Public Health Restrictions: Government Economic Support

Debate between Steve Barclay and Kevan Jones

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

I hear the concerns of my right hon. Friend, but there is a balance that needs to be struck between the comprehensive nature and the fiscal cost of the range of packages that we have put in place and the measures that we have taken to control the virus. The balance that we have struck, in line with the advice that we have received, is about balancing how we control the virus with the wider implications not only for the economy, but for non-covid health issues as well. That is the balance that we are striking. Of course it is attractive for him to say that we should keep spending more and more, but we have already committed more than £200 billion.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister has been clear that the Government’s response to the covid crisis will follow the science. Last night, on a conference call with Professor Stephen Powys, the medical director for England, the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) and my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) asked about the science behind the 10 pm curfew on pubs and restaurants. Professor Powys said that there was no specific advice and in his words it was a “policy decision”. Given that thousands of jobs and businesses are at risk in tier 2 areas such as the north-east, can the Minister tell us what the logic is behind this policy decision?

[Steve Barclay]

As the right hon. Gentleman will know, that same SAGE guidance also says that there are multiple anecdotal reports of outbreaks linked to bars, and the Public Health England case control study also identifies visits to entertainment venues as a risk factor. It comes back to the point about balance. Some in the House say that there is a risk of infection in these hospitality venues and we should close them entirely; others say that we should have no restrictions at all. We have taken our decision on the basis that compliance tends to decrease later in the evening and that there are links to outbreaks in these venues. That is the balance that we have been striking.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Steve Barclay and Kevan Jones

Tuesday 24th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Supply teachers play a vital role in our schools. Many thousands, including my constituent Ellie Atkinson, have found themselves out of work, so may I urge the Treasury to look at a way of supporting these vital workers, either with direct financial support or by ensuring that they can actually work in the schools that are being kept open?

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Steve Barclay)]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that school budgets have been allocated, so the schools already have that money to spend; that will not change. The announcement that the Chancellor has made about the PAYE system is about supporting people through that mechanism. If the right hon. Gentleman has other proposals, I am happy to engage with him to discuss them further.

Self-employed Persons: Financial Support

Debate between Steve Barclay and Kevan Jones

Tuesday 24th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

As I have said, the Chancellor held meetings with small business leaders this morning. He is having further meetings on this issue today. He is very aware of the concerns raised by my right hon Friend and other Members, and we continue to work at pace on this issue.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I am sorry that the Chancellor is not here, but may I ask the Minister to pass on to him that the self-employed people contacting me are not wealthy individuals? They are individuals such as Andrew Brown, who I raised last week—a self-employed graphic designer whose income has disappeared. They are taxi drivers. They are small catering companies. Unless action is taken now for these individuals, not just to relieve the hardship they are facing, their businesses will no longer be in existence. My fear is that we will generate unemployment among these people for a long time to come.

[Steve Barclay]

I agree with the first part of that. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the vast majority of these people. I have made that point repeatedly. I referred earlier to the fact that the target population has different elements, but the vast majority of those who are self-employed face enormous challenges. We absolutely hear that, and I accept that. On his second point, we have taken a number of measures, but we recognise that more is needed. That is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor is meeting leaders on this issue today to look at what further measures we can bring forward.

Tax Avoidance and Evasion

Debate between Steve Barclay and Kevan Jones

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Steve Barclay)]

There is a shared desire across the House to ensure that the correct amount of tax is paid and that tax is not evaded, not least because the public services on which we all rely in our constituencies depend on that happening. Since 2010, we have introduced over 100 new measures to tackle tax avoidance, evasion and other forms of non- compliance, which, alongside HMRC’s other compliance work, have secured and protected significant revenue that would otherwise have been lost.

In 2018-19, HMRC brought in an additional £34.1 billion that would otherwise have gone unpaid, including £1.8 billion from the wealthiest individuals and £10 billion from the largest businesses. Our tax gap is at 5.6%—lower now than at any point before 2010 and one of the lowest in the world. To put that in context, in 2005, for example, under a Labour Government, the tax gap was as high as 7.2%. Action has been taken, but there is a shared desire across the House to continue to take further measures on this.

We have achieved that progress through a mixture of enforcement action for those seeking to avoid payment of what is due and through reform, because not all the tax gap is due to malicious behaviour. It can also be due to basic errors, whether that means the data that is used to calculate tax or how the calculations have been assessed. HMRC estimates, for example, that £10 billion of the current £35 billion tax gap is due to taxpayer error rather than evasion or avoidance, all of which shows that the Government have an important role in helping more individuals and businesses to get their tax right first time. A further £4 billion stems from firms going bust while owing tax. Likewise, other areas of the £35 billion tax gap are due to long-standing issues on which there will be a shared desire—for example, tackle tobacco smuggling, which is not a new issue under this Government, alcohol smuggling, and the tax lost through the hidden economy. Many of these are long-standing issues, but the crux of the matter is that the tax gap is at a near record low, thanks in large part to the actions taken by my predecessors in the Treasury.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I wonder whether the Minister thinks that there is a strong ethos of enforcement within HMRC, especially on landfill tax fraud, which I will speak about. In a case I was involved in, HMRC was not interested unless there was more than £20 million a year in evasion. Does that not send a signal that some people can get away with evading large amounts of tax, because there is not an ethos in HMRC to properly investigate?

[Steve Barclay]

As a point of principle, HMRC always seeks to collect the tax that it is due. One of the areas of innovation—I will come on to such areas as Making Tax Digital—is about making that easier for HMRC, but I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman is making a point more about fraud than error. The underlying principle is that HMRC always looks to collect the tax that it is due, but if he has a specific point on a constituency basis, I know that my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury will always be keen to discuss it with him, because he has a zeal for cracking down on any such practice.

The Government have done much to squeeze the tax gap: by ensuring that companies increasingly pay their way; by cracking down on offshore avoidance and evasion; by tackling tax avoidance schemes; by helping people to get their taxes right first time; and by investing in HMRC’s toolbox. If one looks at the actions being taken in terms of large businesses, they will see that there is an exceptional level of scrutiny. At any one time, HMRC is engaged with half the UK’s largest businesses and we have introduced specific measures to shape behaviours. For example, the diverted profits tax was introduced in 2015 to ensure that multinational companies pay UK tax in line with their UK activities. Under our rules, those companies either declare the correct amount of profits in the UK and pay the full amount of corporation tax on them, or they risk being charged a higher amount of diverted profits tax at a rate of 25%. It raises tax directly through encouraging changes in groups’ behaviour that, in turn, leads to increased tax receipts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Member picks up on a point the shadow Chancellor made in his opening remarks about the total number of staff, but the key issue is how staff are deployed and what technology we are using. I was just referring to Making Tax Digital. If tax is being filed through the Making Tax Digital platform, the number of staff that HMRC uses will change; that profile will change. We now have about 25,000 staff dedicated to tackling tax avoidance, evasion and other forms of non-compliance, and the proof of the staffing levels is reflected in the fact that we have a near record-low tax gap—far lower than for many years under the previous Labour Administration.

Since 2010, our criminal investigations have prevented the loss of more than £15 billion and resulted in more than 5,400 individuals being criminally prosecuted and convicted. In 2018-19, HMRC investigations secured nearly 650 criminal convictions for tax and duty fraud, resulting in numerous custodial sentences. HMRC has used billions of pieces of data, combined with analytics, to identify where tax is most at risk of going unpaid and to make tailored, targeted and proportionate interventions. Technology and capabilities have moved on, therefore, but, as I am sure the Financial Secretary will mention later, what continues is the dedication of staff within HMRC, who share the House’s desire to close the tax gap and ensure that people do not evade their responsibilities.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

On the analytics, what is HMRC doing to track individuals who set up companies, fold them after two or three years and then open up new companies? A constituent came to me with a case in the cosmetic surgery industry where the same individuals moved from one company to another while owing huge amounts to the Inland Revenue and to local councils in council tax. What is HMRC doing to track these individuals? The three individuals involved in the company my constituent highlighted to me have evaded huge amounts of tax.

[Steve Barclay]

The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point about the moving target of criminality and the ingenuity of approaches to evade tax or abuse the tax system. That is partly why I referred earlier to the fraud service set up within HMRC in 2016. It is also a key part of how technology is used in a dynamic way within HMRC to tackle that moving target of criminality. As I said in answer to his earlier intervention, if in their surgeries Members are told of case involving firms or local authorities in their constituencies, that intelligence is obviously of relevance to colleagues, and I can commit that the Financial Secretary would take those forward.

Afghanistan

Debate between Steve Barclay and Kevan Jones

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) on initiating the debate. I am sure that we could have listened to him speak for a lot longer on the subject. His knowledge of present conflicts and others is well known in the House.

It would be wrong not to start the debate by remembering those who have fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those who have been wounded in the service of our country. I was a Minister in the Ministry of Defence during the previous Labour Government, and I do not think that anyone takes decisions easily on the things that happen. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) said that we should be reminded of the individuals who died. I say to him that if a duty Minister is rung late at night on a dark weekend to be informed that there have been nine casualties, it never leaves them. Irrespective of political party, no one can detach themselves from the individuals, the sacrifice that their families have made, or the circumstances in which they died.

The debate is about Afghanistan, but the hon. Member for Broadland drew out broader questions of strategy. The hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) talked about where we started with Afghanistan, and, of course, it leads back to the response to 9/11. I believe that it all started with the use of the terminology of a war on terror. I thought that that expression was wrong, and I never used it. It gave the impression that the only possible response was a military solution. We all know that the fight against terrorism involved not only the military, but law enforcement and politics, as has been made clear in several contributions today.

The initial invasion of Afghanistan was about dealing with the Taliban, who were the hosts for al-Qaeda. A lot of people forget the attempts that had previously been made by the Clinton Administration and the very early Bush Administration to get the Taliban to give up bin Laden and expel al-Qaeda from Afghanistan, but that did not happen. I think that there was confusion over policy. Members of special forces who went into Afghanistan in the early days have told me that their first remit was to expel the Taliban, and that there was no notion of nation building. I think that is where the confusion and mission creep came into being. From my dealings with the Bush Administration and senior figures, and as a member of the Defence Committee, prior to the invasion of Iraq the message was quite clear that they did not do nation building; they did war fighting. I do not think that they were committed from an early stage to nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) has said that he met someone who called the recent wars “Blair’s wars”, and my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West has just described them as Prime Ministers’ wars. However, we must not forget that Parliament took the decision that we should be part of the invasion of Iraq, and there was cross-party support for our mission in Afghanistan. It would be wrong, therefore, to try to apportion blame to an individual or a political party. Should we have questioned some things more? Yes, on some occasions we should have done, and that goes back to the strategic points that the hon. Member for Broadland made. One question we have to ask is about the relationship between politics and the military. The notion of the public, and perhaps the media, is that politicians are bad and the military is good, but we all know that life is not as simplistic as that. That relationship is one of the serious issues that we need to address.

The hon. Member for Newbury mentioned Lord Reid. I have spoken to him on several occasions about the deployment to Helmand, and he was the one who held it up for quite a while. The enthusiasm for going to Helmand clearly came from parts of the military. There is a saying in the Army: “We will crack on.” The military must give clear advice to Ministers, and if things are not doable, Ministers should be told that they are not. In my experience of the military, however, that does not happen, and there is a notion that everything can be achieved.

The hon. Member for Broadland referred to military structures. I would like to reflect a little on that, and especially on the way in which the military operate within the MOD. The hon. Gentleman accepts that there is a difference between the military, the political and the civil service: I used to refer to it as a three-legged stool. The situation in the military is even more complex, because of inter-service rivalry, as I have seen. On one occasion, I attended a meeting of Ministers and chiefs, at which the senior naval officer and the head of the Army shouted and swore at each other across the table. The relationship is not always unanimous or harmonious. Senior military must be joined up and speak with one voice, and I think that they are getting better at that. The movement towards the joint command under this Government is a move in the right direction to try to achieve more joined-up thinking.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The concern is often expressed that the senior military were speaking with one voice, under pressure from the then Government. Will the hon. Gentleman clarify which senior military generals spoke against the previous Government’s policy and were promoted under that Government?

[Mr Jones]

This is where the nonsense comes in—where the political line that was taken and the party politics of that line cause confusion. The problem we had was that there was disagreement between the service chiefs at the time on different strategies. If politicians ask the military whether it is possible to do something, there is an in-built response of “Yes, we can,” but I am saying that there has to be a grown-up relationship. When Ministers ask for advice, they must sometimes be told by the military, “No, that cannot be done.” [Interruption.] The hon. Gentlemanhas asked me to give an example. At the tail end of the last Government, certain senior generals acted completely outside their remit by being political, which was not a helpful stance and did not ensure that they were above the party political debate. That was unfortunate.

I return to Helmand and the deployment south, about which the hon. Member for Broadland raised an important issue. Corporate knowledge in an organisation is important, and, like the hon. Gentleman, I fear that we are losing a lot of that. In addition, in our approach to deployment we must not look solely at the military kinetic effects. We should consider, for example, employing anthropologists to inform the debate about what will happen when we deploy somewhere, to ensure that when people are deployed, they have the fullest possible knowledge about the situation.

I have to disagree with what the hon. Member for Reigate said about Iran. I accept his point about the Iranians being against the Taliban, although I think that that was mainly to do with the Taliban murdering Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998. It was a maligned force in Basra and, in the latter days, in Herat in Afghanistan, where it was used in the proxy war against the United States and ourselves. Should we actually engage with them in negotiations? Yes, I think we could.

Finally, one major strategic failing in Afghanistan was the issue of Pakistan. All the emphasis was on rebuilding, and on occasion we treated Afghanistan in isolation, but the real problem was related to Pakistan. When the history books are written, they will say that the Musharraf Government, by speaking both ways, made our job much more difficult in Afghanistan.