Ms Stella Creasy
MP for Walthamstow · Labour (Co-op) · United Kingdom
“I thank the Foreign Secretary for his clear-sighted commitment not only to talk about a two-state solution, but to actually try to act to achieve it, as the only foundation of a safe Israel and a free Palestine.”
“Could he reassure the House that we will not acquiesce and bend to such pressure, and that the only action that could ever be acceptable to us to make us contemplate reversing this ban would be a halt on the E1 development and a permanent end to settler violence?”
“I start by paying tribute to the new Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), for all the work she did on the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee on these issues. I know that she will do a brilliant job in this role.”
“I do not really understand the technology, but I know that he does, and I understand and share his fear accordingly. We come here today to debate this Bill because we all know that trust is a bygone issue in our politics.”
“We would welcome her having that conversation, which might be more illuminating than whether she is concerned about Zach Goldmsith’s leaflets. I add my support to the amendments tabled by my hon.”
“From today, if we do not take a stand with this Bill to tackle the ways that money has infiltrated our politics, the risk is that they will think we are acting in the interests of our own back pockets.”
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“Again, the Minister makes a compelling case for the new clause, which would enable exactly such an information-gathering exercise. As he points out, this may be a complex area. I note, however, that the Bill deals with overseas companies and their inheritance tax positions. I fail to understand why Ministers accept that we need to address the use of commercial entities to avoid inheritance tax but do not accept that we need to address their use to avoid capital gains tax. Will he say a little about that?”
“I am afraid that I am not satisfied that the Minister has made a strong enough argument against his own argument that this is a complicated area in which we need information. The new clause would not commit the Government to closing the loophole; it would simply start the process of asking how much the loophole costs us and recognising that, where we create a category for one type of property and people can apply it to another, that may generate a loophole that is exploited to the detriment of the UK taxpayer. With that in mind, and in full support of the British businesses that are being penalised as a result of the Government’s failure to address that loophole, I wish to test the will of the Committee on this matter. Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.”
“Since the Brexit vote there has been a 96% drop in EU nurses registering to work here. With an NHS vacancy rate of 86,000 and rising, just how much bigger does this crisis have to get before the Government stop using these medics as bargaining chips and do something to make sure that there are nurses and doctors in our A&Es this winter?”
“Member for Hitchin and Harpenden would be interested in the £170 million that I believe Stevenage, near his constituency, will have to pay out to PFI companies. That money could be invested in the public infrastructure that we so desperately need. I am sure that all of us would agree that we expect these companies to pay their tax, as they signed up to in these contracts, yet it is clear that they do not. So if the Minister is not prepared to accept these incredibly reasonable amendments in this environment, I hope that he will set out precisely what he is going to do to get our tax money back. All of us and all of our constituents need and deserve nothing less.”
“I am sure that the Minister will tell me that this is a dreadful attack on the private sector and that we should not be saying that these companies are ripping the British public off and that they are legal loan sharks. However, I ask him: if he will not accept the amendments, will he commit to gathering the data about how much these companies have paid in tax, how much difference these have made to the value-for-money case for these businesses, and therefore how our communities will be able to pay back the sums involved? I am sure that the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar would love to have £169 million to invest in his local community; there are many worthy causes that I am sure he would support. I am sure that the hon.”
“New clause 1 asks us to do what, frankly, at the moment we do not do as a country—understand what the difference is between what we expected to get in from tax from these companies and what we will get in. It is always troubling to me that the Treasury does not seem to have a central database either of how much we were paying to take on these loans—particularly the rates of return, which we know are substantially higher than the rate of borrowing on the public sector—or of the taxation these companies are paying back versus what they were expected to pay back. New clause 1 would get to the heart of that matter and it sits alongside amendments 5 and 6 in trying to understand where these companies are making excessive profits from the public sector.”
“Therefore, how we might start to reclaim some of that excessive profit is a tricky question, but there is a strong case that, if a company has signed up in good faith to a particular rate of tax, surely that is the rate of tax that it should pay. That is written into the contract, it is part of the business case in the Green Book that is made on these sorts of deals. We as taxpayers have an expectation. Indeed, I would expect the Minister to have a series of sums reflecting the amount of money that would be paid back that he would write off against the large sums that I talked about. However, given that the corporation tax situation has moved from some of these companies nominally paying 28% to their paying 19% or less, that is clearly a substantial discount on what they were expected to pay.”
“New clause 1 goes to the heart of that question. Those companies signed up for public sector contracts, with particular rates of tax at the time they were finalised. Yet, as we know, corporation tax has varied substantially over the past decade. The debate is not about what the right level of corporation tax is; it is about a simple principle. If a company has signed up to pay a certain rate of tax, and the tax rate changes, it clearly benefits from that. We signed up to the deals for taxpayers, however, on the basis that they would pay a certain rate of tax. That tax rate will now change. New clause 1, again, asks just how much the companies are benefiting from the changes. I know that the Minister will tell me that there are various anti-discriminatory clauses in the PFI and indeed the PF2 contracts. I agree with him.”
“Indeed, the shareholders’ returns are 28% on their sales—more than double the 12% to 15% that was predicted in the business cases. Between 2000 and 2016 the total value of sales of shares in PFI companies was £17 billion. It is notable that in 2016 100% of equity transactions involving those companies were to offshore infrastructure funds in Jersey, Guernsey and Luxembourg. That is based on a sample of 334 projects. Those companies are going to get a substantial tax relief from the exemption. Yet they do not pay tax in the UK—or, certainly, there is a lot of evidence that they do not. It is an exemption that will enable them to continue to justify paying little or no tax; they will be able to write off the interest on their loans and projects against it. Yet taxpayers are not benefiting from the tax that they said they would pay.”
“Amendments 5 and 6 are intended to enable taxpayers to understand how much the companies will benefit from the exemption, and how much extra money they will be able to write off against their tax bill, thus paying little tax in the future. It matters very much to the companies, because most are heavily indebted to their shareholders. They use a model involving 80% to 90% senior debt; the rest is equity loans in terms of the products that they offer. PF2 will change that very little. The amount of debt that they carry, and therefore the amount of interest that they can trade off, which the measure will allow them to do, will be relevant to their ability to give returns to their shareholders. It is clear that those companies give their shareholders substantial returns, and will be able to fund that through such tax relief.”
“That is the starting point for amendments 5 and 6. The Bill will bring in a cap on the amount of relief that companies can claim against interest. However, there is a public sector exemption, for public sector infrastructure companies, and it will substantially benefit the companies in question. Having been a Member of this House for seven years, I have always assumed that when such a provision is introduced we will be able to debate its merits. I note that the restrictions in relation to the measure mean that we cannot stop it, or ask whether we are being wise and whether, given that we know the companies do not necessarily pay the tax it was assumed they would in the UK, we are getting their tax situation right. We cannot stop the measure, but we can certainly ask just how much the companies are going to benefit from it.”
“Just eight companies own or appear to have equity stakes in 92% of all the PFI contracts in the NHS. Innisfree manages Barts, which is my local hospital, and it has just 25 staff but stands to make £18 billion over the coming years. It might be thought, therefore, that companies of that size and stature would pay a substantial amount of tax—I see that the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar can predict where I am going with this; sadly, it does not appear to be the case. Indeed, many of the companies seem to report little or no tax in the UK. One of the simple reasons for that is that many of them are not registered in the UK. That is crucial because the provisions in the Bill to give those companies a relief on paying tax on the interest that they get from shareholder debt are predicated on the idea that they are UK companies.”
“The hospital is paying back £150 million a year in PFI charges, more than 50% of which is interest alone on the loan. The hospital downgraded the nurses’ post to try to save money, and so found that many nurses left. It therefore faced a higher agency bill. It is clear that PFI and the cost of those loans drives problems. It is also clear that those companies make what I would term excessive profits. That is where new clause 1 begins to try to offer us some answers. If the companies make excessive profits, that is not part of the contract that we signed with them. The National Audit Office has been incredibly critical of how taxation played a role in decisions about private finance companies, but that has not been realised. Also, not that many companies are involved, yet the tax returns are huge.”
“There is a role for private finance, but the question is, if we are getting a bad deal and if the companies are not honouring the obligations that we as taxpayers assigned to them, what can we do about it? Clearly, the PFI companies are making huge profit. Research from the Centre for Health and the Public Interest shows that over the next five years almost £1 billion in taxpayer funds will go to PFI companies in the form of pre-tax profits. That is 22% of the extra £4.5 billion given to the Department of Health alone. In my constituency I see at first hand the impact of this. Whipps Cross University Hospital is technically in the constituency next door, but serves my local community—it is part of Barts, which has the biggest PFI contract in the country: £1 billion-worth of build, £7 billion to be repaid.”
“That should trouble all of us because we are not getting the value for money that the deals were supposed to be. One of my concerns that I hope the Minister will address is that PF2 also pays little regard to the question of where the companies are situated and how much tax they pay. I have therefore tabled two amendments—in fact, three; one is about defining private finance companies—to understand what kind of deal we are getting from those companies and how we as taxpayers and those who represent taxpayers can get a better deal for the British public. For the avoidance of doubt, the debate is not about not using private finance. One day, I hope that we will have another debate—I am sure the Minister will look forward to it as much as he is looking forward to this one—about the alternatives to private finance.”
“In particular, the cost of the credit—the taxation that will come from the companies involved—is part of the decision to go with them. That is specifically part of the Green Book calculations. I am looking forward to the Minister telling us what has happened to those Green Book calculations, which were supposedly withdrawn in 2013 but I understand are still being used by Departments for private finance deals, to understand how tax plays a part in the decision to use private finance companies. The idea is that this form of credit may be more expensive but that the companies will repay us in taxation in the UK. That forms part of the decision to use them. The widespread evidence now is that those companies are not paying UK taxes, and that they are benefiting from changes in our tax regime over the past 20 or 30 years.”
“It is recognised that questions about the companies involved and the role of taxation in the decision to use PFI or PF2 to fund public infrastructure are questions for all of us, because we see in our constituencies the problems that are caused. I note that the constituency of the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar now has repayments of £169 million as a result of private finance. The constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle, the shadow Minister, has £423 million-worth of repayments required under private finance contracts. I would describe private finance as the hire purchase of the public sector—indeed the legal loan sharks of the public sector— because the companies offer credit to the public sector, but at a high cost.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Howarth. I am looking forward to this debate because it is something all of us across the House feel concerned about. I recognise that we are debating the Finance Bill. I reassure you that the amendments and the majority of what I will talk about today are about taxation and, in particular, the requirements of the legislation. I just want briefly to set out how that fits into the context of the concerns that are shared across the House about private finance and the cost to the public sector of borrowing to be able to build the infrastructure that we all know we need. To be clear, Governments of all colours have used private finance and continue to do so. The private finance initiative and private finance 2 schemes are little different from each other.”
“To be clear, the evidence of the problems with the PFI model extends to the not-for-profit model. I encourage the hon. Lady to read the work of Mark Hellowell of the University of Edinburgh. No political party can claim the moral high ground when it comes to private finance in this country.”
“The Minister says that he has met the stakeholders affected and is setting out how those companies might be impacted. Will he clarify which companies his officials have met to discuss these rules?”
“Be under no illusions, Mr Howarth; I intend very much to speak to the amendments at hand. The Minister argued, slightly bizarrely, that we already have information about whether the changes would affect PFI companies, because the Government have been able to assess that, yet they are rejecting our call to put that information in the public domain. The Minister said clearly that his officials have met PFI companies, and I asked him to clarify which companies. I hope that when he meets stakeholders he will meet my local hospital, which is dealing with the difficult consequences of PFI deals for its financial position. I would argue that officials who are essentially having to sack nurses to pay back PFI loans are equally stakeholders, so I would be interested to know whether he has met any of them.”
“I am determined that we can table legislation and show these companies that we are serious about recognising where they have generated excessive profits, where we can learn from the windfall tax of the previous Labour Government, to be able to bring them to the table to renegotiate the costs and get the money back for the British taxpayer so that we can properly invest in infrastructure. There is another debate to be had about the range of credit available to this country, but with this legislation and the tax breaks that this Government are giving to these companies, it is the taxpayer who will lose out, and we deserve to know by just how much.”
“All the amendments do is ask the Government to admit just how much that is, because all of us will have to recognise that that money, which the companies will be able to pay off against their loans, is money that we will have to find to bridge the gap in relation to the £300 billion that we have now committed to paying them. It is entirely in order and within the scope of this legislation, Mr Howarth, that we should ask for that information. For the avoidance of doubt, let me be very clear that I have absolutely no intention of giving these companies a penny more of taxpayers’ money. I do not wish to get into litigious battles with them about their tearing up their contracts and giving their lawyers an opportunity to claim even more money. Frankly, they have had more than enough from the British taxpayer.”
“Either way, we as taxpayers should know and should care, because that money should go towards the £300 billion. The new clause matters because we know that tax relief on interest paid to shareholders and other affiliates where the debt is held at arm’s length, which is what many of these companies do, has been widely abused, with shareholders injecting debt for the sole purpose of reducing their pre-tax profits and hence the company’s corporation tax. When the Minister gives the tax relief to these particular companies, which he admits are highly leveraged, he is giving them a bonanza.”
“Far be it from me to suggest that pride comes before a fall, but I think that he will find it as troubling as I do that we have not cracked how best to borrow, given that, as my hon. Friend the shadow Minister says, we are always a good bet. Frankly, we never let hospitals or schools go bust, so we always repay our debts. I also encourage my colleagues from north of the border in Scotland to do that, given that the problems also apply to the Scottish Futures Trust. This is about the use of private finance companies. Their tax take is absolutely part of the calculation. I note, too, that the Minister did not address at all new clause 1 and the levels of tax that the companies signed up to pay. Again, that is very troubling. Either the Minister is telling us that he knows and does not want to tell us, or he does not know and does not care.”
“That is why I am slightly troubled when the Minister says that tax treatment is part of the deal, but does not then want to give us those data. He says that his Department has looked at the matter and therefore the amendment is unnecessary. Will he therefore commit simply to publishing the information used to assess whether the exemption was in the public interest? It can be in the public interest only if it does not affect the amount of tax that we get back from the companies to go towards the £300 billion that we will have to pay out as a consequence of signing the contracts. I encourage the Minister to read the work from the National Audit Office on this issue, and specifically about the tax adjustments made in the contracts and whether that really did get value for money for us, and indeed its assessment of PF2.”
“Well, this is why how much tax these companies pay matters. I hate to tell the Minister how to do his job, but I have looked at the PFI and public sector comparator documents used to assess the value for money of the deals, and they explicitly talk about the levels of tax that the companies pay and, indeed, look at how those would be traded off against the cost of borrowing to the public sector. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton North asks about the £300 billion for which we are now indebted in repayments on the loans, as against the £55 billion of outlay. One reason why we took on the £300 billion was that we expected to get back in tax from the companies money to trade off against it. That was an explicit part of the value-for-money calculations done by the Departments. That is why the Green Book matters.”
“My hon. Friend is making a powerful point about the nature of these companies based overseas. Does she share my frustration that the Minister seems to think that does not matter because these clauses will only affect companies in the UK while not recognising that those companies have only nominal addresses in the United Kingdom, with their parent companies being based overseas? They are able to trade off the tax exemptions that the Bill will bring in. All of these PFI infrastructure companies may well claim to be UK-based for tax purposes to trade off these incomes, but actually they will be in Guernsey and Jersey, the Cayman Islands and the like. It is a con.”
“Having heard the Minister make a compelling case about the importance of ensuring that non-doms do not avoid paying tax, I look forward to the debate that we will have on new clause 2, which raises exactly the same issues about the treatment of commercial property as a way for non-doms to avoid residential property taxes. I look forward to the Minister supporting the new clause accordingly.”
“My hon. Friend is making a powerful case about the importance of trying to make these kind of rules work for the reality of how social investment often happens in our local communities. Does she agree with me that there is also a concern that by excluding asset-leasing, things like community pubs and community land trusts might also be excluded by the Government, probably unintentionally? Many of us know of small community groups that may want to take over pubs in our communities that would be excluded by this measure and unintentionally actioned against. Surely we should be acting on that.”
“As a Co-op, as well as Labour, MP, I am rather passionate about the idea of social investment. The Minister seems to be a little short-sighted about the idea of assets—after all, there are many people looking at running community pubs, for instance, which is a great example of a community asset that we might want to support. I would not see that as an example of a low-risk venture. Surely, if he accepts our amendment, we can look at some of those issues and make sure that he is not missing out on some of the things he would like to see investment in because of a concept of risk that is rather narrow, rather than recognising some of the boundaries of co-operative and social investment.”
“The right hon. Gentleman was waxing lyrical about corporation tax earlier. Of course, private finance initiatives—with companies that Members on both sides of the House have concerns about—have been beneficiaries of the Government’s changes to corporation tax. Those companies benefit from the lower corporation tax espoused by the right hon. Gentleman, even though they signed contracts with the Government to pay a higher rate of corporation tax that was part of the value-for-money assessment for those contracts. If he wants to get the money owed to the public sector, does he recognise that corporation tax may need to be amended in certain ways and with some companies to reflect that?”
“I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns about PFI. I would like to hear him talk about Private Finance 2, which is this Government’s proposal, including £23 billion of infrastructure investment that will be done under the same contracts, and which therefore faces the same challenges. Many Labour Members recognise the need to deal with PFI. I would hope to hear the right hon. Gentleman—a man who has been so proud of the role of corporation tax—deal with them equally rather than avoid the question. I am sure that his constituents would like that too.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way again. I am pleased to hear his concerns. I note his intention to increase public sector borrowing. I repeat that the Government are talking about £23 billion of infrastructure spending financed by this Bill. They are looking at PF2, which is “exactly the same” as PFI. They are not my words, but those of the National Audit Office. Will he join me in supporting amendments to the Bill to ensure that those companies pay their fair share of tax and the public sector gets the money it deserves?”
“I want to take up the right hon. Gentleman’s challenge. I am sure that he is proud that the previous Government, of which he was part, extended capital gains tax to residential property sales for non-domiciles, so will he join me in suggesting that we close the loophole on commercial property sales? There is one idea that could raise some money for investment in this country.”
“Those options will be gone for our companies when we leave the European Union unless we have alternative arrangements, so when the Government are making legislation through part 4 of the Bill on VAT, the lack of any correlation between the 14th directive and the importance of aligning those measures so that businesses have a seamless transition and can be confident that they can manage their VAT if they trade with other countries is very frightening.”
“Surely we should change that, and I hope that Members from all parties will listen and support changes to proposed new section 439. While Brexit is a Monty Python foot, for many of our small businesses VAT is their biggest compliance issue. Many of them trade in Europe and therefore have to reclaim VAT from other countries. The clock is ticking for us to leave the European Union and the lack of information in this legislation about how companies will manage VAT post-Brexit is alarming. In particular, articles 170 and 171 of the Council of Ministers’ 2006 directive—I hope that the Minister is writing this down—are matched by section 39 of the Value Added Tax Act 1994. That allows companies in Britain to seamlessly reclaim VAT through intra-EU legislation.”
“Indeed, the Bill gives an exemption to the very companies for the interest that they pay on shares. These companies signed deals with the public sector to pay a certain rate of corporation tax and to commit to paying UK taxes. Indeed, the value for money assessments of the deals was predicated on that, and I note that the Government have not updated the value for money deal to take account of this information from 2013, despite promising more than four years ago that they would. Schedule 10 to the Bill allows those companies to claim back the interest without the cap. How can we, as a society, give these companies more money through that investment relief as we see our public sector struggling and that money being leached out of it?”
“Let me give an example of the kind of money we are talking about. The company that owns University College Hospital in London has made pre-tax profits of £190 million out of the £735 million that we as taxpayers have paid it. That is enough money to build another hospital outright. This country now owes £300 billion in PFI debts on projects that should have cost £55 billion. Nobody in this House can be smug about PFI. When PF2 is as expensive and the preferred model for how the Government intend to invest in infrastructure, Members on both sides should be asking whether their communities can avoid such contracts. With eight companies owning 92% of the equity stakes in the hospital sector, there is certainly more work to be done to look into them.”
“We could do that in this Bill; we could certainly gather the information on the impact it would have. We could also look at the creditors we as a country owe. Members on both sides of the House will know of my interest in private finance initiatives and my recognition that Governments of all colours have used them and continue to use them. I note that Ministers have talked about the £23 billion they wish to invest in infrastructure and I am sad that the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) is not in the Chamber given the concern we share about whether private finance is the best way to do that. Of the additional money put into the NHS in the spending review, 22% will leach out to PFI companies as profit, and every constituency in this country has one of these deals.”
“They are borrowing to stay afloat because their wages have not risen, and they are borrowing for basics—to put food on their table, to keep a roof above their head, and to put petrol in their car to get to their jobs where they are not getting the pay rise that they deserve. Nothing in this Bill will tackle the squeeze on them from that debt or help the third of people who are now in debt because they are behind on credit card repayments. Clause 69 could introduce an FCA consultation, as despite the fact it is looking at credit card debt it is not considering the lessons that Ministers could learn from the cap on high-cost credit companies. When some people are paying £2.50 for every £1 they are borrowing in this way to stay afloat, it is time to extend the cap on high-cost credit and payday loans to credit card companies.”
“We could change business property relief, too often used to avoid inheritance tax, restricting it to small businesses and perhaps bringing in a cap of, say, £5 million, so that people do not use that to avoid taxation. We could deal with commercial real estate in cases where people are avoiding the 5% stamp duty by putting it into companies. Those are all things that could be put into clause 16 to raise money and to be fair about who is paying all the taxes that are avoided. Clause 69 talks about gathering information. We should be dealing with the information about the debts that our communities are based around. Forty-one per cent. of consumer debt is on credit cards. Hon. Members should talk to the people in their communities who are now called zombie debtors, paying the interest but not the capital on the money that they owe.”
“After all, there has been much talk about tackling the issues of non-doms. Indeed, the previous Chancellor changed the legislation to put capital gains tax on to residential property sales, but now there is a loophole around commercial property sales. Let me reassure Government Members that if they choose to follow our advice on this matter, it has been tackled in the United States, in Canada and in Australia. It is not crazy economics but sensible planning. We could apply the same rate of tax on carried interest to hedge fund managers. Why are they not paying the same rates of income tax as the cleaners who clean their offices—still, on this Government’s watch, seven years on?”
“Let us not be blind to these challenges, or to the inequality that is stubborn in our country. During this time, the people who benefit from many of the measures in such legislation have done rather well. In 2000, FTSE 100 chief executives were paid, on average, £1.4 million a year. Now, it is £4.5 million—a 220% increase. That is not market forces, but it shows a failure by us as a country to invest in people. Our productivity reveals that challenge, and the personal debt of our communities is paying for it. Ministers may ask what I would do to raise money—we have heard that question before—so let me give them some examples of things that we could put into this Bill. We could, for example, look at clause 16 on capital gains tax. Earlier I asked Government Members whether they might join me on this.”
“A typical French person need only work Monday to Thursday compared with a typical Brit, and it is the same for Germany, which has a 29% higher GDP per hour than the UK. We have seen a lost decade of productivity in this country, and our communities and businesses are paying, so that we are now in an extraordinary position where it is more expensive than ever before to employ somebody, despite the squeeze on wages. Stagflation is upon us. Inflation is up by 12% since 2010, but wages are down by 6%. It is little wonder that so many in our communities are borrowing. When we come to legislate on income tax or on the increasing numbers of people who are self-employed—the small business owners whom we all cherish in our communities—let us ask what we can do to help them.”
“Last year we borrowed £52 billion, and it is expected that this year we will borrow another £60 billion. So forgive me, but I will not take any lectures from Government Members about fiscal responsibility. If, in these seven years, you had been on a business board and the finance director had come to you every single year, as Conservative Chancellors have, asking for more money because yet again they have not got to grips with how they were spending it, you would sack them. That is certainly what I hope the British public will do. At the same time as we are borrowing more and failing to tackle the debt, our productivity is worse. I agree with the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who is sadly no longer in his seat, that this is a challenge we cannot ignore, whatever is going on in Europe.”
“In 2016, I read the note from the Office for Budget Responsibility that recognised that the Government had broken their own deficit rule. The hon. Member for Moray talked about being a referee. We are not even on yellow cards with this Government as regards economic competency—it is a straight red card, as far as I am concerned. Previous Chancellors have claimed time and again that they would get a grip on the public finances. Time and again, they have moved the goalposts. They changed the targets in 2014 to 2017 for eliminating the debt. In 2015, they changed the target to running a surplus in normal times by 2020-21. Then, in 2016, they changed the target again to reduce net borrowing to below 2%. Now, in the Tory manifesto, it has changed to 2026, and we are hearing that in the autumn Budget it could be changed to 2027.”
“Therefore, when we are looking at tax measures, we are looking at how we might help our constituents, and we have to ask first about those who will bear the brunt of a Government who do not do things to tackle the impact on their lives of rising inflation, stagnant wages, low productivity and, indeed, that Brexit Monty Python foot. Our country has an eye-watering £200 billion of personal debt. In every single legislative measure we make we must ask what we are doing to reduce that debt, because the consequences for so many are so great. My concern is that that debt is so high because the Government are balancing the books out of the pockets of our constituents. In 2010, I sat on the Opposition Benches—a new MP, like the hon. Member for Moray—and listened to a Chancellor promise that the deficit would be eliminated.”
“One of the Ministers is a former sparring partner of mine on the Public Accounts Committee, so he will know my personal commitment to value for money for the British public. However, we first need to understand the context in which the Finance Bill is proposed—how we got to this position, why the legislation represents so many missed opportunities and why my colleague from the Scottish National party, the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), was right to talk about people feeling the squeeze. We know that for many of our constituents there is too much month at the end of the money.”
“That is why this Finance Bill is so important and why I look forward to the many hours we will spend debating it in Committee. It is vital that we do not let Brexit deter us from dealing with some of the many problems we have in our country. The test we must therefore set for all proposed legislation in this House is, does it progress the needs of our communities and our country? I have to say that I find this Bill wanting in many different ways. The Government seem to have an economic plan based on personal debt, not UK productivity. This week, I heard the Chancellor desperate for ideas. I want to be a helpful contributor to this House and to our debates, so in my speech today I shall set out for Ministers—I hope they will listen to some of our ideas—some suggestions on how we could get this country on to a sound economic footing.”