Clive Lewis
MP for Norwich South · Labour · United Kingdom
“I do not know whether I am alone in this, but I am hearing the shadow Secretary of State glibly throw away 80 years of legislation on human rights—human rights that were forged in the aftermath of the Holocaust, of concentration camps, of the horrors of fascism.”
“I thank the right hon. Member for his speech. Maybe I can answer his question. Perhaps it is because of a nostalgia for an Israel that no longer exists—an Israel that made the desert bloom.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his excellent speech. There are lots of things about AI and its impact that we do not know. But one of the things that history teaches us is that if vast amounts of power and wealth are handed to a handful of individuals, corporations or even the Chinese Communist party—this is not just about corporati…”
“coli from raw sewage, and why thousands of our constituents are made sick every year. When public anger saw the Government ban bonuses, water execs raised their salaries and rebranded the payouts “retention payments” and that comes on top of the £78 billion to shareholders and £60 billion borrowed, our bills up 40%, and 30p in every pound…”
“I thank the Minister both for her response and for putting up with me—I am a bit of a broken record on this issue. We are all well aware that water is essential to life itself—to food, industry, nature, housing, energy, and now even the data centres powering the supposed AI revolution—and yet we have handed a monopoly where no competition…”
“South East Water is one of a number of privatised water companies that are responsible for selling off 35 reservoirs since 2017, and those companies have not built a single one since privatisation that is complete.”
The complete record
Every one of 606 lines we hold for Clive Lewis, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 11 of 13.
“The hon. Gentleman has made some interesting points. Earlier in the debate reference was made to a public good. A public good is defined as a service, such as healthcare or education, that we feel is so important to us as a society that we collectively provide it. The BBC is a public good; it has a value for our democracy, for our community cohesion and for society generally. Therefore, we should pay for it collectively and not leave people who are over 75, and who cannot afford to pay for it themselves because they have no means, to pay for it. We should provide it collectively, as a public good.”
“The left has always been a friend to the BBC, and should remain so, but securing a public and democratic media system with the BBC at its heart will require radical change.”
“The privately educated and Oxbridge graduates still dominate—just as they do the press, as a recent Sutton Trust report shows—but the BBC became an elitist organisation more in step with neoliberal Britain. I have no doubt that the Brexiteers want a BBC that is even more right wing, even more vulnerable to Government pressure and even less economically literate in its reporting—or, alternatively, no BBC at all. Meanwhile, some on the left are so disillusioned with the BBC that they have given up on it altogether. That is a mistake. There are serious problems with the BBC that cannot be ignored, but they can be resolved by making it genuinely independent of Governments—of the left and the right—and accountable not to a narrow elite but to its own staff and to the communities it should represent.”
“The organisation has always been a quasi-state broadcaster, orientated toward officialdom and particularly vulnerable to pressure from the Government of the day, as the last charter renewal process showed. The situation got much worse from the 1980s onwards, when the BBC became increasingly marketised and politicised. Independent reporting was curtailed as editorial and managerial authority was consolidated, funding was cut and services and programme making were contracted out. In short, the BBC’s public service ethos, which was always far too elitist anyway, was steadily eroded while the BBC was slowly privatised. None of that opened it up to a wider range of voices.”
“There is now a fairly substantive body of work examining the reporting of the 2008 financial crisis, including, for example, Mike Berry’s recent book. Berry shows that the economic debate, at that crucial time for our country, was skewed toward the right, and that even mainstream economic opinion was marginalised in favour of the disinformation emanating from the Conservative party and its allies in the press. I could go on, but the overall picture is clear: not only is BBC News overwhelmingly orientated towards the political and economic establishment but, in so far as it exhibits any political bias, it tends to be towards the right. The story behind that pattern of reporting is detailed in Tom Mills’s 2016 book on the BBC.”
“One of the key functions of the BBC should be to act as a bulwark against misinformation and the abuses of private power, but how can it perform that function if its news agenda is set by an often unscrupulous, partisan press, owned by a handful of billionaires, which has spent decades misinforming people on every important issue of the day? Again, we can look at the research: Cardiff University found that more than half of BBC News policy stories during the 2015 general election originated with the press, with The Daily Telegraph and The Times leading the pack, and the right, once again, dominating overall. Another crucial issue on which this has had an impact, alongside reporting on immigration and the EU, is austerity.”
“During the EU referendum, that “impartiality as balance” paradigm, which seems always to lean to the right, was scrupulously applied to the two sides of the referendum campaign, but with the right dominating both. Research by Loughborough University found that Conservative and UK Independence party representatives accounted for 74% of all party political appearances on television news. Cardiff University found an even higher level of prominence, with Conservatives and UKIP together accounting for almost 80% of politicians. The striking domination of our political debate by the right is exacerbated by the influence of right-wing newspapers.”
“Similarly, when it comes to debates about the BBC, there are the allegations of bias advanced by many of those same right-wing interests, and then there are the findings of independent academic research. What does the social scientific evidence tell us about BBC impartiality? One consistent finding is that the BBC allows the press and senior politicians to set the agenda for its reporting. In the BBC’s Bridcut report of 2007, it acknowledged that impartiality should mean representing a range of views in society, not just the perceived political centre ground or the balance of opinion in Westminster. However, research by Cardiff University found that, five years later, BBC News was still dominated by elite sources with—and this is key—an over-representation of Conservative and Eurosceptic views.”
“That is partly because the BBC produces a vast amount of content, featuring a range of people and opinions, meaning that everyone will at some point see something to complain about. Unfortunately, at times that has led representatives and defenders of the BBC to dismiss all criticism of its reporting. “If we are attacked from both sides,” the argument goes, “then we must be doing something right.” However, when faced with conflicting claims, we cannot just dismiss them all and assume that everything is fine; we must assess which are accurate—or which are more accurate. When it comes to climate change, there is a weight of evidence among the scientific community, and then there are the ideas put about by right-wing think tanks, newspapers and politicians.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Cheryl. As has already been mentioned, I need to declare an interest; unlike the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell), I rejected the advice of my father, who said I had a great face for radio, and decided to become a BBC TV reporter. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on securing this crucial debate. What could be more crucial in this period of political instability than the question of BBC bias, which is what I will address in my speech? I think hon. Members will be pleased to hear that I will not mention “Panorama”. I do not need to. This is a target-rich environment. When it comes to BBC bias, or impartiality and the BBC, we often find, as in this debate, that there are a lot of contradictory claims and counter-claims.”
“The hon. Lady is giving a fantastic speech. She has mentioned the views of four different people on the limits of using GDP, what it is, what good it does in our economy, and what good growth does. Some 51 years ago, Robert F. Kennedy—hardly an economic radical; he was a Democrat—gave a speech on the limits of GDP. I add that because he is someone that I and many people across the political divide can respect. He was well ahead of the curve on this issue.”
“The Minister spoke about the Green Book, which is still—despite the changes—essentially a neoclassical economic model based on equilibrium economics. Most scientists and economists on the fringes of economic thinking would tell us that we are moving into a disequilibrium position in our economic model. The two are completely incompatible and the Green Book is not fit for purpose as we enter a climate crisis in which many of its assumptions are no longer credible.”
“With all due respect, only this Government could dress up a 94% collapse in domestic solar installations as a success. They now plan to slap 20% VAT on solar and storage and to replace the certainty of the feed-in tariff export payments with a lick-and-a-promise scheme with no certain payment rates and no guaranteed periods. Why does the Minister not just admit that, as ever, the Tories always side with big and dirty rather than with clean and local?”
“Who determines what is a fair price—our collective democracies, which enable these companies to exist, or a handful of corporate executives whose primary motivation is to maximise profit? Who determines that price? At the moment, I do not think that the balance is correct. Finally, has the Minister considered the use of compulsory licensing, allowing a UK company or other company to make cheap generic copies? That is allowed under World Trade Organisation rules; the definition of an emergency is up to the host country that needs to use it, and from initial research it is something that could be used and has been used before. I know that is not something she would want to do initially, but ultimately, would she consider it if Vertex refuses to move? I will leave hon. Members with a quote from Ethan, who had his 11th birthday on 5 June.”
“The reality is that we have a socialised—dare I say socialist—healthcare system, which treats people’s health on a collective basis, based not on their ability to pay, but on their need. That is quite revolutionary. However, that healthcare system operates in an international pharmaceutical industry based on rapacious profiteering. How do we square that circle? I suggest the answer lies at the European level, not the US level. Ultimately, the EU’s being one of the biggest healthcare markets in the world gives the European Union immense clout in imposing its will on international pharmaceutical companies; that is one of the reasons I want to stay in it. My other question is a philosophical one: what is a fair price for years of investment and research?”
“The unforgivable actions of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which admittedly does important work in research and development relating to the treatment of cystic fibrosis, mean that it continues to put patients’ lives at risk as it seeks to extract the highest possible price from our NHS. When Alexander Fleming created penicillin, he had it publicly patented so that it was accessible to all, and it became a revolution in modern medicine. Should we not be legislating for pharmaceutical companies to do something similar and put patients, not profits, at the centre of their development? I have a number of questions for the Minister. How do we approach this matter systematically, so that we are not back here time and time again, as we have heard?”
“In 2017, half of all people who died with cystic fibrosis were under the age of 31, as has already been stated. It is a statistic that his mum Rachael is only too aware of as she spends the majority of her time caring for her son. We know that Vertex drugs could change the lives of cystic fibrosis sufferers and their families, since they fix the underlying genetic mutations that cause the condition, but, as we have heard today, Vertex is more interested in 45% investor returns than in 20%. That seems to be its priority. Although the chronic underfunding of the NHS is a contributing factor in this story, it is by no means the only reason why a deal has not been reached.”
“To put this in context, because his lung function has declined to just 54%, in the past four weeks alone Ethan has coped with two separate full-day hospital admissions, 14 days of intravenous antibiotics, which are administered by his mum twice a day at home and take 45 minutes each time, and two sessions with a psychologist to help him to overcome needle phobia brought about by years of blood tests. All that is on top of his regular daily cocktail of medication and a physio session of a minimum of 22 minutes every day. Yet none of those treatments are designed to cure Ethan. They are simply designed to treat his symptoms—symptoms that are expected to get worse the older he gets. They attempt to slow down the irreversible lung damage that will slowly cause him to suffocate. He knows that.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I add my thanks to the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) for securing this debate. I will focus on two key things: asking the Minister a series of questions on potential remedies for this situation, but also using my time to speak about Rachael and Ethan, a mother and child in my constituency who are forced to live with the realities of cystic fibrosis every day, and the adverse impact that the actions of the company Vertex are having on their lives. Ethan is 11 years old. He has a big smile and loves pizza, trampolining and spending time with his friends, but sadly that is where the similarity to other 11-year-olds ends, since every day his life and that of his mum Rachael are dominated by the strain of dealing with cystic fibrosis.”
“I thank the Minister for giving way. I raised the issue of compulsory licensing, which the Government have within their armoury. Of course it would be a measure of last resort, but given that we are dealing with people’s lives, the quality of their lives and a company that is quite simply being intransigent, and greedy, surely that option should be considered. That would send a message to those pharmaceutical companies—that global pharma industry—that if they are going to be greedy and put people’s lives at risk, despite being made fair offers, this option could be used by our Government.”
“It is really good to hear hon. Members talk about climate change and greenhouse gases, but there are in fact nine planetary boundaries, of which greenhouse gases are one. I wonder whether people understand that it is entirely possible that we save the planet from climate change yet kill ourselves through eight of the other planetary boundaries, two of which we are in the red for. Is it not the case that financial markets, pension schemes and so on actually need to see their remit as wider than just greenhouse gases, also covering a range of other areas, including biodiversity and carbon?”
“Navigating global society through the perils of the 21st century will require two key things: global co-operation, and human ingenuity and passion on a scale hitherto unseen in our entire history. President Kennedy summed it up in his moon-shot speech of 1962. He did not ask what it would cost; he asked instead what it would take to succeed. He said: “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win”.”
“They arrived at the climate crisis debate like gatecrashers at a premature funeral, smashing through the window in a shower of glass to announce to a hushed congregation that the patient was still alive. Their message to this place is simple: “The time for incrementalism has passed. Act now, change now, or be swept away by those who will.” This motion offers us a chance to fundamentally restructure our economy to deliver good, secure, well-paid jobs as we mobilise to decarbonise our economy on a grand scale. It offers us a chance to reinvigorate and strengthen our democracy, to massively reduce social and economic inequalities, and to protect and restore vital threatened habitats and carbon sinks. We must onshore the global financial system, bringing it back under democratic control. That brings me to my final point.”
“Global civilisation as we know it will be gone by the end of the century unless we act. What has been the response from the Conservatives? I will try not to be too partisan. We have seen the green light for fracking, fossil fuel subsidies boosted by billions, onshore wind scrapped, solar support axed, the green homes scheme eviscerated, zero-carbon homes abandoned, the green bank sold off, the Swansea tidal lagoon stuffed, and Heathrow approved. If Tory environmental policy in 2010 could be summed-up as “hug a husky”, the 2019 policy looks more like “Shoot it, skin it, and boil it down to its bones.” It was against that background—with the science of the climate crisis over here and Government policy over there—that Greta Thunberg, the youth strikers and Extinction Rebellion appeared.”
“So often as politicians we talk about what is politically possible, but with the climate crisis we need to move from the art of the politically possible to the science of what is necessary. When you are drowning, you do not ask yourself, “Ooh, what is politically possible?”; you do whatever it takes to survive. When the banks crashed in 2008, the political consensus in this place was to save them by any means necessary. According to the National Audit Office, the cost was £1.2 trillion, which meant 10 years of austerity, public service cuts and vast human suffering. But now, instead of a banking collapse, we face a climate and ecological collapse. We face catastrophes of biblical proportions: droughts, pestilence, famine, floods, wildfires, mass migration, political instability, war and terrorism.”
“I welcome the Minister’s comments about listening to and acting on the science. If that is the case, the Committee on Climate Change has questioned whether support for oil and gas may become incompatible with the Government’s long-term climate change objectives. In the spirit of not disappearing down a rabbit hole of conflict, perhaps we can agree, on both sides of the House, on whether there is a sustainable way to reduce fossil fuel extraction to move from maximum economic recovery to sustainable economic recovery.”
“Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to one of this country’s most successful publicly funded renewable energy programmes ever? I am of course talking about the last Labour Government’s export tariff, the feed-in tariff scheme, the biggest single democratisation of energy that the UK has ever seen, cutting 700,000 tonnes of carbon. This month, however, in an act of supreme national and international self-harm, the Government killed it off—kaput, finito, game over. In the real world, how can anyone, anywhere believe that this Government take their climate change obligations seriously?”
“At a recent lobby of Parliament by Save the Children and Oxfam, my constituents were quite clear that the arms sales to Saudi Arabia need to end if the famine in Yemen is to end. Does the Minister share their sentiments?”
“I praise my hon. Friend to the rafters for securing this debate, because it is quite clear to many people that it would be entirely possible for this country and this planet to save ourselves from climate change, yet destroy ourselves in myriad other ways that breach the other eight planetary boundaries. Picking up on that, does he agree that it is the world’s poorest—both internationally and domestically—who will be disproportionately impacted by the systemic climate shocks that these breakdowns in biodiversity will have on our economies?”
“14. What steps he plans to take to support small and medium-sized renewable power generators after the scheduled closure of the feed-in tariffs scheme.”
“From listening to the Government’s rhetoric on climate change, we could be forgiven for thinking that the school strikers are coming out in support of them; they are coming out against them, and if we cut through the greenwash we see the feed-in tariff axed, the solar energy sector decimated, and now the exports payments framework about to be ended and no replacement put in place. So let me ask this: will the Government ever announce a cut to the lavish support they dole out to their friends in the fossil fuel industry?”
“I am sorry, but when it comes to funding the new technologies that really matter, this Government, and especially the Treasury, have been abysmal. The climate crisis is upon us now, but this Government’s reaction has been to axe carbon capture and storage funding; to cancel the Swansea lagoon, despite the fact that we were poised to be a world leader in tidal technology; and to slap innovative emerging storage technologies with business rates. At the same time, they are throwing billions into new tax breaks for oil and gas. Does the Chancellor agree that this Government are not facing the climate emergency but creating it?”
“Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the IPCC report on a 1.5°C target said that we need to make the necessary reductions to our greenhouse emissions by 2030? Unfortunately, the Government are telling the Committee on Climate Change that they cannot look at that reduction until 2050. That seems to me to be a little bit late in the day.”
“They have slashed solar subsidies, blocked onshore wind and prevented a closed-loop reuse and recycling sector. They have supported fracking, privatised the Green Investment Bank and supported Heathrow expansion. They have blocked mandatory climate risk-related reporting for the finance sector, they have never issued a green bond, and they have axed their own flagship energy efficiency policy. Those young people were not just calling for incremental change. They were calling not for climate change, but for system change.”
“There does not need to be a trade-off between the environment and jobs, or between economic and social justice and the environment. How did we respond to climate change and the sustainability issues facing us in the UK? We decided to expand Heathrow—fantastic! I think the Heathrow issue is probably one of the most decisive splits we will see in politics in the coming years. It is the biggest single source of emissions in the UK, and the expansion has now given the green light to 300 million tonnes more of carbon being poured into our atmosphere. No Government who aspire to tackle the climate crisis and to keep temperature rises below 1.5°C would ever allow Heathrow to happen. Let us quickly run through some of the failings of this Government.”
“If we look at the gilets jaunes movement in France, we see that it happened because of the technocratic centrist fixes the Macron Government were trying to make. There were €40 billion of carbon taxes, yet only a small fraction of that was invested in public transport or for the poorest, and it fell disproportionately on those least able to pay, who are actually those consuming the least carbon. As a result, there was not one single tax on French aviation fuel. That is what caused the frustration and anger in France—inequality and a lack of justice at the heart of that economic policy. This is why the green new deal mentioned by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) is capturing the public imagination.”
“We know that the wealthiest 10% are responsible for more than half of all greenhouse gas emissions on our planet and in our country, and yet we also know that the poorest 50% are responsible for just 10% of greenhouse gas emissions. This is not about a false choice between consumption for the poorest and the environment. The poor cannot cut what they are not consuming. We need to see a contraction and a convergence. The poorest in the world and in this country will need to consume more, and the wealthiest—not just individuals, but corporations—will need to do more of their fair share. That is a challenge to the economic orthodoxy that those on the Conservative Benches champion. That is the challenge before us, and we can see what happens when we do not ensure that social justice is at the heart of the changes we make.”
“Labour understands the scale of the challenge before us and the national and international purpose that we must set ourselves. It can be nothing less than a radical transformation of the way our economy works. That is a problem for people who are tied to an economic system, as the Conservative party is—it is a conservative party, so it wants to keep the economic model we have. Some Labour Members understand that if we want to make these radical changes in the timeframe we are talking about, we need to radically change how the economy works and who it works for. That will be a challenge to some Conservative Members, and I will tell the House why.”
“I am going to be slightly partisan in what I say, and not for the sake of it, but more as a polemic. I genuinely feel that those young people called their school strikes because they think this place is sleepwalking off a cliff edge, not in terms of Brexit—although we may well be doing that—but ecologically. I am happy for Conservative Members to challenge me at any point. I am speaking from the Back Benches, but I was appointed by the shadow Chancellor as the first ever shadow Minister for sustainable economics. The next Labour Government understand that we can no longer allow the Treasury’s short-termism and obsession with neo-classical economic orthodoxy to block the bold and radical fiscal, monetary and regulatory changes we need to deal with the climate crisis.”
“As we look around the world today, with the rise of the hard right in the form of Trump, Bolsonaro, Salvini and too many others, we know that tackling the scourge of growing antisemitism, wherever it is found, has rarely been so urgent.”
“As a black man who has experienced racism all my life, I see the situation very differently: to my mind, closing our eyes to racism against one group only emboldens racism against us all. The only way to combat racism is to show no tolerance to any of it, ever. In that spirit, a few of us have recently formed the new Black, Asian and Jewish Alliance, which we call BAJA. Through our existence, we aim to highlight diversity within our groups as well as between us. Based on the principle of mutual solidarity, we recognise that what we hold in common is considerable, but we also try to listen and learn from each other about our distinctive experiences. Above all, we know that racism can be defeated only if we stay united and refuse to be divided by any of the current tensions that swirl around us.”
“Today, similar projections, conscious or otherwise, can be heard in the repeated association of Jewish people with shadowy conspiracies, often associated with Israel—especially when complaints of antisemitism are made, even when the evidence of it is before our eyes. And it is before our eyes. The same HOPE not hate report affirms the seriousness of modern antisemitism, online and off, including the very real problem of left-wing antisemitism. Sometimes I hear it said that antisemitism should not be focused on at all in modern Britain as that takes space away from highlighting racism against other groups—as though there is a finite space for this discussion that cannot expand. That can unwittingly reproduce a stereotype of Jews as somehow powerful and privileged even when they are calling out the racism that they experience.”
“In a frank self-admission, George Orwell, writing in 1945, suggested that the starting point for any investigation of antisemitism should be not just condemning others but looking inside ourselves. This is good advice, even today, that I know some people in my party seem to find quite difficult to follow. The fact that the left is opposed to racism in principle does not mean that it is immune to being, consciously or unconsciously, racist or antisemitic in practice. It can be all the more difficult for us to face up to this fact given the extent of unacknowledged racism in other parties, which goes deep. In the 1930s, assertions of hidden power and wealth were routinely hurled at hundreds of thousands of poor Jewish immigrants living in the slums of London and Manchester.”
“As has been stated, it is clear that most of the well-documented rise in antisemitic incidents here and in many other parts of Europe is driven by the alt-right, the far right and the fascist right. They are emboldened by the xenophobic rhetoric of our age to form a sickening new far-right internationalism, with sometimes devastating consequences for all racial minorities. Did I believe that in 2019 I would wake up to the news that “No blacks” signs had been daubed on the front door of the home of a 10-year-old boy who had just started a new school, or that Islam would be seen as a threat to the British way of life by one third of people in the UK, according to a poll commissioned by the anti-fascist group, HOPE not hate? I know that racism can take different forms and all of us can hold unconscious biases.”
“For me, this debate is personal. I am not Jewish, but as a black man I know what it feels like to experience racism of both the individual and the institutional kind. I understand how a racist insinuation is not just offensive, but isolating, making you suddenly feel vulnerable and excluded. I know how the repetition of a well-worn stereotype or trope, followed by the inevitable denial that it is racist, can be undermining and exhausting. I know, because I have seen it and felt it, as well as read about it, that hostility to Jewish people and age-old antisemitic stereotypes are becoming more common. Many people speaking in this debate will have experienced antisemitism at first hand, as we have already heard in some of the distressing testimonies today.”
“None the less, as the Opposition have noted a number of times, it would be advantageous to have a more comprehensive and transparent process in place.”
“The Government’s policy paper states: “Following stakeholder feedback the government has decided to increase the individual donations limit for GASDS to £30. A consultation is not needed to make this small change.” However, an increase of 50% from £20 to £30 is very significant. What is the evidence base for that figure? What estimate have the Government made of the effect on how and by whom donations are made? The policy paper further states: “This measure will be monitored through information provided in correspondence and regular feedback from the charity sector.” The draft order is exempt from the requirement to provide a review provision in accordance with section 28(3)(c) of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015, as it relates to “the giving of grants…by…a public authority”.”
“Will the Government publish any information that they have on it? Will the Minister also update us on the Treasury’s monitoring of any potential loopholes? The explanatory memorandum to the draft order notes that “20 per cent of organisations currently participating in the GASDS are already claiming at, or close to, the overall limit of £8,000 per charity (or community building).” I note that charities can claim up to £8,000 per building; do the Government have data on how many organisations are claiming for more than one building? How much of the gift aid small donations scheme benefit has accrued to large organisations claiming for more than one building? Are there any plans to increase or decrease the £8,000 limit after the donation size has been increased?”
“During the passage of the 2017 Act, the Opposition tabled a new clause that would have required a review of the prevention of fraud and abuse in the small donations scheme. Such a review would need to address the number of penalties imposed under the 2012 Act and the circumstances giving rise to the imposition of such penalties. It should also include HMRC’s assessment of the extent to which charities have been established or have operated for the primary purpose of securing benefits from the small donations scheme, and of the evidence available on the role of the gift aid matching rule in preventing fraud and abuse. Will the Minister update us on whether the Government will consider such a review? Has there been any evidence of the gift aid small donations scheme being used for fraud or tax evasion?”
“The Small Charitable Donations and Childcare Payments Act 2017 then made several changes to gift aid small donations to simplify and increase access to the scheme, particularly for smaller and newer charities, including allowing small donations covered by the scheme to be made by contactless payment from April 2017. Although the Opposition welcomed that streamlining to create legislative clarity and coherence, we have continued to emphasise the need for robust Government monitoring of the gift aid small donations scheme, especially in relation to its use for fraud or tax evasion. Will the Government publish any information that they have on the matter? Unfortunately, there have been cases of charities being used as vehicles for tax avoidance and fraud. It is incumbent on us to make it as hard as possible to abuse charitable status.”