Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to his oral statement of 3 March 2021 to the 2021 Budget, what discussions he has had the Secretary of State for Defence on how the £10m committed to the Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust for veteran’s mental health will be apportioned.
Answered by Steve Barclay
The Chancellor is in regular contact with Cabinet colleagues, including the Defence Secretary. The Armed Forces Covenant Fund Trust (AFCFT) will design, and run, an open grant competition to award the funding. The Ministry of Defence, the Office of Veterans Affairs (OVA) and HM Treasury attend AFCFT board meetings and will be involved throughout the programme’s design and decision-making.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that self-employed people in receipt of Self Employment Income Support Scheme grants are not disadvantaged by mortgage lenders.
Answered by John Glen
Decisions concerning the pricing and availability of mortgage loans remain commercial decisions for lenders, and the Government does not seek to intervene in these decisions. Although the Treasury sets the legal framework for the regulation of financial services, it does not have investigative or prosecuting powers of its own and is not able to intervene in individual cases.
For individuals applying for new credit, it remains important that lenders are able to carry out the proper checks to ensure that these individuals are not lent to in an unaffordable way, especially if for example a borrower’s income has changed as a result of Coronavirus.
Together the three Self Employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS) grants combined provided up to £21,570 of support for each individual and places the SEISS among the most generous schemes for the self-employed in the world. And, as of 31 December, around 2.7 million individuals have made claims totalling over £18.9 billion so far across all three grants. Details about the fourth grant will be announced on 3 March.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what plans his Department has to reduce the number of customer complaints made against National Savings & Investments.
Answered by John Glen
NS&I has seen exceptionally high customer demand since the Covid-19 outbreak, and this was amplified by a requirement for NS&I to raise additional funding from savers to support the Government’s response to the pandemic.
HMT has provided additional funding of £9 million in 2020-21 to NS&I to help improve its operational performance and mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on its customer service. With this, NS&I has put a number of significant measures in place to improve its operational performance. This includes expanding its UK contact centres by opening additional sites and recruiting additional staff to process customer enquiries. NS&I are working hard to return to delivering its high standard customer service.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent estimate he has made of the backlog of National Savings & Investment customers seeking to withdraw their funds.
Answered by John Glen
NS&I processes significant numbers of repayments with a seasonal peak of maturing bonds in January and February, and it has been prioritising payment processing. As of 22 February 2021, circa 12,800 payments to customers were still being processed.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many customer service staff National Savings & Investments employs.
Answered by John Glen
NS&I’s operational services and staffing arrangements are outsourced to Atos. As of February 2021, there were circa 1,100 staff employed by Atos working across NS&I’s customer service and back office operations. This compares with circa 900 staff working across NS&I’s customer service and back office operations in February 2020.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of extending business rates relief beyond the end of the 2020-21 financial year.
Answered by Jesse Norman - Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
The Government has invited representations from stakeholders on various aspects of the business rates system through the fundamental review of business rates.
This year, due to the direct adverse effects of COVID-19, the Government has provided an unprecedented business rates holiday for eligible retail, hospitality and leisure properties worth over £10 billion. The Government has also frozen the business rates multiplier for all businesses for 2021-22. Business rates are devolved in Wales, and so any reliefs are a matter for the Welsh Government.
The Budget will set out the next phase of the Government’s plans to tackle the virus, protect jobs and support business.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the recommendations made by the UK alliance of visual art networks in their letter and written evidence submitted to his Department on 20 January 2021 on the extension of Museums and Galleries Exhibition Tax Relief; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Jesse Norman - Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
The Government keeps all tax reliefs under review, and regularly receives proposals for changes to tax reliefs. The Government has committed to reviewing MGETR before its expiry in 2022.
When considering potential changes, HM Treasury must ensure they provide support to businesses across the economy in a fair way and represent good value for money for the taxpayer.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent assessment he has made of the cost of restoring the war widows pension to people who had remarried or cohabited between 1973 and 2005.
Answered by Steve Barclay
My department has not made a recent assessment of the costs. It has been the policy of successive governments that retrospective changes to public service pension and compensation schemes should not be made where benefits have already been awarded. The Government currently has no plans to reinstate war widow(er)s pensions with retrospective effect.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent assessment he has made of the potential merits of extending the temporary VAT reduction to 5 per cent to hair salons.
Answered by Jesse Norman - Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
The temporary reduced rate of VAT was introduced on 15 July to support the cash flow and viability of over 150,000 businesses and protect 2.4 million jobs in the hospitality and tourism sectors, and will run until 31 March 2021.
This policy will cost over £2 billion, and it is necessary for a boundary for eligibility to be drawn. The Government keeps all taxes under review, and any future decisions on tax policy will be made at Budget.
The Government has announced a significant support package to help businesses from a whole range of sectors through the winter months, which includes an extension of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, an extension of the Self-Employment Income Support Scheme grant, and an extension of the application window for the Government-backed loan schemes.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of allowing all housing sales agreed during the period of reduced stamp duty rates that complete after the cut ends to be eligible for that discount.
Answered by Jesse Norman - Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
The temporary SDLT relief was designed to stimulate immediate momentum in a property market where property transactions fell by as much as 50 per cent during the COVID-19 lockdown in March. This has also supported the jobs of people whose employment relies on custom from the property industry, such as retailers and tradespeople.
The relief applies to sales that have completed or have been substantially performed before 31 March 2021. Completion and substantial performance are recognised legal concepts and using them as trigger points for Stamp Duty Land Tax provides certainty to consumers and to HMRC. There is no standard definition of “sale agreed” in a housing transaction and so moving the trigger point for a transaction to “sale agreed” would lead to uncertainty and confusion amongst home buyers. This lack of certainty would also mean that such a trigger point would be open to abuse.