no circumstances is he to pledge moving back to four-year terms. That probably also provides an answer to the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies).
I will not say any more about the amendments of the hon. Member for Pontypridd, which he has confirmed are probing amendments, but I want to comment on Plaid Cymru’s amendments 30 and 31, specifically amendment 31. They highlight an important issue, which is one for the Committee to debate, about the coincidence of elections. We discussed that when we debated the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, and it was one reason why I, as the then responsible Minister, decided to move the date of the National Assembly for Wales election.
Jonathan Edwards
As I said, I think the Bill will be viewed as an important milestone in the constitutional development of our country, but it will not surprise the hon. Gentleman to hear that my ambition for Wales is greater than what is set out in the Bill.
Owen Smith
A moment ago the hon. Gentleman said that Labour was in some way seeking to undermine the Bill, and I am aware from media reports that that is the line Plaid Cymru is taking in the media. I wish to place on record that that is the opposite of what we are seeking to do. We are probing the Bill today but we will support it. We are looking to strengthen the powers held by the Welsh Assembly in many regards, and we are seeking greater symmetry on tax powers with Scotland. Crucially, we will be tabling amendments to secure fair funding in advance of any of those changes, and looking to ensure that we move to a reserved powers model—all of which I am sure the hon. Gentleman would support.
Jonathan Edwards
If that is indeed the hon. Gentleman’s position, I am sure he will join us in the Lobby when we vote on the new clauses later.
The second major context in which this debate takes place is the seismic events happening in Scotland. As I said yesterday in the Welsh Affairs Committee, the second part of the Silk commission’s work will be superseded by the result of the independence referendum, one way or the other. Even the Bill could be superseded by events in Scotland, as its proceedings in the Lords are likely to happen after the people in Scotland have cast their vote in the independence referendum.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)
I, too, would like to start by welcoming you to the Chair, Dr McCrea. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. I thank hon. Members on both sides of the Committee for their contributions to this early part of the first day of our deliberations.
Amendment 9 would give the Assembly the power to decide, by resolution, when Assembly elections are held, and would remove the Secretary of State’s powers in relation to varying the date of Assembly elections and proposing a date for extraordinary Assembly elections. Amendment 10 would prevent the Assembly from setting a date for an election on a day on which it knows, or reasonably expects, a parliamentary general election to be held. The amendments would permit the Assembly to determine the date of Assembly elections and consequently the length of its own terms. That reflects a recommendation made by the Welsh Affairs Committee arising from its pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Wales Bill.
It is worth pointing out that the Silk commission considered the matter of legislative competence for Assembly elections to be outside its terms of reference and made no recommendations in this regard in its second report. Nevertheless, the Government believe that the devolution of further powers to the Assembly should not be undertaken in a piecemeal fashion, and that the issue would best be considered in the wider context of possible changes to the Welsh devolution settlement arising from the recommendations made by the commission in its second report. The Government made clear, on publication of the report, that recommendations requiring primary legislative change should be a matter for the next Parliament and the next Government, and consequently that they should be for political parties to consider in preparing their election manifestos. We believe the same principle should apply when considering whether legislative competence for Assembly elections should be devolved to the Assembly. It is important that electors are clear on how long they are electing Assembly Members for when they vote in the 2016 Assembly election, and that five-year Assembly terms are in place by then to ensure that Westminster and Assembly elections do not coincide in 2020.
The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 moved this House to a fixed five-year cycle and consequentially provided that the next ordinary general election to the National Assembly for Wales would be moved on a one-off basis by one year from 7 May 2015 to 5 May 2016. This responded to concerns raised by the Assembly that holding general elections to this House and to the Assembly on the same day could lead to the Assembly elections being overshadowed. I am encouraged that Members of all parties seem to be in agreement on the position that we do not want the two elections coinciding. I particularly welcome the Labour party’s support in seeking to minimise the risk of that, which is evident in amendment 10.
Similarly, amendments 30 and 31, tabled by right hon. and hon. Members from Plaid Cymru, are intended to ensure that an ordinary Assembly general election does not take place within six months of a UK general election. I am encouraged that the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) has been reassured by the debate so far and by our previous discussions, and that he is not going to press his amendments on that basis.
There is cross-party support for the principle that, as far as possible, we should seek to ensure that ordinary general elections to the Assembly and to this House should not coincide. With the next Assembly election scheduled for 2016, if the Assembly remains on a four-year cycle, the two sets of elections would coincide every 20 years, starting in 2020—something that all parties are clearly keen to avoid. Clause 1 makes it far less likely that Assembly elections and parliamentary elections will coincide in future. I therefore ask Opposition Members to support the clause, to consider the further devolution of powers to the Assembly in the context of preparing their own parties’ manifestos and consequently to withdraw or not press the amendments.
Owen Smith
I am grateful to the Minister for acknowledging that our amendments reflect the views of the Welsh Affairs Committee and, indeed, as I said earlier, those of the Welsh Government, and that they were tabled in good faith. I am equally pleased to hear that when it comes to looking at the Silk commission part I report or any legislation that might arise from it or be reflected in the manifestos before the next election, the Government will be open to considering whether the Assembly should be responsible for—or at least have the ability to consent to—when the elections should take place. In the light of the Minister’s remarks, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Removal of restriction on standing for election for both constituency and electoral region
Mr Harper
I beg to move amendment 15, page 2, line 33, at end add—
‘(5) The Secretary of State shall make arrangements for an independent review of the—
(a) likely and possible impacts on the effectiveness of the Assembly of the removal of the restriction on standing for both constituency and electoral region. In particular, the review shall examine the implications for the desirable total number of Assembly members and the proportions elected by each route; and
(b) advantages and disadvantages of amalgamating the five Assembly electoral regions into one for the whole of Wales.
The Secretary of State shall lay a copy of the report of the review before each House of Parliament within nine months of this Act receiving Royal Assent.’.
The Temporary Chair (Dr McCrea): With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause stand part.
New clause 4—National Assembly to set number of AMs—
‘Her Majesty may by Order in Council provide for the transfer of responsibility for setting the number of Assembly Members to the National Assembly for Wales.’.
New clause 6—Transfer of responsibility for determining electoral system—
‘Her Majesty may by Order in Council provide for the transfer of responsibility for determining the system of election of members of the National Assembly for Wales to the Welsh Government.’.
Owen Smith
May I just check? The hon. Gentleman referred to the minority parties a moment ago. Is he referring to his own party, the Conservative party in Wales, as a minority party?
Mr Harper
No. I was referring to the Labour party’s view, which, when I listened carefully to the debate, seemed to be its definition—not mine; its definition—that a minority party was any party other than Labour. It seemed to me that the effect, and I think the intention, of the change that it made, which this Bill seeks largely to reverse, was a partisan one that was designed to favour Labour and disadvantage all others.
Owen Smith
I intend to speak principally to clause 2 and not to amendment 2 or the new clauses. We tabled an amendment to delete the clause, but it has not been selected, so we will push the clause to a vote.
I fear that gerrymandering has been a hallmark of this Government’s legislation on the constitution. We saw it in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 and the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, and the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) has today sought, in effect, to reintroduce, through the back door, his gerrymandering proposals to reduce the number of Members representing Wales, which would have a consequent effect on the number of Assembly Members. I fear that clause 2 in particular continues in that vein.
Mr Harper
I will resist, I hope, being provoked any further, but how can the principle of ensuring that Members of this House represent a broadly equal number of electors be called gerrymandering? Most people would think that it is a matter of basic fairness. We debated this issue at length when the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act was making its way through Parliament. I understand why Labour Members did not like it, because it had an effect on them, but it is about delivering equality of representation, which I would have thought they were in favour of.
Owen Smith
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I think it was made in the same spirit as that with which he has repeatedly made other arguments, which is to cloak his party’s partisan intent in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act and, indeed, clause 2 of this Bill with the veneer of a principled objective. That is not true: the rationale for all of those measures was to benefit his party, which is a smaller party—a minority party—in Wales. I intend to demonstrate why that is the case.
Hywel Williams
The hon. Gentleman has used the magic word, “minority”. In what way is a party with 30 out of 60 seats and that does not command the support of more than 50% of the Welsh electorate who actually vote a majority?
Owen Smith
The point I was making is very simple and I do not need to embellish it, because I can rely on the evidence provided by the Government’s own impact assessment, which states extremely clearly that the proposal’s objective is to benefit the
“smaller parties in Wales who may have a smaller pool of high quality candidates to represent them in elections.”
Labour Members certainly would not for one moment contest the argument that the smaller parties in Wales—among which I would, unfortunately, count the Conservative party—may have a smaller pool of high-quality candidates to represent them in elections, but I do not believe that that is an adequate reason for seeking to amend legislation with regard to this country’s constitution and elections.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
The shadow Secretary of State will know that under the original Government of Wales Act 1998, there was no ban on dual candidacy. At what point did the damascene conversion of the Labour party against the concept of dual candidacy take place?
Owen Smith
I am very grateful to the Secretary of State for asking that question, because I think the date was 2 or 3 May 2003. The precise geographical location of that conversion was on a road not to Damascus, but to Ruthin. It was of course during the Clwyd West election—the election to the Assembly in his constituency in north Wales—when we witnessed the extraordinary state of affairs in which Labour quite clearly won the election and the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru lost it, but the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Plaid Cymru representatives were all returned to the National Assembly for Wales in what any right-thinking individual would think was a complete denial of democracy and natural justice.
Mr Jones
I anticipated that the hon. Gentleman might mention the so-called Clwyd West question. Was it not always entirely foreseeable from the moment that devolution was instituted under this system that in some seats a number of representatives would be elected by first past the post, on the list, or both? It was always foreseeable and, frankly, the fact that it was not foreseen seems a large oversight by the Labour party.
Owen Smith
That may well have been foreseeable. Labour has acknowledged that it was a mistake to draft the legislation in such a fashion that it became possible for would-be Members of the Assembly to nest like cuckoos in individual constituencies for a period, anticipating their entry to the Assembly via the back door. However, we did not imagine that the measure would be used so shamelessly as it was by parties in the Secretary of State’s Clwyd West constituency.
Mr Mark Williams
Has there been the same acknowledgement that such a measure was a mistake for elections to the Scottish Parliament or the Greater London authority, in which dual candidacy is still permitted?
Owen Smith
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, and we should consider this matter right across the piece. The evidence of elections in Wales that is before our eyes, particularly in Clwyd West, but in other seats as well—Llanelli springs to mind, where wannabe Assembly Members perched for a significant period, only to contest the seats under first past the post—suggests that the measure will be abused. It has not of course been abused elsewhere, but it has been abused in Wales. That is why we as representatives of Wales, who were then in government but are now in opposition, are seeking to prevent this Government from amending the law for Wales so that we guarantee that such sorts of abuses do not take place in future.
Mr Williams
If the principle runs so deep and the risk of abuse is so great, surely the hon. Gentleman should talk to his colleagues in Scotland and London about reforming the systems there, rather than picking—quite frankly—on the National Assembly for Wales and the people of Wales.
Owen Smith
As all hon. Members do, I talk regularly to colleagues in other parts of Britain, but we are now addressing legislation that relates to Wales. The evidence relating to Wales that is before our eyes—from recent history in the Secretary of State’s own seat—suggests that there is a problem there and that the measure has been abused. As best we understand it, public opinion also supports my contention that the system should be retained and that the proposed ban should not be lifted.
Mr David Jones
The hon. Gentleman has twice used the word “abused” in the context of Clwyd West. Will he please explain what he means by abuse in that context?
Owen Smith
It is pretty straightforward. As I have said, there was an instance in Clwyd West of the abuse of natural justice and of what most people understand as democracy by a system that allowed people to enter the Assembly via the back door. That is supported by the evidence, and I want to enumerate some of the pieces of evidence, because they are extremely important.
Mr Llwyd
The hon. Gentleman has used the word “abused”, which is objectionable, and has referred to the back door. Why in 2003 did Rhodri Morgan, Lorraine Barrett, Sue Essex, Jane Davidson, Jane Hutt and Leighton Andrews all stand for a constituency and on a list if that was so obviously attempting an abuse?
Owen Smith
Because that was quite clearly the system in place at the time. However, as I have acknowledged—my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain) of course acknowledged it when he amended the law in 2006—we admitted that it was a mistake to allow people to abuse the system in such a fashion.
I hesitate to steal the thunder of my right hon. Friend, who referred to this matter so eloquently on Second Reading, but if we want evidence of the potential abuse of the system whereby an Assembly Member nests in a constituency that they subsequently want to seek election to through first past the post, we need look no further than the leader of Plaid Cymru, Leanne Wood. She published a memo to her members in an e-mail which provided what can only be described as a route map for such abuse. I did not intend to quote extensively from it, but as I have been provoked, perhaps I ought to remind the Committee of the details. She instructed her party:
“We need to be thinking much more creatively as to how we better use staff budgets for furthering the aims of the party.”
She went on:
“Regional AMs are in a unique position. They are paid to work full-time in politics and have considerable budgets at their disposal.”
She said:
“Consideration should be given to the location of their office—where would it be best for the region? Are there any target seats…within the region?”
She went on:
“They need not be constrained by constituency casework and events, and can be more choosy about their engagements, only attending events which further the party’s cause. This can be achieved by following one simple golden rule: On receipt of every invitation, ask ‘How can my attendance at this event further the aims of Plaid Cymru?’ If the answer is ‘very little’ or ‘not at all’, then a pro forma letter of decline should be in order.”
I do not think that we need any further evidence of the potential abuse to which I am referring.
Mr David Jones
Is the hon. Gentleman’s criticism not of Leanne Wood, who I agree behaved wholly disgracefully? Is he not overlooking the many regional Members who were elected and behaved entirely properly? His criticism is not of the system, but of an individual who behaved reprehensibly.
Owen Smith
The Secretary of State might be right that some regional Members behaved perfectly appropriately. I agree with him that Leanne Wood did not behave appropriately in instructing her colleagues to respond in that way. The point that I am making is that the system as it was constituted, and as he proposes to reconstitute it, was open to such abuses. That is why we suggest that the current system, which we put in place when in office, should be retained.
Mr Jones
The hon. Gentleman is being extremely generous in giving way again. Surely these issues could be resolved by a change in the standing orders of the Assembly, rather than by changing the legislation. Does not the Assembly have the power to regulate itself? The hon. Gentleman looks puzzled. I would have thought that he would recognise that the Assembly is in a position to regulate the conduct of its Members through its standing orders.
Owen Smith
The Assembly can do that, but that issue strikes me as rather tangential to the one that we are debating, which is the nature of the electoral arrangements that this House lays down for the Assembly, which the Secretary of State is seeking to change.
I will return to the guts of the matter, which is the evidence of the need for the change. I think that the evidence supports our view that no such change is required. I return to the evidence provided in the impact assessment by the Government. Although they concede that a majority of respondents to the consultation—a “small majority”, admittedly—were
“in favour of retaining the ban”,
they state that
“the Government does not think that a strong enough case for this was made in the consultation responses.”
[Interruption.] The Under-Secretary of State for Wales suggests that those were Labour responses. He really ought to take his consultation seriously. If the Government want their policy to be supported by the public, they ought to reflect the evidence, rather than dismiss it out of hand when it happens to be counter to their narrow, partisan interests.
Susan Elan Jones
I am intrigued and surprised that none of the three Plaid Cymru Members have stood up to defend their leader. In the interest of their silence, may I suggest a possible tweet for at least one of them: “We cannot answer what the shadow Secretary of State is saying, so we are silent and looking sheepish #nationalistsconfused”?
Owen Smith
I look forward to reading it on Twitter later this afternoon. To return to the evidence, the Government concede that this measure is solely designed to benefit the smaller parties in Wales—the Conservatives, the Liberals and Plaid Cymru—and that a majority of people responding to their consultation did not agree with their proposals to change it.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman just said that this change would benefit the smaller parties. Does he therefore think that not changing it would be beneficial to the largest party, and is he not also conflicted by an interest in this issue?
Owen Smith
I am merely quoting from the Government’s own impact assessment, which clearly states that this is for the benefit of the smaller parties in Wales, among which we count the Conservative party.
Public attitudes to this issue are relatively clear and there have been several reports. Most importantly, the Bevan Foundation—which is non-aligned although splendidly named after my great hero—conducted an analysis and a large survey to consider all these issues. It found that
“dual candidacy was unfair compared with those who felt candidates should be free to stand in both.”
As a reference to the detail included in that survey, I quote a respondent from Llanelli who asked:
“How can it be right that you vote one way and then the person who loses can still find a way to get elected?”
Someone from Swansea East said:
“I think it is unfair … It’s like people can sneak in the back door.”
and another said:
“It does seem unfair in a way, surely if they weren’t popular enough they shouldn’t be able to get in.”
Another respondent said:
“I don’t think some should have the added advantage of standing in both—it seems unfair really.”
and someone else from Llanelli said:
“You don’t have two bites of the cherry.”
Mr David Jones
Will the hon. Gentleman clarify whether the survey he refers to is the one that was commissioned by his hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David), and although he refers to a large number of respondents, is it the case that there were precisely 47?
Owen Smith
It was indeed commissioned by my dear and hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David), but the Bevan Foundation, as the Secretary of State will know, is a non-aligned charitable foundation. It would surely contest quite vigorously the implication—which I am sure he does not mean to make—that it is in any way aligned to the Labour party.
Of course, it is not just evidence from the Bevan Foundation that is important. International evidence suggests that this form of gerrymandering is not supported by the public. In New Zealand, for example, public opinion research conducted by the independent review committee, which is part of its Parliament and appointed to examine the electoral system, found that one key criticism was that it was possible for MPs to be defeated in an electoral contest but returned to the House through their position on the list—clear evidence that it is not just in Wales that people are concerned about that.
In fact, it is not just in New Zealand that there are concerns. In New Brunswick in Canada, an independent commission endorsed the ban on dual candidacy stating:
“The Commission heard that in some jurisdictions where candidates are able to run simultaneously on both ballots, voters are displeased with the case where a candidate is not successful in a single member constituency, but is elected anyway by virtue of being placed on the top of a party’s list.”
Evidence from two notable democracies—Canada and New Zealand—shows that it is not just those in the Labour party and in Wales who are worried about that process.
Of course, it is not just Labour Members who have been concerned about this issue: it used to be a concern of Members on both sides of the House. For example, Lord Crickhowell, a former Conservative Secretary of State for Wales, has said that the arrangements were “really pretty indefensible”. I would have thought that was a clear statement, but the current Secretary of State clearly does not agree.
Perhaps Liberal Democrat Members agree with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury who said when we last debated this in 2006:
“I should also point out that the Secretary of State for Wales has said that if the Commission had considered what he called the systematic abuses carried out by list members in Wales”—
which I have described here today—
“he would have reached the same conclusion that we have”—
“we” in that case being of course the Liberal Democrats—
“namely that a ban on dual candidacy is the only effective solution.”
We therefore have many examples from across the world, from Wales and from across the House of people’s concerns about the way in which the system has been abused.
Mr Mark Williams
The hon. Gentleman mentioned New Zealand and the international precedents that he asserts back his case. Is he aware that the final report of the commission that looked into the system in New Zealand concluded:
“It is proper and desirable…that political parties can protect good candidates contesting marginable or unwinnable electorates by positioning themselves high enough on their list to be elected”?
The New Zealand experience resulted in the ban being thrown out.
Owen Smith
I am aware of that: the point that I was making is that concern is felt about this issue across the world. It is not a narrow, partisan point: it has been widely discussed in other jurisdictions where this or similar systems have been applied. It has been suggested that this only applies in Wales, but that is not true. There are similar election arrangements in several Asian countries, including South Korea and Taiwan, where they have a similar ban on such behaviour.
Mr Williams
The key point is that the New Zealand experience validated the approach that the Government are taking in clause 2.
Owen Smith
I understood the point that the hon. Gentleman was making: I was merely pointing out the significant concerns in New Zealand that remain.
Jonathan Evans
The hon. Gentleman has shared with us the research that he has done on the position in New Brunswick. In neighbouring Quebec they had the same debate and came to the same conclusion as the Secretary of State.
Owen Smith
That is as may be. I merely say once more that this is not a straightforward, open-and-shut case, as it has been presented by the Government. We know otherwise—from the evidence of Clwyd West and other seats in Wales, from public opinion and, frankly, from what our constituents tell us about their dissatisfaction, which extends to the broader issue of the list and first-past-the-post system. We know that the public do not understand candidates being rejected under first past the post and then sneaking into the Assembly by the back door.
Jonathan Edwards
The hon. Gentleman says that he has been inundated by representations from constituents on this matter. I have to be honest and say that I have never had any discussion with a constituent on this issue. How many of the good people of Pontypridd have been on the phone to him?
Owen Smith
I am tempted to say that very few of my constituents—or, I suspect, those from any constituency in Wales—ever want to talk to me about the constitution, which seems to exercise Plaid Cymru all the time. Most people in Wales do not want to talk about the constitution: they want to talk about the cost of living crisis and the other problems that we have in Britain.
In conclusion, the evidence of the recent past in Wales suggests that the previous system was being abused. We have made a clear, principled non-partisan argument that the current system should be retained as it is. In so doing, we are striking a chord with the views of the Welsh Affairs Committee, which did not come to a final conclusion but did say, as a point of principle:
“we consider it unadvisable for electoral systems to be changed frequently. Successive changes to electoral systems risk being perceived as partisan by the public.”
This is clearly a partisan change. The public will see it for what it is and I am sure they would support us when, later this evening, we vote against clause 2 standing part of the Bill.
Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)
I welcome your Celtic insight into this debate affecting a Celtic neighbour, Dr McCrea. I apologise to you, and to those on both Front Benches, if I have to be out of the Chamber for the winding-up speeches.
I wish to speak on clause 2 stand part, a clause that reverses the ban on dual candidature, which this House legislated for in 2006. On Second Reading I provided detailed evidence about the widespread abuses of the dual candidacy system in Wales that led to it being banned under the Government of Wales Act 2006, which I introduced. None of that evidence was disputed or rebutted by the Government or any of the parties. I readily confess to being one of the Wales Ministers who, prior to devolution, took the original 1998 Government of Wales Bill through Parliament that permitted dual candidature, but I never for one moment imagined the abuses that it would produce and the antipathy it would create. Voters never understood that it was widespread practice, from when the Assembly was established in 1999 up until 2007 when it was banned, for candidates rejected by a particular constituency to secure back-door election as Assembly Members through the regional list. They were then even able to claim to represent the very constituency that had rejected them.
After reading the Government’s proposals for repealing the ban on dual candidacy, I have searched in vain for substantial arguments beyond cries of political partisanship. The truth is that the ban has affected all candidates of all parties by preventing each one from having a two-way bet with voters. The ban simply puts the voters in charge by ensuring that, if a candidate is defeated in the constituency vote, that candidate does not get elected in defiance of the popular will. At a time when the political class—all of us—are held in lower repute than at any time in the history of British democracy, the very idea that the Government are proceeding to ensure election losers become winners is absolutely extraordinary. It holds the electorate in utter contempt.
Let us examine the case advanced by Ministers. First, the Government have used evidence borrowed heavily from the Scottish elections, which are similar to ours in Wales, and manipulated evidence from the Arbuthnott report to support their case. Ministers claimed in the Green Paper that the Arbuthnott report on the situation in Scotland found no justification for the argument that public dissatisfaction with dual candidacy had a negative impact on voter turnout. They also used evidence from the Electoral Commission’s 2006 “Poll Position” report, which focused on voting in the National Assembly elections. Clearly, however, the Government chose only to reflect the contents of those reports selectively.
In fact, the Arbuthnott report quoted the Scottish social attitudes survey 2003, which found a high degree of opposition to party control of candidates on their regional election lists. Moreover, opposition to party control of the lists was particularly acute—this is the important point—because of public confusion with the system, exacerbated when regional Members of the Scottish Parliament appeared to get in through the back door having been defeated as constituency candidates. In the 2003 Scottish election Arbuthnott report, the public was indeed concerned that 88% of regional MSPs elected had fought and lost in constituencies. The closed list system was seen to have undermined the election result in these scenarios, as it raised questions of legitimacy for regional MSPs in voters’ minds. The Electoral Commission’s 2006 “Poll Position” report on voting in Wales clearly demonstrated that more than half the Welsh population—56.7%, to be exact—opposed the closed list system, which is still in place, and that more than 60% of the electorate preferred to be represented by just one Assembly Member.
Mr David Jones
I, of course, share the general delight at serving under your chairmanship, Mr Chope.
This has been an interesting and very forthright debate. Clause 2—it seems unnecessary to say—will overturn the ban on dual candidacy introduced by the Government of Wales Act 2006. Under its provisions, candidates at an Assembly election cannot stand both in a constituency and on a regional list. Before 2006, candidates could of course stand in both.
Amendment 15, which was moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), would require the Secretary of State to commission an independent review of the possible effects of dual candidacy on the effectiveness of the National Assembly for Wales and to lay the findings before both Houses within nine months of Royal Assent. I fully understand his intention in tabling the amendment and to a certain extent I empathise with him. I welcome the opportunity to debate further the merits of removing the current unfair ban. My hon. Friend has highlighted the need for independent evidence on the effects of dual candidacy, which is of course important, but the fact is that ample evidence from independent bodies shows that dual candidacy is part and parcel of similar systems across the world.
The previous Labour Government justified imposing the ban on dual candidacy on the grounds that they said there was “considerable dissatisfaction” with the system, although they provided little evidence to support that position. Frankly, having listened to the debate, I have to say that I have heard little more evidence this afternoon. We have of course had the Bevan Foundation—
Owen Smith
Will the Secretary of State not confirm to the House that his own consultation for the Bill showed that the majority of respondents were in favour of retaining the current system?
Mr Jones
It is fair to say that there was a majority of one, but frankly most of the respondents were Labour Assembly Members. As I will mention later, the letters written by those Assembly Members bore a suspicious similarity to one another. It might almost have been that a template was provided for them.
The ban was introduced despite opposition from other parties in the House, academics and even the Electoral Commission. I know that several Labour Members served on the Welsh Affairs Committee before the passage of the 2006 Act, and I am sure that they recall the evidence of Dr Richard Wyn Jones, Dr Roger Scully and Glyn Mathias, the Electoral Commissioner for Wales, who all highlighted the potentially partisan nature of the changes. Professor Alan Trench of the constitution unit at University college London, who is currently a special adviser to the Select Committee, said in November 2011 that it was
“a pretty blatantly partisan manipulation of the electoral system”.
Mr Jones
No, I will make some progress. [Interruption.] I will give way in a moment.
In its evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee in 2005—I do not think the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) was a member of that Committee—the Electoral Commission stated that it did not believe that the case had been made and that it would
“caution against any change that is perceived to be partisan and could add to a prevailing distrust of politicians”.
The Electoral Commission saw no evidence in favour of the ban during the passage of the Government of Wales Act 2006. During the pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill, it reaffirmed that position. Even the Arbuthnott commission, which the last Labour Government set up to consider the electoral arrangements in Scotland, made it clear that
“dual candidacy is a common feature of mixed member proportional systems across the world”.
Owen Smith
I will take the Secretary of State back to the remarks that he made a few moments ago. Will he confirm that when he referred to the smaller parties that would benefit from the change, he was talking about the Conservative party in Wales?
Owen Smith
I am grateful for that clarification. Is he therefore saying that the Conservative party in Wales struggles to field high quality candidates?
Mr Jones
I do not think that we have had that difficulty in the past.
The Opposition have pointed to the fact that a majority of respondents to the Government’s Green Paper consultation were in favour of retaining the ban as further evidence in support of it. However, if one takes away the many Labour Assembly Members, who responded in a strikingly similar way, that would no longer be the case. The simple fact is that the ban was introduced to benefit one party, the Labour party, in one part of the United Kingdom, Wales, and in not Scotland or London.
In his evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee during its pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill, Professor Scully said that the claims that are made about dual candidacy, which have been repeated again and again by Labour Members,
“remain wholly unsupported by solid evidence”.
I repeat that the simple fact is that the ban was introduced as a partisan act that affects smaller parties disproportionately and ensures that good quality candidates are lost to the Assembly.
Mr Harper
That is a good point. There are two separate arguments, one about what we should call the different institutions and another about which body is the right body to pass the legislation to enact those changes. I think that the Government’s approach in clause 4, which recognises the reality of what we call the Welsh Government and reflects that in primary legislation passed by this Parliament, is the right one, rather than the approach followed by those who have signed up to new clause 5. That is why I will oppose the new clause, but I am glad that the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr is not going to press it to a vote. I hope that the Committee will support clause 4.
Owen Smith
I, too, welcome you to the Chair, Mr Chope. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.
We support clause 4, which renames the Welsh Assembly Government. That is what the Welsh Assembly has long said that it would like to happen and it reflects normal custom and practice across Wales, so we are pleased that the Government have decided to change things and use the term Welsh Government in future.
On new clause 5, we accept that there is a debate to be had about the name. Silk part II refers to the prospect of a Welsh Parliament and it is ironic that the leader of the Conservative party in Wales holds that view. I admire the chutzpah with which the Under-Secretary glossed over that, as it is an irony that the Opposition see clearly. However, this is an area of debate that ought properly to be dealt with in any legislation that reflects Silk part II rather than under this Bill, which properly reflects the preponderance of Silk part I. For that reason, even if the new clause were pressed to a vote, we probably would not support it.
Stephen Crabb
I agree very much with the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). There are two elements to the debate. The first is about what we call the legislature and the second is about where the decision is taken. As for the first, there is an emerging debate in Wales about what we should call the National Assembly and whether it should have its name changed. The leader of my party’s group in the Assembly has a view that I fully respect. He is an excellent colleague and I am sorry if I gave the impression that I was glossing over his views, but I still maintain the position that the debate is emerging and has not yet engaged with the public consciousness. Until we get to that point, it is probably a debate that will not be resolved.
As for the second part of the debate, the Silk commission referred to the decision on where the decision should be made in part II of its recommendations. We have been clear and consistent all along that decisions about the Silk part II recommendations are not for this Bill but for a future Parliament and a future Government and for the parties to consider in their manifestos. I stand by my earlier remarks and ask the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) not to press his new clause to a vote.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 4 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
New Clause 4
National Assembly to set number of AMs
‘Her Majesty may by Order in Council provide for the transfer of responsibility for setting the number of Assembly Members to the National Assembly for Wales.’.—(Jonathan Edwards.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mr Gauke
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this evening, Mr Chope, and to set out the Government’s position on clauses 8 and 9 and the Government amendments. I will also take the opportunity to comment on the amendments tabled by others and will have the chance to debate taxation powers with the shadow Secretary of State for Wales, which I am sure will bring back many happy memories for him of serving on Finance Bills.
Subject to the outcome of a referendum, clause 8 amends the Government of Wales Act 2006 to introduce a Welsh rate of income tax to be paid by those defined as Welsh taxpayers. Clause 9 amends the Income Tax Act 2007 to set out how the Welsh rate of income tax determines the Welsh basic, higher and additional rates of income tax. It also defines the income that will be taxed at those rates.
I shall start with Government amendments 19 and 21. The income tax provisions in clause 8 form part of a new part 4A of the 2006 Act, which is introduced by clause 6. Part 4A’s introductory section includes a reference to the income tax provisions in chapter 2. The provisions in clause 6 will come into force two months after this Bill receives Royal Assent. However, the income tax provisions in clause 8 and 9 can of course be brought into force only following a yes vote in a referendum. Amendment 19 therefore removes the reference to chapter 2 from clause 6, and amendment 21 reinserts the reference into clause 8, bringing the commencement of the reference into line with the rest of the income tax provisions. That will ensure that the amended Act accurately reflects the legislative competence of the Assembly at a given point.
The provisions in clause 9 concerning the Welsh rate have been revised since the draft Bill. That necessitated changes to the power to allow for further consequential changes to be made under secondary legislation introduced by clause 8 in new section 116I of the 2006 Act to ensure that it continued to work as intended. Government amendments 22, 27 and 28 make further technical changes to that power in order to clarify that proposed new section 11B does not impose a charge to income tax. Rather, the effect of the new section 11B is to apply the Welsh rates of income tax to a Welsh taxpayer’s non-savings income.
On Government amendments 23 to 26, the power in new section 116I also allows an order to be made to ensure that HMRC can continue to operate the PAYE system effectively in the event that the Assembly passes a Welsh rate resolution at a late stage in the preceding tax year. Such an order would require employers to continue to operate PAYE on the basis of the information issued by HMRC, rather than the correct tax position for a specified period. The tax position of employees would ultimately be correct over the course of the tax year.
The scenario I have set out would also apply if, for whatever reason, the Assembly did not pass a rate-setting resolution at all, assuming that that had not previously been announced by the Welsh Government. Although I accept that that is unlikely to arise in practice, it is important to recognise that the Assembly has the option not to pass a rate if it so chooses. Amendments 23 to 26 therefore extend the order-making power to cover that scenario. I hope that hon. Members will support those amendments and Government amendments 19, 21, 27 and 28.
In amendment 41, I was pleased to see an amendment from the hon. Members for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) and for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) that supports the principle of income tax devolution, although I note that their latest approach would not provide Wales with quite the same outcome that they have now proposed for Scotland. None the less, it is progress. Although I confess to not having previously studied the issue very closely, I was not sure whether the Labour party opposed income tax devolution or thought that there was not enough of it. No doubt we will receive an explanation later.
Owen Smith
I am grateful to the Exchequer Secretary, and this of course brings back warm memories of time spent debating Finance Bills. He failed to mention our amendments 38 and 39—I presume he will do so in due course—which seek to give symmetry between Scotland and Wales in relation to tax powers. While I am on my feet, may I ask him to return to what he said earlier about Welsh taxpayers under this legislation? Will he confirm for the House that that would designate all MEPs in Wales as Welsh taxpayers, including Kay Swinburne, a Conservative, who does not live in Wales?
Mr Gauke
All Welsh MEPs will be Welsh taxpayers. I will deal with the amendments the hon. Gentleman mentions, although I do not think that they would achieve symmetry. I note that he was not very clear in responding to my point that only a little while ago he said that devolution of income tax to Wales was a Tory trap, or something of the sort. Now he proposes that devolving 10p is insufficient and that it should be 15p. I do not know whether he holds both views at the moment, or just one. I will certainly give way if he can provide some clarity on that point.
Owen Smith
Of course, they are entirely reconcilable, as I shall explain later. However, I did not hear an answer from the Exchequer Secretary on whether Kay Swinburne, the Conservative MEP for Wales, who still lives in Ledbury in England, would be designated as a Welsh taxpayer under the terms of the Bill. That strikes me as an extraordinary oversight by a Conservative Minister.
Mr Gauke
I will repeat what I said: Welsh MEPs will be Welsh taxpayers. I am not sure that I can be any clearer.
On the extent of income tax devolution, there is a careful judgment to be made. Devolving an element of income tax increases the financial accountability of the Assembly and the Welsh Government in three important ways. First, it will enable the Assembly to fund more of the spending for which it is responsible. Secondly, the Welsh Government will be able to vary the levels of tax and spending in Wales. Thirdly, while the Welsh Government currently control many key levers to generate economic growth in Wales such as education, skills, housing and planning, the resulting economic performance currently has no impact on their budget. Devolving an element of income tax will directly link the Welsh Government’s budget to their economic decisions.
Mr Gauke
This is not about charging for public services. We have devolution of income tax in Scotland, where the issues that the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned may arise. I am surprised that, as a distinguished shadow Minister, he appears to be taking a position at odds with his own Front Benchers.
Owen Smith
There is absolutely no contradiction on our part. The Minister has come very late to the debate; I do not know why the Secretary of State does not feel able to answer these questions, but that is for him to respond to. We have said throughout that we have never thought that income tax devolution to Wales was a priority. We do not think there is a significant appetite for it in Wales, and we consider that it creates a Tory trap in two respects. The Conservative party is committed, in Wales and across the rest of the UK, to cutting taxes further for the wealthiest people. The Secretary of State has said that he wants to do that. He has further said that he favours tax competition, with Wales able to undercut England. We are not in favour of that. However, given that in the Bill the Secretary of State has drawn a clear line between the quantum of income tax that is nominally to be devolved to Wales and the amount of borrowing that will be afforded to the Welsh Government, and given that £1.7 billion has been cut out of the Welsh budget, particularly in capital, we are in favour of increasing the amount of money that they might borrow. Our 10p to 15p change would achieve that, if the Welsh people agreed to it in a referendum.
Mr Gauke
I am grateful for that lengthy speech. I may have come late to the debate, but it is perfectly clear that Labour has been all over the place on this matter. I come back to what I said about the advantages of devolving income tax. One of those, very significantly, is that there is much greater accountability for the Welsh Government, because if they are able effectively to use the powers that they currently have to get the Welsh economy to grow, they will benefit from that as a consequence of increased revenues.
Owen Smith
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; he is being very generous with his time. This is like all our yesterdays, in that we are debating, by implication at least, the Laffer curve. He said a moment ago that if Wales were to pursue the right policies, it would see economic growth by deploying these new powers. Does he mean by that that taxes in Wales should be cut, as the Secretary of State has said he would do? If so, which taxes does the Exchequer Secretary propose to cut and by how much?
Mr Gauke
That is a matter for the Welsh Government. They might want to pursue tax policies, but I repeat that policies on education, skills, housing and planning all contribute towards economic growth. The situation at the moment is that the Welsh Government control many of the key levers to generate economic growth, but do not currently benefit from any resulting economic performance through the impact on its budget. This devolution of tax will address that situation. Equally, to go back to the point made by the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), it means that if bad policies are pursued and they damage growth, that will have a consequence for the Welsh economy. I am sure that he is not suggesting that the Welsh Government will pursue growth-damaging policies.
The Temporary Chair (Mr Christopher Chope)
Order. The Minister is not giving way to the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies). We must have some order. There are not many Members in the Chamber, but they seem to be making a mockery of the rules of order. I think that the Minister is giving way to the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith).
Owen Smith
I merely wanted to ask whether, while talking about good and bad policies, the Minister would care to congratulate the Welsh Government on the good policy of Jobs Growth Wales. The policy has been seven times more effective than the Work programme in Wales, and has resulted in Wales having higher growth and, indeed, better unemployment figures than anywhere else in the UK.
Mr Gauke
It is worth pointing out that 12,000 new jobs, as I understand it, have been created under the Work programme in Wales, but I think that I should make a little progress, Mr Chope.
The change involves creating incentives for the Welsh Government, which of course means transferring some risks to them. Specifically, the Welsh Government’s budget will benefit if the income tax base grows faster in Wales than the UK average, but it will be adversely affected if growth in Wales is slower. Crucially, the larger the proportion of income tax that we devolve, the greater the potential impact on the Welsh Government’s budget. Devolving 15p of income tax would increase the size of the impacts by 50% compared with devolving 10p. There is a balance to be found between risks and rewards, and at this stage we see no evidence to suggest that we should move away from the Silk commission’s assessment, which resulted in the recommendation to devolve 10p of income tax. That recommendation is now reflected in the Bill.
Owen Smith
I aim to entertain and to scrutinise legislation properly. Simply on the question of risk, will the Exchequer Secretary tell us what risk the Welsh Government will bear in relation to the potential costs of the change? We know that it will cost between £40 million and £42 million to do it in Scotland. Will it be more or less for Wales? How much will it be?
Mr Gauke
At this point, it is not possible to say what the cost will be. I must say that, with the gain in greater accountability and the greater devolution of powers, hon. Members should welcome the change. The hon. Gentleman is aware that the issue is one for a future referendum. Whether the Welsh people want to go down such a route is a question for them, and such matters will clearly be relevant to that debate. However, on having a 10p rate rather than a 15p rate, I hear the arguments in favour of essentially no devolution whatsoever and those for having a larger sum, but we believe that we have got the balance right. I hope that hon. Members will accept the balance achieved by the Silk commission recommendation, and that the hon. Gentleman will not persist with amendment 41.
Jonathan Edwards
That is an important intervention. The Labour party’s position is that it is worried about tax competition, yet, based on its tax policy, the only tax competition that could happen would favour England and other parts of the British state.
Owen Smith
Let us be absolutely clear: Labour has not argued, and is not arguing, for a tax increase in Wales. We know that the Conservative party is saying that it wants to cut taxes for the wealthiest in Wales. We are seeking to future-proof the legislation so that a Labour Government in Wales would be able to mitigate against further Tory tax cuts for the wealthiest, and introduce tax justice in Wales.
Jonathan Edwards
That is the crux of the argument, and the division between the Labour party and my party. My view is that we should empower the National Assembly and have a mature debate in Wales about what the level of taxation should be. I think the hon. Gentleman is aware of where my political conscience lies—I tabled an amendment to the Finance Bill to reinstate the top rate to 50p. Let us have the debate. Let us trust our Assembly Members to have the debate and let us see the National Assembly mature. The one thing that devolving responsibility for these powers will do is lead to the maturing of the Assembly. Hopefully, we will see the growth and development of our democracy in Wales.
When the Welsh Affairs Committee carried out the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill, we had independent witness after witness—I hasten to add that my hon. Friend the Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) had taken over my role in the Committee for that period, as I was enjoying my paternity leave with my son Llywelyn—giving evidence, except of course the Secretary of State and Treasury Ministers, arguing that the lockstep should be removed. Those giving evidence included the leaders of all the parties in the Assembly, not least the leader of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives in Wales. Several distinguished economists, academics and experts, as well as the Chair of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, also gave evidence. When the Welsh Affairs Committee visited Scotland following the initial Silk report, there was much excitement about its proposals. Academics, economists, civil servants, Ministers and Back Benchers in the Scottish Parliament were all in favour of Silk’s proposals for Wales, as opposed to what they have in the Scotland Act 2012.
I need not remind Labour Members present that the Labour First Minister, Carwyn Jones, said that the lockstep is a “Tory trap” and that it should be removed. He said the lockstep was “a long way short” of what was considered to be good for Wales, adding that
“binding the rates together is not right for Wales”.
That is a clear indication of the need to remove the lockstep on income tax varying powers.
We in Plaid Cymru are seeking, through amendment 21 and several other amendments, to maintain the integrity of the original cross-party Silk commission recommendations. We believe that the Welsh economy needs that sensible package of reforms in order to increase its ability to bring about economic growth and create jobs. We believe that it is a necessary tool, which will help us to begin to rebalance the economy of the British state by giving greater power to the nations and regions, and will help Wales to begin to lift itself from the bottom of the UK economic league table.
In its present form, the Bill requires Wales to hold a referendum on the lockstep model of income tax and win it in order to gain access to the higher limit applying to borrowing to fund investment. We believe that Wales needs access to that money in order to invest sensibly in infrastructure, secure a good return on its investment, and provide jobs that will have a beneficial effect on the state of the Welsh economy. We are all mindful of the huge cuts in its capital budget that the National Assembly has suffered under the coalition Government.
Given that the lockstep was not the compromise agreed by the parties during the Silk commission’s deliberations, it would surely make more sense to devolve the model without the need for a costly referendum. It is simply an income tax sharing model, with a 90-10 split between the United Kingdom and Welsh Governments. Giving the Welsh Government the ability to vary tax is a theoretical exercise that, as the Treasury well knows, cannot become reality with a lockstep—hence the strings that are attached in the Bill. The big prize of what we propose would be the increased borrowing capacity that I believe is required to help the Welsh economy to regenerate and renew itself.
It is clear that all the other parties are now putting narrow self-interest ahead of the Welsh economy by attaching conditions and caveats to Wales’s gaining of greater fiscal and financial powers. The Tories and Liberal Democrats have their condition of the lockstep, while Labour has its caveat in regard to reform of the Barnett formula, on which its members continue to contort and refuse to commit themselves despite citing it as a precondition for greater financial powers for Wales.
As for the debate in Wales, Andrew R. T. Davies and Kirsty Williams have announced some exciting tax policies that they wish to pursue in relation to the ability to vary taxes. Unfortunately, their colleagues down here in London are completely undermining what they have pledged to the people of Wales in various policy announcements. That is a big hit to their credibility, which may be why the Secretary of State introduced the lockstep: perhaps he wanted to undermine Andrew R. T. Davies.
There has already been much public debate in Welsh civil society about the issue of the lockstep and the power to vary income tax bands individually in Wales. There has been controversy as the lockstep row has engulfed the Conservatives. The Welsh Secretary has claimed that the mechanism would not prevent Welsh Ministers from using the powers—although they have not been used in Scotland since 1999—and has suggested that a 1p cut across all three bands would increase Wales’s competitiveness, a claim which, according to the Welsh Government, would cost £200 million a year. Meanwhile, the leader of the Conservatives in the Assembly rejected the lockstep in his submission to the Welsh Affairs Committee hearing on the powers, prompting a damaging fall-out with the Secretary of State. All the Tory Assembly Members were seconded down here to No. 10 Downing street to try to repair some of the damage.
We are often given the impression that it is the Treasury that does the overruling in all these matters. If Scotland does not have it, Wales surely cannot have it. However, the ability to vary income tax bands individually, as per Silk, would truly allow for the ability actually to vary income tax in Wales, and would be a significant step in the maturing of our democracy. As I said in our first debate this afternoon, it would provide a very positive narrative for the Westminster parties in relation to Scotland, demonstrating that they were serious about reforming the settlement of the UK and going beyond what Scotland has at present.
Owen Smith
It is a pleasure, Mr Hoyle, to serve under your chairmanship, and to call you by your true name. This clause is one of the most important in the Bill, so it is a shame that we do not have a huge amount of time to discuss it. There are many important questions about how it will work in practice in Wales. The Exchequer Secretary attempted to answer some, but not all, of those questions, and there remains significant uncertainty as to how income tax varying powers would work in Wales and what the real risks would be to the Welsh Government’s budget and to the services on which the Welsh people rely through that budget.
I take some comfort from the Minister’s observation that there is probably a long time between today and these measures being deployed in anger in Wales. Crucially, from our perspective, we have been clear about the triple lock—about knowing that this would be good for Wales and for the Welsh budget, that fair funding was secured for Wales and that the Welsh people had assented at a referendum to these measures being employed in Wales. All of those three tests would have to be passed.
However, there remains on our part significant concerns about the motivation behind these proposals from the Conservative Government. We are suspicious that the true motivation is to cut taxes in Wales for the wealthiest, as the current Government have done across the rest of the UK. That suspicion is based on a very clear reading of the statement made by the leader of the Conservative party in the National Assembly, who, in a wide-ranging speech last year, explicitly called for cuts solely to the top rate of tax in Wales. This is not a fantasy on our part. The leader of the Tories says that he wants to cut just the top rate, and the Secretary of State wants tax competition through cutting across the board.
Owen Smith
I entirely understand that point, absolutely, completely and utterly. I also understand that the leader of the Conservative party in Wales has placed on the record his desire to cut solely the top rate of tax—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State is muttering from a sedentary position. I presume that he is referring to his colleague, the leader of the Tory party in Wales, because it was he who called for a cut to the top rate of tax. We understand perfectly well how this legislation will work in Wales, but we are not in favour of any one part of Britain undercutting another through tax competition, which is unfortunately the position of the Secretary of State for Wales—[Interruption.] He keeps chuntering from a sedentary position that I do not understand it, but, dare I say, if he had greater faith in his own understanding of his own Bill, introduced in this House with amendments tabled in his name, he would stand at the Dispatch Box to explain the Treasury position and the tax amendments. Unfortunately, he clearly does not understand it sufficiently not to have to rely on his colleague the Exchequer Secretary. We are extremely grateful to the Exchequer Secretary for turning up to act as a human shield for the Secretary of State for Wales, but it is a crying shame that the Secretary of State and the Minister require his support.
Mr Gauke
There is no doubt that the Secretary of State understands the measure but, given what we have heard so far from the shadow Secretary of State, perhaps it would have been better if one of the shadow Treasury team had been making the speech instead. They might have understood it.
Owen Smith
The Exchequer Secretary can continue to attempt to suggest that I do not understand the Bill, but I understand it perfectly. I understand perfectly how lockstep works, but equally understand that this Government have cut taxes for the wealthiest in Britain. They have exclusively cut the additional 50p rate to 45p. I also know that his party in Wales has proposed that it would like to go further with Wales, so he will forgive us if we are suspicious of the “tax cuts for the wealthy” motives of the Conservative party. I think we will continue to be suspicious. Unless he would like to get to his feet and tell us that he does not intend that his colleagues in Wales should cut taxes for the wealthiest, I suspect that he will not wish to intervene further.
On the subject of the complexity and cost of the Bill, the Exchequer Secretary left us entirely without answers about how it will work. In order to illustrate its complexity, I highlighted that he has today moved a poorly drafted clause that will see a Welsh Tory Member of the European Parliament who does not live in Wales and who does not have a residence of any description in Wales, but who lives in England, designated as a Welsh taxpayer. The logic of that is entirely lost on me, but I should have thought that he would want to check who his European Members are in Wales and where they lived before he determined that they would get a tax break—in her case, a £700 tax break—were his Government to do what the Secretary of State for Wales has suggested and cut all the tax bands in lockstep by 1%. That is the tax cut that she would get in Wales, despite the fact that she does not actually live in Wales.
Jonathan Edwards
The hon. Gentleman’s point about Kay Swinburne is an interesting one. Based on that, where does he expect that Stephen Kinnock will pay taxes should he be successful in winning Aberavon? Would it be in Aberavon, in Copenhagen or where he pays tax at the moment, in a tax haven in Switzerland?
Owen Smith
I intend to answer. I fully anticipate that my friend, Mr Kinnock, were he to be so lucky as to win the forthcoming general election and be returned as the hon. Member for Aberavon, a great and noble seat in the Welsh Labour tradition, intends, as he has stated on the record, to live in Aberavon. The irony of this poorly drafted legislation that has been brought before us by those on the Treasury Bench today is that it would not matter where he lived. He could live in Copenhagen or in England and he would still, for the purposes of this half-cocked Bill, be considered a Welsh taxpayer. I do not think that the people of Aberavon would understand that and I suspect that the people of Wales will not understand why an English Tory MEP living in Ledbury will be deemed a Welsh taxpayer.
Let me return to the point about the complexity, if I may, and read a small section of the Bill to the Minister for the delectation of the House. It is entitled “Close connection with Wales or another part of the UK” and can be found in proposed new section 116G in clause 8. It says in subsections (3) and (4):
“T”—
the Welsh taxpayer—
“has a close connection with a part of the UK if in that year—
(a) T has 2 or more places of residence in the UK,
(b) for at least part of the year, T’s main place of residence in the UK is in that part of the UK,
(c) the times in the year when T’s main place of residence is in that part of the UK comprise (in aggregate) more of the year than the times when T’s main place of residence is in each other part of the UK (considered separately), and
(d) for at least part of the year, T lives at a place of residence in that part of the UK.
(4) In this section ‘place’ includes a place on board a vessel or other means of transport.”
I read those subsections for the enjoyment of the Leader of the House, who I am delighted to say has joined us, to point out what a ludicrously complex piece of drafting that is, and what a ludicrously complex Bill it is. We point that out because attending that complexity is cost—enormous cost.
The Secretary of State, or rather the Exchequer Secretary—the Secretary of State did not answer because he was not at the Dispatch Box—could not tell us how much it would cost to implement these measures in Wales. That is a surprise. He also talked about accountability. He might have been a little more accountable for his own Department, because it is today that the Government and his Department should have published the second annual report on the implementation of part 3 of the Scotland Act, inwhich we were anticipating, as outlined in the Secretary of State’s impact assessment to this Bill, a renewedand updated view on the costs associated with the implementation of these measures in Scotland. That has not been published today. It was not published in April as Ministers promised.
That is a dereliction of duty, not least because it leaves us in Wales with no idea as to how much these measures will cost. But we have reason to believe and to fear that it will be a significant amount of money, because we know from the first report on the implementation of the Scotland Act that it will cost more than £40 million to implement such measures in Scotland, and we know from the Government’s own impact assessment that it is likely to cost more in Wales. The reason is the porosity and populous nature of the border between England and Wales: 48% of the Welsh population and 10% of the English population live within 25 miles of that border, which means that fully 6.3 million people live along that border. In contrast, just 4% of the Scottish population and just 0.5% of the English population live within 25 miles of the border between England and Scotland, which means that just 450,000 people live along that border.
If it has taken so far, as the Government have conceded, £1.7 million to start the analysis of how these measures will work in Scotland, how Scottish taxpayers will be identified, how a pay-as-you-earn system will work, how employers will deal with it, and what the nature of the information to be provided to newly designated Scottish taxpayers will be—it is already £2 million-ish and counting, and soon to be £40 million for Scotland—do we not need to have some idea in Wales, as a part of prudent management of Treasury finances, and eventually Welsh Government—finances, of how much money it will cost the Welsh? If the Minister wants to offer us some indication, I should be grateful, but at the moment we are in the dark, and in the dark we remain concerned that the costs will be greater for Wales, and the disbenefits for Wales, therefore, potentially also greater.
In the light of the fact that there is such a long period before the measure comes into force, we will not press the amendments that we have tabled to the clause, but we will maintain our concerns about the motivations that lie behind it. We will continue to push for fair funding for Wales, not to the detriment of Scotland but in the interests of the people of Wales, and we will continue to ask the Minister to clarify what exactly this measure will mean for the Welsh people, and whether they will be better or worse off if the Bill were ever to be enacted.
Mr Gauke
After what is a relatively short speech from the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith), I am still not entirely sure whether he is for or against it, but we are certainly for the devolution of income tax in the way set out in the clauses. I hope that the clauses and the Government amendments will have the support of the whole House, and that all other amendments will not be pressed.
Amendment 21 agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Owen Smith Excerpts(12 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
The Chancellor claims to be credible and consistent in his decision making, including his decision to withdraw the age-related tax allowances—the so-called granny tax that my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) just asked about. In that case, will the Minister confirm why, in February 2009, the present Chancellor explicitly called for the tax-free allowance for pensioners to be increased?
Mr Gauke
In the light of the very substantial increase in the general personal allowance and of the concerns raised by the Office of Tax Simplification that the current structure does not have support, that is the right move. Pensioners are well protected by our policies and will continue to be so, but that move is one that results in a simpler and fairer tax system.
Finance (No. 4) Bill
Owen Smith Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 1, page 2, line 4, leave out paragraph (c).
The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 76, page 2, line 4, at end insert—
‘(1) The Treasury shall, within two months of Royal Assent of this Act, publish a report on the additional rate of income tax.
(2) This report shall make recommendations on—
(a) preventing the tax-avoidance measures employed by individuals to avoid making payments at the additional rate of income tax, and
(b) the impact upon Treasury revenue of setting the additional rate to—
(i) 50 per cent and
(ii) 45 per cent in the tax year 2013-14.’.
Amendment 7, page 2, line 5, leave out subsections (3) to (6).
Amendment 62, page 2, line 22, at end add—
‘(7) The Treasury shall, within two months of Royal Assent, make an assessment of the relative administrative costs of—
(a) making an additional charge to income tax payable by all individuals with an adjusted net income above a certain amount; and
(b) the measures in section 8 of, and Schedule 1 to this Act.’.
Clause stand part.
Owen Smith
It is a great pleasure to be under your chairmanship, Mr Hoyle.
The legislation we deal with in this House can sometimes appear rather obscure or require a significant amount of interpretation. For financial legislation that is often true in spades, but not so with this Bill, because what do we have, straight off the bat, on page 1, in part 1, chapter 1, clause 1? A tax cut for millionaires—£40,000 for 14,000 millionaires, signed away in one short line, in subsection (2)(c), which cuts the additional top rate of tax from 50p to 45p. Let me be clear: our amendment would get rid of that provision. It would do what we as the Opposition are able to do and strike out from the Bill the change from 50p to 45p. Let there be no doubt whatever: we will be voting to remove paragraph (c) later today.
Owen Smith
But for now I look forward to the intervention that I am about to receive from the Exchequer Secretary.
Owen Smith
No; which is why I wanted to nose off on this point. Let us clear out of the way this obscurantist nonsense that we are hearing from those on the Treasury Bench—first from the Prime Minister earlier today and now from the Exchequer Secretary. He will know that protocol dictates that we cannot table an amendment that would straightforwardly put the rate back to 50p. That is what colleagues on the nationalist Benches attempted to do, and they were ruled out of order. However, what has been ruled in order by the senior Clerk responsible for this Bill is precisely what we have done, to try to get rid of the Government’s shift from 50p to 45p. The Government would then need to decide exactly what they would do with that rate, but our view is clear: it should be 50p, as it was previously. That is why we have tabled what we have tabled, on the Clerk’s advice.
Owen Smith
I will give the Minister one more chance, but I warn him that he will listen to the country, and the country is telling him that it knows where Labour stands on this issue. We are in favour of keeping the rate at 50p. The Government are getting rid of the 50p rate; the rest is complete nonsense, and smoke and mirrors. If he wants to blow some more smoke, come on up.
Mr Gauke
The country is aware that Labour did not vote against the change to the 50p rate in our debates on the Budget resolutions, although the nationalists did. It is indeed the case that there would be two income tax charges as a consequence of the amendment that the hon. Gentleman is moving. I do not want to do his job for him, but if he wanted to achieve the objective that he is setting out, he could have tried to remove subsection (2) entirely, but he did not. He has kept the charge at 20% and 40%. If his amendment succeeds, we will have those two rates of income tax next year.
Owen Smith
I am not going to indulge in this procedural nonsense much longer, because frankly the country is interested in the substance of the debate. However, if the Exchequer Secretary wants to intervene on me one more time, he can take the opportunity that the Prime Minister eschewed earlier today and correct the misleading comments that he made about the 50p rate, which he said raised no money. We know that it did raise money. We know that page 52 of the Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs report makes clear how much money it raised and how much it would have raised in future. If the Exchequer Secretary wants to intervene on that point he can, but as for our amendment, drafted on the Clerk’s advice, we are confident in it, we are happy about it and we will debate the substance rather than the nonsense.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and neighbour from Pontypridd for giving way. He will know that my constituents, like his, find it inconceivable that the Government should be trying to reduce the tax rate from 50p to 45p at this time. Will he confirm that literally the only people in this House who can even table an amendment to put it back to 50p are Ministers of the Crown? That is what they should be doing today, rather than hiding behind the procedure of this House.
Owen Smith
I am grateful to my hon. Friend because he reiterates the point that I have made. The Government are the only body in this House who can choose to raise taxation.
Owen Smith
No, I am not going to give way.
The Government are the ones who could decide today to put the rate back up to 50p. They have chosen to cut it from 50p to 45p. We are not going to indulge in any more of this procedural gibberish. The reality is that we are here to debate the substance of the issue, which is the values and the evidence that underpin the decision.
Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)
My hon. Friend has referred to the fact that at Prime Minister’s questions today the Prime Minister said that the 50p tax rate provided no additional income to the Treasury. However, can my hon. Friend confirm what the actual loss to the Treasury would be from reducing the rate to 45p?
Owen Smith
I would be absolutely delighted to confirm that, because we have got it in black and white, in the HMRC’s dodgy dossier, as I think of it these days. Page 39 of the HMRC paper says that the post-behavioural yield—that is, the amount of money realised—of the 50p rate for the one year in which it was in existence was £1.1 billion. The summary, on page 2, says the same thing. In answer to my hon. Friend’s supplementary point, the amount of money that would be forgone in forthcoming years, which is captured in table A2 on page 51, is £3 billion, rising to £4 billion over the spending period. That is the reality, there in black and white in the HMRC document. These are not uncertain numbers, like some of the other ones. I will now give way to the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis)—[Interruption]—who is looking off into the ether.
Michael Ellis
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. If he disputes the Government’s suggestion that his amendment would reduce the rate to 40%, can he say what it would reduce it to? Also if he thinks it so important that the rate should remain at 50%, why did his Government sit on their hind heels for 13 years before raising it to 50%?
Owen Smith
I will answer the hon. Gentleman’s last point first, because I answered it on Monday, too. When we introduced the 50p rate, in the Budget for the year before it took effect—we first floated the notion in 2009, allowing a year for it to be implemented, as is good practice—the rationale was simple. We wanted the people with the broadest shoulders to pay the maximum amount, and to pay an amount that is fair and just. This Government have a different set of priorities.
Graeme Morrice
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again. On the basis of the confirmation from the official HMRC report that the loss is indeed in excess of £1 billion, does he think that the Prime Minister should be asked to come back to the House and correct the record accordingly?
Owen Smith
I do. It is absolutely extraordinary that the Prime Minister should have misled the House in the manner in which he did. However, it is in keeping with the misleading of the House that is writ large throughout the HMRC document, which has frankly come up with this £100 million loss—not flat, as the Prime Minister suggested—with the flimsiest of evidence and on the basis of economic modelling that I intend to take to pieces later on.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
There are a couple of points to make. First, there is no uncertainty that 14,000 millionaires will significantly benefit from the change. Where there is uncertainty, however, is in the Government’s arguments about the overall impact on the Exchequer, in terms of tax gained and tax lost. The Select Committee on the Treasury has said today:
“The cost and benefits of reducing the additional tax rate to 45p are both highly uncertain”.
The Government have tried to make an argument, but they have not even got the facts right in the first place to make their argument stick.
Owen Smith
The word “uncertain” is used so many times in the various documents that I have lost count. In fact, I must apologise to the Committee. On Monday evening, I said, perhaps with my dander up, that there were three instances in the HMRC document of the words “uncertain” or “uncertainty”, when there are in fact 32 such references—one for just about every page. I shall read out some excerpts from the document later.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
The reason that amendment 6 was not selected for debate was that the House had already divided on that matter. Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman’s party abstained on that occasion. On his amendment, it is my understanding from the Clerks that there must be an additional rate in the Bill. Is there not therefore a danger that the Government could use his amendment to drop the top rate of tax to 40p, thereby creating a tax break on a tax break? Several Members made that point on Monday.
Owen Smith
I suppose that there is a risk of that happening, because the Chancellor has wanted to reduce the rate to 40p all along. He might even want to go lower; perhaps we will get an indication later of how low he and his Ministers think they can go on income tax. With respect to the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), the reason that he gave was not the reason that his amendment was not selected. It was not selected because it is only the Government who can choose to put up taxes—
Owen Smith
I am not going to give way again to hear more obscurities of protocol. They are nonsense and are just being used to distract attention from the measures.
Elizabeth Truss (South West Norfolk) (Con)
What impact does the hon. Gentleman think having the highest rate of income tax in the G20 has on this country’s competitiveness?
Owen Smith
We do not know—[Laughter.] Conservative Members might laugh, but I would like to see them present some evidence on this, instead of the flannel and rhetoric that we are hearing—[Interruption.] The Minister is waving the HMRC report. Will he point to the part of it that gives definitive data on the impact on competitiveness of any rate of tax? There is nothing about that in the report, which is why he is not getting up to point it out. Come on! Let him show me the part of the report that substantiates the point made by the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss).
The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I am sure that the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) has only just walked into the Chamber. He cannot have picked up the debate quite this quickly. He might need a little more time to listen before he intervenes.
Owen Smith
We should give the hon. Gentleman time to warm up, but if he wants to intervene to tell me where in the HMRC report we can find a definitive set of data on the impact on competitiveness of the various rates of tax, I will gladly sit down and wait for him to do so.
Owen Smith
Does the hon. Gentleman want to intervene on me on the point of competitiveness using evidence or anecdote?
Mark Reckless
The document says that all this is highly uncertain. That means that there is a significant possibility that the 50p rate was losing the Government revenue. Would the hon. Gentleman therefore welcome support for his amendment from the Government Benches at 4 o’clock?
Owen Smith
I am very pleased that I gave way to the hon. Gentleman. His intervention has exposed the fact that Conservative Members do not read the documentation, even though they listen to the flannel from their Front Bench. I repeat that page 39 of the document shows, under the heading “Adjusted impact on 2010-11 tax liabilities”, that the post-behavioural yield is £1.1 billion. It is there in black and white. That is how much money the 50p rate raised. No one is disputing that, and I presume that the Exchequer Secretary is not going to get to his feet and dispute what is written on page 39, or indeed, what is written on page 2, in the summary. I do not think that he is going to do that.
Owen Smith
I am not going to give way at the moment. I want to carry on with my speech, then I will give way again. Perhaps by then the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) will have warmed up and will be able to give us some evidence, instead of more rhetoric.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
Much has been made of the effect of the top rate of tax on revenue and on competitiveness. Given that the Government have stated their intention to change the top rate of tax, is it not surprising that the Chancellor has said that he is going to initiate
“some real research into dynamic scoring, and what the broader economy effects are of changes to taxation”?
It seems that even the Government do not know the impact of the change in taxation.
Owen Smith
I knew it would be worth while giving way to the Treasury spokesman for the Democratic Unionist party. His intervention offers a contrast to some of the more pedantic contributions that we have heard from Conservative Members. He is right to say that it was far too early to make a decision, ostensibly based on evidence, just one year after the implementation of the new tax rate. That is what the Institute for Fiscal Studies has concluded, and it is what the Office for Budget Responsibility has effectively concluded in suggesting how uncertain the conclusions are. It is also, unfortunately, what the country is concluding.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
The information in the report shows that the cost to the Treasury of the tax cut will be £3 billion. That is rather conveniently predicated on behavioural change bringing in an extra £2.9 billion. Given that scorn has been poured on that figure of £2.9 billion, what confidence does my hon. Friend have that this tax change will not end up costing the Treasury far more than its report suggests?
Owen Smith
I have absolutely no confidence whatever. My hon. Friend’s point goes to the heart of the dodgy economics in the dodgy dossier. The figure of £100 million is entirely predicated on the assumption that there will almost be a net offset of the £3 billion static loss as a result of the change to the 50p rate, through people deciding to work harder, save less, take their income in the current year, and hide their income less. Those are the behavioural changes that the Government are assuming will take place, but there is no real evidence base for the change. It is fundamentally dodgy.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that we are debating the difference between those of us who do our economics using evidence and those on the Government Benches who do it using spurious theory? We should all be responsible; we should look at the evidence and report that evidence. That is why it is important that the Prime Minister should return to the House to correct the record.
Owen Smith
I am tempted to say to my hon. Friend that the golden phrase “expansionary fiscal contraction” tells us all that we need to know about the ability of those on the Treasury Bench. Expansionary fiscal contraction! That is working really well, isn’t it? It is going splendidly.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
If we set aside the shadow Minister’s amendment, which would leave us with a 40p top rate of tax—[Interruption.] Let us set that aside for the moment. My question to him is this: would he reverse the decision on the 50p tax rate if he were in office? A yes or no is all I require.
Owen Smith
Yes. Right now, we would not have cut the 50p rate in this Parliament. Full stop. End of. Thank you very much.
Owen Smith
No, the hon. Gentleman has just heard my answer. Throughout this Parliament, we would not have done that. No tax rate is set in stone for ever, but the question of whether we would reverse that decision is irrelevant because we are not in government. You lot are, and you cut it, but that would not have been our priority. Neither was it the priority of the present Chancellor just 18 months ago. When we introduced the 50p rate, we said that we wanted those with the broadest shoulders to pay the most, in order to deal with the global turmoil—[Interruption.] Members should just listen for a moment. When he was shadow Chancellor, the present Chancellor said that he agreed with us. In October 2009, he said that
“we could not even think of abolishing the 50p rate on the rich while at the same time I am asking many of our public sector workers to accept a pay freeze to protect their jobs. I think we can all agree that would be grossly unfair.”
I still agree with that.
Owen Smith
No, there is more from the Chancellor. Conservative Members ought to listen to this, because it is their very competent Chancellor speaking. A year later, in October 2010, he said:
“The public must know that the burden is being fairly shared. That’s why I said last year: we are all in this together. And I am clear…that those with the most”—
like those on the Treasury Bench—
“need to pay more. That is why… I have stuck with the 50p tax”.
Have I missed something over the past 18 months since this Chancellor has been in trouble? As far as I have seen, the economy has flatlined, growth is at absolutely zero, business investment is going nowhere and inflation is rising. The only thing that has fallen recently is unemployment. Thanks be to goodness that it has dipped today, but it is still at 2.6 million, and as I pointed out to the Minister on Monday night, 2,500 people were queuing for 200 jobs at a supermarket in my constituency last week. That is the reality of the economy under this Government, unfortunately.
Alun Cairns
I am grateful. How does the hon. Gentleman reconcile his enthusiasm for the 50% rate with the view of the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), who said that the 50% rate was temporary? How temporary is temporary for the Labour party?
Owen Smith
The 50p rate was introduced, as I said earlier, when we were in the depths of the biggest global recession—[Interruption.] I add the word global, unless Government Members are still suggesting that the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the US was the fault of the Labour Government. Among the many risible claims of the present Government, that is right up there with “expansionary fiscal contraction”. While we are still asking the poor to pay the price for that global recession and piling misery upon misery on them, with VAT changes, increased job insecurity and wage stagnation, cutting the 50p rate is fundamentally the wrong thing to do.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend the shadow Minister has referred to several things that are uncertain, but has it not already become clear that two things are absolutely certain? The first is that the Prime Minister gave us a pork pie earlier when he was talking about how much the 50p rate would raise. Secondly, the only reason there have been so many cock-ups in the Budget and the Finance Bill is that the Government have had to try to justify to the public their cut to the 50p rate. The whole mistake of the Budget hangs on that one initial mistake in cutting the 50p rate.
Owen Smith
I grateful for that intervention. I am not sure whether the pork pie was served at ambient temperature, but it was certainly a pork pie.
Owen Smith
I have already pointed out three times that it was a pork pie, including to the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), to whom I do not intend to give way. I will give way, however, to my right hon. Friend.
Mr Lammy
My hon. Friend has done a very good job of demonstrating that the Government are not at all clear on the figures and the money that will be lost. Does he think that the Government have more clarity about the Mayor’s position on this issue? Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, made eight separate interventions to get this tax reduced, but made no interventions on VAT, no interventions on an increase for pensioners and no interventions on charities. He sought to intervene on behalf of the richest Londoners. My hon. Friend may agree that the Government ought to publish those interventions, so that we can be absolutely clear whether or not the Mayor has any evidence.
Owen Smith
Again, I am pleased that I gave way, as I think that is an excellent suggestion, which we really should take up. Of course the series of interventions on the 50p rate from the current Mayor of London—I say current; I hope he will not be Mayor for much longer—and, indeed, the series doubtless coming from the Chancellor’s and Prime Minister’s other wealthy mates, backed up the ideological decision to get rid of it. In fact, I am tempted to say that the cut in the 50p rate gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “mates’ rates”.
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman will recall that when, in November 2008—for the first time and 11 and a half years into the Labour Government—the suggestion was made to change the higher rate of income tax, the then Chancellor suggested bringing in a 45p rate. Might that rate have been suggested simply because it was felt it would maximise the tax take from it? Is that not one reason the hon. Gentleman is somewhat misguided in supporting this amendment?
Owen Smith
No, and I shall get into the technicalities in my response, if I may. When the 45p rate was initially mooted, the recession was not as profound as it subsequently became, justifying the shift to the 50p rate. If we look at the calculations underpinning the suggestions of the 45p and 50p rates, we find that they were informed by the use of a taxable income elasticity number of 0.35, which shows that an even higher rate, nearer 56%, might have been the optimal level for imposing the tax. We did not impose that rate, and—before the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) bobs up and down excitedly—I am not for a minute suggesting we ought to impose it. What I am saying is that there is uncertainty about the optimal rate, which is why it is so foolhardy for this Prime Minister and Chancellor to hang their credibility, and the claim of fiscal neutrality at the heart of their Budget, on economic calculus and economic modelling that is inevitably uncertain. That is the word used 32 times in the document, and I am going to use it some more in a moment. Unfortunately, it shows the truth for this Government.
Mark Field
I entirely appreciate that the hon. Gentleman’s case applies to all sides—that there is much uncertainty about precisely the optimum rate of tax—but does he not accept that the 45p rate mooted three and a half years ago, which has now been put in place, was suggested simply because of the totemic effect of having to pay less than half one’s income at the highest rate of income tax? That totemic effect has a massive impact on both entrepreneurial spirit here and the international competitiveness that my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) mentioned earlier.
Owen Smith
What I would accept is that the rate was raised to 50p in the end because we felt that there was still an overriding imperative to help through the period of recession the people in our economy who are the most vulnerable and to ask those who are the most fortunate in our economy to bear the broadest and biggest burden in order to allow that transfer to occur. That is the totemic rationale from our perspective. What is totemic for this Government, I fear, is the idea that the 50p rate is not approved of in the City or by the wealthiest people, but I do not believe that that provides a justification for making this decision—and nor does the Chancellor, which is why he eschewed the possibility of arguing from a political or ideological perspective to justify the cut to 45p. He argued that it was being done on the basis of evidence. In fact, that was the only Keynesian bit of logic in the Chancellor’s Budget speech. He effectively said, “The reason I no longer believe what I believed in 2009 and 2010 is that the facts have changed”, and he changed his view accordingly. In his view, based on the dodgy dossier, the rate was not bringing in the anticipated amount of money, which is what justified paring it back to 45p.
Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
There appears to be an emerging cross-party consensus that there is great uncertainty in this area. Is it not therefore appalling that the Chancellor should go ahead at such short notice without any evidence base? Does that not confirm that he had made up his mind without looking at the evidence?
Owen Smith
I hate to say it, but it is worse than that. What happened is that the Chancellor made up his mind, and then made the evidence fit his decision. [Interruption.] I am asked where is the evidence, but 32 times in the one exculpatory piece of evidence provided, the Treasury covered its behind by referring to uncertainty. I shall go through them in a minute, but that shows how often it was necessary to justify this damascene conversion.
Mark Reckless
Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that because the situation is uncertain, the 50p rate might have cost revenue, so the Government had less money for the least fortunate in society?
Owen Smith
I do not know how many times I need to keep telling the hon. Gentleman this, but the simple answer is no. He should turn to page 2 of the document, which clearly says that this rate raised £1 billion; he should turn to page 39, which says that it raised £1.1 billion; he should turn to page 51, which says that it will rise to £3.1 billion next year. These would be the static costs. It goes on to say—[Interruption.] No, £1.1 billion is the actual amount lost to the national accounts as a result of this change. That is a fact. It is not uncertain; it is a fact. The Treasury thinks that the money would have gone up to £3 billion, rising to £4 billion subsequently.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Harriett Baldwin
Can the hon. Gentleman confirm that his party’s next manifesto will contain a pledge to restore the 50p rate?
Owen Smith
When we get close enough to the next election to write our manifesto, we will write it, and the hon. Lady will be able to see it then. That is the simple answer to her question. Can she tell us exactly what will be in her party’s manifesto at this stage? I do not think so, and I do not intend to tell her what will be in ours. We will decide.
I wonder what the Tory manifesto will say about the NHS and VAT at the next election. I suspect that it will not say that the Tories will look after the former or fail to increase the latter, because no one would believe them any longer, would they?
Let us be clear. The document says that £3 billion would be the static cost of a cut in the rate to 45p. It also says that the behavioural change based on the magic of Arthur Laffer’s cocktail napkin calculus would generate £2.9 billion. Unfortunately, as I have said, HMRC is not terribly certain about that, which is why it has covered its rear so often.
I promised to give the Committee a few examples of the use of the words “uncertain” and “uncertainty”, which occur more than 30 times in the document, and I cannot resist doing so, because they are so juicy. The document states that
“the yield estimates were highly uncertain.”
It states:
“There is considerable uncertainty over the true level of the elasticity.”
It states:
“The incompleteness of returns at this stage gives the results and conclusions a margin of uncertainty.”
In fact, there is so much uncertainty in it that there is a separate section entitled “Areas of uncertainty”. My personal favourite appears on page 38, where uncertainty is expressed about the uncertainty. In an attempt to estimate the behavioural effects, the document states:
“The level of uncertainty associated with this estimate is therefore driven by the uncertainty of all the other stages described above.”
Why is the document so uncertain? The reason, in short, is taxable income elasticity or TIE. The Treasury decided that the appropriate TIE for the calculation of a £100 million loss was 0.45; not the standard number that the previous Treasury had used, 0.35, and not—I look forward to an intervention on this point—the standard numbers used in the vast welter of academic research which puts a delta at between 0.12 and 0.4. The figure of 0.46, which is used in this Treasury document, is at the very top end of the possible delta. Even if it were true that 0.45 is appropriate, however, the uncertainty would still be enormous. All we need do is shift the figure slightly to 0.35, and what do we find? Not a £100 million loss, but a loss of £700 million. If we shift it nearer to the 0.12 that has been used in many United States studies, we see a loss to the tune of between £3 billion and £4 billion.
Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, told the Treasury Committee, whose report was published only today, that the Treasury’s
“central estimate… is incredibly uncertain, to the extent that we think that its estimate suggests there is only a two-thirds probability that a revenue-maximising rate lies between 30 per cent and 75 per cent.”
That is what the IFS had to say about what the optimal rate might be on the basis of the Treasury’s calculus. Mr Johnson continued:
“Those numbers are absurd in some sense, but that gives you a sense of the level of numbers of assumption and uncertainty that underlie what”
the Treasury
“has done.”
Mr Gauke
The hon. Gentleman has referred to the academic debate. May I refer him to page 20 of the HMRC document, which relates to the IFS study? It states that Brewer, Saez and Shephard estimated a TIE of 0.46 in 2008, and Gruber and Saez estimated a TIE of between 0.5 and 0.7. It also states:
“The TIE estimate of 0.35 used in the Budget 2010… estimate”
—which the hon. Gentleman described as “standard”—
“was deliberately at the low end of the academic elasticities surveyed.”
The 0.45 TIE is much more consistent with the academic position than the claims of the last Government.
Owen Smith
I am thrilled to have given way to the Minister, because his intervention has revealed that, although he may have read the dodgy dossier, he has not read the academic literature. If he had done so, he would have read more recent publications such as that of Saez, Slemrod and Giertz, which is a review of all the pieces of work done on TIE. It concluded that many of the earlier studies, including the HMRC study, had relied on estimates that were excessively high owing to flaws in the data and the methodology used. Saez et al suggested that
“the best available estimates range from 0.12 to 0.40”.
That is the same Saez from whose earlier paper the Minister quoted. In his most recent paper, he changed his mind and concluded that between 0.12 and 0.4 was the generally accepted estimate. The Treasury has cooked the figures on the basis of one academic study produced as part of the Mirrlees review.
Owen Smith
Absolutely. The key correlation is not between top rates of tax and GDP. There is very little evidence of that. However, there is evidence that top rates of tax have a massive impact on the distribution of wealth across the deciles, and are concentrated on the richest percentage of our economy. That is the truth, and that is why the Government ought not to have made the decisions that they made.
All this stuff may seem rather arcane, but it is central to the Budget. If the Treasury got it wrong—if the amount that will be lost is not £100 million, but a great deal more—the neutrality of the Budget is bust, as is the credibility of the Government. Who will pay the price of that bust? It will not be the 14,000 millionaires who are 40 grand better off as a result of the extraordinary largesse from this millionaires’ Government. It will be the pensioners, the unemployed, the vulnerable, and squeezed middle-earning and low-earning families throughout the country, who will be £500 worse off as a result of this Government’s activities.
We fear that that is the price that will be paid. We believe that written into clause 1 are the priorities and the politics of the Government, which are ideological, value-driven and fundamentally wrong: wrong for this time, and wrong for this country. That is why we will vote against the proposed change and in favour of our amendment, and we hope that Government Members will look to their consciences and do the same.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I do not think it is necessary for me to speak to amendment 1 because my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) and others have, in their interventions, destroyed the Opposition’s argument. I recall that the TaxPayers Alliance organised a wonderful celebratory dinner not long ago, in the Guildhall I think, at which the guest of honour was none other than Dr Laffer of the Laffer curve. I am delighted that the Treasury is now paying more attention to the principles behind the Laffer curve, which, in my view, are well represented in the argument for reducing the top rate of tax back to 40%, rather than 45%. I hope that in due course my hon. Friend the Minister will explain why someone like me should not be tempted to vote for amendment 1 on the basis that it would reduce the level to 40%.
Owen Smith
When Dr Laffer attended the dinner at the Guildhall, did he bring with him the famous cocktail napkin on which he sketched the curve?
Mr Chope
Dr Laffer did not bring any visual aids with him; he was able to command his audience without them. I remember being surprised by how relatively youthful he was—it seemed that his principles and his curve had been talked about for so long that I had assumed he was going to come in with a walking stick, but he did not. He was very lively in mind, body and spirit so I think he is someone we can continue to listen to in the months and years ahead.
I want to use my short speech to comment on amendment 62, which is in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless). It calls on the Treasury to
“within two months of Royal Assent, make an assessment of the relative administrative costs of…making an additional charge to income tax payable by all individuals with an adjusted net income above a certain amount; and…the measures in section 8 of, and Schedule 1 to this Act.”
Jonathan Edwards
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Hoyle, and to contribute to the debate. I shall speak to amendments 7 and 76, in my name and that of the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), relating to the cut in the additional rate of income tax, and consequential amendments. I intend to press amendment 76 to a Division at the appropriate time unless, of course, it is accepted by the Treasury.
Despite heavy lobbying over the past year to remove the 50p additional rate of tax, the switch to a lower rate of 45p was one of the more surprising announcements in the Budget last month. It had been assumed by many that the Government mantra of being “in it together” meant that it would be politically necessary to show that all parts of society were paying more tax and facing the same level of public service cuts. Many therefore assumed that the 50p rate would be with us for at least as long as the Government maintained their plan A for cutting the deficit. After all, pressing issues such as Barnett formula reform have been conveniently parked in the name of the war on the deficit.
For my party, the issue is a matter of principle, irrespective of the timing and the state of the wider economy. Those with the broadest shoulders should bear the burden of taxation. A progressive taxation system based on the Scandinavian model is part of our political DNA. Someone who earns at the additional rate of £3,000 of taxable income per week is clearly in that category. Only a handful of people who earn that kind of money reside in my constituency. We therefore support the maintenance of the current 50p additional rate.
As I made clear in my speech on Second Reading on Monday, my opposition to this tax cut is on the record, as I voted against it during the Budget votes last month. The income tax rates for 2013-14 were one of the founding resolutions of the Budget, and offer very little scope for change today. My amendment 6, which would mean that the additional rate would be 50%, appears on the amendment paper but was not selected.
Hon. Members can therefore imagine my surprise that the official Opposition did not join my colleagues from a variety of smaller parties in opposing this measure on 26 March. That was the vote against a cut in the additional rate, but the Labour party unfortunately abstained, apart from two honourable exceptions. The hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) representing the official Opposition kindly allowed me to intervene on her during the debate on Monday. I asked her to confirm whether this was a deliberate or a tactical abstention. Her response was that the Opposition had voted against the whole Finance Bill and that was sufficient.
The hon. Lady’s answer would have been a semi-appropriate response, were it not for the fact that, if my memory serves me well, her party divided the House on resolution No. 8 on higher income benefit. Clearly, some resolutions were more important than others that evening.
Owen Smith
Just to clarify, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) made plain, we had already voted against the whole Bill. There was a further reason for not supporting the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, which was that unfortunately it would have wiped out all the rates of taxation, not only the 50p rate.
Jonathan Edwards
I am sure the hon. Gentleman read the leaked e-mails from Labour insiders the following day, which were widely reported on the Guido Fawkes blog and which indicated that this was a major balls-up—excuse the pun.
Karl MᶜCartney
Thank you, Mr Hoyle for letting me continue. I feel I ought to correct what might be an untruth: I did not break the leg of the hon. Member for Rhondda. I gave him quite a good pass—not even a hospital pass—on the rugby field and the two large gentlemen who were about to tackle me then tackled him.
The independent Office for Budget Responsibility agrees that the 50p rate raises only a fraction of what was supposedly intended. So, one of my questions to the Chancellor and his Ministers is whether they know of any reason why any Member would disagree with the highly respected OBR other than for disingenuous political gain.
The 50p rate is bad economics. The previous Labour Government’s Chancellors and Prime Ministers and the Labour party’s current shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), are well aware of that privately but cannot bring themselves to acknowledge it publicly. Ultimately, it is the highest tax rate in the G20. Our Government are clear where they stand on the 50p tax rate: it has not raised anywhere near the revenue expected as many individuals cleverly engaged their own or their accountants’ knowledge to bypass the rate and lower their tax bills. The Government have now sent out a clear signal to the international community that Britain is open for business and will no longer have the highest tax rate in the G20. The same clear signal cannot be said to be coming from those on the Opposition Benches.
Karl MᶜCartney
Not at this point.
It has been interesting—and would be again—to hear from the Chancellor or his Ministers what positive signs we have seen from businesses after he announced the change. Once again, why does the Labour party fly in the face of business leaders’ opinion? As I have said, the 50p tax rate raises only a fraction of what was intended and is bad economics. It is better to put the British economy first, ahead of cheap headlines, but then that was never the Labour way, was it? One would have thought by now that Labour might have learnt some economic lessons.
The cut in the 50p tax rate was never a priority of this Government. Raising the personal tax allowance and helping low and middle income earners has always been the No. 1 priority tax cut for the Government and that is what we have done. This is a Budget to be welcomed by all with far-reaching tax reform that Labour should be embarrassed it never even considered. It announces the largest ever increase in the personal tax allowance, which will benefit 24 million ordinary families up and down our country. Most basic rate taxpayers will gain at least £220 every year. In total, this Government will have taken 2 million low paid people out of tax altogether.
Labour spent much of the aftermath of the recent budget indulging in photo calls in unfamiliar territory for Labour Members—any pasty shop they could find. Even an unannounced visit to my own constituency of Lincoln by the photogenic brother of the Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband), featured such a stunt. Among all this new-found fondness for pasties, but perhaps notably not for one bottle of a famous brown sauce, the Leader of the Opposition has strongly criticised the decision to cut the top rate from 50p.
The right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) made a laughable claim when he said:
“After today’s Budget, millions will be paying more while millionaires pay less.”—[Official Report, 21 March 2012; Vol. 452, c. 809.]
He is the true heir to Blair, is he not? Soundbite, not substance—and not even basic mathematical understanding. After this Budget, not only will millions of people pay less tax, but many low earners will pay little or no income tax. If, as we know, the 50p top rate raised only a fraction of what was intended and in addition harmed our international competitiveness and, as other Budget changes have ensured that the direct cost of the reduction to a top rate of 45p has been mitigated many times over, that should surely be welcomed by Members on both sides of this House.
Alun Cairns
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s point. In fairness to him, he has presented a respectable view. I disagreed with it, but I expected him, as a columnist in the Morning Star, to present that sort of image. On that basis, he would want to tax as much as he can and spend as much as he can—something that I disagree with. There is a difference between the respectable point that he made and the unrespectable point made by the hon. Member for Pontypridd because of the confused message that he is presenting because of the uncertainty.
Owen Smith
With the greatest respect to the hon. Gentleman, I have absolutely no idea what his last sentence meant, but I will move on. If this was such a good Budget for business, why did the OBR conclude that over the next year business investment in Britain will go up by 0.7%, which is down by almost 8% on last year’s estimate? If business is supposed to be spending lots more money as a result of the 50p rate cut and many other measures in the Budget, why is that not shown in the OBR figures? Why is GDP going up by only 0.1%?
Alun Cairns
It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman is extremely selective in whom he quotes and when he quotes them. He chooses to quote the OBR’s figures when it suits his argument on one occasion, but chooses to quote the HMRC’s figures when it suits his argument on another occasion. That relates back to the uncertainty that I mentioned.
Alun Cairns
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would recognise that there is no silver bullet. I suggest that there is a range of issues. It is partly to do with the eurozone, partly to do with the debt that we inherited from the previous Government and partly to do with the global environment. Thanks to the Chancellor and the Treasury team, we are putting Britain on the road to the recovery. The reduction of the rate from 50% to 45% is central to that because of the message that it sends to every investor around the globe, as I have outlined.
We must recognise that we have had the highest tax rate in the G20. That has an effect when international companies consider where to invest. The G20 countries are in the top league of where international companies spend their money. Obviously, I want us to be seen as the most competitive nation in the league, not for us to be at the bottom of the league. That is the situation that we inherited.
The message of the Labour party consists of nothing more than envy. Labour fails to recognise that the top 1% of earners pay 30% of the income tax in this nation. The marginal rates are exceptionally important, as has been mentioned. We need to create an environment in which Britain is open for business and make it an attractive nation to investors from the UK and from elsewhere.
The argument presented by the hon. Member for Pontypridd is hollow. He misses a number of points. First, the 50% rate was intended to be a temporary rate in the first place. In response to interventions, he said that he did not think that the temporary rate should be adjusted just yet. How temporary is temporary? He gave the impression in his response that the rate should remain at 50% for the remainder of this Parliament. That would take us up to eight years of this temporary tax. He said in another response that he could not predict the Budgets that would happen after the next general election. There are three years remaining in this term. He cannot have it both ways. He says that the temporary tax should last for eight years, but that he cannot predict what will happen in three years’ time. The reality is that the Labour party is merely presenting the politics of envy. It wants to be the tax-and-spend party once again. It was the tax-and-spend party when it left office, and it has done little to move on from that position.
Owen Smith
The hon. Gentleman can rest assured that there is no envy on my part of him or other Government Members. I did not imply what we would have done in my speech; I stated explicitly that we would not have got rid of the 50p rate for the duration of this Parliament. The reason for that was equally clear: the Opposition are still asking for an equitable distribution of difficulty in these difficult times, as opposed to the Government, who are giving a tax bung to millionaires. We would not have done that and we think that it is the wrong thing to do. He clearly thinks that it is the right thing to do.
Alun Cairns
The hon. Gentleman has repeated that by “temporary”, the Opposition mean eight years and that it could be even longer. On the one hand, he is not prepared to make a commitment for three years’ time, but on the other, he is prepared to make a commitment for the next three years. That is another inconsistency in his argument.
The Opposition’s strongest argument is about the uncertainty over the change in income when the rate changes from 50% to 45%. To be kind, one would say that the hon. Member for Pontypridd has been selective; some might say that he has not been wholly honest. Everything is uncertain. There is no guarantee about how the economy will grow, nor about how the European or the global economy will grow. There was exactly the same uncertainty when the previous Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), introduced the 50% rate. He predicted that it would bring in three times more than it has brought in.
Alun Cairns
If my remark caused offence to any Opposition Member, I will happily withdraw it. To rephrase what I said, the hon. Member for Pontypridd was inconsistent in his argument.
There is obvious uncertainty about the data that HMRC presents.
Owen Smith
In the interests of consistency, will the hon. Gentleman confirm that he agrees that there is gross uncertainty about the revenue receipts and about the £100 million loss? Does he therefore think that the Exchequer might lose more than that?
Alun Cairns
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, because I can answer him directly. Exactly the same uncertainty that there is now existed when the previous Chancellor increased the rate from 40% to 50%. The economic situation has changed. Therefore, there will obviously be uncertainty in all the data, be they from the OBR, HMRC, the Institute for Fiscal Studies or any other independent forecaster. The Chancellor needs to make a judgment based on the data that are presented. [Interruption.] I will happily give way if the hon. Gentleman wants to intervene.
Owen Smith
I just want to point out that we know how much money was raised by the 50% rate. That is not in dispute or uncertain. It raised £1.1 billion. That is there in black and white on page 39 of the HMRC document on the 50p rate. It is the projections that are uncertain. It is uncertain that £100 million will be the loss to the Exchequer. However, we know that the static cost, if there is no behavioural change, will be £3 billion. We know all that.
Alun Cairns
The hon. Gentleman is missing the point. The increase from 40% to 50% raised only a third of what was projected when it was introduced. That is how uncertain things were. If it is a bad tax and is not raising what it is intended to raise, let us get rid of it and have a sensible tax that is a lot more business-friendly and attractive to international investors. If that is the Opposition’s best argument in opposing the reduction of the rate from 50% to 45%, it demonstrates how weak they are.
Owen Smith
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, because I did not get a chance to say this earlier. The notion that the rate raised only a third of what was anticipated is another half-truth that was included in the Budget speech. In the year when we set the rate, we anticipated that it would raise £1.3 billion. That is there in black and white in the Labour party’s final Budget. It raised £1.1 billion. That is not a third of what we anticipated, but £200 million shy of it.
Alun Cairns
There are uncertainties about the drafting of any Budget at any time. There will be uncertainties in the Budget next year and the year after, as there have always been for any Chancellor writing a Budget. In the end, it comes down to the fact that a Chancellor has to make a judgment. This Chancellor had to make a judgment about whether a marginal tax rate in excess of 60% was right for Britain to attract investors and create wealth within the nation. He did so on the basis of information from the OBR, HMRC and the Institute for Fiscal Studies that at a time when we needed growth more than ever, that marginal tax rate sent the wrong message to other nations, and that a reduction in the headline rate of tax from 50% to 45% was exceptionally important.
Charlie Elphicke
Much of the discussion on the 50p rate has been on whether it is an economic decision or a political one. My viewpoint is very simple. If we wanted a nice, easy time, and if our Ministers wanted a nice easy ride on the “Today” programme, where all those nice, gently liberal-leftie, metropolitan BBC people would congratulate us on doing nothing whatever, we would have left the higher rate at 50p. I am sure the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) would have approved and been happy to congratulate us. If, on the other hand, we wanted to take action and do the right thing economically—the one thing that really matters is getting this country growing as quickly as possible—even if it were politically hard for us to sell, we would support the entrepreneurs, wealth creators and aspirant people who create the jobs and money that make this country go. For my money, that is the bottom line. The economics trump the politics.
Owen Smith
I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Gentleman that getting the country growing is the most important thing. The trouble is that that blue book he was waving around a moment ago, taking into account the 50p rate cut and all the other measures, says that the Government will increase GDP by 0.1%. Are they not failing?
Charlie Elphicke
I completely disagree. The Government are doing a great job. We have had the most difficult year, in which recovery was effectively postponed because the European and eurozone crisis caused massive uncertainty. I will not shirk from the point: that uncertainty has caused businesses to delay the business investment that was expected by about a year. The OBR, in the blue book that the hon. Gentleman says I am waving around, makes that perfectly clear. I will happily take him on on the issue of business investment. The situation has come to pass basically because of the eurozone. Also, the OBR says that business investment for the fourth quarter can be a bit lower than expected but that it often, statistically, bounces. It also says that the Government’s pioneering reduction of business taxes will have a positive effect in helping the country to grow.
The bottom line of economics is that we need to ensure more jobs and money as quickly as possible to help the country to grow faster despite the chaos and financial mismanagement in the eurozone. Let us not forget that Labour, if it had had its way, would have taken us into that chaos and into the euro. If Labour had won the election, it would also have carried on spending at an unsustainable rate and rapidly taken us the way of Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland, which would have put us in an extraordinarily difficult position.
On the revenue numbers, Labour’s central argument is that we should not cut the 50p rate because, first, we need to hit the rich and squeeze them until the pips squeak and, secondly, we are letting money go that would otherwise be brought into the Exchequer and are looking after our rich friends. That is its analysis. However, the summary in paragraph 4.7 on page 84 of the OBR report states:
“The Chancellor’s decision to cut the”
50p rate
“has an estimated direct cost to the Exchequer of £0.1 billion, excluding the impact of ‘reverse forestalling’ as people shift…income from”
one year to another
“to take advantage of the lower rate. The figure is small because the additional rate is now assumed to be close to its revenue-maximising level.”
In other words, it does not make much difference—£100 million here, £100 million there, out of a total budget that I believe is getting on for £700 billion, is a small amount, particularly given that it sends a positive message to aspirants, entrepreneurs and the people who work hard to deliver so much value-added for our country.
Charlie Elphicke
I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing me on to my next point. The hon. Member for Pontypridd is fond of saying, “Ah, look at the HMRC impact report. It brought in £1.1 billion but the estimate was that it would then have brought in much more.” [Interruption.] Some £3 billion, he says. That was the estimate in the March 2010 Budget, which mentioned an additional £2.6 billion. In the June 2010 Budget forecast, that increased to £2.7 billion. However, when we look in detail at what happened and how much was brought in, it appears that the OBR and HMRC now estimate the figure to be £0.6 billion in 2012-13.
Owen Smith
I will explain to the hon. Gentleman why there is a step from year 1, when we anticipated it would raise £1.3 billion but when it actually raised £1.1 billion, to the subsequent figure of £3 billion. The explanation, of course, is that it gets far harder to bring money into earlier years. It gets far harder to forestall the income. That is what happened in the first year, but it would have been increasingly difficult to do so afterwards.
Charlie Elphicke
The hon. Gentleman makes that assertion. Let us consider the detail of what the OBR says, leaving aside forestalling. Page 108 of its report, which considers this matter in great detail, states:
“These steps might include labour supply responses (e.g. working less”—
working less hard, basically—
“taking a lower paid job, retiring early, or leaving the country)”.
As we know, many people have given up, upped sticks and gone—driven away by the anti-business, anti-aspiration policies of the Labour party.
Charlie Elphicke
With the 45% rate, there is less utility and less maximisation of revenue from doing so. Of course, it is marginal, but the unacceptability of paying—paying, not avoiding—at 45% is less than it is at 50p. People resent 50p and think, “These people are trying to stuff me and take all my money away.” The 40p rate was well settled and people’s behaviour was sort of booked in. The judgment is that the most revenue will be raised halfway between the two because, on the one hand, people will think it acceptable—they will not go the extra mile to avoid it—and, on the other hand, they will not think they are being fleeced as they were under the so-called temporary 50p rate, which Labour is now saying was not temporary.
Charlie Elphicke
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman one more time, but I would ask him to say whether it was always the intention that the 50p should be temporary. Yes or no?
Owen Smith
I have already answered that three times in this debate, so I am not going to repeat myself. Yes, the rate was temporary, although we would not have got rid of it for the whole of this Parliament. However, let me remind the hon. Gentleman what the Business Secretary’s response was to the argument, which he has just made, about the equanimity with which people will pay full tax at the 45p rate: “Pull the other one”.
Charlie Elphicke
The Business Secretary is well known for having strong and principled positions from which he never resiles. The hon. Gentleman makes a fascinating point, although I do not know the detail of that quotation.
Let me turn to tax planning, and avoidance and evasion. As I have said, people set up personal service companies and, quite frankly, fiddle the system. To be honest, we need stronger anti-avoidance legislation to stop that kind of thing. However, the important point is that we need it if the rate is at a level at which people regard it as socially acceptable to pay, and do not feel that they are being completely fleeced.
Mr Gauke
As we all know, the previous Government were reluctant to take any meaningful steps to reduce the deficit. However, they could point to the imposition of an increase of more than 10% in the additional rate in three months, even though there was scepticism at the time about the projected levels of revenue. It is also worth pointing out that the then Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), accepted that the increase was “a temporary measure”. He recognised some of the difficulties with the policy. He accepted that the behavioural effect would steeply reduce potential revenues—the estimate at the time was that the measure would reduce revenues by two thirds. That is about £4 billion of revenue that he accepted would never materialise, owing to behavioural adjustments, such as individuals deciding to work less or not remain in the United Kingdom. He also accepted that the 50p rate would damage the UK’s international standing, giving us the highest statutory income tax rate in the G20. He also accepted, I am sure, the fact that although the measure was temporary, it would be politically difficult to reverse.
However, I have to say to the Opposition, and to the many hon. Members who have participated in this debate, that although Labour may claim to want to raise taxes on the wealthy, the reality is that the 50p rate was not succeeding in getting the money in. I do not think that it is a coincidence that the 50p rate was in place for only 36 of the 4,758 days for which the previous Labour Government were in power. When we came into office, we inherited a tax rate that we were told would damage our competitiveness, that would bring in questionable levels of revenue and that was always expected to be temporary.
Owen Smith
The Minister has repeated the line that the 50p rate was not getting the money in. What exactly does he mean by that? His own HMRC report says, in paragraph 5 on page 2, that the yield was
“around £1 billion or less”.
It does not say by how much less. Page 39 of the report states that the figure for the yield is £1.1 billion.
Mr Gauke
The hon. Gentleman cites the report; let me give him the full quote. On page 2, the summary gives the estimate that the yield from the 50p rate could be
“around £1 billion or less…and that it is quite possible that it could be negative.”
We need to compare that with the previous Government’s estimate of a yield of £2.6 billion—[Interruption.] Ah! The hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) says that it was £1.3 billion in the first year. Let me explain why the figure was £1.3 billion in the first year. He is presenting that as a great triumph. Most of the money that comes in from wealthy individuals comes in through the self-assessment system, and most of the money raised from the top rate will be collected in the year after the rate is introduced. Only a certain proportion will come in through PAYE. The reason the figure was £1.3 billion in the first year was purely one of cash flow. If the hon. Gentleman is claiming that the revenue was only ever expected to be £1.3 billion, that is not a fair representation of the previous Government’s estimate, which was of a steady rate of £2.6 billion and rising.
Owen Smith
I simply want to ask the question one more time. If the yield was less than £1 billion, how much less was it? Surely the Minister knows how much the top rate got him.
Mr Gauke
The central estimate, which the OBR has confirmed, is £700 million. We are reducing the rate to 45%, and the central estimate of the cost of that is £100 million. Were we to take it down to 40%, which would be the consequence of the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, the central cost would be £700 million.
Mr Gauke
Thank you, Mr Hood.
As I was saying, there has been a 29% increase in the number of Britons given permission to work long-term in Switzerland, and the United Kingdom has become less competitive. As a result of our reforms—the additional measures that we are taking to cap charitable and other reliefs, and the measures we are taking to deal with avoidance—27% of revenue from income tax will come from the top 1%, who paid between 20% and 25% under the Labour party.
The reduction in the additional rate is understandably controversial, but we should look at the evidence, not the Opposition’s rhetoric. The 50p rate did not raise the revenues that it was intended to raise, and what money it did raise came with a cost of damage to growth and competitiveness. This is not a sustainable position, so we are reducing the rate to 45p, providing certainty and clarity for those affected. That will mean a relatively small cost to the Exchequer and a significant boost to our competitive position. As the CBI has said,
“Reducing the 50p income tax rate will send a clear signal that the UK is open for business. We must continue to encourage top talent to live and work in the UK.”
This change is good for our long-term tax revenues, it is good for our economy, and it is good for the UK as a whole. I therefore ask hon. Members not to press their amendments, and propose that the clause should stand part of the Bill.
Owen Smith
Labour Members do not believe that the cut from 50p to 45p is good for the economy, and we do not think for a moment that the Minister has justified it today. Nor do we think that he has justified the claim that the rate raised practically nothing, which is what the Prime Minister, rather curiously, told the House earlier today. The Minister himself contradicted the Prime Minister in conceding that it raised perhaps £1 billion. In fact, I think the Minister definitively said £700 million whereas the Prime Minister said it raised nothing. I do not know which of them is right, but I am assuming the Minister is right.
Owen Smith
I do not think I have time to give way, as I want to press the amendment to a Division.
Nor do I think the Government have succeeded in persuading any Member of this House that it is anything other than voodoo economics to suggest that the cost of this rate change will be only £100 million. It is very likely to be closer to £3 billion than to £1 billion.
As we remain wholly unpersuaded, we shall press the amendment to a vote—
The Temporary Chair (Mr Jim Hood)
This is the second time that I have had to deal with a point like this and that is not a point of order for me. I have been chairing the Finance Bill Committee for the past two hours and I am unaware of whether anybody has been in touch with the Chairman of Ways and Means or with Mr Speaker himself about any such statement. That is a matter for the usual channels and not for me.
Clause 209
The Bank Levy
Owen Smith
I beg to move amendment 5, page 121, line 19, at end add—
‘(2) The Chancellor of the Exchequer shall review the possibility of incorporating a bank payroll tax within the bank levy and publish a report, within six months of the passing of this Act, on how the additional revenue raised would be invested to create new jobs and tackle unemployment.’.
The Temporary Chair (Mr Jim Hood)
With this it will be convenient to discuss clause stand part and schedule 33 stand part.
Owen Smith
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood—the first chance that I have had to say that today.
Clause 209 and our amendment to it, amendment 5, relate to the bank levy. The point of the amendment is to raise the issues that Opposition Members believe ought to be at the forefront of the Government’s thinking and at the heart of their Budget: what we do to stimulate growth and, in particular, to generate jobs in our economy. Crucially, on a day when we have seen yet another report, this time from the Institute for Public Policy Research, on the scarring impact of long-term unemployment on, in particular, young people, and on a day when we still see 1 million young people languishing on the dole, it seems to me a very easy argument and a very simple point to make to the Government that such issues ought to be at the forefront of not just our mind but theirs.
This aspect of the Bill, the bank levy, offers an opportunity for the Government to do something to fill the gaping hole at the heart of their Budget when it comes to creating growth and generating jobs. There is not a single word in the Budget or in the Bill about the problem of youth jobs, and that is a crying shame, so I hope that the Government will later today amend that omission.
In a moment I shall discuss the background to the bank levy, but to begin with I shall draw together some of the common themes that run through my remarks and the Bill—themes from the debate that we have just had on clause 1 and this debate on clause 209 and the bank levy.
First, I want to raise some questions about the Government’s competence. Clause 1, the profound uncertainty about Government decisions, the other more general decisions in the Budget in relation to VAT on caravans and on pasties, which we will debate later, and the various other curious measures that they have brought forward have all already raised enormous and pressing questions about the competence of the Chancellor and the Government when it comes to managing our economy.
Secondly, there are questions about certainty. Earlier we debated the HMRC report on the Exchequer effect of the 50p rate, and Opposition Members such as the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) asked significant questions about the accuracy of the Government’s modelling in that report and the accuracy of the claims that only £100 million will be lost to the Exchequer. There are further questions to be asked about the accuracy with which the Government have measured the impact of the bank levy to date and juxtaposed it with the rates of revenue which were raised by the bank bonus tax that the previous, Labour Government introduced.
Thirdly, there is a crucial set of questions about values and priorities, because both the clauses that we have debated to date and the clause before us raise questions about the priorities and values of this Government versus those of the Opposition. Those questions do not reflect terribly well on this Government, Mr Gale, it is a pleasure to welcome you to the Chair—[Interruption.] Sir Roger, of course. How on earth could I have forgotten? Sir Roger, welcome. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.
I suggest that the Government could simply do the decent thing today by deciding to retain the bank levy but also introduce a bank bonus. That would be the wise thing to do, and it would set about raising the revenue that could be used to try to create 100,000 jobs for young people.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Does the shadow Minister think that the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds HBOS need less profit and less retained cash to get out of the mess they are in, or more?
Owen Smith
I would be terribly happy for all the banks, including RBS and HBOS, to make more profit. That would clearly be a very good thing for the British economy; we are entirely agreed on that. At the moment, however, they are not being asked to bear a particularly heavy burden, and nor are the other banks that are already making significant profits—lower than in previous years, but still significant. It is not easy to square that with the Conservative Government’s previous commitment to honour our intention to make those with the broadest shoulders bear the greatest burden. The Government’s decisions on the 50p rate and the bank levy do not bear out their former agreement with us; rather, they speak of a Government who have decided to make a different set of decisions over the past few years, as borne out most recently by the 50p tax rate. The Government should think again about how much money they are raising from the banks and what is the appropriate amount that they should raise.
Owen Smith
I will keep going for a moment and then happily give way.
The bank levy currently impacts on banks only after the first £20 billion in equities and liabilities is taken into account, capturing, in effect, the millionaires of the corporate world. When the idea of the levy was first mooted—initially by Labour Members and then after being picked up by the International Monetary Fund— [Interruption.] I am afraid that that is true. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) first mentioned a bank levy, and then the IMF picked up on it. It is a simple point, but I will happily give way if the Minister wants to intervene.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Mark Hoban)
May I point out that the previous Government ruled out a bank levy because they did not want to introduce one unilaterally? This Government had the courage to do that, and to do the right thing so that banks could pay their fair share to the Exchequer, whereas the previous Government ran away from the issue completely.
Owen Smith
When the IMF first talked about a bank levy, it thought that an equitable, sensible amount to get from the banks in this country was £6 billion—not the £2.5 billion that the Government claim to be raising. The reality—people out there ought to understand this—is that by the end of the current spending period, the Government will be raising as much from people who eat pasties, buy or sell caravans, sit in caravans, do up listed buildings and do all the other things that have been changed under the VAT rules as they will be raising through the bank levy. That is the real comparison. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) laughs, but it is a fairly accurate comparison, and people out there will not think that it is fair or equitable. They will not understand why caravan users and pasty eaters—even if the pasties are not eaten at an ambient temperature—should bear the same degree of pain as the bankers, who, as I think many people would concede, were at the very least involved in the global crisis that paved the way for the recession of recent years.
Mr Hoban
The hon. Gentleman said that the VAT changes will raise as much as the bank levy. If he looks at table 2.1 on page 50 of the Red Book, he will see that in 2016-17 closing loopholes and correcting anomalies will raise about £350 million, but the bank levy will raise £2.5 billion. How can he square the two statements that he made?
Owen Smith
May I take this opportunity, Sir Roger, to apologise to you, to the Minister and to the House for misleading you all? Of course, I misspoke; I should have factored the granny tax into all the VAT changes. If the Minister does the maths, I am sure he will find that when one adds in pensioners on top of caravanners, those eating pasties, and those affected by the other VAT changes—
Owen Smith
I am afraid that I have been getting my facts right all afternoon: it is Government Members who have been getting their facts wrong. [Interruption.] No, amendment 1 was not wrong; it was absolutely spot on. To say that it was wrong is nonsense.
Owen Smith
The Minister gives the lie to the argument that the Government have made about this figure, which allows them to state that it is £2.3 billion, not £3.5 billion, and is therefore lower than the £2.5 billion that they are ostensibly raising through the bank levy. Of course, both the £2.3 billion figure and the £2.5 billion figure are open to question. It is not just me who thinks that; many commentators have said so.
How did the Government manage to reduce the yield of £3.5 billion that is written in black and white on page 101 of the blue book to £2.3 billion? I could tell the Committee, but I will go one better and read out a comment piece from the Financial Times from earlier this year:
“The Treasury reached its £2.3bn figure for last year by lopping off £1.2bn from the original £3.5bn figure—citing the income tax and NI which the exchequer may have lost due to banks paying lower bonuses than they might have done. (A speculative behavioural assumption).”
As anybody who has read “The Exchequer effect of the 50 per cent additional rate of income tax” will know, highly speculative behavioural assumptions are the bedrock of this Government’s economic policies. The article went on to forecast that the bank levy, which was meant to reach £2.5 billion in 2012, would actually reach only £1.3 billion. In truth it reached £1.8 billion, but it certainly did not reach the £2.5 billion that is claimed repeatedly by Government Members.
Stephen Williams
The shadow Minister said that the figure of just over £1 billion being lost because of behavioural change was speculative. Of course, the previous Chancellor stated that the bank bonus tax was introduced in the last Parliament to drive down the awards of bonuses. It was meant to change behaviour. The previous Chancellor therefore speculated at the time that there would be a reduction in the number of bonuses and, therefore, in the income tax and national insurance contributions taken in by the Treasury.
Owen Smith
That would have been a good intervention, were it not for the fact that the £3.5 billion that was realised is written in black and white on page 101 of the OBR document. It is clear how much money was raised—£3.5 billion. [Interruption.] If the Minister wants to intervene to correct me on that, he can do so.
Mr Redwood
The shadow Minister is not completing the thought. We are not disputing the gross amount. We are asking how much other revenue was lost because of the behavioural consequences. He has agreed that the purpose of the bank bonus tax was to drive down bonuses. Assuming that there was some success, the Exchequer must have lost a pile of money in other taxes.
Owen Smith
The right hon. Gentleman is right that there would have been behavioural impacts. We do not dispute that, nor do we dispute that there would have been behavioural impacts in respect of the 50p rate. What we dispute is that the behavioural impacts would be as significant as those projected in the document on the 50p rate and those alleged by the Government on the bank levy. Given how fallible those projections have been shown to be in today’s Treasury Committee report and in any number of comments written about the HMRC report on clause 1 and the 50p rate, we are entirely right to question the basis of the assumptions both on the 50p rate and on the bank levy.
Mr Redwood
If the hon. Gentleman reads the Red Book further, he will see that £4 billion-plus more a year will be raised from self-assessment income tax under the 45p rate than under the 50p rate. Indeed, in the year to April 2012 there was a 9% reduction in self-assessment income tax, because the top income tax payers paid themselves 25% less than the year before.
Owen Smith
At the danger of being ruled out of order for repeating today’s earlier debates—[Interruption.] The Financial Secretary says from a sedentary position that I am on the back foot, but I am absolutely not. I have been pointing out to his colleagues for the past couple of hours that the volume of behavioural change anticipated in the Exchequer analysis is fundamentally flawed. The taxable income elasticity point chosen by the Exchequer to derive that volume of behavioural change is completely outwith the normal delta used by economists to assess the elasticity of top incomes. [Interruption.] No, we are talking about the future. We are talking about what behavioural change there will be and what the yield will therefore be in future.
That takes us to the central question of the Government’s competence. There are questions to be asked about the competence of the way in which they set up the bank levy. Why on earth did the Government choose in the first instance a rate of 0.045%, only to have to increase it five times in the past 18 months to hit their annual yield target of £2.5 billion? I would be delighted to hear the Financial Secretary explain that to us. Why did the Government do it that way around? It does not make any sense to me. It would have been more sensible either to have stuck with the payroll tax, as we suggested, or to have arrived at a hard figure and allowed the yield to set the rate, not the rate to set the yield.
Thus we come to the question of how the Government can keeping saying that they are certain that the bank levy will yield £2.5 billion each year. It did not in its first year, when it hit £1.8 billion. The reason the Treasury team is continually having to tweak the rate is that it is not certain how much money it is going to yield.
Owen Smith
I am absolutely not against the rate going up. My question is about the Government’s competence and whether they know what they are doing. They clearly do not know what they are doing about the granny tax, the 50p rate, VAT—
Owen Smith
No, you’re all over the place, with the greatest respect, as this car crash of a Budget has shown not just to the House but to the whole country over the past three weeks. As an editorial in The Times said on Monday, when the Budget is still leading the headlines three weeks after the Chancellor has sat down, we know something has gone wrong, and it ain’t just one thing that has gone wrong but just about everything.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I have been reading the media reports too, and I have been astonished to find the Prime Minister called a dilettante. Would my hon. Friend like to comment on that?
Owen Smith
I am not sure that he is a dilettante, but I certainly think he does not pay terribly much attention to details. Had he paid attention to details, he would not have said what he did earlier today in Prime Minister’s questions, when he told the House that the 50p rate had raised next to nothing, only to have his Exchequer Secretary confirm just a few hours later that the actual amount it had raised was £700 million. By my way of looking at it, in a period of fiscal austerity £700 million is not nothing, it is rather a large chunk of change. Certainly the £3 billion that we might lose over an extended period is a very large chunk of change.
I do not know how the Government continue to argue that we are all in it together, when they have given a tax cut to 14,000 millionaires, or how—this is a political point—they can continue to say that the only thing that matters economically is to cut the deficit. They have chosen to forgo a lot of money next year. Let us call it £700 million, but it will be far more. They have done that to give a tax cut to millionaires, so how on earth can they continue to say that only thing they care about is cutting the deficit?
Brandon Lewis
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it was a mistake to introduce a bonus tax that was not only a one-off, but that was set up so that it would encourage people to pay less and therefore reduce the amount of money going to the Exchequer, as opposed to introducing an ongoing levy that will continually bring money into the Exchequer and therefore benefit the country?
Owen Smith
One needs to consider these things in the round. We have heard repeatedly from the Government that they will take more money from the rich than the previous Government and do more on tax avoidance, but none of those claims stands up to scrutiny. The previous eight Labour Budgets did more on tax avoidance than the current Government—those are not my numbers, but those of the IFS. The notion that the rich in this country are paying five times more than the poorest is clearly fallacious.
Brandon Lewis
Will the hon. Gentleman clarify what he said because he has not answered my point, which was not about tax evasion? Does he agree that an ongoing bank levy will raise more money than a one-off tax would have done?
Owen Smith
If Labour had won the election, it may have changed its view and continued the bank bonus tax. The Opposition certainly believe that Government ought to impose a bank bonus tax in addition to the current levy—[Interruption.] Well, the bonus tax was introduced for a one-off period, but I think a Labour Government would have continued it based on our priorities and values that we described in respect of the 50p rate. We would not have thought it right at this juncture, in a period of fiscal austerity, either to give a big benefit to the wealthiest individuals or to ask the wealthiest corporations to pay a lesser amount.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
The hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) implies that paying tax is voluntary, but surely it is compulsory in this country. It is just a question of ensuring that the people who owe tax pay it.
Owen Smith
The debate on the 50p rate was interesting in that it revealed the differing attitudes of Opposition Members and Government Members to paying taxation. From the way in which some Government Members responded to the debate, one could surmise that they are very comfortable with people finding every possible means, illicit or legal, to avoid tax. [Interruption.] Well, there was a clear implication from some hon. Members in the earlier debate that the boundaries and borders of the envelope can be pushed, as they were. In some respects, that argument was deployed to justify the cutting of the 50p rate, because so much money was, through fair means or foul, pulled forward into 2009 when it should have been taken in 2010.
Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)
If the Labour party is so keen on stopping tax avoidance, will the hon. Gentleman explain why Labour Members voted against an anti-avoidance measure in a Finance Bill last year?
Owen Smith
Will the hon. Lady explain which anti-avoidance measure Labour Members voted against? I tell her very straightforwardly that all Chancellors ought to tackle tax avoidance in all Budgets. The current Chancellor has risked far too much credibility on his belief in his ability to tackle tax avoidance and his belief that he is doing more than previous Governments did so. The facts bear out my claim—the IFS, not the Labour party, has done the analysis—that Labour Chancellors, in seven out of last 10 Labour Budgets, raised more money for the Exchequer through tackling tax avoidance than the current Chancellor will do with this Budget.
Michael Connarty
Is my hon. Friend aware that since they came to power the Government have had the ability to forbid the Cayman Islands to refinance its sovereign debt unless it revealed all the transactions taking place in the Cayman Islands? I understood that to be one of the things they aspired to do to stop people putting money into tax havens to avoid paying tax in this country. They have failed to do so and allowed the Cayman Islands to refinance its sovereign debt without any conditions whatsoever.
Owen Smith
As is in the Bill, have also cut a deal with Switzerland that allows people avoiding tax by the Government putting money into Switzerland to continue doing so. Again, on the plausibility of the Government’s estimates, they claim that it will net between £4 billion and £7 billion for the Exchequer, but the OBR thinks that highly questionable.
Alun Cairns
I am astounded by the Opposition’s attitude, particularly given that their major party donor used to use those benefits in Switzerland, which we have now closed, and to hear them brag about the previous Government’s anti-avoidance measures, given that their candidate for Mayor for London is using every scheme in the book to avoid paying tax. What influence have those changes had on him?
Owen Smith
The hon. Gentleman ought to read some of the Budget documentation. The Government have not closed anything in respect of Switzerland; they have opened it up and continued to allow people to put money into Switzerland. They have asked them to acknowledge how much they have there and then charged them a lower rate of tax than they would have been charged had they kept their money in the UK. What is worse is that it runs fundamentally contrary to the European train of thought, established across Europe and supported by the previous Labour Government over their last five years, which is that we want more transparency, not less, in our tax affairs. Unfortunately, we will have less transparency as a result of his Government.
Kelvin Hopkins
I find it tiresome that while the overwhelming majority of my constituents, who are ordinary working people, pay tax through pay-as-you-earn and have no opportunity to evade or avoid, we spend countless hours debating the minority of rich people, defended by the Conservative party, and their tax affairs. I want the rich to pay their taxes in the same way as those on PAYE so that they do not escape paying one penny.
The Temporary Chair (Sir Roger Gale)
Order. I am beginning to find it a little difficult to relate this debate to amendment 5 or the related matters. Perhaps we could return to them.
Owen Smith
I am grateful to you, Sir Roger, although I found that debate terribly entertaining. [Interruption.] Oh no, I am more than happy to talk about tax avoidance all evening, especially about the Swiss deal, which is particularly disgraceful. No doubt we will do that upstairs in Committee.
I return to the question of the bank levy and the bank bonuses tax and which was the most effective measure. It is clear that, as the OBR said, the bank bonus tax raised £3.5 billion in 2010, which is almost twice what the levy raised in 2011. Those are not disputable facts; they are there in black and white in the Red Book and the OBR’s analysis. Choosing not to reinstate our bank bonus tax represents an effective tax cut for the banks.
Owen Smith
I shall keep going for a moment.
That is before we consider the actual tax cuts being introduced in the year-on-year reductions in corporation tax and the other changes to the controlled foreign companies legislation.
Stephen Williams
The hon. Gentleman says that banks will all get a tax cut because of the reductions in corporation tax. That assumes that they have taxable profits. Many have accumulated losses and will not be paying corporation tax for quite some time, whatever the rate.
Owen Smith
I would not dispute that for a moment. Many of the banks are under water and so will not end up paying tax for a significant period, but not all of them, and that is my point. Broadly speaking, the banks and financial services account for about 8% of corporation tax in this country. Overall, there will be a reduction to the Exchequer, through the cut in corporation tax to 22%, of about £5.5 billion per annum. That is leaving aside the CFC changes. On average, then, we would expect the financial services and banks to get about £450 million off their tax bills as a result of the Government’s changes. That is the point I am making. The question that needs to be asked in the round is what we are doing to tax corporations and tax our banks.
Nigel Mills
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need a predictable tax system, so that investors can understand what they will be expected to pay? When measures are described as “one-offs” or “temporary”, we ought to be able to rely on that, rather than allowing them to be permanent fixtures.
Owen Smith
By and large I would agree with the hon. Gentleman. Tax policy ought to be predictable. Indeed, the current Government deserve some credit for continuing with the trajectory set by the previous Government on tax policy planning and tax making, by seeking to consult significantly and publish things well in advance. [Laughter.] For some reason the Minister is chuckling. I would point to the introduction of the 50p rate, which was first mooted in 2009 and introduced in 2010, which was probably what led to all the forestalling. However, that approach is a good idea, by and large. We ought to consult carefully on tax policy, because as this Government are learning to their cost, so often there are unintended consequences of tax policy. I might highlight, for example, the simplification introduced so blithely by the Chancellor in his Budget speech, when in just one sentence he waved away Churchill’s special personal allowance for the elderly and introduced the granny tax. That was a simplification that seemed sensible at the time, but in hindsight it has had unintended consequences.
Michael Connarty
We would all agree—hopefully one day Governments and Chancellors will also agree—that we should not do unpredictable things in tax policy. The thing that has damaged the economy tremendously and harmed all our constituents is the production tax on oil and gas in the North sea, which has disincentivised people massively and sent the price of fuel through the roof for people who cannot afford it, damaging their employment prospects and the economy of the country.
Owen Smith
At the risk of stepping off-piste again and incurring your wrath, Sir Roger, all I would say is that that is another example of this Government’s incompetence. A year ago they were trying to squeeze the oil and gas companies by introducing new taxes on them. Then the Government were lobbied like billy-o for a year, and what have they done? They have effectively reversed the position. They have introduced a slightly different measure, but bluntly, they have taken money from one pocket and put it back in the other. If the Government had been a little more competent, if they had shown a little more foresight and if they had thought things through a little, as they so clearly have not done with this desperate Budget, they might not have made those mistakes.
Brandon Lewis
To return to the bank levy, the hon. Gentleman has referred again to the potential reintroduction of the bank bonus tax. Bearing in mind that the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) said that it could only ever be a one-off, is the hon. Gentleman saying that the previous Chancellor was wrong, or will he say how many times something has to be reintroduced before it is no longer a one-off? I am just curious.
Owen Smith
I am saying that Chancellors have to keep things under review. In a period of fiscal austerity such as we are in right now, I am confident that a Labour Chancellor—particularly one as knowledgeable and shrewd as my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling)—would have found ways to try to exact a fair return and a fair set of receipts for the Revenue from the bankers, who, we must all remember, were complicit at least to some degree in some of the problems that we have faced over the last few years.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
We all agree that the financial services industry is vital for our economy and that we want it to remain a world leader. However, we also understand that it needs to pay its share towards getting the deficit down and dealing with some of the consequences of the downturn. We have discussed the fact that the amount raised by the bank levy is just over half the amount raised by Labour’s bank bonus tax—£1.8 billion compared with £3.5 billion. However, a repeat of the bank bonus tax would not be permanent, but would be a temporary measure. It could be construed as temporary to do it again, realising that we need to pay the cost of tackling long-term youth unemployment, which, as we know from a report out today, could hit nearly 1 million. We need to look at priorities and deal with what is vital for young people’s futures.
Owen Smith
My hon. Friend is right. She is talking about the values and priorities that I mentioned at the beginning of my speech. What are our values? What priorities do we set, according to those values, in respect of fiscal and budgetary decisions? At the moment, it is hard to discern that this Government’s values involve anything other than protecting privilege at the expense of hard-working families and of the most vulnerable in our society.
Mark Durkan
The amendment represents an attempt to make the bank levy a more articulate tax by incorporating a payroll tax element into it. Would an attempt to ensure that bankers on excessive remuneration did not benefit unduly from the cut in income tax be consistent with the Government’s efforts to increase the levy because they want to ensure that banks do not benefit unduly from the reduction in corporation tax?
Owen Smith
That would be entirely consistent. The Minister knows that our amendment merely asks the Chancellor of the Exchequer to review the possibility of incorporating a bank payroll tax in the bank levy, and to publish a report within six months on how the additional revenue might be spent. We have suggested that we would spend it on creating 100,000 jobs for the unemployed youth of our country, 1 million of whom are still out of work today despite the recent small but welcome fall in unemployment. We would also spend the money on building 25,000 affordable homes, which are equally vital at a time when homelessness is rising at a rate that has not been seen for 25 years.
Andrew Gwynne
My hon. Friend is making a compelling case. May I share with him the figures that I have obtained from the House of Commons Library for the 16 to 24-year-olds in the borough of Tameside who are not in employment, education or training or on an apprenticeship? The figure for 2010 stood at an appalling 20%, or one in five. The most recent figure is 33%, or one in three. Does not that show how urgently we need to tackle the underlying structural employment issues in constituencies such as Denton and Reddish?
Owen Smith
It absolutely does. On Monday night, I put it to the Chancellor that he and those on his Front Bench were entirely out of touch with the reality in constituencies such as mine and that of my hon. Friend. Pontypridd is fortunate, right now, to have the prospect of a new supermarket opening, which will create 200 jobs, but 2,500 people queued 600 yards down the main street to try to secure one of those jobs. They came not only from my constituency but from right across south Wales. That is the desperate reality that many people in this country are facing. I saw the queue myself, and I know that many of those people were young and eager to work. They also felt that the opportunities for them were diminishing under this Government, rather than increasing. They are looking to the Government, and the Opposition, for action. They want us to put on the table solutions that will deliver growth and jobs and that will stop the economy flatlining.
Unfortunately, the net effect of all the measures in the Budget, including those in clause 209, will be an increase of only 0.1% growth in GDP—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) shakes his head, but those are the numbers in his Government’s documentation that have been agreed and validated by the OBR: growth of 0.1% in GDP and growth of 0.7% in business investment, which is down almost seven points from where we thought we were going to be just 18 months ago. That is a desperate state of affairs. How on earth can he defend it?
Alun Cairns
It has been said in the previous debate as well as in this one how cautious the Chancellor rightly needs to be in planning the Budget and in working with growth figures. Does the hon. Gentleman recognise the improvement in the UK’s economic position announced by the Institute for Fiscal Studies earlier this week, leading it to increase its growth predictions?
Owen Smith
Yes, I recognise that. I also recognise the Ernst and Young ITEM club, which uses precisely the same methodology and precisely the same numbers as the Treasury in calculating its growth projections. It said earlier this week that it did not expect to see 0.8% growth as the OBR anticipates, but 0.4% growth over the next year. It is not expecting 2% growth, but 1.5% growth in the following year. Very few credible commentators believe in the heroic suggestions of a bounce back next year, the year after and the year after that. Those suggestions are clearly a load of nonsense, just as it is a load of nonsense to assume that we will see 0.8%—
The Temporary Chair (Sir Roger Gale)
Order. I assumed the Chair in anticipation and excitement at the prospect of listening to the debate on amendment 5 and the bank levy. We really are straying a long way from it. The Opposition Front-Bench spokesman has now been on his feet for more than 40 minutes, yet he has still not finished speaking to his amendment.
Owen Smith
I am grateful, Sir Roger. I am bringing my remarks to a conclusion.
The amendment we have tabled is very simple. It simply requires the Government to look at the possibility of reintroducing a payroll tax on the banks.
Owen Smith
No.
We think that would generate significant revenues, which could be used to create youth jobs to tackle the scourge of youth unemployment in our country and to create new affordable homes. We want the Government to look at that; we want them to get their priorities right; we want them to undo some of the damage they have done in the last two years. That is why we will of course press the amendment to the vote when the appropriate moment comes.
Karen Bradley
It is a great pleasure to contribute to the debate on how we should tax our banks. First, it is important to put on the record the fact that I think banks should pay their share towards paying down the deficit. Every day, we are borrowing more money to pay for public services, so it is important for the banks to pay their share so that the deficit can be dealt with as soon as possible. How, then, does one take money or tax? As a tax accountant by training, I know that there are many different ways of extracting revenue from businesses. We can tax them based on their income or their profits or in many other different ways.
One thing about the bank levy introduced by this Government is that it guarantees that the banks will pay some tax. If they are loss making, their losses will not wipe out that tax. The bank levy cannot increase the losses; it is non-tax deductible for corporation tax purposes. We will be ensuring that, each year, the banks pay their fair share towards reducing the deficit.
Reductions in corporation tax are also not taken into account in the levy. It is absolutely the right thing to do to cut corporation tax. We need to cut it for all our businesses, to promote entrepreneurship, so that our businesses have more money left over at the end of every year to invest in new employment, new plant and machinery and shareholder returns. Given that shareholders are often our pension funds, it is extremely important that we ensure that those pension funds get the return that they so desperately need to allow our pensioners to enjoy the living standards they expect. As I say, reducing corporation tax is important, but we need to ensure that the banks do not benefit too much from that reduction—and the bank levy makes that happen.
Mr Redwood
I remind hon. Members that I am an adviser to an industrial company and to a small investment management business. I am not a tax adviser, so I feel able to participate in this debate.
I was interested in the Opposition amendment and it turns out to be rather disappointing, for a number of reasons. It asks the Government to produce a report
“on how the additional revenue…would be invested to create new jobs and tackle unemployment.”
As phrased, it does not actually ask for a report on how a bank payroll tax would work, although that is perhaps what Labour Members wanted, too. Interestingly, the Opposition have shifted from wanting a bank bonus tax—a tax originally described as a “one-off” and clearly aimed at very high earners in certain kinds of investment bank, which everybody loves to hate at the moment—to wanting in this amendment a general bank payroll tax. I ask them to think about what that means, because most of the people on the payrolls of our leading large banks are, of course, modestly remunerated. This payroll tax would give a further incentive to bank directors and managers to try to get rid of personnel they are employing, because if we tax something, we clearly do not like it. The Opposition say that they do not like payroll, so they are trying to tax payroll.
Owen Smith
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving me this opportunity to clarify the wording—[Interruption.] No, there is no “Ah ha” moment, I am afraid. The wording we have used reflects the wording used by the OBR to describe the temporary bank payroll tax. It is no more than that.
Mr Redwood
It is worth teasing these things out, because I think we have had confirmation from the Opposition that they have in mind a general payroll tax, which would hit people other than the very high earners in investment banks. The amendment does not say “a bonus tax for investment bankers”, for example; it says a “payroll tax”. One therefore has to assume it would affect conduct.
Owen Smith
With the greatest respect, either the right hon. Gentleman misunderstood what I said or he is deliberately misrepresenting what I said—mischievously, I suggest. We were not intending to do anything other than replicate that which we have done previously, so a bonus tax is what we were talking about. The language adopted in the amendment is reflective of that used by the Government and the OBR—that is all.
Mr Redwood
Well, I think we are very grateful for that clarification. We await the details that, unfortunately, we did not get from the Opposition about how they would target the measure, whom they have in mind, how much those people would have to earn and how much bonus they would get. The point rests on perhaps a narrower base than the words in the amendment lead one to infer. One has to assume that the tax will lead banks to employ fewer people.
The tax that the Government have adopted also has consequences. They have decided to get extra money out of the banks by taxing the size of their balance sheets. I think the Government might be right that that is a slightly better way of doing things than taxing personnel costs because it is more general, but that too has adverse consequences. All taxation has adverse consequences as well as some positive uses. The Government tax encourages banks to shrink their balance sheets because they do not wish to pay too much tax. What does that mean in normal language? It means they want fewer deposits and less share capital and that they want to lend less money to people because the way to reduce the tax burden is to have less taxable capacity in the United Kingdom. The tax therefore has a cost. I do not disagree with what the Government are doing: I understand the awful financial situation that the country finds itself in and I can see how this tax is more popular than many others, but let us not pretend that these things are costless. At a time when we need more growth and more loans of a suitable kind to people who can afford to pay them back in order to create demand and more loans to smaller and medium-sized enterprises at a time when they need to grow, taxes on banks are not terribly helpful.
I am enough of a politician to know that banks are very unpopular and that it is an easy hit for politicians who want to improve their own popularity to take a position against the banks, so I am being something of a foolish hero by standing up and saying that not all banks are bad and that quite a lot of people who work for banks are perfectly decent people doing a decent job. The banking service that is supplied around the country to small and medium-sized enterprises and to you and me, Sir Roger, is very necessary, and sometimes it is well handled and well conducted.
There is a dreadful run of debate in this country that everything to do with the word “bank” is evil and wrong, that it serves the banks right and that everything has to be directed against them, but we have to work with the banks—the good, the bad and the indifferent—because we need them to be on the side of economic growth and recovery to tackle the very real problem that the Opposition have identified in the second part of their amendment—tackling unemployment. We need to get unemployment down, and one way of doing that is by having a strong banking sector working closely in partnership with the small and medium-sized enterprise sector and with those people who have a reasonable income and might want to borrow more to buy things and create demand.
Mr Hoban
I think shareholders are well aware that bonus pools affect banks’ profitability and the amount that they are able to pay to their shareholders by way of dividends. I am demonstrating that the reforms that we have introduced since we have been in office have been far more effective in curbing behaviour in bank boardrooms than the bank payroll tax.
Let me deal now with youth unemployment, which is highlighted in the Labour amendment. The Government have introduced a wide range of measures to tackle the problem. We have improved the support that is available to jobseekers. We have introduced a more flexible jobseeker’s allowance regime better to support a jobseeker in the search for work. In June last year, we launched the Work programme, providing specialist support over the next five years to help to support the longer-term unemployed and help the most vulnerable jobseekers to keep in touch with the labour market. Later this year, we will run a pilot to find the best way to introduce a programme of enterprise loans to help young people to set up and grow their own business. We are taking other actions to tackle the problem.
We are strongly of the view that it is right that banks should make a fair contribution that reflects the risks they pose to the UK financial system and the wider economy. That is why we introduced the permanent bank levy—a move that Labour Members chose to disregard when they were in government. We need to balance fairness and competiveness and raise the revenue that we need. The actions that we are taking demonstrate that we have a clear strategy in place to enable economic recovery and create jobs. The bank levy is the right course of action. I ask the hon. Member for Pontypridd to withdraw his amendment, and I move that clause 209 and schedule 33 stand part of the Bill.
Owen Smith
There are still 1 million unemployed young people in this country. That is the highest rate since records began. Long-term youth unemployment is growing as never before. In my constituency of Pontypridd, there has been a 333% increase in long-term youth unemployment in the last year alone. The point of the amendment is to highlight that problem in the real economy. We are trying to connect this out-of-touch Government to the reality of youth unemployment, and to get them to do something to tackle it and to get growth in our economy. I have not been persuaded to withdraw the amendment and we will press it to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Committee proceeded to a Division.
The Temporary Chair (Sir Roger Gale)
I ask the Serjeant at Arms to investigate the delay in the No Lobby.
Finance (No. 4) Bill
Owen Smith Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Danny Alexander
With this measure we are trying to strike the right balance between having a proper system of tax relief for charitable donations and ensuring that the wealthiest in this country pay a fair proportion of their income in tax. I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would support that measure rather than oppose it, particularly when he considers it in the context of the many other measures that we have taken to encourage and support charities and voluntary organisations. For example, we have introduced for the first time gift aid on small donations received by small charities—from shaking tins on the street corner, holding coffee mornings and that sort of thing—which was not done when his party was in office. That will benefit thousands of small charities all around this country, and it is the sort of thing that he should welcome. Likewise, Big Society Capital has been created to help charities and voluntary organisations to raise funds.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
Before the right hon. Gentleman moves off the 50p rate completely, can he explain to the House why the numbers revealed by the Treasury this morning seem to show that at least 75% of top-rate taxpayers were paying the full rate of tax? How can he explain to his hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) that so little money—the £100 million that is ostensibly in the Budget—was being raised by the 50p rate?
Danny Alexander
First, the hon. Gentleman should study the figures based on the tax system from 2010-11, under the tax rules put in place by his Government. They show, for example, that 6% of those earning over £10 million a year were paying tax at under 10%, that 3% were paying it at 10% to 20%, that 8% were paying it at 20% to 30%, that 12% were paying it at 30% to 40%, and that 72% were paying it at above 40%. The figures do not say that they were paying at the 50% rate. The fact is that the independent Office for Budget Responsibility and the HMRC study, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman has reflected on in great detail, show the most reliable, reasonable, central estimates.
Danny Alexander
No, I want to make some progress, and the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) has already intervened on this point.
Danny Alexander
No, I am going to press on and address the question of the 50p rate. When I have done so, the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Lady will be free to intervene on me again.
Before discussing the 50p rate, I will refer briefly to clause 8, which will remove child benefit from the highest earners. We will withdraw child benefit from those in households earning more than £50,000 in a way that is gradual, so that only those earning more than £60,000 will lose all their child benefit. The measure will help to ensure that the burden of deficit reduction is fairly shared, and by implementing it as we propose, we will deal with the anomalies that have been highlighted.
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
Before I begin my remarks on the Bill, may I make one small comment on the contribution of the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), who was a little critical in her speech of the VAT change to ski tolls? Will the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) gently remind her that the systems in Glenshee, Glencoe, the Lecht, Aonach Mor and Cairngorm are important parts of the Scottish winter economy? I am sure she did not intend in any way, shape or form to be critical of the many jobs they provide for young people, or of the tens of thousands of working-class Scots who loyally use their local ski systems every winter.
Owen Smith
Of course my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) was not in any way challenging the importance of those jobs. She was juxtaposing the Chancellor’s decision to introduce a tax break in that industry and a tax increase in the caravan park industry, in which there is another important set of jobs.
Stewart Hosie
Indeed—the caravan sector has my sympathy and support in attempting to change that decision.
There are many other reasons for opposing the Bill, and I shall highlight a number of them. One key reason is the introduction of the plans to reduce the 50p tax rate to 45p for those earning more than £150,000 a year—some of us have already managed to vote against the measure, but I shall say no more about that tonight. According to the Government’s numbers in the 2012 Budget book, the measure will mean that the Government forgo £360 million over the forecast period. It is quite something when a Government are prepared to sanction the loss of revenue yield when the deficit, debt and borrowing forecasts are worse than the forecasts in the previous Budget.
The changes to age-related allowances for older people—the granny tax—will impact on about 40% of pensioners, which is another a reason to oppose the Bill. The measure will affect those who are above the basic state pension and pension credit level, but below the £30,000 a year level—people on that level will not benefit anyway. That will leave some 4.41 million people worse off than they would otherwise have been.
The Budget and the Bill are full of wrong-headed decisions, not least the Government’s determination to increase air passenger duty. Let us look at what they have done. In the Budget, the Chancellor announced that APD will rise by 8%, or double the rate of inflation and confirmed that it will rise again in April 2013 in line with inflation, ignoring the fact that Scottish, Welsh and English people, who live on an island, already pay the highest aviation duty in any country in Europe.
It is therefore no wonder that Scottish airport bosses united prior to the Budget in calling for the Chancellor to rethink the planned hike in APD and give the Scottish operators what they called “a fighting chance” to compete against European rivals. Their joint statement says:
“At a time when the Government talks about creating jobs and growth, its blinkered insistence on further increases in APD achieves precisely the opposite.”
It goes on to say:
“Youth unemployment is at record levels”,
which should concern us all, and that “inbound tourism” and importing
“is a major employer of young people, but international visitors are being turned off the UK because of the exorbitant level of APD…which is by far the highest air travel tax in the world.”
We are not all in it together, and so much for Britain being open for business, as the hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) claimed.
Let us analyse what the Government are planning for APD. The £2.2 billion the Treasury collected last year is almost twice as much as every other European country combined. A family of four travelling to Spain will pay a total of £52 in tax. If they travel to Florida, they pay £260, and if they fly to Australia, they pay £368. That is why the Airport Operators Association chief executive said that his organisation will be campaigning against the rise as the Bill progresses through the Commons. The Scottish National party intends to move amendments to cancel the rises and, more importantly, to devolve air passenger duty to Scotland and Wales.
Air connectivity is crucial to the economy. The increase in APD is unhelpful and unwelcome, and will hit the tourism industry and needlessly jeopardise the recovery of the economy as a whole, but the key problem in the Bill is the complete failure, as the hon. Member for York Outer said, to tackle the rising price of fuel. Let us be under no illusion about the significance of that. The Forum of Private Business has said that more than one third of its members cited transport costs—predominantly the price of fuel—as their main cost pressure. When they were asked what would help to improve the business climate in the UK, they said that their main priority was not regulation, but reducing the cost of fuel duty. They were incredibly blunt in their reaction to the Budget upon which this Finance Bill is based, saying:
“Businesses and consumers just can’t afford to keep paying out more and more for their fuel. There is a serious risk that economic recovery in the UK is strangled at birth if the Government doesn’t act, and act fast.”
We hope the Government listen to the Forum of Private Business, because the economic plan they are following simply is not working. They are following a path that is failing. Much as I like the hon. Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley), who is not in his place, I do not recognise the positive progress he said he had seen in the economy. We can see that the Government’s plan is failing because, in the 2011 Budget, the deficit was forecast to be £90 billion for 2011-12 and it is now £98 billion. The 2011 Budget forecast for 2011-12 was that the net borrowing requirement would be £122 billion, but it is now £126 billion. National debt, on the treaty calculation, was due to peak at 87.2% of gross domestic product, or £1.25 trillion, in 2013-14, but on the same calculation, it is now expected to peak at 92.7% of GDP, or £1.365 trillion, in 2014-15.
That means that even the Chancellor’s fiscal rules—that the structural current deficit should be in balance and that debt is falling as a share of GDP in the final year of the forecast—are under pressure, because both objectives are highly dependent on GDP growth, which, according to the OBR, is dependent on incredible rates of business investment, as other hon. Members have said. In 2010, the Government suggested that business investment had to grow by between 6.7% and 10.6% a year every year from 2011, but by the time of the OBR November 2011 outlook, growth in business investment had turned negative for 2011 and the forecasts had been changed to suggest business investment growth from 2012 to 2016 of between 7.7% and 12.6% a year. The Government have now changed that again—they expect business growth at heroic levels of between 6.4% and 10.1% a year between 2013 and 2016.
Nobody wants growth in business investment more than I do. If we can power the economy in that way, it will be fantastic, but there is precisely no evidence that it is happening. Indeed, the downgrade of a previous high estimate tells us that it is unlikely. That should be a concern to all hon. Members, because it makes a negative rate of central Government consumption at the same time more dangerous. There is nothing to offset the lack of growth in the whole economy as a result of lower-than-expected business investment, but that is precisely the risk that the Chancellor has put into his plans.
The Chancellor’s 2011 Budget showed that between 2012 and 2015 there would be a fall in Government consumption and expenditure of 1.2%, 1.8%, 2.4% and 1.8% a year. This Budget’s figures and the Finance Bill that delivers it are no better. They show falls of between 1.3% and 2.6% from 2013 through 2016. At a time when there is no guarantee of growth in business investment, it strikes us as particularly foolish to continue down the path of reductions in central Government consumption and expenditure. The key point is that any Chancellor getting his sums wrong on growth will deliver an economy that has a serious impact on real people, on public expenditure for the services that communities rely upon and on the Government’s ability to grow the economy out of its current stagnation.
In those three areas, because the UK Government’s policy is wrong and is not working, real people are paying the price. But that should come as no surprise. The Government inherited £73 billion of cuts and tax rises every year from 2014 to 2015 onwards. That was a balance of £52 billion in cuts and £21 billion in tax rises. That increased to £113 billion of cuts and tax rises every year from 2014 to 2015 in the 2010 Budget, and went further with cuts and tax rises of £128 billion every year from 2015 to 2016. As the Red Book made clear, this Finance Bill now sets us on a path of fiscal consolidation—cuts and tax rises—of £155 billion every year from 2015 to 2016. And of course the proportion of cuts to tax rises is no longer 3:2 but 4:1. Yet despite brutally cutting so much money from the public services on which people depend, they have still managed to deliver a tax cut for millionaires. In essence, that makes this a Tory Budget, a shameful Budget and one, of course, that we must resist by opposing the Bill.
But the Government have been honest. The 2011 Budget told us that every single population quintile would see a reduction in its net income. So they are at least clear about the impact of their polices. This year’s Budget Book and Finance Bill have delivered no help. Indeed, the Budget Book told us again that every single population quintile would still be worse off.
As I said earlier, however, of everything that ought to have been done but was not, the failure to act on fuel was the most disgraceful. My criticisms of the previous Government are well known. I criticised the fuel duty escalator and their refusal to act on and outright opposition to measures to introduce a regulator. But this Government are no better. Their plan for a stabiliser is no such thing: it will see fuel costs rise by inflation when the oil price is high and by inflation plus—an escalator—when the price is low. A real fuel duty stabiliser would see the rate of duty fall when the price rises, precisely because the UK Government are already getting VAT on the North sea windfall to pay for it.
No doubt the failure properly to address this issue is why the Federation of Small Businesses has expressed its disappointment that the Chancellor
“did not announce a cut in the level of Fuel Duty”.
It is why the Licensed Taxi Drivers Federation has said:
“rising fuel costs are creating detrimental factors”
and leading to businesses being unable
“to invest in businesses as they’d like to.”
It is why bodies as diverse as the Scottish Grocers Federation, the National Farmers Union of Scotland and the Road Haulage Association, among many others, all recognise that rising fuel prices are inhibiting economic growth and are calling for Government action to deal with it.
The costs are being borne across business and society. The NFUS has told me that it is
“very concerned about the rising cost of fuel and its effect on rural businesses and communities. This is being felt most acutely in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, where public transport is severely limited and fuel prices are among the highest in the UK.”
I say to the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) that if unleaded or diesel was only £1.45 a litre in some of these communities, the constituents there would be absolutely delighted.
The NFUS accepts, as we all do,
“that the global price of oil is beyond the Government’s control, however MPs could help to address this critical problem through introducing a fuel duty regulator to cushion the blow of soaring oil prices. Such a mechanism would benefit not only the farming community, but also Scotland’s rural economy as a whole. Transport is at the core of the rural economy, where there is far less scope to use public transport than in urban areas.”
The NFUS makes a key point:
“The cost of transporting the inputs of feed, fertiliser and fuel is so high, as is the cost of delivering produce to the market, that it is putting Scotland’s already fragile rural communities at a competitive disadvantage with other EU producers. Rural businesses could play a vital role in…economic recovery and high fuel duty is holding them back”.
I would have thought that if the Government recognised anything, they would recognise the drag on growth and recovery that all these trade bodies and others recognise in their day-to-day lives. So we need to take action, and we need to take it now. As the NFUS has said, we cannot mitigate all price rises because they occur for a variety of reasons, but we need to militate against the worse rises, particularly when they are driven by the barrel price of oil.
That was the same fundamental point made by the Scottish Grocers Federation, which also appreciated
“that the rising cost of fuel cannot indefinitely be reduced”,
but which would
“support any measure which would provide more stability and predictability in fuel prices.”
It continued:
“The rising cost of fuel, along with other significant increases in overheads including energy prices”—
again, the fuel dependents—
“continue to erode the viability of many small and medium sized retailers in Scotland… Government should be doing everything it can to support small and medium sized businesses which are fundamental to economic growth and employment. And that is why we are certain that the Government should introduce a proper Fuel Duty Regulator - to smooth out spikes - provide certainty - allow for investment - And most importantly remove this drag on recovery.”
The FSB spoke for everybody when it said it was
“disappointed that the Chancellor has not announced a cut in the level of fuel duty and that the rise deferred to August is still to go ahead. This will still hit small businesses and households hard and so we need to see a long term solution to address high and volatile fuel prices. We remain concerned that the Government’s Fair Fuel Stabiliser will not trigger an actual reduction in the price paid at the pumps.”
Nor will it because it was never designed to do so. That is why businesses such as those in the taxi trade, which are not in control of their own prices—they cannot set their own fees or fares because they are set by local authorities—have to take this hit on the chin. As the taxi industry said, that is leading to many detrimental factors: profit margins cut, people unable to invest in their businesses in the way they would like to, drivers having to put in extra hours and take-home pay for families reduced.
The taxi industry supports our position on the introduction of a fuel duty regulator, but the Government argue that this cannot be done and that there is no yield to fund a cut in fuel duty. They have made that case several times. But how much worse is it without a regulator in place and businesses of all sorts being forced to take these hits—hits that are a drag on economic recovery? The Forum of Private Business has said:
“The pips are squeaking, and everybody is feeling the pain.”
And by goodness they are. Yet action could have been taken. Businesses and consumers cannot afford to keep paying out more and more for their fuel. There is a serious risk that economic recovery in the UK will be strangled at birth if the Government do not act and act fast.
With those remarks on fuel and the absence of certain measures in the Bill, plus my other remarks, I hope that I have put our opposition on the record. We hope to return, with appropriate amendments at the appropriate stages, to issues such as the 50p tax cut, changes to age-related tax allowances, APD and, most importantly, the failure to deal with the fuel issue.
Owen Smith
I am following the hon. Gentleman’s argument with great interest. Will he confirm whether he plans to vote with his Government on the controlled foreign companies changes that will give a reduction of about £1 billion a year to UK-based multinationals?
Charlie Elphicke
The hon. Gentleman will know, first, that that means that we will get more tax in the UK and, secondly, that we already have a 0.7% commitment to the international aid budget. If he wants to pledge—a spending commitment from Labour of £1 billion or so—to extend that commitment, let him do so. I am sure that the shadow Chancellor would be fascinated.
Owen Smith
No, I am explaining to the hon. Gentleman that the Finance Bill, supported by the Chancellor, contains a measure on changes to the controlled foreign companies legislation that will reduce the revenues to the Exchequer by £1 billion per year—companies in the UK avoiding tax. Is he in favour of that?
Charlie Elphicke
Aid charities have made the case that corporations headquartered in the UK should be paying more tax overseas. That is not our job. Our job is to secure our own tax base in the UK. That is what I want to focus on, and it is what the previous Government totally failed to do over many, many years. If we put a stop to it and raise the due amount of tax from companies not resident in the UK with anti-avoidance measures and proper tax reform, we could have lower fuel duties for hard-pressed families and a lower basic rate of tax—and goodness knows we could even pay down some more of the debt that the previous Government shockingly, disgracefully saddled this country with.
I hope that the anti-avoidance measures in the Bill will be widened in the following way: the first principle is that business tax rates should be low, simple and attractive. Britain should be open for business, but open for business on a level playing field for national and international companies. Businesses should have a social responsibility to pay a fair share of tax. Some object to the idea of morality in the tax system, but this is an issue of corporate social responsibility. Tax avoidance should be dealt with firmly and rules changed to stop the avoidance. I shall come to specific measures in a moment.
For many years, the European Union has consistently and systematically sought to undermine our tax base in its pursuit of a common corporation tax base. We need the EU to support member states in protecting tax revenues rather than undermining them with so-called anti-discrimination rules.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Very simply, because £150 billion extra has not got to be borrowed. Forecasts of what may happen are fundamentally unreliable. In a large economy, no efforts to forecast a small percentage of growth that there may or may not be have been successful. In the history of economic forecasts both in this country and across the world, there is one thing of which we can always be certain: that they are wrong and that the outcome will be different. This extra £150 billion that is proposed is based on a theoretical level of growth that was never going to be achieved, and that was never able to be achieved.
Owen Smith
Does the hon. Gentleman therefore agree that it is equally uncertain that the revenue to be lost as a result of the change in the 50p rate will be just £100 million, as his Treasury colleagues contend?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, because I think the reduction from 50p to 45p will, in fact, raise revenue. I think the estimates are far too unambitious and that, actually, there will be an opportunity for the Government to go further in future. I am extremely encouraged that the Treasury is producing reports on what is the best level of higher rate tax.
On that point, the Government have yet again been right, brave and bold. It is, of course, marginally politically embarrassing in an age of austerity, when we are all in it together, to cut the higher rate of tax, but it is right to do so if that raises more tax for the country—it is right if that allows the Government to spend on the priorities that both they and the British people have. Yes, there may be unpleasant headlines and we may be mobbed up by the hon. Ladies and hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition Benches, but it was the right thing to do. Time will show that the 45p rate will end up raising more revenue, because rich people can leave the country and not pay tax, can decline drawing dividends from their companies and not pay tax, and can postpone taking revenue and not pay tax. It has been shown time and again that reducing rates results in higher rates of total income. The Government were right to introduce this measure, therefore.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
What a pleasure it is to follow that barnstorming speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), which is one of many powerful speeches that we have heard from Opposition Members. There have also been some interesting speeches from Government Members, which I will come to in a moment.
People used to say that Budgets from Tory Chancellors, and Tory Chancellors themselves, were cruel but competent. After this Budget, they do not say that any longer. Opposition Members do not say it and nor do Government Members. We have heard quite a bit of criticism of the Budget, but little praise for it. Over the past few weeks, as the chicanery at the heart of the Chancellor’s Budget has been exposed, line by line, clause by clause, in the newspapers and in this House, the scales have fallen from the eyes of people across this country, and especially from the eyes of the people who were kidded into voting Conservative at the last election; from the eyes of the people who thought that the Chancellor was an astute political strategist and a smart steward for the economy; from the eyes of the people who thought that the NHS was safe in the hands of the Conservatives; from the eyes of the people who bought the balderdash about the big society; and from the eyes of voters in my constituency and constituencies like it across the country who heard that, apparently, we were all in it together.
That myth has been wholly debunked over the past couple of weeks, and in the speeches of my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth), my hon. Friends the Members for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown), for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell), for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) and for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire), my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) and, of course, my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw, we have heard it exposed once more today. They have exposed the black hole at the heart of the Bill where there ought to be measures for growth. The price for that black hole will be paid for by working people across this country. They have exposed the ludicrous, unthought-through, ill-judged measures, whether on pasties or caravans, that have been rightly and roundly mocked in the press.
Government Members have also made significant and challenging speeches. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), with his characteristic candour, pointed out the lack of growth measures in the Bill and bemoaned the fact that the Chancellor has not done more to deliver growth and to stop the economy flatlining. The hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) exposed the perversity at the heart of the changes in clause 8, which relate to child benefit. The hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) gave a particularly good dissection of the madness of the pasty tax and the caravan tax. Those Government Members know that they no longer have a Chancellor whom they can trust to run the economy or to take charge of their party in the future, because in this Budget he presided over a slow-motion car crash.
With the tax on pasties, grannygate, the conservatory tax, VAT on caravans and the charity charge, this is not a Budget to boost growth or a Budget for any particular sector of our economy, except for the headline writers. They are the ones who have been waving their Order Papers and who continue to celebrate this Budget—the gift that keeps on giving.
Only this morning, we heard the Exchequer Secretary trying to justify the proposed changes on charitable giving and the 25% cap on tax relief. He did so by revealing that a handful of people in this country who earn more than £1 million and more than £10 million succeed in dodging paying their tax. There is no news in that. One would have thought that a competent Government who understood what they were doing would have realised that the flipside of that argument was to reveal that more than 75% of higher rate taxpayers—those paying 40% and 50%—do pay all of their taxes.
Members do not need to believe my words about that, or even examine the Treasury’s own analysis that reveals it. They simply need to read what the BBC’s economics editor Robert Peston said today. He pointed out that more than 73% of people earning more than £250,000 had been paying the 40p and 50p rates. Even among people earning between £5 million and £10 million, 70% or 80% paid the full rate. What does that mean? According to the economics editor of the BBC, it
“implies that many tens of thousands of people were (and are) paying the 50% tax rate, and were unable to dodge it. To state the bloomin’ obvious, all of those people were given a very lovely tax cut in the budget.”
It must surely have occurred to a competent Chancellor that he would be exposed by such analysis.
Owen Smith
I will in a moment, because the hon. Gentleman has some interesting perspectives on the value of the 50p rate.
One would have thought that a competent Chancellor, or perhaps some of his Ministers, would have spotted that if such data were put into the public domain, some of us might realise not only that the 50p rate garnered £1 billion in the last year, as has now been confirmed, but that it was going to bring us £3 billion to £4 billion a year steadily, not the £100 million figure that the Government are suggesting using smoke and mirrors.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Even though the economics editor of the BBC says it, it does not necessarily mean it is so. The hon. Gentleman does not know what income people would have been able to draw but decided not to because it would be liable to the 50p rate. People with large incomes can decide not to take them. All that is known is that they paid the right rate on the income that they took.
Owen Smith
All that we know is what is written on page 52 of the review by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs of the 50p rate, in table A2. It states in black and white that £3 billion a year will be forgone as a result of the changes, not the £100 million figure that is arrived at with smoke and mirrors about the taxable income elasticity calculation that Treasury Ministers signed off. What does the Office for Budget Responsibility say about that? As the hon. Gentleman said, it says that there is huge uncertainty about that calculation. We contend that we should rely on the absolute numbers, as revealed this morning—that £1 billion was raised from the 50p rate last year, not the nonsense £100 million figure.
That situation reveals the priorities of the Government, who are taking £3 billion from pensioners. On average, £83 is being taken from them, and £285 is being taken from those turning 65 this year, to pay for a tax cut of an average of £40,000 for 14,000 millionaires. That is the Government’s priority. We cannot pretend to understand it, but it is unfortunately the priority that working people will pay for.
Lorely Burt
The hon. Gentleman talks about the 50p tax rate, which his party’s Government introduced. I cannot remember how many days before the general election at which the coalition Government came into office that that happened—was it 48 days? May I invite him to speculate as to why the former Prime Minister had 13 years in government but brought in the 50p tax rate only such a short time before his Government left office?
Owen Smith
Perhaps the hon. Lady could remind us whether it was 48 days before the election, or just before that, when her party talked about the VAT bombshell that it would stop when it came into government. Was it 48 days? I am not sure. We have made the argument about why we introduced the 50p rate, and we do not intend to make it once more.
The reality is that the Government are entirely out of touch. Both Government parties—the one down there below the Gangway and the one up here opposite me —are completely out of touch with the reality of working people in this country. [Interruption.] The Chief Secretary tells me from a sedentary position to answer the question. I have answered it, and I will answer it again on Wednesday when we debate the 50p rate. It was introduced in a period of recession to ensure that the people with the broadest shoulders paid the most. We would have stuck by that decision and not, in the midst of a continuing period of austerity, asked the most vulnerable to pay. That is a desperately bad choice.
If there was ever any doubt that the Government were out of touch, hon. Members should have come in earlier and listened to the Chief Secretary, a Liberal Democrat, parrot the Government line on working family tax credits that all people need to do is go out there and earn a little bit more by working an extra eight hours a week. Let me put him and the Chancellor, who is sitting next to him, in touch with the reality for working people in this country. In my constituency of Pontypridd, Mr Chancellor, a new supermarket is opening. It will create 200 jobs. A fortnight ago, 2,500 people queued 600 yards down the main road and across a bus station to try to secure jobs in a supermarket. Those people need a Chancellor who will deliver growth and jobs. They need a Government who give a damn about working people. That is why we needed a Budget for growth. We did not get it and that is why the Opposition will vote against this bad Budget.
Mr Gauke
The provision on cable cars applies not only in Aviemore, but in, for example, the Isle of Wight and London. I confess that it does not apply in South West Hertfordshire or in Wrexham, but it applies in places around the country. It is worth pointing out that, by and large, public transport is exempt from VAT, and the provision brings cable cars into line with that.
Let me consider fairness. We inherited a personal allowance of £6,475, and the Bill increases that to £8,105. Next year, there will be a further increase of £1,100. The Government are taking 2 million people out of income tax, providing a tax cut for 24 million people and are well on course to meeting our target of a personal allowance of £10,000.
Let me turn now to the controversial issue of age-related allowances. We must look at the changes in the context of the £275 increase in the state pension. Labour Members tend to say, “That is simply because of inflation,” but let me remind the House that the plans we inherited from the previous Labour Government were for the state pension to increase in line with average earnings. That would have meant an increase of £127 less than our increase, so the Government have increased it more than Labour would have done.
Owen Smith
Will the Exchequer Secretary confirm—we asked one of his colleagues to confirm this earlier—that, on average, families in Britain, taking into account all the changes, will be £511 worse off, as suggested by the Institute for Fiscal Studies?
Mr Gauke
We inherited the biggest deficit in our history and have taken measures—through both spending and taxes—to reduce it. The fact is that the measures we have taken on the personal allowance will result in, for example, a tax cut of £170 a year for every basic rate taxpayer in the country.
Mr Gauke
No. I am going to make more progress.
Returning to the age-related allowance, it will remain the case that those receiving employment income above the retirement age will not pay national insurance contributions. We have heard nothing this evening about why the Opposition believe as a matter of principle that those under the age of 65 should have a lower personal allowance than those over the age of 65. Given that the personal allowance has increased so substantially, it is reasonable and sensible to simplify the tax system and have one generous personal allowance, regardless of age.
We have taken decisions to remove anomalies in the VAT system, but VAT is a broad-based tax and it is neither fair nor economically justifiable for similar or identical products to be treated in different ways on the basis of arbitrary distinctions. The same approach should apply to mobile caravans as to static, non-residential caravans, and to a hot pie served in a fish and shop and one served in a bakery.
Labour Members argue that removing those anomalies will hit living standards, but may I put those measures in context? Next year, basic rate taxpayers will get a £170 income tax cut. That will be sufficient to pay VAT on 1,300 Greggs hot sausage rolls. I confess that those consuming more than 1,300 Greggs hot sausage rolls—that is 26 a week—will lose under the Budget, but I suspect that that is the least of their worries.
We are taking a tough decision on child benefit, but it is right that those earning £20,000 or £30,000 should not pay taxes to fund child benefit for the families of those who earn substantially more. Each of those policies has produced opposition, and whenever there is opposition to a difficult decision, along comes the Labour party. It opposes each and every measure, however logical or fair it may be. Labour agrees with every interest group that comes along and says, “Don’t tax us,” or “Keep spending on this.” The Labour party is the party that likes to say yes, just as it did in government. Is it any wonder that it left the public finances in such a mess?
There is one tax increase that Labour has supported: the increase in the additional rate of income tax to 50p, which the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) spent so much time on. What is the effect of the 50p rate? We have the assessment of HMRC. What has the 50p rate achieved? More people work overseas; total income has fallen by between £2.9 billion and £4.4 billion; and GDP is between 0.2% and 0.3% lower. All of that is from the HMRC assessment.
Owen Smith
Will the Exchequer Secretary confirm that the HMRC report on the 50p rate stated on no fewer than three separate occasions that the calculation was highly uncertain and that table A2, which contains absolute numbers, shows that the loss will be £3 billion rising to £4 billion over the spending period?
Mr Gauke
Both HMRC and the OBR have made a central estimate, and that is what we have used. I am sorry it does not fit into Labour’s ideology, but the reality is that HMRC’s assessment is that the 50p rate raised less than half the expected amount and might even have cost the Exchequer. The OBR’s assessment is that it is a reasonable and central estimate.
It takes a special kind of incompetence to produce a policy that sends a terrible signal to our competitors, drives higher earners out of the country, damages GDP and fails to raise revenue. There are better ways of raising revenue from the wealthy—for instance, by addressing SDLT avoidance, raising the SDLT rate on properties worth more than £2 million and capping reliefs to ensure that the wealthy cannot opt out of income tax. Both sides of the House want to raise more money from wealthy people. The reality is that we are better at doing it.
We will get more money out of the rich as a proportion of income tax each and every year than the previous Government managed in 13 years in any year. We will not only end our having the least competitive higher rate of income tax in the G20 but provide for a corporate tax regime that becomes increasingly competitive—the main rate will fall to 22% in 2014. We are updating our controlled foreign companies regime, ensuring that companies choose to locate here, not move away. We are implementing the patent box, which is already resulting in additional investment in the UK, as announced by GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, and we have more generous arrangements for enterprise investment schemes and venture capital trusts, and a new enterprise investment scheme.
The Bill is good for growth. It encourages investment. It attracts entrepreneurs. It tackles avoidance. It helps those on low incomes. It asks the better-off to pay more. And it provides for a significant restructuring of our tax code. It takes difficult steps but delivers real change. Those changes will improve the tax system and the economy as a whole. I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Owen Smith Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Matthew Hancock
Lord Drayson was an unusually good Labour Minister—I would favourably compare him with almost all the others. The defence strategy does, indeed, recognise the need to take into account the interests of our defence industries. That is an important part of the strategy, but not necessarily always the decisive factor.
Returning to the issue of tax, the Government should give a receipt to taxpayers. My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer)—another great Suffolk man—has pioneered that approach. We as individuals would not spend much money without asking for a receipt in return. For most people, their tax bill is the biggest item of expenditure, so such a receipt would be very important. It would also educate the public on the impact of their taxes.
We also need to know the impact of our taxes for policy making. It is extraordinary that the Labour party ignores the behavioural impact of high taxes. It is hardly surprising that it managed to mess up the public finances so comprehensively if it denies, as the shadow Chancellor does, the impact of high taxes on incentives and the amount of future tax money the Exchequer receives.
Secondly, we need a simple and attractive tax system, especially on corporation tax. All taxes are, eventually, paid by individuals, but it is companies that make so many decisions about where to locate jobs. So although a high corporation tax still falls on individuals, it puts companies off expanding or coming to Britain. By having an attractive corporation tax rate, we can attract companies to this country. Ultimately, the corporation tax would still be paid by UK residents, whether it was paid indirectly involving the companies or in any other way the tax is raised.
Owen Smith
If the corporation tax rate has been so effective, will the hon. Gentleman explain why, according to the OBR, the volume of business investment in Britain is set to decrease by 0.7% this year and is down 7% over the past year?
Matthew Hancock
I shall give a direct answer to that. When GlaxoSmithKline announced 1,000 jobs and half a billion pounds of investment the day after the Budget, it cited the lower corporation tax rates as a reason for doing so.
Matthew Hancock
I cannot give way, as I have only a minute left. This denial of the impact of the 45p rate is surprising, given that the Labour party is not pledged to implement the old rate again.
The third point I shall make is the importance of an industrial policy. Whether we like it or not, the Government have a stamp in this area, so I am very supportive of the following: the announcement on help for our creative industries, which was warmly welcomed, as Britain’s creative industries are the biggest in the world; the enterprise zones; the research and development tax credits; the moves on transport infrastructure, which has been talked about many times, where the start date for the work on the A11 has been announced and brought forward, and there is to be more road infrastructure, paid for both by the taxpayer and through innovative other means; and more for university research facilities. Let us contrast all that with what was called a “backwater”—the previous Government’s business Department. It all shows that the results of this Budget will be growth in the future, business confidence and a great deal of support in the months and years to come.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
This has been an interesting debate, although we have not heard too much about transport, despite that being the theme for today. I suppose that that is a feature of Budget debates, but I suspect that it is also down to the fact that the Budget did not contain that much about transport. I am therefore not going to delay the House too much by talking about transport but will talk about the broader measures and about the Chancellor in the broader context.
People say that the Chancellor is a man who already worries a lot about his legacy, despite it being very early in his Chancellorship. I suspect that explains the volume of leaks, which reported that he wanted this to be remembered very much as a watershed Budget. The word used in the press quite a bit was “Lawsonian”, which I understand is a compliment where he comes from. Well, it was a watershed Budget and it will be remembered—there is no doubt about that—but perhaps not for the reasons he wanted and not in the manner he anticipated.
It was a watershed Budget for two key reasons. First, it shattered, once and for all, the illusion that this Chancellor is a master of political tactics or economic strategy. The only masters are the masters of the universe, down the road in the City, who will be thanking him for this Budget. They might be the people who think he is still smart about economic theory. I hate to tell him, but the only vanity that is burning right now is his own, on the front pages of the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and all the other newspapers in which I read this morning that one Tory Back Bencher, who remained nameless—I cannot think why he wanted to remain anonymous—said:
“Everybody was saying George is a great economic strategist and political strategist and how unique he is to have both skills: that is going to be questioned. In fact, colleagues already are.”
More important, this Budget was a watershed because it gave the lie, once and for all—[Laughter.] The laughter indicates that Government Members are not worried about this in any way, shape or form. However, the Budget gave the lie to the notion that we are all in it together in this country in a period of austerity, because after this Budget we clearly are not. Clearly after this Budget, the old Tory order is restored and some people in our society are, in their view, more equal than others.
The themes the Chancellor sought to pursue in his speech were that his Budget would be simple, predictable and fair—that was how he described it just a couple of days ago. This morning, the Institute for Fiscal Studies described it as a “hotch-potch” of reforms that
“may turn out to be less fiscally neutral than intended”.
It is hard to disagree with that conclusion from the independent IFS, because everywhere one looks in the Budget one finds measures that are mis-described, such as the tax increase on pensioners that is described as a simplification, and outcomes that are overstated. We have heard a lot today about this being a Budget for business, but according to the OBR, it is resulting in a 0.7% reduction in business investment this year, which is down 7% on the anticipated volume of business investment over the past year.
Crucially, numbers have been massaged throughout the Budget or just plain made up—guessed at—on the basis of Arthur Laffer’s famous cocktail napkin curve. I am afraid that the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) will find that numbers in the Budget will fall apart.
Owen Smith
In a moment.
Those numbers are absolutely crucial to the debate because they are crucial to the claims of fairness and fiscal neutrality. The key number is that relating to the 50p rate costing only £100 million, because the OBR endorses HMRC’s findings. That is what the Government estimate will be the long-run annual cost to the Treasury of cutting the 50p rate. The Chancellor swept the number aside the other day as though it were nothing, just as he swept aside with an imperious flourish of his hand the £1 billion that we actually saw going into the Exchequer in the first year of the 50p rate.
Matthew Hancock
Is it any wonder that Labour left everything in such a mess given that it does not accept that higher taxes have behavioural consequences? Is the hon. Gentleman saying that Labour will never again look at the impact of tax rises on people’s behaviour?
Owen Smith
We absolutely agree that taxes and changes in the income tax rate have an impact on “behavioural yield”, to use the Treasury’s phrase. That is why, when we calculated in March 2010 the revenues that would be realised—
Owen Smith
It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman says that; I am going to explain why it is not wrong and why we are right. At first glance, it looks very simple. Page 51 of the HMRC report shows the cost of cutting the 50p rate—the money that will be forgone by the Exchequer—as £3 billion, not £100 million. The next line covers the behavioural impact to which the hon. Gentleman has referred—the one based on the Laffer curve and a bit of undergraduate economic text in the previous 50 pages—and says that the Exchequer will get back £2.9 billion rising to £3.9 billion over the spending period. The key point is that all that is entirely based on a taxable income elasticity measure of 0.45. If we plug that into the equation we get this £100 million gap. Of course, the previous Treasury figures were predicated on a 0.35 number—a more conservative estimate— and that would have given £2.7 billion in revenues each year.
Owen Smith
I would be intrigued to get the Secretary of State to explain why it was wrong. If she looks at page 50 of the document she will see that it says simply that the Government decided that 0.45 was a better estimate. That was predicated on a single academic study produced in the Mirrlees report and there is no other evidence for drawing that conclusion. That is why the Government are guessing at the £100 million. Sensible economists would think a different sort of sensitivity range would have given them a far better estimate.
Justine Greening
The OBR is very clear that the £100 million represents a reasonable and central estimate. In fact, I would suggest that the previous Government’s assessment of elasticity in one of their final Budgets was designed entirely to manufacture tax receipts that were never going to materialise. If it was such a good idea, why did it take them 13 years to think of it?
Owen Smith
The principal reason why we did not introduce it was because the economy was growing through most of our period in government, unlike the economy under her Government.
Let us return to the taxable income elasticity measure. The OBR says that it might be reasonable, but it also says on no fewer than seven occasions throughout the document that there is “huge uncertainty” around the assumptions—not small uncertainty, but huge uncertainty. The Treasury itself, in its document—albeit buried on page 68 of 69—says:
“The results of this evaluation are highly uncertain.”
The reality is that, based on the Laffer curve, the Government have made up that £100 million number, but over the last year we got £1 billion from the 50p rate.
Charlie Elphicke
There is more evidence that reducing the rate ups the take. Each time there was a reduction, from 80% to 60% in the ’80s, and then to 40%, revenues went up hugely. We know that it works, from the evidence.
Owen Smith
What we know is that last year we got £1 billion from the rate—not £100 million, but £1 billion. What we also know is that the OBR thinks the estimate of £100 million is highly dubious. That is the reality. If we had waited two or three years—a reasonable period—to make the estimate, when people would not be able to pull the money into an earlier year, which is increasingly difficult as the years go by, we should have seen a reasonable number.
The real issue is not the estimate, but what will actually happen as a result of the Government’s cooking the books in that fashion. Ordinary people will pay the price. In this country, 4.77 million pensioners will pay between £80 and £280 extra as a result of the changes to the personal allowance. That is the reality of the Budget, not what the hon. Gentleman describes.
What about the 1.3 million ordinary working people earning about £41,000 who have been sucked into the 40p rate? We have not heard a lot about them in the Budget. We have not heard about the teachers, policemen and middle managers who will be paying more, or indeed about the 1.3 million who will be affected by the big cut in their child benefit—£1,300 for most of them. That is the reality of the Budget for ordinary working people.
Many Members talked about business and growth. We heard a fascinating contribution from the hon. Member for West Suffolk about the need for an interventionist business and industrial strategy. I completely agree. There were two measures in the Budget along those lines: one was for video games and the other was the patent box that is said to be benefiting GSK. I know a bit about the patent box, because I was one of the industry side negotiators with the Labour Government back in 2009 when we struck the deal on the patent box. It was not a Tory policy—an industrial strategy made not by the Tories, but by Labour, and we are now reaping the benefits.
What about the video games measure? The hon. Gentleman thinks of himself as a bit of a historian of economic facts, so he should look back to the first Budget of his great friend the Chancellor, when the right hon. Gentleman got rid of tax relief for video games. Two years later, with the video games industry pointing out that it was a really duff move, the Government have reinstated the relief: not a policy made on the Tory side, but on the Labour side.
What is the reality? It is 0.1% extra growth, 4.77 million pensioners paying the price, inflation still at 3.2% and wages only up 1.4%. The reality is that the Government are ill serving our economy and ill serving Britain. They do not know what they are doing. They are making a mess and the time has come for us to think again.
First-time Buyers
Owen Smith Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) on securing the debate. The subject is important in a week when the Prime Minister has made two significant announcements. At a time when the Liberal Democrats are taking policies in my manifesto and planting a nice yellow flag on them as though they had always owned them, I want to ensure that we claim both those policies as having been born, brought to fruition, made aware and brought to life in the Conservative party, with a big blue sticker on them.
I am proud of what this party has done for first-time buyers, not just since I have been an MP but since I was born, and even since the party was founded. We have always been the party of the first-time buyer. I make no apology for that, and I am proud of it. I know that our critics—sadly, they could not arrive today—normally say that we are opposed to social housing and that we look down on it. Far from it; as my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) pointed out, we see the importance of the tenancy escalator. We see social housing as a springboard or trampoline, not quicksand from which one should never escape.
There is a reason why that is in our party’s DNA: we are real people with lived experiences. In my family, on my mother’s side, I had relatives living in Myrtle Gardens, a modernist estate in the heart of Liverpool. It was rather like the Karl Marx-Hof in Vienna but, in that part of Liverpool, possibly more left-wing. In the 1930s, it was a model of its time, but by the 1980s and the Toxteth riots, it was a shadow of its former self. What happened? Along came Lord Heseltine, who made sure that Myrtle Gardens was rebuilt and sold off to local people at prices that they could afford, which turned that estate around. In the heart of Liverpool, the Conservative DNA flickered, and we should be proud of that as well.
Council estates should be more than just assemblages of houses where we put people for social engineering purposes, as many on the left have always sought to do. My home village of Weaverham, where many people bought their houses in the 1980s, was two-thirds council estates, mostly for people working in the local Imperial Chemical Industries plant. Looking around, I found that they built a community from within the houses that they bought; they did not rely on someone else to do it for them.
It is clear that after 13 years of Labour rule, the challenges that we face are far different. As other speakers have pointed out, numbers of first-time buyers are falling sharply, from 50% of all house buyers in May 2009 to only 20% now. My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) cited the age of the average first-time buyer as 35. I heard 37. Maybe we will hear an upwards bid from the Labour spokesman, although I doubt it. That is Labour’s legacy.
Perhaps the most shocking legacy that we inherited was 50,000 statutorily homeless people. We do not mention that figure often enough, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) pointed out. Because the social housing market did not work as it should, we inherited 50,000 people trapped in temporary, substandard accommodation. That is not a legacy of which the Labour party should be proud for one second.
It is no wonder that groups such as Priced Out exist to campaign for people of my generation—20 to 35-year-olds—who are being priced out of the housing market, unable to afford a first house. I was fortunate. I bought in the last housing development in Greater London where prices were still under £100,000. I got in just in time. Another year or two and I would have been the sort of sofa surfer that my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester discussed.
Why should my generation be denied opportunities that previous generations had? We should enable people, not tell them how to live their lives. It is a cultural battle as much as a political or economic one, because it is about the belief that housing policy is somehow about social engineering. It most certainly is not. It is about enabling people to choose how to live their lives. Home ownership is a natural objective for 86% of people, according to the Department for Communities and Local Government. We should not sneer at that or think that it prevents our wider dreams of creating a new Jerusalem. Far from it. True communities come from families having a stake in the society in which they live. That is the nub in terms of policy.
When those on the left criticise our NewBuy policy, I want to take them to Westminster Gardens in Bispham or Hawley Gardens in Thornton in my constituency. The criticism is that we are doing it just for the sake of the house builders. I want to take them around those new estates. Westminster Gardens was being built five years ago, when I was first elected to fight the seat. It is still being built; it is what is called a stalled development. Those who think that we are just trying to benefit house builders should speak to the residents of that estate and find out what is actually going on there.
A stalled development means that the local council will not adopt the roads, so they are left with substandard paving and road quality. They are left with dangers to small children from building sites and higher numbers of road traffic accidents and injuries. Merely to say, “Oh, you’re just doing it for the sake of the house builders” shows once again the failure of the left to engage with people’s lives as they are lived. Once again, it is only seeing the schematics, which is deeply unfair to the people investing in those estates who want them to be completed.
More concerning still is how our social housing market is blocked up, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer said. Many social tenants now are not moving through the system. That is why large numbers are stuck in temporary accommodation: there is not sufficient turnover. Labour has almost destroyed the right to buy by tweaking criteria, lowering thresholds and trying to prevent people from buying their council homes. I am sure that Labour Members pay lip service to the concept, but they do not believe in their hearts that owning one’s own home is a good thing. They look on it with suspicion, distaste and almost distrust, which angers me.
I could easily do cheap politics—
Paul Maynard
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will get a chance to have a go at me later, and I look forward to hearing it, but since he encourages me, I will talk about union leaders occupying social housing and the fact that here in the royal borough of Westminster, there are 2,000 social tenants who earn more than I do as a Member of Parliament. Perhaps that should give us pause for thought. Perhaps we should reconsider how we use social housing and what it is for. I do not think that it is there to give Bob Crow a pleasant place for life.
Paul Maynard
I agree entirely. Perhaps we would like to see a gesture from leader of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers as to what he will do in future.
We need to use our social housing stock better, which is why I welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement on enhancing the right to buy. We have to stop seeing our social housing stock as ghettos that we create. When I first moved to London, into the housing development that I mentioned, as ever, the housing developer built the required proportion of affordable housing at the end of a cul-de-sac; there were two rows of cheaper housing. It became ghettoised and stigmatised, as is always the case. We need to move beyond that and to think of social housing as a resource for the use of the community, not areas of a town or village that are regarded as somehow less worthy. That has always been my concern about the social engineering aspect of housing policy, which many Labour Members seem to want to create—communities that they can somehow control. That strategy is desperately wrong.
Owen Smith
I am listening with interest to—perhaps “enjoying” is the wrong word—the hon. Gentleman’s comments. In his tour de force on the history of the left and its attitude to social housing, will he return to Nye Bevan and the great period of the invention of social housing in the aftermath of the second world war, and point to who on the left, in the Labour party, thinks of social housing as just a matter of social engineering?
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. It was a slight disappointment to me that you forced us to forgo what I am sure promised to be a stimulating aside on my great hero Nye Bevan, but perhaps we can hear that another day. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) on securing a very entertaining debate and on giving me the opportunity to spend so much time with so many entertaining, warm and welcoming Government Members.
The debate is prescient given the announcements—or perhaps I ought to say re-announcements—earlier this week about the NewBuy scheme. I will come on to that in a moment. We have had an interesting range of passionate contributions. There has been a rerun of the golden greats of the Tory past—Thatcher, Heseltine, Eden—and I even heard about building a new Jerusalem. There were times when I could almost hear “Jerusalem” playing as the backing track to some of the tales of bucolic English home owning.
We have also heard some facts today, and I would like to add to some of them to provide some context. Let us be clear: there is a crisis in housing and home building. It is not new. It did not start under this Government. It has been going on for a long while and it is certainly getting worse. We need to be honest. Some of what the Government are doing is intended to help the crisis, but it is far from certain that they will be successful. As the Opposition, we intend to ask searching questions about what is intended and what will be achieved.
The facts are that, under this Government, house building is down, homelessness is up and it is harder to get mortgages. Rents in the private rented sector, where many have been forced to go, are climbing. In part, that is because the Government’s broader economic strategy is not working. The construction industry is being hit particularly hard as an effect of that failure to get the economy moving. Far from criticising the Government for seeking to assist the construction industry, the Opposition are urging them to go further.
Total construction, in terms of output, has declined by £2 billion since the Government came to power. New work output by the construction industry is down almost a quarter, by 23%. It is not getting better—it is getting worse. The previous two months, December and January, were the worst two months since May 2010. Compared with the last 18 months of the Labour Government, all house building has fallen by 11%. Completions, where a house builder finishes a house and brings it to market, are now at their lowest levels since the second world war, having fallen by 10% under this Government. That is not a new trend; it is an ongoing trend, but it is getting worse. The 60% cut to Labour’s affordable homes programme has meant that only 454 affordable homes were built in the past six months. Most shocking perhaps is that homelessness rose by 14% and rough sleeping was up by 23% in 2011. Those are the facts and Government Members need to remember them.
First-time buyers are key to getting the market moving. Government Members noted that the number of first-time buyers has decreased significantly over a long period, down from 700,000 per annum in 2004 to 350,000 in 2010. Why? There was a lot of comment about that. Ultimately, it is due to a squeeze between incomes and prices. House prices are high, and incomes have been depressed over a long period. As the hon. Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) pointed out, the reason for that is supply—we are not building enough houses. The number of houses in the market is very limited and successive Governments, including mine, have not done enough to arrest that. The current Government should not kid themselves that they are getting anywhere near arresting the problem.
There is also a problem of affordability, caused by the squeeze on earnings, limited supply and the contraction in mortgage lending that has occurred since the credit crisis. All those factors have combined to drive up the average deposit required by first-time buyers to approximately £100,000 in London and more than £50,000 across the UK as a whole. The average age of unassisted first-time buyers has risen from 37 to 44 right across the country in that same time period.
Labour understands—and understood—that something needs to be done to address that, which is why we set out to address supply. Between 2005 and 2010, we delivered 256,000 additional affordable homes in England. Contrast that with the scale of ambition shown by the current Government, who propose to build just 170,000 affordable homes—80,000 fewer affordable homes—in a comparative five-year period between 2010 and 2015.
What about helping first-time buyers get on the ladder? Hon. Members will have no doubt read in The Daily Telegraph this morning about the effect of the stamp duty holiday, which was introduced by Labour and is being cut by the Government. Although a couple of months ago, the Chancellor dismissed the stamp duty holiday as wholly ineffective, it has led to a 20% increase in recent months in the number of first-time buyers applying for mortgages. That indicates clearly that, far from being an ineffective measure, it was working and the Government needed to give it time to bed in and not abandon it, which is what they have done.
The Government have also abandoned Labour’s HomeBuy Direct scheme, which was funded to the tune of £380 million and designed to help 10,000 first-time buyers by providing a 30% reduction on the loan over five years. The Government have replaced that scheme with their own far less generous scheme, which is worth just £250 million, and offers only a 20% reduction. Other than that, the two schemes are largely similar.
The latest wheeze is the mortgage indemnity scheme, which was re-announced this week. It was first announced in November. It is designed to help a further 100,000 mortgage holders get on the property ladder through effectively giving them a 9% reduction—or indemnity—in the volume of their mortgage, thereby reducing the cost to the lenders and allowing them to offer 95% mortgages. There are many problems with that, but one is that 95% mortgages were already being introduced into the market at lower interest rates, in certain instances, than the ones announced by the Government. Barclays, Nationwide and some of the other lenders involved are lending at an average of 5.3% and 5.4% over the period on the 95% mortgage, whereas 5.25% was already available from the Leeds building society on precisely the same terms. We need to ask whether the scheme does what it says on the tin.
What guarantee is there that the scheme will actually assist first-time buyers? It is open to all prospective buyers up to £500,000. How can the Government be sure that this will help first-time buyers? How can they be sure that it will go to those families who are most hard pressed, as opposed to those who are slightly better off and can perhaps afford to raise a mortgage?
Finally, how can the Government reassure us that this will address the underpinning cause of the crisis in our housing market—the lack of supply? Can the Minister offer us any guarantees that this will lead to a dramatic increase in the number of houses being built, or will it simply displace activity, both in the mortgage market and in the house building market, that would otherwise have happened naturally as the economy bounces back?
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Miss Chloe Smith)
I start by joining the round of congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine). He has not only secured an important and topical debate, but spoken with real passion. I pleased to respond on behalf of the Government, both to him and to those who have also contributed with passion, whether from Blackpool, Milton Keynes, Cornwall or elsewhere. We have heard about homes, homelessness, history and our hopes for our children. We have heard about stalled development and proper community development, which I will touch on briefly. If Mr Gray will forgive me, I will also insert a small piece of history from my own constituency of Norwich North. I believe that the Mile Cross estate was the first council estate in England built outside London, something that I am very proud about. I shall stop there, before Mr Gray tells me to sit down.
My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester highlighted the package of support that the Government have introduced to help people own their home, and I will set out our progress on that. Before I do so, I will deal with some of the questions that were asked about the detail, principally by my hon. Friend. He asked whether NewBuy could be extended to existing properties, not just new properties. NewBuy builds on an industry-led scheme. That is very important, because it builds on support from both builders and lenders. It makes homes affordable, it stimulates economic activity, and, crucially, it increases supply.
The Home Builders Federation estimates that new build could deliver 25,000 additional homes in three years, supporting in turn up to 50,000 additional jobs, which I think all hon. Members will agree represents a real boost to the economy at a time when it is most needed.
On new versus existing, it is important to state that home building and the supply of new homes at present is not meeting the demand in the economy, so there is a pressing need for new build in that sense. A scheme focused on existing homes would be different and could have different financial consequences.
My hon. Friend also asked about the first-time buyer discount on stamp duty land tax, as did the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith). Hon. Members will be aware of a review by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in November 2011, which brought forth some staggering numbers that they may not be aware of. The review indicated that only 1,000 of the additional first-time buyers who bought a property between April 2010 and 2011 would not have purchased it without the relief. That 1,000 figure is derived from the 118,000 first-time buyers who used the relief, of whom it is believed 117,000 would have done so anyway. Hon. Members will agree that those remarkable numbers suggest that the relief was not effective in increasing the numbers of first-time buyers entering the housing market.
Miss Smith
Before the hon. Gentleman asks me further questions, I must address his point about the cost of furthering the relief for a year being estimated at £150 million. I hesitate to give way to him, because in his comments and the questions that he asked me, he once again showed his party’s rather tenuous grip on credibility—if he thinks that such a sum represents value for money in helping first-time buyers and other purchasers. He then quibbled about whether the scheme that I shall outline really helps first-time buyers. He must ask serious questions if he thinks that £150 million spent in that way furthers that aim with no dead weight.
Miss Smith
If the hon. Gentleman would like to justify that, I am happy to hear him.
Owen Smith
I would have to look at the numbers before lending them any credibility. It would also make sense for the Minister to concede that her comments are based on numbers predicated on a scheme that has not yet ended. She is talking about November numbers, whereas the scheme runs through to March. The Council of Mortgage Lenders suggested that there has been a 20% increase in the intervening period, which will radically change the figures.
Miss Smith
The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that the scheme ends on 24 March 2012. No doubt some will try to get in before then. Indeed, a review has to take place at a certain point and, on the broad thrust of a year, if figures such as those I mentioned have been achieved, it is unlikely that it would continue to be a sustainable way to support first-time buyers.
Let me turn now to the point of the debate, which is to query how we can best support those who wish to enter home ownership. There has been a clear correlation in recent decades between wider economic problems and volatility in the housing market. The best thing that we can do, first of all, to support the housing market is improve the country’s financial and macro-economic stability. That is why we are taking action to get public finances back on an even keel. Only through that action will we give people the confidence to invest in new homes and allow the building industry to go ahead and build the homes that we need.
We need to tackle the underlying structural issues that have had such negative consequences for the housing market. That is why the Government are taking action to improve stability in the credit markets and are reforming the planning system. Without such reforms we will face cyclical problems, time and again, of the sort experienced in recent years. However, we understand that we need to help people now, which is why we are taking action to help first-time buyers and other purchasers own their own home.
The effects of the recent financial crisis were particularly pronounced for first-time buyers, as mortgage lenders have cut back on low-deposit products. I can confirm, from Government figures, that the average age of an unassisted first-time buyer is 37, compared with 33 before the crisis. The Government are taking action now to help first-time buyers and others to attain home ownership.
On Monday, the Prime Minister launched the NewBuy scheme, which will deliver a significant increase in housing supply—I have already put numbers to that—and access to affordable mortgages for those without large savings who wish to purchase a new home. The scheme is not aimed at borrowers who cannot afford the mortgage, but at borrowers who lack the savings to fund a deposit, giving creditworthy borrowers a leg-up in the property market. I should like briefly to note hon. Members’ comments about second-steppers, who are important and have serious contributions to make in our effort to get the housing economy moving.
Detail on products is available to Hon. Members who wish to look for it, but I can confirm that although prior to Monday there were no 95% loan-to-value new build mortgage products on the market, today buyers will now be able to purchase a new build property with a 5% deposit. Builders are partnering with lenders to offer 90% to 95% mortgages. Three lenders are offering new mortgage products in that arena. We expect more builder-lender relationships and associated mortgage products to be confirmed over the coming weeks and months. Therefore, in total, the Government have made provision to help up to 100,000 families and young people to buy their own home.
We are committed to invigorating the right to buy, which hon. Members have applauded in today’s debate. On Monday, the Prime Minister announced that we will support social tenants who aspire to own their own home, by raising the discounts to make it attractive to do so across England. Right to buy has already helped nearly 2 million people since its introduction, but discount rates were reduced by the previous Government and the number of sales fell dramatically. From 2 April, the discount limit will be raised to £75,000 across England, so in London, for example, it more than quadruples the current limit. It will help thousands of people realise their home-owning aspirations. However, we are also committed to ensuring that it does not erode the social housing stock, which is why for every home bought under right to buy a new affordable home will be built.
NewBuy and right to buy sit within a broader suite of options intended to help first-time buyers and others into home ownership. Firstbuy, which was announced in Budget 2011, is a fixed-term measure designed to support the housing market, given constrained credit availability and challenging economic conditions. Under that scheme, the Government and around 100 house builders are together providing some £400 million to assist almost 10,500 first-time buyers to purchase with a 20% equity loan a new build property in England by spring 2013. We have had more 4,250 reservations since the scheme opened in September. The three largest participating house builders have reported sales of more than 1,200 homes in the first four months. Hon. Members will agree that those results show that the Government are taking action now, as needed, to support those who wish for the first time, or indeed at other times, to be a home owner and to continue to build the kind of communities that we all aspire to see throughout the country for our children and grandchildren.
Once again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester for his reasoned, thoughtful and passionate contribution to the debate that he has given us the opportunity to participate in. I thank other hon. Members who have made equally passionate and inspiring contributions on what we all hope for those we represent.
Northern Ireland Economy
Owen Smith Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve for the first time under your chairmanship, Mr Scott. I hope that Members here today and, perhaps more importantly, my constituents will forgive me, a Welshman, for speaking on St David’s day in a debate on Northern Ireland. I have seen colleagues speaking in the other Chamber, but I am delighted to be here speaking about Northern Ireland. Perhaps it will be recalled that I worked in Northern Ireland for several years as an adviser to the previous Government in a period when we did not have devolution in place in Northern Ireland, but when we were working towards delivering that.
Today’s debate has in many ways given us an insight into the radical changes that have taken place in Northern Ireland in the few short years between the period when I was working there and today. Of course, changes have taken place over a long period. The excellent, timely and passionate debate that we have had today on the economy of Northern Ireland is precisely the sort of debate we ought to be holding in this place and in the Stormont Assembly. It is not about security, policing or the latest atrocity, but about the things that are the bread and butter of any society in any body politic: the economy. The crucial issues are about how people earn their living, and the standard of living that they are able to enjoy because of that economy.
The Labour party played a tremendous role—I played a small part—and successive Governments have played a role in supporting the people of Northern Ireland to make the decisions that have allowed normalisation, as it is called, and allowed changes to come about. The Opposition will continue to play their part in standing shoulder to shoulder, as it were, with the people and the parties of Northern Ireland to try to further the cause of peace and normalisation, as well as the economic development of Northern Ireland. I know that Government Ministers will also want to do that, alongside—he ought to be right hon.—my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), who is the shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), who is a shadow Minister. They will play their part in trying to take matters forward.
It is a disappointment and a surprise—I feel I must mention it, given that hon. Members from Northern Ireland have mentioned it—that we do not have with us today either the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland or his deputy. That will surprise people in Northern Ireland. Although this is a Treasury debate, it is a Northern Ireland debate, too. It is disappointing that they are not here today. It is a feather in the cap of my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling, the shadow Secretary of State, that he is present. [Interruption.] The Minister may laugh, but in Northern Ireland people will not necessarily be laughing: I think they might be slightly concerned that the Secretary of State did not see fit to have someone here today.
There are many areas in which there is much agreement between the Government and ourselves, not just on policing and security and constitutional developments in Northern Ireland, but on the economy. We agree that there is, for all sorts of understandable and historical reasons, over-dependence on the public sector in Northern Ireland, and that too great a proportion of gross domestic product is spent by and in the public sector. We accept that the economy must be rebalanced over the long period and that we should build a robust, vibrant and wealth-generating private sector in Northern Ireland, as we must do in the rest of the UK. That means both building the indigenous, domestic private sector and attracting foreign direct investment from across the world. However, on some aspects of the economy, there are disagreements on what a Labour Government would do if we were in power and what the current Government are doing.
Let me first address the base line for the economy in Northern Ireland. As we have heard in today’s debate, it is a complex picture—one cannot take a simple snapshot of Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland economy has many great strengths, many of which were highlighted today by hon. Members. The right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds), the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) and my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell) all drew attention to the great strengths of the Northern Ireland economy. Northern Ireland attracted the second highest proportion of FDI out of all the regions in the UK.
I do not think anyone mentioned education. In my experience, Northern Ireland has a hugely educated work force, a hugely educated part of society and a young part of society. The transport and broadband infrastructure are crucial advantages. Lastly, the beauty and natural attractions of Northern Ireland—its people and topography—are wholly underexploited. We must do more to exploit the potential of tourism in Northern Ireland.
Of course, there are problems, just as there are in all parts of our economy. Gross value added per capita is lower in Northern Ireland than just about anywhere else in the UK—£15,000 or thereabouts per person versus £20,000 in England. Unemployment is a mixed picture. It is lower in Northern Ireland than in the UK—7.2% versus 8.2%. That is a legacy of the increase in employment in Northern Ireland, especially in retail and construction, which was part of the legacy of the ending of the troubles in the past decade. However, retail and construction are some areas that have suffered most in the economic downturn. Young people have also suffered in that period. My hon. Friend the Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) highlighted that 18% of young people in Northern Ireland are unemployed, which is a price we should not be paying.
Of the people in work, we heard that around 30% of people working in Northern Ireland are in the public sector, versus 21% in the rest of the UK. We need to address that at some point. There is also a mixed picture for business in Northern Ireland, where indigenous, domestic start-up rates are low. FDI is, as we have heard, high, but its relative value is low, including the innovativeness of that FDI. On another metric—business expenditure on research and development—unfortunately the Province still does not fare well compared with the rest of the UK.
Many economic levers now sit with the Northern Ireland Executive, and that is absolutely right. Many of those levers are being pulled extremely effectively by the Northern Ireland Executive, but Westminster is still key. Under the current settlement, the Government in Westminster, whatever their complexion, still have to make critical decisions. What have the Government done since they took power in May 2010? The rhetoric has been extremely strong, and the volume of words produced about the Northern Ireland economy has been considerable. Notable, of course, is the document that many have referred to today, “Rebalancing the Northern Ireland economy”. The document talks about the need to reduce the deficit fairly while building enterprise.
Only this week, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland returned to the theme and gave an interesting speech at Queen’s university Belfast. He said:
“I’ve said many times that re-balancing the economy here could take up to 25 years. But it has to be our priority…not by taking an axe to the public sector…but by creating the conditions that enable the private sector to grow.”
We would agree with him about that, but we would also suggest that he looks at the facts that pertain to Northern Ireland and what has happened to the economy on his watch. Crucially, as we have heard again today, overall spending in Northern Ireland is being reduced by £4 billion over the spending period. We are seeing a 40% reduction in capital expenditure. Regarding public sector jobs—the ones I presume the Secretary of State did not want to take an axe to—he should read the report by the Office for National Statistics that came out today, which shows that 9,000 public sector jobs have been lost in Northern Ireland since the second quarter of 2010, when his Government came to power. There are now 218,000 public sector jobs in Northern Ireland, compared with 227,000 when the Labour Government left office.
I have a question for the Exchequer Secretary. We now know that 710,000 public sector jobs will be lost on this Government’s watch over the spending review. We do not have regional breakdowns for that figure, but the Irish congress of trade unions suggests that job losses in Northern Ireland could be as much as 26,000. Would the Minister care to offer his view as to how many public sector jobs will be lost in Northern Ireland on his watch? If he cannot answer that, will he go away and look at the issue? It is crucial that we have a clear understanding of the impact of the changes.
Another set of changes that is at the forefront of many people’s minds in Northern Ireland as we approach the Budget and the start of a financial year is welfare cuts. They will affect thousands of families across this country, including in Northern Ireland. I suggest that Ministers look at what the impact will be for ordinary families. The Library suggests that in Northern Ireland 5,000 families with young children, in which the parents are in part-time work, may lose as much as £4,000 a year as a result of the changes to the welfare thresholds. That is a huge amount of money for relatively low-paid families to lose. That is a measure of the impact of the Government’s changes. Those facts do not reconcile terribly well with the statement made in “Rebalancing the Northern Ireland Economy” that the Government want their changes to be fair; they show that the Government are not being fair.
Mr Laurence Robertson
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that one of the indicators in Northern Ireland that is not as good as in the rest of the UK is the figure regarding the economically active. Given that the welfare cap will be £26,000, which one would have to earn £35,000 to bring home, is he aware that the median wage in the private sector in Northern Ireland is £20,000? That is a lot less than £35,000. What would be the incentive for people to go out to work if the cap were not to be there?
Owen Smith
We need to make work pay—there is no doubt about that—and we need to make work attractive. However, the hon. Gentleman will know that while the unemployment rate may be relatively better than that of the rest of the UK, one of the blacker marks of the Northern Ireland economy is that the economic inactivity rate is worse—27% versus 23%. Such things are neither simple nor straightforward, and they will prove to be difficult. However, we need to ensure that we apply changes fairly and proportionately.
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)
May I be clear about the two points the hon. Gentleman has raised on public sector employment and welfare cuts? Is he saying that if his party were in power, there would be no reduction in public sector jobs in Northern Ireland and no welfare cuts affecting Northern Ireland?
Owen Smith
No, I did not say that for a minute. We have not at any point said that there would not be any cuts. We have said that there would be cuts, although they would be on a different trajectory. I suggest that we would not have seen the same volume of cuts over the same period, because Labour Members do not believe, despite what the Secretary of State said in his remarks to Queen’s university Belfast, that we can grow the private sector and liberate its surpluses by cutting the public sector. That is poor economics and it will not work. We also believe that such an approach has been demonstrated as not working by the facts on the ground. That is why we are borrowing an extra £158 billion in the current spending period: to pay for the failure to get the economy moving. That is the truth.
I hate to tell the Minister, but another area in which the Government are failing in Northern Ireland is in respect of enterprise and getting enterprise moving. When one turns the page in the “Rebalancing the Northern Ireland Economy” document from the section about fairness and enterprise, one comes to what the Government think are the principal measures required to strengthen the private sector and promote fairness in Northern Ireland. First among them is a scheme to help new businesses in countries and regions outside London, the east and the south. It will exempt new businesses from £5,000 of employer national insurance contribution payments. The document says that that will help up to 15,000 businesses in Northern Ireland. I hate to tell the Minister but that scheme has so far helped 461 businesses in Northern Ireland, according to the Government’s own figures. That is just 3% of the target that was originally intended. I put it to him that that is a woeful performance.
Clearly, the Minister needs to consider the targeting of that scheme and whether he needs to revise it. I suggest that the Minister reads the bit elsewhere in the document that talks about the possibility of changing the parameters of that scheme and revising its targeting to expand it to all companies with fewer than 10 employees, as the Labour party suggests, as opposed to concentrating simply on start-ups. If he did that, those businesses might be able to get some of the billions of pounds that are currently languishing in the Treasury not being spent on incentivising enterprise.
Of course, the Minister could consider other tax possibilities. The document is quite insightful in showing us where the Treasury is contemplating different measures for Northern Ireland. One area is in respect of the annual investment allowances. It is very interesting that the document suggests that those annual investment allowances, which are designed to help capital intensive companies, manufacturing and so on, have been cut from £100,000 a year to £25,000 a year across the UK. Those are the sorts of companies one would have thought should be incentivised if one were serious about rebalancing the economy away from financial services towards a productive economy. Apparently, in Northern Ireland, that allowance could go back up to £100,000. That is a very interesting idea and I urge the Minister to think about that, not only in Northern Ireland, but across the UK.
Of course, the corporation tax measure is the big bazooka that we are hearing about the Government rolling out. The document talks about driving down corporation tax in Northern Ireland to bring it in line with the 12.5% in the south, as Members here today have also mentioned. Labour places great faith in the fact that parties in Northern Ireland have expressed some support for that measure, as did some 75% of respondents to the document. During the debate, it has been instructive to hear hon. Members highlight the risks—
Mr Lee Scott (in the Chair)
Order. May I politely remind the hon. Gentleman that I would like to give the Minister time to respond to this vital debate?
Owen Smith
I thought I had another minute until 25 past.
We, too, would highlight those risks in relation to corporation tax. It is very unclear what the dynamic effects will be on taxation or what the degree of volatility will be around corporation tax. It is a notoriously volatile tax, and Ministers in Northern Ireland and in the Treasury ought to be very mindful of that before opening this particular Pandora’s box.
Such an approach is not a silver bullet or the only club in the Chancellor’s bag. There are other things he could do. He could expand the NICs holiday; he could consider VAT across the board; or he could consider VAT in respect of the construction industry. Those are all familiar measures to the Minister. He knows that they are part of Labour’s five-point plan. If he is to be a wise Treasury Minister, I suggest that he needs to look very hard at them and urge his colleague, the Chancellor, to think about changing course for the good of Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK by adopting some of them in the forthcoming Budget.