Equitable Life

Robin Walker Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. That is, indeed, the tone of the pension package reforms that the Chancellor and the Treasury have made and will continue to introduce. The Equitable Life policyholders need to be part of that wider package.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

rose—

[Crispin Blunt]

rose—

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker).

[Mr Robin Walker]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) for rising at the same time. My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones) is absolutely right to say that this is part of a wider package relating not just to pensions, but to the savings culture more generally. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Exchequer Secretary has done fantastic things to support savers, particularly small savers, in his championing of the credit union movement? Any move in the direction of further support for Equitable Life savers would take that legacy further.

[Peter Heaton-Jones]

I entirely agree. The Government have done a great deal to support savers and to support and encourage those who invest for the future, and have done a great deal for pensioners as well. That is undeniable. I hope that, as part of the package, there will be some movement on the issue, and that it will be kept under careful consideration.

The letter that the Treasury Minister wrote to me in response to the letter that I wrote on behalf of the EMAG representatives in my constituency contains the welcome information that she is open to submissions in relation to the Budget. She also points out that the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s report was published in 2008, and that—as we heard from the hon. Member for Angus (Mike Weir)—it is only since the Conservative-led coalition Government came to office in 2010 that any compensation has been paid. It is important to remember that this Government started the ball rolling.

HMRC and Google (Settlement)

Robin Walker Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

Let me return to this case. There has been a lengthy inquiry by HMRC into the affairs of Google. That inquiry has now come to an end and reached a conclusion. There is nothing to suggest that anything other than the proper enforcement of the law as it stands has led the way to this particular conclusion.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

The Minister has said much about bringing our tax system up to date for the 21st century and about closing the tax gap, which I welcome. None the less, we have in our business rates system, a tax regime that is hopelessly out of date, and the cross-party Business, Innovation and Skills Committee called for fundamental reform of it under the previous Government. May I urge him to be as ambitious as possible in that reform so that we can close the gap between online businesses and the bricks and mortar businesses on our high streets?

[Mr Gauke]

As my hon. Friend will be aware, the Government are reviewing the business rates system, and will report shortly. As far as my right hon. Friends the Chancellor and the Prime Minister are concerned—and as the Chancellor has made clear—we are looking to do that in a fiscally neutral way, and we have received many representations on that point.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robin Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the fact that the UK has had a productivity challenge for many decades, and the financial crisis caused a significant impairment that had an impact as well. Productivity is improving, but the key weakness in the British economy, consistently identified by everyone who looks at it, is the weakness of our skills. I hope that the apprenticeship levy and the expansion of the apprenticeship programme will go some way towards addressing that historical weakness for Britain.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

Credit unions can play a vital role in improving financial inclusion and creating a stronger savings culture. As I know from my work with the all-party credit unions group, they have support in all parts of this House. With the opportunity of the World Council of Credit Unions coming to the UK—to Northern Ireland—later this year, will the Chancellor commit to making sure that we continue to build on the work of the credit union expansion programme and back this vital group?

[Harriett Baldwin]

My other constituency neighbour is a fine advocate for the excellent credit unions industry. As he will know, we have backed the industry with £38 million of investment through the credit union expansion project, and we will continue to seek ways to back credit unions.

Spending Review and Autumn Statement

Robin Walker Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

To be honest, I am not going to take advice from the right hon. Gentleman about political projects that do not come to anything. He tried to make his country independent, but the people of Scotland had the good sense to say no.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I congratulate the Chancellor on the way in which he balanced efficiency with compassion throughout his statement. He was as right to invest more in the NHS and housebuilding as he was to clamp down on tax avoidance. To keep up investment in our vital public services, we need to increase our income, both nationally and as individuals, so we need to keep investing in skills. Will the Chancellor expand on how his funding for apprenticeships and the apprenticeship levy will help smaller businesses to invest in skills?

[Mr Osborne]

The apprenticeship levy and the commitment we have made to 3 million apprentices is a huge boost to skills in this country, and it addresses one of the endemic weaknesses in the British economy that has bedevilled us for many decades. Small businesses are a big winner from the scheme: they do not have to pay the levy, but they get the advantage of the funded apprenticeships. We are also increasing the amount we pay for some of the apprenticeship courses. Indeed, there is a general uplift in apprenticeship funding. This will help small businesses, which do so much to support our economy, but which did not always get the support they wanted for training in the past.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Robin Walker Excerpts

Monday 13th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

Budgets, perhaps more than anywhere else, are where rhetoric meets policy. Rhetoric is an inescapable part of politics, but Budgets are the hard end of policy, where we decide our tax rates and revenues, decide on the benefit position and hear about the national accounts. I will spend the few minutes allocated to me discussing those two sides of the Budget.

First, when the Conservatives were elected in 2010 as the lead partner in the coalition, they pledged to get rid of the deficit in five years. We fought that election on a pledge to halve the deficit in five years. That policy was derided as the height of fiscal irresponsibility, but what the Chancellor announced in his Budget last week was that the Government had halved the deficit over one Parliament. They followed the Darling plan, rather than the Osborne plan when it came to the reality of deficit reduction in the last Parliament. They claimed success for their deficit reduction plan, but it was so successful that it now requires austerity for two Parliaments, rather than one.

Secondly, there is a clash between rhetoric and policy in respect of the next five years. The Conservatives fought the election just a couple of months ago on what the Office for Budget Responsibility described as a “rollercoaster” pattern of public expenditure cuts, with the deficit to be eliminated in 2018-19. Yet last week it was announced that the rollercoaster had been ditched, deficit elimination was to be put back a further year and there would be a smoother path of deficit reduction. Again, that is much closer to the plan on which Labour fought the election.

The third area is the mixture between taxes and cuts. The Conservatives fought the election saying that there was no need for tax increases at all and that the deficit would be dealt with entirely by expenditure cuts. Yet this Budget has been audited independently and it will result in a net increase in taxation of £6 billion a year—exactly the kind of plan that they would have denounced at the election.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not welcome the fact that the Budget closes tax loopholes and helps to make our tax system fairer? Surely that is something that we can unite across the House in supporting.

[Mr McFadden]

I do welcome parts of the Budget, but I do not welcome a party fighting an election on a platform of denouncing one set of policies and then adopting them right after the election.

To continue with my list, the Chancellor’s most blatant example of shopping around was lifting wholesale the plan to deal with the tax status of non-doms—something that was never mentioned by the Conservative party until we raised it in the election campaign. Fifthly, we fought the election on a plan for a staged increase in the national minimum wage over this Parliament—another policy that has been adopted by the Conservative party.

There are parts of the Budget that I welcome, particularly those that the Conservative party roundly denounced when they were being voiced by someone else before the election. However, it is not all agreement, because we have to consider the Budget in the round rather than just individual measures that we agree with. We cannot agree with a Budget that has been denounced as regressive because it attacks the incomes of the working poor, leading 3 million families to lose £1,000 a year. That will cause real hardship for families in my constituency and in many others like it. We cannot agree with priorities such as increasing the inheritance tax threshold for people who already have assets, while at the same time abolishing student grants, which are targeted at low-income families, making it harder for young people to pursue higher education and gain the opportunities that they deserve.

We also have to question the abolition of housing benefit for people under 21. I recently met the YMCA in Wolverhampton, and many similar charities deal with the most vulnerable young people. How will the Government ensure that those young people are not forced into destitution, and that the work of such excellent charities is not destroyed by the change?

Overall, the Budget is regressive. It is not just a march on to Labour territory, as we have read in recent weeks, but a plan that will attack the working poor and hurt incentives to work rather than increasing them. As we have heard, being in opposition is not just about blanket opposition. Shouting “Fight the cuts” is not enough. If we did not learn that over the past five years, we should certainly learn it now. Our attitude to the Budget should be to welcome the parts of it that are stolen from us and that we can agree with, but to oppose firmly the parts of it that are not in the interests of the country and our constituents.

Looking forward, the next few years will not just be about the fiscal path. They will be about equipping young people for the future, because too many of them are denied opportunities; about making sure that an economic recovery can be shared by every part of the country, not just based on a property-fuelled boom in one part of the country; and about our place in the world. On all those issues, we will be a sensible Opposition. We will not abandon the ground that we hold because the Conservative party walks on to it, but we will stick up for what we believe in and oppose firmly and with determination where it is deserved.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

This is a Budget that can make a step change in the British economy. It is a Budget that can step us up a gear in terms of work, productivity and pay.

It is a pleasure to follow an excellent maiden speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (David Warburton), and a very thoughtful speech from the new Chairman of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), whom I congratulate on his election.

I am delighted to be called to speak in a debate on local growth, because I believe that the first objective of the Budget is to deliver growth and prosperity throughout the United Kingdom, and particularly in places such as Worcester. If growth is to reach every part of the UK, it must be sustainable, and if it is to benefit the whole population, it must be translated into sustainably higher pay. For that, the first requirement is fiscal credibility. We need only look at Greece to see the situation countries can get into when they lose control of their finances to know that the Chancellor is right to say that if we do not control our debt, our debt controls us. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State pointed out in his opening remarks, that was very much the situation in the UK in 2010, but through the gargantuan efforts of the British people, British businesses and the British Government we have reduced our deficit and set out on a path to begin to pay down our debts.

The second requirement to deliver sustainable growth is security, and I am delighted that this Budget does what the coalition could never, and commits firmly to investing in our nation’s security and defence with that 2% of GDP commitment.

The third requirement is productivity, and I particularly welcome the detailed productivity plan that was published on Friday. This is not before time. The UK lags behind other leading economies in productivity, and it was not a Labour spokesman but my hon. Friend the Minister for Skills who set out the scale of the challenge in his 2012 Macmillan lecture for the Tory Reform Group, when he said:

“we in the political pack must not duck the really hard economic question— which is, why have people in the low and middle-ranking jobs not been able to secure a real increase in their pay for nearly a decade? And we must not dodge the really hard answer—which is, that the productivity of people in those jobs is falling behind that of their competitors.”

He concluded:

“If we want our economy to grow again, if we want our national income to be honestly earned and fairly shared…if we want to benefit from healthcare that is high quality and free, if we want to live comfortably in retirement, if we want all these things, we need to ensure that we are all a lot more productive than our competitors.”

He was right to put productivity at the heart of our mission, and the Chancellor has been right to put productivity at the heart of this Budget. I welcome the plan that sets out to raise investment in skills, in research and development, in infrastructure and, most of all, in people, in order to achieve this.

We need to provide the right incentives to businesses to invest and that should become a core principle of the Government’s ongoing review of the business rates system. We need to remove the disincentives that penalise manufacturing businesses from investing in value-added plant and that create an artificial shelf on business expansion for businesses of all sorts when they move from smaller to larger premises that fall just above the small business rate threshold. We need to design the system so that it supports growth and helps scale-up businesses. We should consider discounts for businesses that invest more in training their staff, and tapers to support businesses that grow through the thresholds for small business rate relief. I look forward to further updates on that important review, promised by the end of this year. This must not be seen merely as an administrative review, but rather as an important tool in the drive to provide higher productivity.

To get there, we need to improve our skills base. It has long been a truism in the post-war period that Germany does skills and apprenticeships better than us. This Government’s commitment to driving up the quality and quantity of apprenticeships has begun to change that, and it is essential that this continues. I am pleased to see the drive to achieve 3 million apprenticeships by 2020 and the use of the German funding model, where large employers pay a levy towards the cost of training.

We also need to make sure that schools deliver the best possible education across the country, which means delivering on one of the key commitments of the Conservative manifesto: fairer funding for all our schools. In a time of overall budget constraint this has never been more urgent, and I look forward to seeing the detail for delivering that in the next spending review. I was pleased to see fairer funding highlighted up-front in the executive summary of the productivity plan.

One of the most welcome changes in the Budget was the creation of the new roads fund predicating vehicle excise duty revenues to investment in our roads. I recently held a debate on the vital priority of upgrading Worcester’s southern link road, including the Carrington bridge, a key bottleneck in our area. Any Government committed to local growth will want to fund such projects.

We need to keep focusing on holding down the cost of travel. That is why I particularly welcome the extension of the fuel duty freeze that the Conservatives in government have now maintained over five years. So many of my constituents are concerned about this and so many businesses have told me what a massive issue it is for them that it has been something I have campaigned on in each year of my parliamentary career. Fuel costs contribute to the cost of living for everyone, whether or not they drive a car, and the price of food in our supermarkets is one of the things that would be higher and less affordable if Labour had had its way and fuel duty was higher. I also believe that the Treasury benefits from holding down fuel duty over the long term as economic activity increases.

Beyond transport, higher productivity will require businesses to have the confidence to keep investing, and the decisions to keep bringing down corporation tax and to maintain the UK’s world-beating research and development tax credit offer and extend capital allowances each have a vital role to play.

[Richard Fuller]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not just the specific measures that are valuable to the economy? The record over a number of years of setting a trajectory of lower taxation for businesses assists all of us, creating jobs and increasing the wealth of the country.

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the track record of delivery and the confidence that that gives business to invest over the long term.

The biggest change we can make to help people with the cost of living is to ensure they are paid better and keep more of what they earn. The Budget takes this further by delivering a national living wage. I welcome the fact that not only is this key social reform being delivered by a Conservative Government, but that the Government are taking steps to help to ensure that businesses, particularly small ones, have the help they need to deliver it. The extension of the employment allowance by a further £1,000 and the reduction in corporation tax will help to make sure that businesses can play their part. I hope the Chancellor will consider carefully how the charitable sector and the care system can be supported in adjusting to this change.

The Opposition have made much of the changes to tax credits. One would think from hearing some Opposition Members’ speeches that in altering this system we were taking on a core principle of the post-war consensus and the welfare state. In fact this invention of Gordon Brown has always been problematic. As the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) has pointed out repeatedly, the limited resources of Government can be better used in targeted support for early intervention and in helping troubled families than in a subsidy for employers to pay low wages. The growth of its cost from £1 billion when it was launched to £30 billion today is clearly unsustainable. The right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who is currently leading the Labour party, was right in thinking this is a change it should support, and it is a shame that the contenders for the leadership and those on the Labour Front Bench do not share her vision.

I welcome this Budget as a boost to local growth and look forward to supporting it in delivering a more prosperous, better paid and more productive Britain.

Tax Avoidance (HSBC)

Robin Walker Excerpts

Monday 9th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I repeat that, as far as I am aware, no one has come forward with any evidence suggesting that Lord Green was involved in the activities of the Swiss subsidiary about which we have been talking today.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

Of course it is right for us to do all that we can to recover taxes that have been either wrongly avoided or illegally evaded, but is it not just as great a scandal that the Labour Government allowed their friends in private equity—the same people to whom they tried to sell Royal Mail and the Post Office—to avoid tax legally by keeping capital gains tax so low that multi-millionaires paid less tax than their cleaners?

[Mr Gauke]

My hon. Friend has raised an important point. There was a problem with the way in which our system was working, and, as my hon. Friend says, the fact that cleaners paid a higher rate of tax than some people in private equity demonstrates how the last Government went awry.

Autumn Statement

Robin Walker Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

I have taken measures to reform stamp duty in a progressive way and introduced a tax, which could have been introduced in any Budget by a Labour Chancellor, to deal with multinational companies that divert their profits overseas. I have ensured that profits cannot be written off against losses incurred during the financial crisis—again, any Labour Chancellor could have done that but they did not. I am determined to ensure that the richest in our society make a contribution and that businesses pay our low taxes. More generally, the result of a pro-business policy is that in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency alone—I think he just dismissed this out of hand—unemployment has fallen by 20% in the last year. I would have thought he would welcome that.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

In our nation of shopkeepers there will be relief at the decision to extend small business rates relief and increase the benefit for small shops and cafés to £1,500. In his review of business rates, may I urge the Chancellor to take account of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee report that urged a fundamental reform? The Conservative party believes in low taxation, and it needs to reform fundamentally a tax that can only ever go up.

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is a champion of small businesses in Worcester and infrastructure investment in Worcestershire and that part of England, and I thank him for his representations. In part because of those representations, we have been able to help with business rates and high street shops in the statement. We now want a review of business rates, but it must be done in a way that is consistent with stable public finances. It is appropriate to consider how the modern economy has changed and the impact of things such as the internet, and that is why we are undertaking that big review.

EU Budget (Surcharge)

Robin Walker Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

What we achieved was the simultaneous application of the rebate, so we will pay only £850 million.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on maintaining the application of the UK rebate in a way that the Opposition utterly failed to do when they were in power. Would he have been strengthened in that position had he maintained a euro preparations unit in the Treasury?

[Mr Osborne]

The first and kindest cut of all was closing down the euro preparations unit, which I discovered in the Treasury on coming to office.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robin Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

17. What assessment he has made of the effect of freezing fuel duty on the price of petrol.

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Priti Patel)]

I refer my hon. Friend to the response I gave earlier.

[Mr Walker]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on taking her well-earned place on the Front Bench. May I tell her that my constituents and, indeed, many businesses in Worcester have fed back how pleased they are that we have kept the fuel duty freeze in place and rejected calls from the Labour party to restore its fuel duty escalator? Will she remind the House what the cost would be to those people and businesses if we had gone along with the previous Government’s plans?

[Priti Patel]

I thank my hon. Friend for his warm welcome and kind remarks. This Government scrapped the previous Government’s fuel duty escalator, which would have increased fuel duty by 1p per litre above inflation from 2011 to 2014. Were it not for this Government’s very clear actions on fuel duty since 2011, current pump prices would be 16p per litre higher and would be nearly 20p per litre higher by the end of this Parliament. I know that my hon. Friend’s constituents and businesses in Worcester will support the clear action that this Government have taken.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robin Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The Help to Buy scheme accounts for only 0.5% of total mortgage lending, and real house prices remain 15% below pre-crisis levels. There is no evidence to suggest that the funding for lending scheme has led to a property price bubble.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

5. What recent assessment he has made of growth in the economy.

[The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)]

As you know, Mr Speaker, GDP grew by 0.8% in the last quarter and 3.1% over the year. Growth is broadly balanced, and those who predicted a year ago that our plan would choke off recovery got it spectacularly wrong.

[Mr Walker]

In March last year, with youth unemployment in Worcester at 645, the shadow Chancellor said that

“the economy will get worse”.

Youth unemployment in Worcester is down by a quarter since then and by 40% since it peaked under Labour. Will my right hon. Friend the Chancellor update the House on how the wider economy has performed during that time?

[Mr Osborne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Since the shadow Chancellor made his prediction, the economy has grown by more than 3% and almost 1 million jobs have been created. In Worcester the claimant count is down by 20% in the past year, so we have more of these predictions from the shadow Chancellor and the economy just keeps growing.