Economy and Jobs

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

May I extend personal thanks to you, Mr Speaker, for your kindness these last few days? I am particularly grateful that you have found time to accommodate me today.

May I pay huge tribute to the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), who has taken her place and made her maiden speech? Her passion will certainly do huge credit to her community, and I am sure that she will be a powerful voice in this House. Her predecessor, Byron Davies, was also a fantastic advocate for the beautiful area of Gower.

We took a huge strategic decision a year ago when we voted to leave the European Union. I know that not everybody in this place voted the same way—in fact, we know that the vote was extremely close. I argued that our sovereignty and influence would not be diminished by remaining, but the electorate chose a different way. I argued that the complexity of leaving would be great, but the people, in their wisdom, chose a different route. I also argued that the impact on our economy would likely be severe in the coming years, and I am delighted that the speedy actions of the Bank of England and the Chancellor have made sure that this year has gone significantly better than anybody hoped or predicted. The Government deserve credit for that.

In a bold move we have now, let us face it, jumped out of the aeroplane. I am not saying it is always a bad idea to jump out of aeroplanes—I can assure Members that there are sometimes some very good reasons to do so—but the essence of courage is not to take one bold decision but to reinforce it. When one has taken the first, one needs to make sure that the others follow. That is why I welcome this Queen’s Speech. I join my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) in saying that the Government are looking not to legislate too much but to legislate importantly. That is essential, because if we clog this place up with legislation, we will not have time to do the most important thing, which is governing— and, of course, talking, because as we start the incredibly complex negotiations with the European Union, we need to make sure that we are ready.

That is why I argue strongly that, having taken this first step, we need to do three things. The first is to be bold. We must be bold in ensuring that we create alliances across the continent of Europe and across the world, not just with friends and with central Governments but with individuals—mayors, MPs and people representing communities that will be affected by Brexit, in many ways as much as we will. We need to hit at the micro level, because at the macro level we represent 8% of European trade, but at the micro level we represent a hell of a lot more in towns in Sweden, in villages in France and in communities in Spain and Italy. We need to make sure that the representatives of those places are on our side, because Brexit is not just about Britain; it is about Europe, so they must be part of the conversation too.

The second thing we must do is be open. Some people will rightly chide the elements of the campaigns that were negative, harsh and at some points, let us face it, bordering on racism. I am delighted to say that most people on the campaigns, including those I opposed, argued for an open, welcoming Britain—a Britain that welcomes people like the parents of the hon. Member for Gower, who came here and made a contribution to our community, and not just ice cream. The past seven years of Conservative Government have seen businesses succeed from that openness, with 1,000 jobs a day and an amazing improvement in the economy. However, that improvement is not without effort or challenge, which is why we must be honest when we mention things such as the seasonal agricultural workers scheme as a solution. Yes, it is a bit of a solution, but in reality we need such a scheme for the NHS, for tourism, and for any number of different engineering and educational places, to ensure that we do not pay for Brexit with a failing economy. I know that many people who voted to leave will agree that such openness is necessary.

The third point is that we must be honest with our people that the complexity and uncertainty we are facing today are likely to continue for a little longer. We must be honest that in reality we cannot guarantee that at the end of 18 months we will get a deal, or that our negotiating partners will agree to the terms for which we are asking. We must be honest about that, because if we are not we cannot expect those who create jobs and make wealth in our society, and those who invest, employ and grow companies, to take decisions. I ask very much for those three things.

If I may, I will also ask for one more thing, which is that we look at Brexit as a reality, not an ideology. Too often, I have felt myself back in a theology lecture hall hearing about the way to heaven, to Jannah, or to the Elysian fields, but Brexit is not paradise. Brexit is made for the people and it is an opportunity for which they voted; it is not the people who are made for Brexit.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

Plausibility ran through every sentence in the Minister’s speech. Plausibility ran riot, but plausibility I do not accept.

Who would have thought that a general election would be called on the day we were in this Chamber, which is packed-out, for this scintillating debate? I do not think anyone would have thought that. Only a few weeks have passed since the Chancellor’s shambolic Budget U-turn, yet today the Prime Minister has announced a U-turn in relation to the general election. We all thought the lady was not for turning, as she has led us to believe on at least seven occasions, and of course we were wrong. [Interruption.] Apparently the Prime Minister did not want an election, and clearly in the last few days she has had some sort of damascene conversion—a damascene conversion to democracy, apparently. We had the Brexit referendum last year which gave authority to push on with Brexit, but we now find that the Prime Minister says she wants even more authority. I thought we had been getting the Brexit vote pushed on us time after time, but clearly that has not been enough. The Prime Minister might possibly be feeling slightly insecure; I really do not know, but we are where we are.

As the Finance Bill is a product of the Budget, it is only right that we start this debate by offering a reminder of its contents. Notwithstanding what the Minister has just said, the Budget continued the Government’s programme of tax cuts for multinational corporations and the super rich: by the end of 2021 they would have received £70 billion-worth of tax breaks, paid for by those on middle and low incomes and of course the self-employed. [Interruption.] That is a fact; it is clear from the Office for Budget Responsibility’s figures and the Government figures.

The Budget failed, however, to address adequately the social care crisis, and we are now seeing 900 adult social workers in England leaving the profession every day—and goodness knows how many GPs getting their pension statements are ready for moving on as well. It also did little to support small and medium-sized business owners, who are the lifeblood of the economy and increasingly feeling the pressure as the economy slows and inflation rises.

More importantly, the Budget demonstrates that this Government are willing to break their manifesto commitments at the drop of a hat. Despite the Chancellor’s bravado, the Government’s economic ineptitude after seven years is clear for all to see. His Government have presided over the slowest recovery since the 1920s, with growth and average earnings downgraded yet again. The Chief Secretary said in his Budget speech that the Government do not believe in “spending and promising” what they “cannot deliver” and agreed that that is an important barometer by which to judge the Government’s record. Let us look, therefore, at what the Government have promised over the past seven years and what they have actually delivered.

On coming to power, the Conservatives committed to balancing the books by 2015—a Conservative broken promise. They said that would be pushed back to 2019-20—another Conservative broken promise. Instead, by 2020 they plan to be borrowing an eye-watering £21.4 billion. Some 10 of the Government’s 14 Budget and autumn statements since 2010 have seen an increase in forecasted borrowing. This Government’s record on borrowing has been missed target after missed target, with constant upward revision. The Government pledged that debt as a percentage of GDP would start to fall in 2015; instead it continues to grow—another Conservative broken promise.

The Government’s record on growth has been one of epic failure. The OBR has now revised down economic growth for 2018 and for every remaining year of the Parliament, notwithstanding the comments made before about the OECD. The British people wait to see any benefits of growth, but the only growth they can expect to see is in the size of the Government’s Finance Bills; this one is a whopper, coming in at 762 pages, longer than any previous Finance Bill and one of the largest pieces of proposed legislation ever presented to this House. Those 762 pages are hardly riveting reading, I have to say. [Interruption.] I have read every single syllable of it, several times.

We would need to search long and hard through those hundreds of pages for anything that helps ordinary taxpayers. Instead it is replete with ever-more complex giveaways to corporations and the super-rich. But even those hundreds of pages are not enough to contain the Government’s giveaways to the rich. This mammoth Bill will be supplemented by an unprecedented number of statutory instruments, on the back of the Treasury’s already unheard of use of SIs. There were 90 in the last Session, and there have already been 88 in this one. We have heard about Henry VIII edicts, but this makes the Chancellor look like a committed parliamentarian.

The growth in the size of the legislation is matched only by the growth in the number of broken Conservative promises. Are this Government doing anything to deliver growth that benefits the average household? The Chancellor has consistently pledged action to tackle the UK’s productivity gap, but under this Government, this country’s productivity gap with the G7 has grown by a fifth, and we now have the largest gap since 1991. The Conservatives were in government at that time as well.

This Government have done little to tackle the scandal of chronic low pay and insecure work. Despite falling unemployment, workers are currently suffering their worst decade for pay in 70 years. Rising inflation is now outstripping wage growth and, according to the Resolution Foundation, real-terms pay is now falling for around 40% of the UK workforce. The Government’s promise of a £9 national living wage has been consistently revised downwards—first to £8.80 and now to £8.75—while rising inflation results in the cost of living going up for everyone. It is clear that when it comes to introducing a wage that working people can live on, only a Labour Government will deliver. This Finance Bill does little to address the crisis in living standards that many of our constituents are currently feeling. Nor does it offer support for small and medium-sized businesses, which are facing rising costs and a lack of investment due to the Government’s hard Brexit strategy—if you can call it a strategy.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making some interesting points, but I hope he will forgive me for saying that they seem to run contrary to the facts as I see them. I see businesses coming to Britain, I see investment moving to Britain, and I see opportunity starting in Britain. This all seems to run contrary to his argument, and I wonder whether he can explain why businesses see Britain as a land of opportunity and growth when he clearly does not do so.

[Peter Dowd]

If that is what the hon. Gentleman sees, I suggest that he needs to take off his rose-tinted spectacles.

We are all aware that the only Conservative idea for the shape of a post-Brexit economy is to turn our once pride-worthy economy into a bargain basement tax haven. That is what the Conservatives want. We have had seven years of slogans from this Government, but we still have no evidence that their negotiations on Europe amount to anything more than something written on the back of a fag packet. They are non-existent, and they have been non-existent for the two or three years since the announcement of the referendum, other than their preparation to sell us down the river to tax avoiders and dodgy dealers across the globe.

The Government make great claims on tackling tax avoidance in the Bill—we heard the Minister talk about this earlier—but it is a charter for tax avoiders, and no amount of smokescreens and bluffing can hide that fact. The Chancellor wants us to believe that measures to bring some non-doms into tax will really tackle the problem, but throughout the Bill we see measures to preserve the special status of non-doms and to privilege that group over domiciled taxpayers. Even the Government’s headline “deeming” measure is undermined because they have chosen to preserve the non-dom status of offshore trusts. How on earth is this going to get more taxes paid if non-doms are being forewarned that they can simply hide their money away in a trust and still keep it beyond the Revenue’s grasp? When is closing a loophole not closing a loophole? When it is hidden in a magic spreadsheet.

The Bill fails to introduce any meaningful measures to tackle tax avoidance and evasion, which even this Government admit are costing at least £36 billion a year. In short, this Finance Bill continues to push our country towards a low-tax and low-pay economy in which a small minority of the rich can get wealthier at the expense of everybody else.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

It is very kind of the hon. Gentleman to give way again. As he has brought up the NHS, I feel that it is only right for us to ask how Labour is doing on the NHS. We have to look to Wales to see how Labour is doing—not well, is the answer. The statistics from the NHS in Wales indicate that treatment is poorer, waiting lists are longer and people are less satisfied than they are in England or, indeed, in Scotland, where the SNP has, sadly, also delivered worse results.

[Peter Dowd]

I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to waiting lists in England, where an estimated 3.8 million people are waiting for treatment. I suggest that he should be more concerned about those 3.8 million people in England than he is about Wales.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Dowd]

A million people in employment are on zero-hours contracts. Millions of people are in insecure work. Of course I welcome employment, but it has to be secure, well-paid, reasonable, sensible employment that allows people to sustain their families. Under this Government, millions of people are unable to sustain an ordinary life with the wages they receive. That is the reality.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way. Does he understand that his pledge further to increase taxes runs directly contrary to his hope for better employment? Increasing taxes and increasing the burden of the state on companies around our country would lead to employment falling, not rising. Welfare cases would rise, not fall. It would be generally bad for our entire economy.

[Peter Dowd]

I do not know which speech the hon. Gentleman has been listening to, but I did not refer to raising taxes.

[Tom Tugendhat]

You did!

[Peter Dowd]

No, I did not. I was asked earlier how I would pay for the changes, and I indicated that I would start with corporations. In effect, corporations receive £70 billion in relief over a five-year to six-year period through banking levy reductions and so on. That is the starting point for us. As far as I am concerned, the Bill takes us no closer to knowing when the Conservatives will finally meet their target of closing the deficit. A series of failures has led them to borrow more than any other Government in history, and far more than every Labour Government combined. That is the fact of the matter.

Equitable Life Policyholders: Compensation

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We are dealing with people who are getting on in years. As he points out, sadly about 15 policyholders a day are dying before the situation has been resolved. I am strongly of the belief—we see this for a whole range of issues—that the longer people wait for justice, the harder it is to appreciate that justice has been served.

The core of this issue is that many people feel that, even after all these years, justice has not been done. That message has come across loud and clear from my constituents and those of other hon. Members who have spoken. These people worked all their lives only to find that their pension pot has failed to materialise in the manner they were promised and they genuinely believed would occur.

In practice, this means that people who spent decades working for a comfortable retirement have had it denied them. It means that they are downsizing or even re-mortgaging their homes in their old age just to make ends meet. That is clearly not what we want for people who have contributed throughout their lives.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is speaking extremely powerfully. He is absolutely right to focus on those who will not have the opportunity to recover the money they have lost unless the Government change their mind. Does he agree that a real message can be sent to young people and those of us who, like myself, are less young? We must show that saving and responsible action during a working life is rewarded. There is a danger that if we continue to get this wrong, the lesson we are providing is that people should not bother to save, because it is not worth it.

[Justin Madders]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point. I am sure that he has many years to go before he reaches retirement age, but that is something that is absolutely central to the debate, so I will expand on it a little more. We are entering an era in which retirement ages will increase and there will be more and more onus on people to take responsibility for their own retirement. If we have a system that people lack confidence in, it simply will not work. That is why compensation in these situations should be delivered in full.

One of my constituents told me:

“what I personally find sickening is that Her Majesty’s Government, no matter which party is in power, has utterly refused to act on the Ombudsman’s findings, which point to its own shortcomings.”

That point, which has been made by many Members, really does sum up where we are. I hope that the Minister will update us on what the Government are doing and focus on what good news those individuals who feel that the system has short-changed them can expect. That is important not just for them, but for the trust we should have in the system to secure our own futures. There is a need to restore confidence and build trust not just for the individuals affected by the scandal, but for everyone. As the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) said, there are uncomfortable parallels with the WASPI campaign. People’s confidence has been shattered by what they consider to be broken promises by the Government and the institutions in which we place our trust.

I agree that we all need to encourage people to plan for their retirement and to contribute to their pensions, but what kind of message does it send if the Government fail to properly regulate a provider and then fail to compensate people fully for their losses? It is not just trust in the finance sector that is at stake here; it is trust in politics itself. As has been said in previous debates as well as today, the 2010 Conservative manifesto included this comment, which links these issues in a neat way:

“We must not let the mis-selling of financial products put people off saving. We will implement the Ombudsman’s recommendation to make fair and transparent payments to Equitable Life policy holders, through an independent payment scheme, for their relative loss as a consequence of regulatory failure.”

I think that all Members agree that that is a worthy aim, but the question of whether the pledge has been met in full is a matter of some debate.

I am conscious of the time, because we do want to hear from the Minister. What has already been said today has really summed up the situation, but let me end by making what I think is a key point. A failure to correct the wrongs of the past will lead to a failure to secure confidence in the future. I do not believe it is an exaggeration to say that the erosion of confidence that this episode has engendered could, in fact, be of greater impact in the long run than the cost of full compensation. I hope that, even at this late stage, the Government will do the right thing, not only for the policyholders of Equitable Life, but to restore confidence in the entire system of savings and pensions.

The hon. Member for Harrow East spoke of a debt of honour, and I think that that is an excellent way of referring to our obligations. We need to act honourably, and to correct this injustice in full. Given the age of many of the policyholders involved, it is clear that the adage “Justice delayed is justice denied” was never more true than it is in this case.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

Nobody will see their rates bill go up by 600%, and the damping mechanisms make that clear. Of course rateable values may go up by very significant amounts. I shall have more to say about this next week.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I welcome the Chancellor’s promise to explain more about what he is going to do about business rates in the Budget next week. Does he recognise, however, that in taxing our towns and villages around the UK, especially the beautiful ones in west Kent, he is in danger of changing the culture that is at the heart of our community, not just raising money for the Exchequer?

[Mr Hammond]

Yes, I absolutely recognise my hon. Friend’s concern. It is for that reason, as well as for reasons connected to the economic sustainability of individual businesses, that we have said that we will look at how best to help those most seriously affected.

Leaving the EU: Financial Services

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

The clock is back. The excitement! The hare is running!

I should briefly declare an interest. I have at times worked in the financial services industry. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Like so many other hon. Members, I am here to talk about financial services outside the capital. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), who spoke very powerfully about that. In my constituency, I drive past the Fidelity asset management centre, which is based in Hildenborough and employs nearly 1,000 people. Financial services also support economies such as the legal economy, accountancy and various other innovators. As we have discovered from the success of start-ups in the United States, access to financial services is often a trigger for improvements in the tech sector.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I apologise for not being in the Chamber earlier because of Select Committee duties. Does my hon. Friend concede that it is important that we link access to financial services with access to other professional services including legal services, which are critical to building the infrastructure backing up the financial services sector?

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point and I will let it rest there.

Access to financial services is not just about the financial services industry but about all industries. Finance greases the wheels of the whole economy. It is important that we maintain the access we have in the UK. I therefore urge hon. Members to see Brexit not just as a threat, which sadly so many people do, but also as an opportunity. The United Kingdom used to be extremely good at taking the opportunity to innovate. Too often we have limited ourselves. Many people will look at the potential loss from the eurobond clearing and various other elements, but we should also look at the potential openings in financial technology, where we have already seen such innovations in the UK, to which I hope we agree we can add.

Services here in the UK are built on the foundation of skills that support the current industry and that will support future growth. Tomorrow’s growth will be based on those same skills, which come from a highly educated, highly literate and highly open population of people across our islands, whose languages, ethnicity and cultural links tie them around the world. They are able not only to do deals but to finance and enable entrepreneurs and businesses around the world. That is why I am less concerned than some about the potential closing off in markets in the European Union. We must remember that the EU itself depends on the City of London and that the depth of asset pools in the City gives the industries of Germany, Italy and France a reach they would not get from their own domestic markets. It gives them an opening to other financial sources around the world, including east Asia, that they would not get from Milan, the Paris Bourse or the Frankfurt exchange. I know that the Minister, who is in his place, will see this as a good deal for both parties, as all good deals should be, because the EU and Britain have a common interest.

Having that common interest requires us to remember who we are. It requires us to remember that we, here in the United Kingdom, are in so many ways more than the sum of our parts. We define ourselves not by the nations we come from, but by what we give together. I mean this very seriously. In so many countries in the world, people define themselves as a “something-something”. In the United States, for example, people often define themselves as a Polish-American or an Irish-American. I, who am the son of a French woman, the grandson of an Austrian man and an Irishwoman, do not define myself by that. I define myself as British, as so many people here do. It is that openness and inclusivity that has made Britain the home for so many and the centre for so much.

That is why, when we look at the financial industry, we must not look at it alone, or indeed just consider the legal and accountancy aspect. We should not even consider its enablement of other industries. We should consider the ethos it requires. That ethos is the ethos that we have promoted on these islands for a thousand years. It is one that defines people by the breadth of their experience, skill and knowledge, and not in a narrow sectarian definition of origins or passports. It is much greater than that.

I will leave it there and urge the Minister, as he takes the negotiations forward and sits around the Government table, to see that the financial services around our whole country, particularly in the great kingdom of Kent, are not just a simple route to enrichment, but an avenue to openness, growth and the support of what the UK has always been: a beacon to other nations, an island of safety and in many ways an example to all to enrich all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joanna Cherry]

That is not what I am actually talking about. I am talking about the way in which European Union law has enabled Scots lawyers, English lawyers and lawyers across these islands to practise across Europe not for their benefit but for the benefit of their clients. That is the point. It is also to the benefit, as earlier speakers pointed out, of the financial services sector and to the British economy in general. This is not naked self-interest on the part of the lawyers. Lawyers depend on their clients to make a living. If lawyers are not able to practise across Europe easily, they will not be able to provide such a good service to their clients. That does not just apply in the financial sector. It covers all sorts of areas, including, very importantly, child and family law.

In Scotland, the Law Society of Scotland will be urging the UK Government and the Scottish Government to argue in negotiations that the current arrangements for lawyers to be able to practise in the European Union should be retained. It would be very disappointing if the only route for lawyers to be able to practise in Europe in future would be to requalify in other EU jurisdictions and go through the cumbersome processes that we have done away with as one of the many benefits of being in the EU.

Clearly, the best way to protect the legal and financial services in my constituency and in the city of Edinburgh is to remain part of the single market. That would be the easiest way to give comfort to those sectors. Of course, we are not able to give any comfort to those sectors, because the Government “do not want to give a running commentary”. However, it appears, as the result of a legal decision today, that the Government may in due course be forced to come to this democratically elected Chamber and tell us a little bit more about what their plans are. It is worthy of comment that that is not as a result of European judges sitting in Brussels, Luxembourg or Strasbourg. It is the result of English judges sitting in London. As a Scots lawyer, I wish to pay tribute to those English judges for the decision they have reached.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Of course, a few judges sitting in Belfast came out with a slightly different decision, as the hon. and learned Lady may be aware.

[Joanna Cherry]

Ultimately, it will be for the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom to decide, and it includes, of course, two very senior Scottish judges. I believe that the Supreme Court has already allocated a few days in December. I read that the full Bench will sit, so the Scottish judges will be there as well. The Scottish Government have said that it is very likely that Scotland will intervene in that case, and I have every confidence that the Supreme Court will reach the right decision.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

On that Friday before last, there was outrage among disability groups—the Multiple Sclerosis Society, Parkinson’s UK and Disability Rights UK. Why? Because all of them, like many of us, had gone through that process of agreeing the criteria—at least coming to some compromise on what would constitute the criteria for access to this benefit. But the Chancellor moved the goalposts, those already agreed through consultation. Disabled people and their families have been sick with worry about the threats to their benefits.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has called into question the morality of the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, but would the hon. Gentleman please discuss with this House the morality that allows him to stand with bombers who murdered my friends in Northern Ireland and to question the integrity of the Chancellor? [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Before we proceed further, perhaps I can just say to the House, on my own account and on the basis of sound procedural advice, that we must stick to the matter of the Budget. [Interruption.] Order. I do not require any comeback or any comment, agreement or disagreement. Let us proceed in a seemly manner with the debate. That is in the House’s interest, and that is what the country has a right to expect.

DRAFT Grants to the Churches Conservation Trust ORDER 2016

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Monday 29th February 2016 General Committees

[Mr Evennett]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her question. Before I answer it, I congratulate her on her superb work as a Church Commissioner. She is always hard at work on such matters. I totally agree with her: we want to bring new life into our rural communities, and if we can use churches to do that, we should. I mentioned earlier the innovative champing initiative. In a rural area that might be just what is needed. I welcome my right hon. Friend’s comments. We would warmly welcome and encourage any developments that bring tourism, jobs and opportunities to rural areas.

In the past year the trust has saved for the nation three additional churches of exceptional merit, all of which are grade I listed. It will cost an average of £300,000 each to bring recent or upcoming acquisitions into a suitable condition so that they can be safely opened to the public and equipped for community use.

The trust’s primary objective, and the greatest call on its funds, is the conservation of its churches, particularly upon vesting, when buildings might have been out of use for a number of years. The trust has an excellent reputation for the quality of its conservation work. In 2015, it won the European Union prize for cultural heritage, the Europa Nostra award, in recognition of its role in promoting the architectural significance of historical places of worship and their essential function as centres of community life. The work and expense do not end there. With an estate of 347 buildings that could and should be serving communities, there is a rolling programme of repair needs, and new facilities are needed where consents can be granted.

In autumn 2014, the trust opened a new flagship urban project that saw the rescue and adaptation of All Souls church in Bolton for modern community use. With the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund, the £4 million project has conserved the grade II* listed church in a disadvantaged area of the north-west in which the majority of the residents are from an ethnic minority background and put it back into the hands of the community. Hi-tech internal pods provide space and amenities for the whole local community, small business and arts use, while the historical fabric has been beautifully restored. The building is now being run by a newly constituted community group, its facilities are fully booked and it will be self-sustaining in the long term.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

As the Minister mentioned the Heritage Lottery Fund, it would be remiss of me not to commend the work it does alongside the CCT. The fund has done some impressive work in Tonbridge and Malling and I am very much looking forward to announcing a new project it will be doing for us shortly.

[Mr Evennett]

I thank my hon. Friend for those comments, which I endorse.

This year, the CCT will complete the £6 million regeneration of the grade I St Mary-at-the-Quay in Ipswich. With HLF support and a partnership with Suffolk Mind, the church has been fully conserved and, once new facilities are complete, will open as a wellbeing centre in the autumn. The church will be available for a wide range of community uses and will provide a range of therapeutic services, as well as a new model for accessible mental health provision.

In the year to April 2015, 1.9 million people visited CCT churches—an increase of 5% on the previous year. The trust’s churches are run by a growing army of regular volunteers, to whom I offer my praise and thanks. Without them, events as diverse as fashion shows, concerts, flower festivals, and farmers’ markets would not be able to take place. The CCT is busy increasing the number of volunteer helpers, of whom there are currently around 1,800 throughout the country, that it relies on to open churches to the public and make them welcome. The CCT offers its volunteers support and new skills through networking and training. It has shown that it is excellent at partnership working and is at the forefront of saving buildings by looking beyond the traditional heritage solutions.

The CCT has also been applying its expertise in community solutions for churches that are still in use, when they would otherwise, if closed, be significant enough to come to the trust. Benington All Saints in Lincolnshire is one example of where a non-CCT, grade I church, which was in a sad state of repair, has been rescued by the community, with significant CCT help, and was this year endorsed by the award of a major Heritage Lottery Fund grant.

Church buildings can again be the centre for community activities, which is good news. I hope that the Committee shares my enthusiasm for the work of the trust and will approve the draft order.

Equitable Life

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I declare an interest: I invested in Equitable Life while a special adviser. I cheerfully put 17.5% of my salary into an Equitable Life scheme over four years, when I worked for Malcolm Rifkind, and then watched, after I was elected to this place, as the whole Equitable debacle developed over the next decade or so. But at least I was sharing the pain of many of my constituents—well north of 3,000, according to an estimate given to me. The situation that my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) laid out is exactly my experience. To start with, there was a substantial lobby, but that dwindled, although there remain some persistent people—I have their letters—who lost hundreds of thousands of pounds, and they come from all classes of annuitants and policyholders.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I welcome this debate. Does my hon. Friend agree that some people, like him and my father, did at least have time to make up the shortfall, but that others, including many of my constituents, simply did not have that time? Will he mention the fact that some people did not have the opportunity to recover their losses?

[Crispin Blunt]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely pertinent point.

On being returned in 2010, I found myself a member of the Government and obliged, at one level, to support their decision to limit the compensation to £1.5 billion. At the time, as the Prisons Minister, and the prisons budget being rather less than the total compensation required, I could understand, in the circumstances, why they decided to limit the overall compensation. I resolved, however, to speak in this debate and to re-examine the letters I sent out defending the Government’s position, and to re-evaluate my position to see whether it was reasonable.

I was much taken with the comments from the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), the former Chairman of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee. This is about confidence in the entire savings system. I can remember Labour’s first Budget in 1997 and the consequences—unreported from the Dispatch Box—of IR35, which saw £5 billion cheerfully lifted from investors in pension funds through a tax on dividends. If a £5 billion change can be made in a Budget, announced not in the House of Commons but by press release, we need to be aware that we are dealing with vast numbers when it comes to pension policy. I tell the Economic Secretary, who is replying to the debate, that I believe we are on the verge of a substantial—and, for me, very welcome—change in pension policy. As part of that, we need to acknowledge the point made by the hon. Member for West Bromwich West that this issue is about confidence in the system as well as fundamental fairness to our constituents.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who introduced the debate so effectively, on securing it. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) on setting up the all-party group in 2006-07 to reinforce the efforts that were already under way. He attempted to corral those efforts, make them more effective and secure from the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats an undertaking that the issue would be addressed in their manifestos leading into the 2010 election. It is important to highlight that as a simple issue of fairness we need to revisit the sum of £1.5 billion and decide whether or not we have discharged our duty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on securing this incredibly important debate. In common with Members on both sides of the House, I have received a considerable amount of correspondence on the issue and met people in my surgeries who have been affected by it.

Other Members have mentioned this, but I want to pay particular tribute to the Equitable Members Action Group, which has done extraordinary work to highlight the issue and to represent members who have suffered as a result of the unfairness. The group members are persistent, dogged and effective campaigners and lobbyists. I have had the pleasure of meeting the EMAG chairman who covers the whole of the south-west. He is an extraordinarily effective campaigner.

As many Members have said, this is an issue of fairness. Policyholders who were doing the right thing and saving for the future have found themselves in an awful position. We need to take account of that. They have our sympathy, without doubt. Whatever solution we find, however, we also have to keep it in mind that we need to be fair to taxpayers as a whole. Although £2.6 billion is a considerable amount of money that would plug the gap and ensure that those who lost out are compensated in full for their losses, it does, none the less, place a burden—it is a big ask—on the taxpayer and the Treasury to find it. We need to be aware of that.

I am glad that the Treasury has responded to a number of letters from me. There has been a considerable amount of correspondence back and forth. I am particularly happy to have received a letter from a Treasury Minister, which addresses the need and, indeed, the desire to keep the matter under review. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) says, time is short, so I urge the Treasury not only to keep the matter under review, but to bear it in mind that, sadly, the passage of time means that it needs to be addressed quickly. The letter, which I received in response to a letter I wrote on behalf of the chairman of EMAG in the south-west, makes it clear that the Treasury welcomes submissions and ideas for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor to include in the Budget statement. I am sure that the Treasury is taking account of all those submissions.

It is worth bearing in mind that the Chancellor has already announced—and I am sure he will announce more—extremely welcome changes and reforms to the pension system. I hope we can look at the issue as part of that wider package of reforms.

[Tom Tugendhat]

As the Treasury looks at that wider package, may I urge it to ensure that helping the EMAG pensioners is very much part of setting the conditions for other people to save? If people feel that their savings will go unrewarded, that undermines the tone that the Chancellor and the Economic Secretary have rightly set in the various pension arrangements they have made, helping people to realise that pensions are worthwhile and will help them in the future.

[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.

Tax Avoidance and Multinational Companies

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to take part in this extremely important debate. Clearly, a number of things have gone wrong in the case of Google, but I shall focus on one aspect: the tax treatment of intellectual property. This is a growing part of the economy and we need to get it right.

I draw a distinction between two extremes—on the one hand, a large pharmaceutical company that does a great deal of research and development and employs a large number of people to make a new drug, and, on the other, a company such as Starbucks, which registers its name in Luxembourg, seemingly purely as a tax avoidance device. Between those extremes there is a continuum and Google is somewhere in the middle. It has done some mathematics to make some algorithms, but it also has a brand that is extremely powerful. We need to tighten up on this.

What happens at present is that a name is registered in a low tax domain. That separate company charges a fee to this country, where the work is done. That wipes out the entire tax treatment. That is ridiculous. One thing that is wrong is that the company seems to be able to set the price itself. The Revenue is not auditing it and asking whether that is reasonable. Obviously, maintaining a brand involves some costs, but small costs—perhaps to repaint some signs or to train its marketing people. Those costs cannot be compared to the cost of research and development.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady understand that an awful lot of the cost could be in intellectual property and in ideas held by people overseas? That is not necessarily as cheap as a lick of paint, as she suggests.

[Helen Goodman]

I was trying to distinguish between real intellectual property and intellectual property that is purely branding. Take the example of the BBC, which sells television programmes. The BBC can get more money for its television programmes than a small television production company, partly because it is called the BBC, even though the actual costs of making the television programme are the same.

The question we have to ask ourselves is whether, because of the high value of the brand, the company should pay less tax. I submit that that is a fundamental mistake, because the brand is an asset. What the company is getting in that situation is economic rent. The fact that it has a valuable asset is not a reason for it to pay less tax. That is absurd. If a company invests in a piece of machinery and makes a claim against its capital allowance, over time the amount that it can claim against tax decreases as it moves from the point at which the investment was made. In cases where the brand is the asset, companies are claiming more over time as they are selling more. I think that is an area where we could very usefully tighten up.

Perhaps this area of tax would be better handled if we had a few more economists looking at the underlying economics and fewer accountants, who seem very comfortable with the way the system works but are not driven by the desire that the rest of us have to make sure that these people pay their fair share.

Electoral Law

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 General Committees

[John Penrose]

I shall try to respond briefly to the points that have been raised. In spite of the slightly different starting precepts of the various contributions, there is a fair amount of cross-party agreement in the Committee. We all cleave to and support pretty strongly the notion of subsidiarity—the principle that things should be done at the place closest to the citizen, whether at a local elected level, a regional elected level or at a national level. Only when something requires international co-operation should sovereignty be voluntarily pooled as part of that process.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I have a specific question: how many other nations does the Minister think will also veto this proposal?

[John Penrose]

It is a little early in the process to have a precise count. However, I am told that the mood music from other capitals around Europe is that they are equally concerned and that many other countries share our point of view on most if not all of these proposals. We do not need a huge degree of consensus, because, as we have all observed, there is a veto, but we are far from alone on this matter. I hope that the Committee is reassured by the fact that many other countries share the view that has been widely expressed, which is that there is no such thing currently as a European polity—a European demos.

As the hon. Member for Caerphilly pointed out, we are a diverse continent, with many different points of view and many different inheritances and traditions. We are hugely religiously diverse, ranging from Catholic and Orthodox Christians to many other more newly arrived religions as well. We are enormously different in our heritage and in our attitudes, so it would be perverse for us to assume that a one-size-fits-all solution is either desirable or likely to be effective. Neatness is an outcome that is usually beloved only of accountants and lawyers and very rarely something that politicians should go for as a starting point. I share his suspicion of something that comes out as a one-size-fits-all solution across Europe. It is very revealing that he, as a former Member of the European Parliament, feels so strongly in that respect.

The hon. Gentleman asked about finances. It is rather early in the process to have a precise, detailed accounting, but as we are politely but pretty firmly demurring from most of the contents of this proposal, we hope not to get to the point at which the finances become relevant, because we do not want this to happen in the first place, but should we get to that point in the process, of course we would have to add up which bits would cost money and which would not.

The hon. Gentleman also asked about the role of the Commission, which I think he had heard was analysing the results of previous elections. I am not familiar with that process or with any proposals; I do not think that any proposals have been issued from there at all so far. I guess the point I would make is this, and it goes back to the points underlying the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset. These proposals focus mainly on the plumbing of democracy—the dates on which the nomination papers need to be filled in, the way in which electoral registration is handled and the way in which elections are conducted. There will be a suspicion in this country and, I suspect, in many others that through changing the plumbing of European countries’ democracies, Brussels will be trying to advance the case of more Europe—the case of more Brussels.

I just gently suggest, both to everyone in the Committee and to the wider audience, that what is needed is not, in this case, changes to plumbing. What is needed is not plumbing, but poetry. People in Europe—certainly in this country and, I suspect, in many other countries—need to be persuaded of the benefits of Brussels. They need to be persuaded about why Brussels feels that it has something to add—the principle of added value—and to understand where it does not. At the moment, given the turnout in European parliamentary elections, it is clear that that poetry is lacking and that many people are not persuaded of the way in which Europe could, in its view, add value. Therefore, I suggest that focusing on the plumbing is not the answer. These proposals are not the solution. This will seem to many to be an attempt to achieve by stealth what cannot be achieved through honest, genuine democratic debate and persuasion.

If people were persuaded, if there were at some future point some kind of European demos, a shared European view on the benefits or demerits of more or less Europe, we would be able to have a much more straightforward, pan-European and honest democratic debate, but that is not where we are. It is not the direction of travel at the moment, because levels of trust in the European project have been falling more widely