It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price). I very much agree with the principles of her new clause 2 because, if this tonnage tax is to mean anything, it should be about more than just changing a flag; it should be about changing the culture, as she mentioned. I am proud to have in my constituency City of Glasgow College, which has trained a lot of seafarers. It is a big hub for maritime education worldwide. It would be a real boon to it if we could encourage that within the UK, as we are at the moment, and in an independent Scotland it will certainly be a beacon to the world as an island nation.
I rise to speak to the amendments and new clauses in my name and those of my colleagues. As we did in the Bill Committee, we want to highlight the points on which the Finance Bill falls short. Last year, we saw COP26—also in the great constituency of Glasgow Central, where the world came to Glasgow—and I feel that the Finance Bill could have been the opportunity to mark in the legislative process in this place how important the climate change agenda is. It should have run through this Finance Bill and this Budget as through a stick of rock, but unfortunately we are left with just a fluffy sweetie in the bottom of someone’s pocket. It is not enough.
We therefore feel that there should be an assessment of the effect of the Bill’s provisions on climate change and how they affect the UK Government’s net zero targets. In Scotland, we have more ambitious net zero
targets than the UK does. The Scottish Government are delivering lasting action to secure a net zero and climate-resilient future in a way that is fair and just for everyone. The SNP, in government in Scotland, is committed to a just transition to net zero emissions by 2045, with an ambitious interim target in 2030 of a 75% reduction—targets that form the heart of Scottish Government policies and actions.
An example of how that is already being delivered includes the groundbreaking and truly historic ScotWind announcement. We also already have the equivalent of almost 100% of gross electricity consumption generated from renewable sources in Scotland. We have commitments for the renewal of peatland, for the planting of trees and for the tackling of biodiversity loss, and we are leading the Edinburgh process to ensure that a whole-of-Government approach is adopted globally, while committing to protect 30%—and highly protect 10%—of our land for nature by 2030.
All those things are laudable policies, but we see no actions by the UK Government to incentivise them. Finance Bills are full of tax cuts, tax rises, incentives and different measures, and this Bill could have moved so much further to incentivise net zero through the measures introduced. The Bill does not go far enough. It is important to measure not only what is being done, but what could be done. Were the UK Government serious about their climate change commitments, they would rethink the illogical decision to deprioritise the carbon capture and storage facility in the north-east of Scotland. It was a real opportunity. The Government could have and should have gone further, but they short-changed Scotland yet again.
We support a great number of the new provisions in the Bill to do with economic crime. Members should have read already the excellent report released by the Treasury Committee, on which I sit, and which I came from earlier on this afternoon. The 11th report of the Committee, on economic Crime, is a very compelling and detailed read. It notes:
“Economic crime is a major and rapidly growing problem in the UK”,
and that while there has been a range of different initiatives by the UK Government, economic crime
“seems not to be a priority for law enforcement.”
Ministers came to the Committee and told us that they were “not happy” with the progress the Government have made in tackling economic crime, and I could not disagree with the Government on that point. There is certainly a lot more to be done.
While the economic crime levy is broadly welcome, it strikes me that a lot of taxes here are taxing people who are doing the right thing already, rather than chasing the people who are not. That really ought to be more the priority, because we have seen a Minister in the House of Lords resign because of the Government not doing enough and being frustrated at the lack of action by the Government to tackle fraud in the coronavirus loan schemes. There is an awful lot more that the Government could and should be doing on this.
We seek movement on the economic crime Bill. We want there to be an economic crime Bill because so much of the legislation on this issue is still held at Westminster. On the registration of companies, for example, I have spoken long and weary, and will continue to do
so, about the deficiencies in Companies House. The register is complete and utter guff, in that people can put anything in and it is not checked, because there is only an information gathering function, rather than any kind of checking, verification or anti-money laundering organisation at Companies House, and that needs to change. We very much want to see movement on the long overdue registration of overseas entities Bill, and we support all amendments to this Finance Bill to that end. I sat on the Joint Committee, with Members of the House of Lords, on the draft Registration of Overseas Entities Bill, and we took copious information from experts in the field. They said to us, “If you shut down this route, we know where people are going to go next”, and “If you do this, then this will happen.” We made recommendations to the Government, and the Government did not even at that time take up all the recommendations the Committee made.
Since that report was published and the Joint Committee sat, things have only got markedly worse. The criminals are getting away with more, and that has a real effect, because there are implications if those buying up huge swathes of London property cannot be traced. If that property, which should be housing people, is not available to them because it is being used as a means of money laundering, that should worry us all. There are of course implications more widely of the money coming in from Russian oligarchs, with the Government being left vulnerable in dealing with the wider crisis in Ukraine.
If we do not know who owns such property, how can we sanction them and follow them up? How can we take some action against those using the UK as a means of laundering their dirty lucre? We cannot, and it is really important that the UK Government act on this more urgently than they have before. As the hon. Member for Ealing North (James Murray) mentioned, some of this began in 2016. There were Bills in 2018, including the opportunities in the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill in 2018, and all such opportunities have been missed, and they are being missed yet again in the Finance Bill we are discussing this afternoon. I think there needs to be an awful lot more action taken, and an awful lot more quickly.
I have quoted other people talking about economic crime recently, but I want to mention Professor Sadiq Isah Radda, who, as the executive secretary of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption in Nigeria, told our Prime Minister that London was actually
“the most notorious safe haven for looted funds in the world today”.
That really should spur the Government here to action. This has been going on for far too long, and it absolutely must be tackled. It is a stain on the UK and, through things such as Scottish limited partnerships—the legislation those on is reserved to here; it has nothing to do with Scotland—it tarnishes Scotland with a dirty name by association.
Each Finance Bill makes our tax code more complex and, within that, there are more opportunities for people to seek loopholes and ways to reduce the tax that they should pay. For all of us, tax should be regarded not as some kind of burden, but as a duty and the price we pay for living in a civilised society. The more complicated the tax code, the more it can be exploited.
That complexity is hinted at somewhat in the corrective amendments that Ministers have tabled at this late stage. Although this Bill is so complicated, they come to us on Second Reading and in Committee and say, “Oh yes, all things are fine”, but today, at this late stage, we find that things are not quite right and have to be corrected. That makes it all the more worrying that the Government are bringing in this whole new proposal—the public interest business protection tax—without due notice. Again, there may be legitimate reasons for not giving due notice, but there is no consultation or evidence gathering that we get to see before we come here to vote on it today. That goes alongside my general complaint about Finance Bills, which is that their Bill Committees do not take evidence and they should, because that is really important. The public interest business protection tax may well be laudable, but we just do not know sufficiently whether it will be effective, what the evidence is or the Government’s full motivations for introducing it.
I am very grateful to George Crozier of the Chartered Institute of Taxation and the Association of Taxation Technicians, who wrote to me last night with some of his concerns about the proposal and the way that it has appeared at this late stage. Some of his questions about bringing in a new tax without due notice are about the mechanisms in the Bill. It is supposedly time-limited to 12 months, so theoretically it could then be extended in time and in scope by regulation. We do not know whether the Government intend to do that if Ofgem do not move as quickly as they want it to. Again, I accept that the proposal may be about getting Ofgem out of a hole. I am sure that is fine, if that is what the Government want to do, but does that not indicate that it is much easier to make tax changes than effective regulatory changes when there is a point of crisis?
I was very glad that, by coincidence, we on the Treasury Committee had Jim Harra of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in front of us this afternoon. I asked him what he felt the impact of this proposal would be, including whether it would have an operational impact. He said, “No, because we hope it raises no taxes whatsoever”. It is unusual for the head of HMRC to say that he hopes to raise no tax from a measure in a Finance Bill, but that is what he said.
As an anti-avoidance, preventive measure, sure, that is fine, but the way in which it has been introduced this afternoon is not very good. We have seen this very late, and we get all the documents, explanatory notes and all the other things that come with it. To introduce something such as this in a Finance Bill seems very suboptimal, as the Minister is wont to say.
Bringing in a policy such as this also misses the wider set of reforms that are needed to the energy system, which the Government are not taking forward with sufficient urgency. My Glasgow Central constituents and households across these islands are urgently crying out for practical support with their energy bills. They need to know that they can afford to put the heating on in the morning. They need to know whether they can afford to use the cooker to heat up their kids’ dinner. They need to know whether they can turn the lights on or whether they all have to huddle in the dark with candles. That is the stark reality for so many people, and it is part of what is missing from this Government’s action. I said at Treasury questions yesterday that it had been almost two months since the Chancellor came to
the House. Although he came yesterday, there was still no practical solution for such people; there is no practical solution in this Finance Bill.
While I am here, I want to ask the Minister about a query raised by the former Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, who pointed out a change on the HMRC website that says:
“Rates for Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance for the 2022 to 2023 tax year are provisional and may change between now and 6 April 2022”.
I asked HMRC officials why that change to the website was made and they did not know. I ask the Minister whether she knows why that change has been made. Are the Government riding to the rescue of those people, or is it just a change on a website? It would be useful for people to know the full implications.
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I do not aim to keep the House any longer on any of the provisions of this Finance Bill; we have had plenty of time to have our say in Committee. However, the mechanisms in the Bill fundamentally will not fix the cost of living crisis that people up and down these islands face. They will not fix the problem of the national insurance rise heading down the tracks—that tax on jobs that will make it more difficult for employers to take people on at a time when their prices are rising and make it more expensive for individuals to get by. They will not fix the £20-a-week cuts to universal credit and child tax credits, or the urgent energy crisis that people are facing and are so fearful of.
We do not have great confidence in this Finance Bill or its ability to fix the problems that our nations face today. We long for the day when we can have a Government closer to the people in Scotland that will be able to take those decisions in a far more effective and compassionate manner.