Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he plans to make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing new measures to help support businesses participating in the emissions trading scheme.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government is committed to supporting decarbonisation. That is why it protects sectors included in the Emissions Trading Scheme against carbon leakage by allocating free allowances, with installations vulnerable to carbon leakage receiving up to 100% of their emissions allowances for free based on sector benchmarks.
The Government also delivers compensation for the majority of indirect electricity costs imposed by the ETS and CPS on the UK’s most electricity-intensive businesses, through a compensation scheme, which is worth approximately £120 million a year.
In addition, the Government offers a range of support schemes for industry to decarbonise, such as the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF), which supports industrial sites with high energy use to transition to a low carbon future. Applications for phase 3 of the Fund, which is worth £185m, were launched in January 2024.
Lastly, at Spring Budget 2023, the Chancellor announced an unprecedented up to £20 billion for the early development of CCUS to help meet the Government’s climate commitments.
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he plans to make an assessment of the potential merits of providing relief from the emissions trading scheme to businesses that export products to external markets.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The UK is a world leader on carbon pricing. That is why we have an ambitious carbon pricing system, which ensures that polluters pay for their emissions.
Those businesses are protected from carbon leakage in the form of free allowances under the Emissions Trading Scheme, and from 2027, some UK sectors will be protected from carbon leakage by a UK CBAM. The CBAM is a charge on imports and is unlikely to be a suitable tool to address the carbon leakage risk related to exported goods.
The government will continue to assess the impact of carbon pricing on carbon leakage risk for UK industry, including for businesses that export products abroad.
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he plans to undertake a review of the criteria used to determine which industries are included in its carbon border adjustment mechanism proposals.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The government will implement a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) from 1 January 2027 to ensure that UK decarbonisation efforts lead to a true reduction in global emissions. The CBAM will apply a carbon price to relevant imported goods at risk of carbon leakage from the following sectors: aluminium, cement, ceramics, fertiliser, glass, hydrogen, iron & steel.
In making the decision around the initial sectoral scope of the UK CBAM, the government looked primarily at three factors: inclusion in the UK ETS as the purpose of the CBAM is to ensure a comparable treatment of imported goods and domestic products from a carbon pricing perspective, carbon leakage risk, and feasibility and effectiveness.
The scope of the UK CBAM will be kept under review. Further details on the design and delivery of a UK CBAM, including the precise list of products in scope within the announced sectors, will be the subject of consultation in 2024.
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the level of draught relief for (a) beer and (b) cider.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
Under the new alcohol duty system, Draught Relief provides a 9.2% duty reduction on draught beer and cider products below 8.5% alcohol by volume. This ensures that there will always be a lower duty rate for draught products to recognise the value of our great British pubs. This means that every pint, in every pub across the UK pays less duty than their supermarket equivalent - this is the Government's Brexit Pubs Guarantee.
The Government is closely monitoring the impact of the recent reforms, including Draught Relief, and will evaluate the impact of the new rates and structures three years after the changes took effect on 1 August 2023. This will allow time to understand the impacts on the alcohol market, and for HMRC to gather useful and accurate data with which to evaluate the effects of the reform.
As with all taxes, the Government keeps the alcohol duty system under review during its yearly Budget process.
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Plan for Jobs in supporting people into work.
Answered by Simon Clarke
The success of our Plan for Jobs is playing a key role in spreading opportunity across the country.
The Government protected 11.7 million jobs through the pandemic, as well as moving millions of job seekers into work and supporting young people through programmes like kickstart and our apprenticeships offer.
It’s clear our plan is working. 2 million fewer people are out of work than originally feared, and the unemployment rate remains close to a near 50 year low.
We will continue to build on this success with our Way to Work campaign, which aims to support 500,000 jobseekers into work by the end of June.
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate he has made of the number of people furloughed continuously from 1 March 2020.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
There has been no estimate made of the number of people on furlough continuously from 1 March 2020.
The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) was announced on 20 March 2020 and the number of jobs on furlough increased substantially after that date.
HMRC has published statistics on the CJRS, the latest release being published on 9 September 2021. The statistics include figures on the number of employments supported since the scheme started in March 2020. These statistics can be found on GOV.UK: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/coronavirus-job-retention-scheme-statistics-9-september-2021.
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent assessment she has made on the potential effect of the Job Retention Scheme on (a) vacancies and (b) recruitment in the UK labour market.
Answered by Jesse Norman
The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) aims to support jobs, reduce the risk of permanent business closures (supporting those that had temporarily ceased or reduced trading) and reduce the risk of large losses in incomes, through wage support to furloughed employees.
The number of employees on the CJRS has continued to fall as restrictions have eased. According to provisional data from HMRC, 3.4m employments remained on the CJRS at the end of April from 675,000 employers, down from 4.3m employments at the end of March from almost 765,000 employers. This fall was accounted for by a fall in the number of employments on the CJRS on a full time basis; from 2.9m at the end of March to 2.0m at the end of April.
According to the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) data, vacancies rose by 49,000 on the quarter to stand at 657,000 in the three months to April, marking the eighth consecutive month of quarterly growth. Timelier online job advert data from Adzuna suggest that postings were 27 per cent above February 2020 levels at the end of May. According to early estimates from HMRC’s Real-Time Information (RTI), the number of paid employees increased by 97,000 in April, marking the fifth consecutive month of growth.
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will publish the latest figures for the number of employees who are enrolled on the Job Retention Scheme in (a) the UK, (b) Wales and (c) Preseli Pembrokeshire constituency.
Answered by Jesse Norman
HM Revenue and Customs regularly publish statistics on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS). The latest statistics were published on 3 June 2021 and can be found on GOV.UK:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/coronavirus-job-retention-scheme-statistics-3-june-2021.
The statistics include figures for the number of employments on furlough. This differs from the number of employees on furlough, as an individual employed by more than one employer is counted once for each employment from which they have been put on furlough.
The latest statistics report that on 30 April 2021 there were (a) 3.44 million employments on furlough in the UK, (b) 131,900 employments on furlough where the employee was resident in Wales, and (c) 3,400 employments on furlough where the employee was resident in Preseli Pembrokeshire constituency.
These figures are based on the residential address information that HM Revenue and Customs hold for employees.
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate he has made of the proportion of workers supported by the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme who have been continuously in the scheme since it started in April 2020.
Answered by Jesse Norman
It is not possible to provide an answer to the question in the time available.
HMRC have published statistics on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), the latest release being published on 25 November 2020. These statistics include information on the number of employments supported since the scheme started in March 2020. The statistics can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hmrc-coronavirus-covid-19-statistics
Asked by: Stephen Crabb (Conservative - Preseli Pembrokeshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what discussions he has had with the Office for Budget Responsibility on making HMRC a secondary preferential creditor in insolvencies.
Answered by Jesse Norman
The OBR assessed the Exchequer impact of the policy and the methodology behind it to feed into their economic forecast.
A summary of responses to the consultation was published in February 2019, and can be viewed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/protecting-your-taxes-in-insolvency. Following the publication, the Government has continued to engage with a range of interested parties to discuss and explore further the issues raised.