Below is the text of the speech made by Joan Ryan in the House of Commons on 13 April 2016.
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require Schedule 8 disruption payments between Network Rail and train operating companies to be allocated to specified projects aimed at increasing the quality, value for money or reliability of passengers’ experience of railway travel and associated services; and for connected purposes.
I am grateful for the opportunity to present the Bill to the House today, the purposes of which are threefold. First, the Bill seeks to improve the services on offer to rail commuters across the country. Secondly, it aims to ensure that millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is directed towards benefiting passengers, rather than lining the pockets of train operating companies. Thirdly, the Bill seeks to shine a light on a part of the rail industry that is bewildering in its complexity, and to open it up to greater public scrutiny and accountability. The Bill would create a responsibility for the regulator to guarantee that any net income made by train operators from schedule 8 payments in totality is used to fund overall passenger benefits on the network. It is important to note that the Bill is not intended to stop or replace current compensation arrangements between train operators and passengers, which reimburse passengers for delays.
Rail commuters in Enfield and throughout the country are getting a raw deal. They are paying sky-high ticket prices for a rock-bottom service. They are currently having to endure the worst performance in terms of train punctuality for almost a decade. In 2014-15, 47 million passenger journeys on the railways were either cancelled or delayed. Members of the public are shocked when they learn that train operators can actually make a profit from Network Rail failures. If trains are delayed or cancelled and the responsibility lies with Network Rail—for instance, when points do not work or power fails—Network Rail makes compensation payments to the train operators. These are known as intra-industry arrangements or schedule 8 disruption payments. However, train operators are not obliged to reinvest any of that money in services for the benefit of passengers.
The payments received from Network Rail bear no relation whatever to the passenger compensation schemes between the train operators and their customers. Indeed, only a fraction of what train operators receive in payments from Network Rail is ever passed on to commuters whose journeys have been disrupted. Passengers are certainly not helped to claim what they are owed for delays, given that train operators make it so difficult for them to access compensation. It is really important that passengers are made more aware of their rights. I applaud the recent work of Which? and its “Make rail refunds easier” campaign, putting pressure on the rail regulator and train operators to make this whole process simpler, fairer and more accessible to commuters.
I call on the Government to bring rail travel within the EU-compliant Consumer Rights Act 2015. The unfairness of the current structure of railway compensation payments is really brought to light when we consider how much money is involved and how poorly passengers are compensated compared with train operators. I commend the recent work of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) and the shadow Transport team to expose this issue. Their analysis has shown that between 2010 and 2015 Network Rail paid out £575 million to train operators in schedule 8 payments. Over the same period, train operators provided compensation to passengers to the tune of only £73 million. That is a compensation gap of more than half a billion pounds, a substantial boost to train operating companies’ profit margins.
I accept that train operators should be able to cover the costs of any loss of revenue they incur that arise from the unplanned delays caused by Network Rail. What they should not be able to do, however, is make a profit over and above those costs from train delays and cancellations. That is just plain wrong.
In 2014-15, the Government provided a grant payment to Network Rail of £3.8 billion. Therefore, to add insult to injury, a significant amount of taxpayers’ money flows from Network Rail back to private train operating companies, many of them ultimately owned by foreign Governments, under schedule 8 payments. It is scandalous that a system can be designed in such a way that the very people using the rail network and who are most affected by the poor standard of service on offer—tax-paying commuters—can end up contributing to train operators’ profits out of their own misery! How can this be right? Where is the accountability to the fare-paying, taxpaying public for how this system operates and where this money goes?
The rail expert Christian Wolmar has said:
“In an ideal world, the train operators would only get back the actual money that unexpected delays costs them. However, instead the level is determined by an economic model that only very vaguely reflects the impact of delays felt by passengers. So vaguely, in fact, to be meaningless.”
He went on to say that the current system
“does the railways no credit and creates the perverse incentives that plague the industry.”
I could not agree more; the situation must change. We need a way of linking schedule 8 payments to benefits that improve the customer experience of the railways. This Bill would make that happen.
I want the rail regulator to be given the power to ensure that train operating companies have to provide full disclosure of any net profit they might make from schedule 8 payments. This information should be made available to the public. With rigorous monitoring by the regulator, this money should be put towards improving the customer experience and providing a high-value service. Such measures could include retaining ticket office staff; facilitating easier access to station platforms and trains; free wi-fi on trains; or using the money towards paying for a guarantee that trains will not miss out stops—a particular frustration for a number of my constituents. These are just a few suggestions, and I think that, should this Bill become law, it would be a very good idea to consult passengers on the improvements they want to see to their services.
It is clear from recent evidence that the rail regulator understands many of the issues I am looking to address with this Bill. At the end of last year, the regulator and Network Rail agreed a £4 million rail reparation fund to benefit directly commuters affected by poor performance on routes provided by Thameslink, Southern and the Gatwick Express services. By increasing the number of staff at stations, employing more track workers to deal with disruptions and introducing incident management software to resolve issues on routes more quickly, the regulator sought to “enhance” the services for passengers affected by poor performance.
I want a permanent rather than a temporary scheme in place that can benefit all passengers across the country. However, the rail reparation fund example is an important first step by the regulator. What it has set out to achieve reinforces the fundamental principle that lies at the heart of the Bill before us—that improving rail passengers’ services should be the top priority for Network Rail and train operators. Commuters should not be left waiting on station platforms while train operators pick up big profits from the rail industry’s complex, opaque and unfair compensation arrangements.
I would like to thank colleagues from across the House who have agreed to sponsor my motion today. That support shows the extent to which we all want to see the rail industry reformed for the benefit of passengers—our constituents. It is for all these reasons that I commend this Bill to the House.
Below is the text of the speech made by Harriett Baldwin, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, on 13 April 2016.
Good morning – I’m very pleased indeed to be here today to discuss one of the most important priorities for the financial services sector: helping people make the right financial decisions at the key stages of their lives.
Financial decisions are some of the most important a person will make during their lifetime. And it is therefore vital that people can get the help they need, and can choose the type of support that works for them.
Currently, we have an advice market that works well for wealthier customers. But those without significant wealth have an ‘advice gap’.
The average cost of advice is £150 per hour, and the average advice process takes over 7 hours for investment advice and 9 hours for retirement advice. This means that for many, advice is seen as unaffordable.
And firms faced barriers too. I heard evidence from a firm that felt unable to list funds in order of risk, only alphabetically. Another felt unable to contact customers to let them know that they have not used their ISA allowance in a given tax year, or point out that a customer had never increased their pension payments, despite receiving a pay increase.
So that is the context in which we launched the Financial Advice Market Review, which became immediately known as FAMR.
As you’ll know, FAMR published its final report last month.
It set out a new approach to financial advice through 28 recommendations. These recommendations are aimed at stimulating the development of a market that will provide affordable and accessible financial advice and guidance for everyone, at all stages of their lives.
I was delighted by the response to the consultation.
The FAMR secretariat received almost 270 responses, and conducted over 115 hours of meetings to hear your views and ideas.
And I would like to thank all of you here who participated over the course of the review for your invaluable input.
I hope that the recommendations made by FAMR will enable firms and providers to offer consumers different advice and guidance options that suit a range of needs.
From robo-advice that enables people to select an investment fund that helps them meet their savings goals; to streamlined advice on how to protect their income after starting a family; to affordable, holistic retirement advice.
So today I’d like to talk about FAMR’s recommendations, and how the government, the FCA, industry, employers and consumer bodies can work together to ensure that FAMR is a success.
For our part, we have committed to take forward all of the recommendations for which we, as a government, are responsible, and I know that industry will continue to work with us to drive forward progress.
So let me talk about some of these recommendations…
A number of the recommendations focus on ensuring that the regulatory environment helps firms provide affordable advice services.
I know how frustrating it is – for firms and customers alike – when there’s uncertainty about the boundary between “regulated advice” and “guidance” when all people really want is help.
That is why we committed at Budget to consult on changing the definition of financial advice so that it reflects the EU definition of advice as a “personal recommendation”, and we will consult on this over the summer.
I hope that this will do away with the current confusion surrounding multiple definitions, and enable firms to do more for their customers.
I hope that the development of a new streamlined advice regime will also enable advisers to give affordable advice focussed on specific needs, without conducting a disproportionately long and expensive fact find.
I am confident that these measures will give firms the flexibility to bring forward innovative new guidance and advice offerings, so that consumers can select a service that meets their individual needs.
I am also a big believer in the potential for technology to have a significant impact on the supply of advice.
I was delighted when last month the UK was ranked as the world’s leading fintech hub, according to an independent report by EY.
One of the key factors that led to this success was the UK’s supportive regulatory environment, with the Financial Conduct Authority’s Project Innovate receiving special mention as a ‘best-in-class’ programme.
The speed with which technology has changed our day to day lives is astonishing and wonderful. For many people, engaging with their finances online is becoming the norm. For example, over half of people use internet banking.
High quality automated advice has the potential to help bridge the advice gap by bringing affordable options to the mass market. There are already a number of excellent examples on the market, for example LV=’s CORA.
However, I know some firms have been cautious about bringing their models to market, for fear that they won’t comply with regulatory requirements.
That is why FAMR has recommended that we apply our expertise as a global fintech centre, and build on the success of Project Innovate. So the FCA will provide regulatory support for high quality robo-advice propositions that will have impact on the mass market through a new ‘advice unit’, which Tracey McDermott will tell you more about shortly.
A key objective of FAMR is to help consumers engage with their finances. And the development of fintech and the use of data will play an important part of this.
Allowing customers to have easy access to their data is critical. That’s why we have taken action through the excellent collaborative work on Midata and the Open Banking Standard.
And throughout the FAMR consultation, there was also overwhelming support for a Pensions Dashboard that would allow people to access their pension data easily, viewing all of their pension savings in one place.
This would help them to engage with their pension, and gain a better understanding of what actions they can take to ensure a comfortable income in retirement. This matters to a lot of people.
Since the start of auto-enrolment, over 6 million people have been auto-enrolled into a workplace pension. Once fully implemented, around 9 million people are expected to be enrolled, increasing the amount being saved into workplace pensions by around £15 billion per year. And this presents both a need, and an opportunity, to help consumers engage with their finances through the workplace.
There are a number of exciting dashboard initiatives already going on, and I am keen to ensure that the government does what it can to support their progress.
That is why I will act as ministerial champion to support industry in designing and delivering the dashboard, and I am looking forward to working together to bring this technology to consumers by 2019.
Good financial advice is also imperative. Research by Scottish Widows found that 57% of employees want financial advice in the workplace. Employers have also told us that they want to do more to help their employees at retirement. While Unbiased, an independent UK directory of advisers, found that those who sought retirement advice increased their retirement savings by an average of £98 a month as a direct result.
We want to support employers who give employees access to advice, so we announced at Budget that we will increase the tax exemption for employer arranged-pension advice from £150 to £500. We will also remove a cliff edge that meant that if the employer spends £151, all the tax benefit is lost. This will make advice more affordable for employers who want to provide it to their staff.
But we want a benefit of this kind to be available to everyone, including the self-employed and those whose employers do not arrange advice on their behalf.
We will therefore be consulting over the summer on introducing a pensions advice allowance.
This would allow people to withdraw £500 tax free from their defined contribution pension pot before the age of 55, to redeem against the cost of holistic financial advice.
The pensions advice allowance could also provide a ‘nudge’ to get people thinking about their retirement early, so that they can plan for their retirement, and if necessary step up their savings rate.
I encourage the industry to engage with the pensions advice allowance consultation, and view this as an opportunity to tell us how the allowance could best meet the needs of consumers, whilst also working for firms.
It is our intention that the tax exemption for employer provided advice and the pensions advice allowance could be complementary, so it would be possible for those who are able to use both to access up to £1000 of tax advantaged advice.
For these measures to be a success, and for consumers to have the confidence to engage with financial services, they need to know that the industry is designed to work for them and that they will have access to redress. That is why FAMR did not recommend a reverse of the Retail Distribution Review, no return to commission, and no compromise on consumer protection.
In the context of FAMR, it is also right that the government reassesses its public financial guidance provision.
Changing the regulatory regime for advice will make much more financial guidance available to consumers by facilitating greater availability of alternatives to government-backed financial guidance, as both financial services firms and third sector providers come forward with innovative guidance offerings.
Of course, some people will still require impartial financial guidance, particularly those with lower financial capability. But we need an approach to guidance that works with the market, and doesn’t duplicate it.
The public financial guidance consultation was positive about the commissioning model the government currently uses for debt advice. This is why we have decided to replace the Money Advice Service with a new, slimmed down money guidance body that will identify gaps in the financial guidance market, and commission targeted debt advice, money guidance and financial capability projects to fill these gaps.
This body will have no brand, and will not engage in direct delivery. Instead it will focus purely on commissioning services and will seek significant input from the financial services sector. Money will no longer be spent on marketing – allowing the new body to channel as much money as possible directly to the front line, via third parties and charities with local expertise.
The new money guidance body will have a corporate, rather than a consumer-facing website, where details of funding opportunities will be published. We will ensure that useful budgeting tools and products created by MAS will continue to be hosted on appropriate websites
We will, however, be continuing to offer government backed guidance. Many people find pensions a complex subject and are likely to have a range of questions in their lifetime that they will want help and support to answer.
So we are pooling the expertise of the Pensions Advisory Service and Pension Wise, and some pensions guidance provided by the Money Advice Service into a single pensions guidance body. This will make sure that customers can get all their pensions questions answered in one place, and will not face frustrating hand-offs if they have questions about a range of issues.
These are exciting changes which will deliver more financial help to more people, advice tailored to their specific needs, and guidance for those who just need some support in making their own decisions.
And all with no compromise on quality or consumer protection; in short, a market that works for the customer.
To get these reforms bedded in, we will need to work together – alongside consumer groups, industry and employers.
So I’m pleased that a Financial Advice Working Group, drawing members from the FAMR Expert Advisory Panel and the FCA Consumer and Practitioner Panels, chaired by Nick Prettejohn, will take an active role in implementing some of these recommendations.
The next step will be to make these recommendations a success – and I look forward to working with you all to do exactly that.
Below is the text of the maiden speech made in the House of Commons by Ed Balls in the House of Commons on 25 May 2005.
It is a great honour to make my maiden speech in this House on this, the final day of debate on the Queen’s Speech, to follow the thoughtful speeches of my right hon. Friends the Members for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) and for West Dunbartonshire (Mr. McFall) and to follow a series of excellent maiden speeches, not least that of the hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb), which together show that we can look forward to a number of thoughtful and constructive contributions in the debates of this House in the years to come.
This is the first maiden speech by a Member of Parliament for Normanton for 22 years. Bill O’Brien, my predecessor, was a hugely respected MP, whose commitment to improving the lives of hard-working families in our area is beyond question. Almost everyone I have met in our constituency has a personal story to tell of how Bill has helped them, a friend or a family member. I know, too, that he is widely respected in the House for his parliamentary experience, for his detailed knowledge of mining and local government matters and for his wisdom. I have been told by many hon. Members how they have turned to Bill for advice and support during their parliamentary careers.
I also want to mention Bill’s family and in particular his wife, Jean, who has also served for 22 years, as an MP’s spouse. It is my considered view, speaking from some personal experience, that the role of the MP’s spouse is not always fully appreciated at a political level. I want today to set the record straight: Jean O’Brien has consistently been by Bill’s side, a tower of quiet strength and dignity. I am sure that all hon. Members will want to wish them a long and happy retirement from the Commons and to thank Bill for his commitment to public service.
I have had the privilege of speaking to many hundreds of voters in the past year about issues that directly affect their daily lives—pensions, skilled jobs, plans for a new hospital at Pinderfields, out-of-school child care and the need for more police and community support officers on the beat. All those issues I will be actively pursuing in the coming months. As we have talked, time and again I have heard and felt first hand the powerful traditions that run deep through Normanton.
My constituency forms an arc around the north of the city of Wakefield, running from Sharlston and the town of Normanton in the east, through Altofts, Stanley, Outwood and Wrenthorpe to the north, and then round to Ossett and Horbury in the west, all linked together by the M62 and M1 motorways, which intersect in the constituency. It is a constituency united by a strong industrial tradition in manufacturing, railways and coal mining, and by a long-standing civic, trade union and co-operative tradition. In our district, the Co-operative party is our conscience, and I look forward to participating actively as a member of the Co-operative group of Labour MPs.
Most important, Normanton boasts a historic Labour tradition, with the longest continuous Labour representation of any seat in England—a continuous representation, that is, since 1885, when the Liberals stood aside for 12 working-class Lib-Lab candidates. We are proud of Normanton’s Labour tradition, matched only by the Rhondda valley in south Wales, and if I may be so bold, long may it continue.
We are now in a time of great change, as the revolution of globalisation transforms communities such as ours, but these challenges of technological change, foreign visitors and new investors are, for us, nothing new. Few constituencies can boast visitors as distinguished as Queen Victoria, Prime Ministers Gladstone and Disraeli and US President Ulysses Grant, all of whom visited our area in the mid-19th century, Normanton being, for passengers travelling north to south in the pre-buffet era, the restaurant stop of choice.
One visitor above all left his mark: the Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro II, who stopped for lunch in August 1871, heard about the local colliery at Hopetown, arranged a visit and caused such a stir that the pit shaft was renamed Dom Pedro and became known as the Don. The emperor also visited the Normanton iron works, was shown a special rail and immediately ordered a batch to be sent back and used in the expansion of the Brazilian railway.
To us, globalisation is nothing new, and well over a century later the same strengths that made my constituency an industrial leader—our strategic location, our manufacturing expertise and our skilled work force—are now the key to our future prosperity. It is the task of the Wakefield Way steering group, on which I serve, to ensure that we exploit those advantages to the full. We want to see the Wakefield district established as a key logistics cluster, and a centre of industrial and manufacturing expertise.
We also have to be honest about the weaknesses that we must address. We still have too many people trapped on incapacity benefit, who want to work but need extra help and support to return to work. Compared with other parts of Yorkshire, we have skills shortages alongside low levels of qualifications in the adult work force. It is both an affront to social justice and a real economic threat that so many 16-year-olds in my constituency still leave school without a proper qualification. I therefore welcome the measures set out today by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in this Queen’s Speech debate on science, skills, employment, housing and regional policy, which will really help us in that task.
We are able to debate today how our wider economic policy can build on stability—rather than, as used to happen, how we can avoid stop-go—because the Labour Government have put in place a new British model of monetary and fiscal policy for our country and taken the tough decisions to establish and entrench economic stability. Twenty years ago, the Wakefield district was labelled a “high unemployment area”, with one young person in every four unemployed for more than six months as a result of the devastating loss of manufacturing jobs and the closures of the pits. It was not a price worth paying. Today, because of our economic stability, our district has an unemployment rate, not above, but below the national average. The new deal has cut youth unemployment from a peak of 3,300 young people out of work in 1984 to just 130 today—20 in my constituency. It is because of the proactive and forward-looking approach that Labour has taken to economic policy—Bank of England independence, the symmetric inflation target and the two fiscal rules—that, for the first time in a generation, my constituents are benefiting from what is close to a full employment economy.
That stability—that prudence—has been for a purpose. We have shown that a Government committed to progressive goals—increasing investment in our public services, introducing a national minimum wage, lifting 1 million children out of poverty—can also deliver the lowest inflation for 30 years, the lowest mortgage rates for 40 years and record levels of employment. Some said that a Labour Government could not run a stable economy and pursue progressive goals. The present Government have proved them wrong.
At this point, I must confess that, yes, as a young economist working in opposition back in 1994, I wrote that truly immemorable phrase, “post-neoclassical endogenous growth theory”—but there was a penultimate draft from which that infamous phrase had been excised, and it was not I but a rather more distinguished Member of this House who wrote in the margin, “Put back the theory.” From 1997, I was proud to serve the Labour Chancellor and the Labour Government for seven years as economic adviser and then chief economic adviser to the Treasury. I was privileged to chair the International Monetary and Financial Committee Deputies during a period in which Britain, under the leadership of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, have led international efforts to reform the international financial architecture and meet the millennium development goals.
I know that those opportunities—all the opportunities that my family and I have had—were made possible only by the achievements of the Labour party in government. My grandfather, a lorry driver, died from cancer soon after the war, when my father, the youngest of three boys, was only 10. My father—from a widowed family in a working-class community in Norwich—was able to stay on at school at 16 and get a scholarship to university. All the opportunities that he and we have been able to enjoy were made possible only because of the welfare state that the Labour Government created in 1945, reflecting our core belief that opportunity should be available for all, not just for the privileged few.
I am now able to be in public service once more, as a Member of this House and as Labour’s ninth MP for Normanton. My Labour predecessors—Benjamin Pickard, William Parrott, Fred Hall, Tom Smith, George Sylvester, Thomas Brooks, Albert Roberts and Bill O’Brien—were all coal miners, every one of them. They were Labour because the adversity they suffered taught them not selfishness, but solidarity. However insurmountable the obstacles seemed to be, they never settled for second best for themselves or anyone else in their struggle for full employment and social justice. I hope that, in the coming years, I shall be able to demonstrate the humility, hard work and commitment to public service for which previous Normanton MPs are known, remembered and honoured, and thus enable my constituency’s historical traditions to live on renewed in this century. We owe it to our predecessors, as we owe it to our families and to future generations, to complete their work and, on the platform of stability that we have built, secure an economically strong and socially just society of which we can be proud.
I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make my maiden speech today.
Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Stephen Crabb in the House of Commons on 25 May 2005.
I am grateful for the opportunity to make my maiden speech on the final day of debate on the Queen’s Speech. It was a pleasure to listen to the maiden speeches by my hon. Friends the Members for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley) and for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries), and by the hon. Members for Plymouth, Devonport (Alison Seabeck), for Worsley (Ms Keeley), for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson) and for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). I wish them all the best in their parliamentary careers. I would like to add my own tribute to those that have already been made to the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) for his excellent work, both in Northern Ireland and in the Principality.
I count it a huge honour to be elected as the new Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire. I am only the second Member to represent the constituency, which was created before the 1997 election, when it was won by Jackie Lawrence, and again in 2001, for the Labour party. Jackie retired at the end of the last Parliament. She and I were opponents in the election held four years ago, and we both fought robust campaigns. The more that I saw of her during that election, however, the more that I was struck by the sincerity and humanity with which she carried out her duties as a Member of Parliament. She entered Parliament for exactly the right reasons—to improve the lives of Pembrokeshire people—and served her constituents well during her eight years as an MP. Her parting remark to me on election night in 2001 was, “Best of luck with your parliamentary career, Stephen, just not here in Pembrokeshire.” I am afraid that I have disappointed her, but it was typical of her integrity and grace that not only did she send her congratulations after my win on 5 May but, last weekend, she welcomed my family and me to her home, where she passed on some excellent advice on being a Member of Parliament and treated us all to excellent home-made scones. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House will join me in wishing her all the very best in retirement.
Preseli Pembrokeshire, with much justification, can be described as one of the most beautiful parliamentary constituencies, containing as it does much of the Pembrokeshire coastal park with its 185 miles of footpath running alongside scenes of spectacular beauty. The coastline is important to Pembrokeshire. We are surrounded by the sea on three sides, and that has been the source of our comparative economic advantage throughout our history. Even today, after whaling, fishing, oil refining and defence-related industries have all flourished and then declined, the sea is still important to our local economy.
We have two ports: Fishguard, with its ferry service to Rosslare in Ireland; and the port of Milford Haven, which is the UK’s fifth largest port, with major oil interests, a remnant of the fishing industry, and an Irish ferry from Pembroke dock. As I speak, construction is under way on two major liquefied natural gas terminals near Milford Haven. When completed, those could provide 30 per cent. of the UK’s natural gas needs, which will be shipped into the nearby port of Milford Haven. Not surprisingly in an area of such outstanding natural beauty, the liquefied natural gas development is not without controversy, and some specific issues need to be addressed. The LNG investment, however, will bring a vital injection of economic activity to west Wales, which could provide a substantial long-term pay-off for many years to come.
As well as our coastal heritage, Pembrokeshire is also home to Britain’s smallest city, St. David’s, with its picturesque streets and beautiful ancient cathedral. St. David’s was a site of huge importance in early Christendom. It lay on the intercontinental route that took Irish pilgrims through Britain on the way to Rome and sometimes Jerusalem. Still today, the A40 trunk road, which leads from Fishguard through Pembrokeshire towards the M4 corridor is recognised by the EU strategic trans-European network, which links western Ireland with mainland continental Europe.
Travelling along the single-lane A40 through Pembrokeshire can be a slow and frustrating journey, however. Upgrading the A40 to a dual carriageway is certainly overdue. Local business needs it, local people want it, and while I am a Member of this House I want to do whatever I can to make the case for it, and, I hope, to persuade the rather Cardiff-centric Welsh Assembly of the need for investment in critical infrastructure in other parts of Wales.
In the heart of Pembrokeshire is the old town of Haverfordwest—the county town of Pembrokeshire—which I am blessed to be able to say is my home town. I grew up there, in a street of council housing, which backed on to my old secondary school. Many of the houses in that street have now been bought and had small porches, kitchen extensions and other improvements added to them. I want to add my voice to that of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries), who said that no one should lose sight of what the Conservative right-to-buy scheme did for hard-working, working-class families in constituencies such as mine. Of course we need to provide an adequate rented sector for individuals and families who might, through different circumstances in their life, have to fall back on social housing, but the aspiration of the vast majority of people in this country is towards home ownership, which should be recognised as a key goal of housing policy.
There have been Crabbs in Pembrokeshire for many generations, and not just on our wonderful beaches. My grandfather was a baker in Haverfordwest at a time when, like other small market towns, it was full of independent traders, grocers, shopkeepers and tradesmen. In those days, there was no such thing as a small business sector; there were only small businesses. Times change, and today Haverfordwest has a Tesco, a Morrisons, a Kwiksave and an Aldi, and I am told that we will soon have a Lidl store as well. I am not a betting man, but I am willing to wager that not many of our long-suffering local farmers who still constitute a significant part of the local economy will see much of their produce on the shelves of that supermarket when it comes to Haverfordwest.
A principal reason why Pembrokeshire is such an attractive place for the food discounters is that our per capita GDP is so much lower than the UK national average. GDP in Pembrokeshire is less than 70 per cent. of the EU’s 15-member average, which qualifies us for objective 1 status. We are currently in receipt of structural funds through that programme. I do not want to be too controversial today, but I am more than a little sceptical of the long-term success of EU structural funds in closing the wealth gap between regions. The targets for the EU cohesion and structural funds have consistently not been met.
Objective 1 did, however, provide an important opportunity for many stakeholders in west Wales to focus like never before on what needs to be done to improve the region’s economy. My fear is that that was a missed opportunity. Many business people in Pembrokeshire tell me that they do not feel that the business community was actively involved in the objective 1 programme, and that the process was dominated by public sector bodies. I believe that small business is the backbone of the Pembrokeshire economy and I want to do whatever I can while I am a Member of the House to provide a voice for the hard-working men and women who comprise that sector.
I greatly value the commitment in the Queen’s Speech to reducing burdens on business—business regulations. The small business community in my constituency is looking for action, not more words, from this Parliament.
I am grateful for the courtesy of the House this afternoon, and to the people of Preseli Pembrokeshire for giving me the opportunity to be their representative during this Parliament.
Below is the text of the speech made by Stephen Crabb, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, on 12 April 2016.
Good morning.
Thank you Claire [Tickell, Chair, EIF] for that introduction.
It’s a pleasure to be here today at the Early Intervention Foundation to make my first speech as the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
I know EIF is absolutely committed to transforming the life chances of the most disadvantaged in our country. In that spirit, I’d like to thank you for the work you do to bring new thinking and a better understanding of the evidence of when and how it can be the right thing to intervene early to change lives.
In particular, I know my department asked you to look at how relationships between parents can impact on children’s lives and what interventions might be effective to help improve those lives. That important review, published last month, contains powerful conclusions which demonstrate why we are making family stability a key part of our life chances strategy.
So I look forward to your continued contributions and getting to know you better in the weeks, months and maybe years ahead.
I thought I would use this important opportunity today to share some early thoughts with you about the kind of welfare system I believe in; and about the challenges that lie ahead as we continue the vital task of reforming welfare actually as part of a broader mission to build a society in which the life chances of everyone are improved.
But let me first take a step back.
One of the things that has struck me since taking over at DWP is the sheer size and scale of the department.
There is no other Whitehall department which connects with as many people, at so many important moments in their lives; there’s no other department which spends as much taxpayers’ money.
It accounts for nearly a quarter of all public sector spending in this country. The DWP budget is more than the entire GDP of the nation of Portugal!
And it is therefore not surprising that it attracts strong and passionate views about how, where and why that money is being spent.
The DWP is a department of big numbers; big data; big statistics.
Each year it processes 5 million benefit claims….
….pays £170 billion in benefits and pensions to 22 million people…. ….receives 47 million calls from the public seeking advice and support…. ….and all of this happens in more than 700 jobcentres and contact centres in all parts of the United Kingdom.
But, as I said in that very first statement in the House of Commons just 2 days after I was appointed, “Behind every statistic is a human being.” It’s something I remind myself of and remind my ministerial team of every day.
Because my overriding vision for the Department for Work and Pensions is that, even amidst all of these big numbers, fundamentally, we should be in the business of people….of individuals….we should be in the business of families.
From the very top of the organisation to the farthest flung jobcentre, the thousands of staff, advisers, Ministers – and especially me as the Secretary of State – should understand that we are in the people business.
Welfare that focusses on people also means we must understand the human impact of decisions we take far better. It means that when we talk about the numbers of people receiving benefits or moving on or off of benefits, we also need to understand at a much deeper level the underlying factors for why those individuals find themselves in a set of circumstances that requires support from the state.
A people business does mean providing financial assistance and support to protect people from poverty who, in their current circumstances, cannot provide for themselves. That I think is the mark of a decent society.
But a people business also means recognising that for a great many of those individuals and their families, those circumstances can change; and those circumstances absolutely do need to change. So a welfare system that does not provide this support and basis for transformation in people’s lives falls far short of what a modern welfare system can achieve, I believe.
So these twin objectives should be at the very heart of every reform and at the centre of our welfare system – vital social protection but also the incentives and support to bring meaningful and positive change to people’s lives.
But our efforts to deliver welfare reform should be just one part of a much broader approach for strengthening society, creating opportunity, and breaking down barriers that entrench poverty and disadvantage.
That’s exactly what we mean when we talk about life chances….a relentless focus – an all-out assault as the Prime Minister calls it – on tackling the root causes of poverty in Britain today….On tackling those things which are undermining social mobility and holding people back from reaching their full potential in life.
This is an area which is really close to my heart.
You see, I believe in a society where it should not matter what street you grew up on… how much your mum or dad earn… or where you go to school….
….the society I believe in is one where everyone has a decent set of opportunities to lead fruitful lives.
Over the past few generations, we have seen some incredible and dramatic changes in society. In some ways, society is almost unrecognisable from just a few decades ago.
Never before has so much information been at the fingertips of so many….
the digital communications revolution has transformed people’s access to information and reduced the real life costs of information, it has broken down cultural barriers and made the world a smaller place.
Never before has university been a realistic option for so many. What was the preserve enjoyed by a small privileged elite has been opened to millions.
Never before have we seen such a decline of social deference.
And the pace of this change has been astonishing. The impact this has had on people has been palpable.
And so with these trends in the way people view society, in education, in the reach of digital communications, the revolution in technology….you could be forgiven for thinking that we should be living in a golden age of social mobility.
But for many, that is simply not the case. Today, far too many people have their life chances determined before they have even had the chance to explore all that life has to offer.
We cannot deliver true social mobility, we cannot help people live their lives to the fullest, without fighting the very real factors that hold people back from reaching their potential.
Yes, we’ve seen some really encouraging progress, with record levels of employment, a huge expansion in apprenticeships – over 2 million since 2010 – and lower youth unemployment.
But we need to do much more. So, during my time at the Department for Work and Pensions, 2 things will go hand in hand – reforming welfare, and a relentless focus on improving life chances.
That means leading a life chances strategy that uses the entire machinery of government to break down some of these barriers to opportunity.
So we will be:
Regenerating estates so children have safe and secure homes where they can thrive.
We’ll be using work experience much more creatively to give young people the encouragement they need to get into further education, employment or training when they leave school.
We’re going to be investing in mental health services to tackle some of the debilitating disorders that can have such a devastating impact on young people’s life chances at a crucial stage in their lives.
And we’ll be supporting those with drug and alcohol addictions to turn their lives around and fully recover.
And I know that these are not new problems. But I think this is a new approach we are delivering. As Chair of the Social Justice Cabinet Committee, I will be leading a more coherent and collaborative government strategy….an approach that mobilises all parts of government to tackle poverty, and improve social mobility for the poorest in our society.
At this point, I’d like to pay tribute to my predecessor, Iain Duncan Smith. Someone who I think will go down as one of the great social reformers of our time. Iain has helped to change the way we as a government look at poverty. He turned the lens on the root causes of poverty rather than just the symptoms and led many important reforms. He has been – and I’m sure will continue to be – a champion for improving the life chances of some of the country’s most disadvantaged people.
All of our life chances work, from the health sector to schools, to decent places to live is vital, but I believe it is a stable home and a family life that gives children the best possible chance.
It is hard to overstate the importance of family. Because no-one can doubt that from a young age, it is the family that helps to define us….
….that tells us who we are and where we’ve come from; it is where we derive our first identity.
Perhaps most importantly, it is from the family that we are first loved and, in turn, we learn to love…
…. where we first learn to fight and to make up….
….and where we first learn to make choices and see the consequences of those choices.
I am not talking about some idealised model of a self-contained nuclear family – society is much more complex than that.
But family is the training ground for life. And a good start provides a great platform for a fruitful life. In contrast, as you well know, family life which is chaotic, violent, broken, damaged, turbulent….
leads so often to a life characterised by educational failure, crime, poverty, and where that cycle is then repeated in another generation. And the impact on the individual, on society, the economy and the welfare budget is massive.
Some have estimated the overall costs of relationship breakdown in our society could be as high as £47 billion. And behind that figure, life chances are squandered.
I know many MPs will see the real human cost of this every week at their surgeries – as I have – with breakdown of relationships often the backdrop to so many of our constituents’ problems.
I don’t think it has to be this way. We believe in the vital and foundational role of the family.
That’s why we have already doubled the funding for relationship support, we have increased the amount of free childcare to support parents and, of course, we are helping families move into work through Universal Credit, which I will come on to in a few moments.
It’s why we have targeted those families that need the most help. Our Troubled Families programme has turned round 120,000 families that had complex and deep rooted problems and we’re extending this to 400,000 more families.
And we’ll go even further, increasing support for new parents with an expanded parenting programme, which will build on the great work of EIF in this area.
If stable family relationships provide the platform, then I believe it is work that provides the economic security and the essential role models which I believe children need to improve their life chances.
Fundamentally, as human beings, we are hard-wired to derive satisfaction from meaningful, fruitful work. Work should be a place where we feel valued – in every sense, where we continue to learn and grow, where we are introduced to new and expanded social networks, a place which is fundamentally good for our physical and mental well-being.
And of course I recognise that for a great many people their own experience of the workplace falls well short of that ideal – but this recognition of the value, the worth of work is very much at the heart of my outlook on welfare reform.
A pound you earn can mean more than a pound provided in welfare.
I have spoken elsewhere about my own personal background and I don’t intend to go over that again here today, but one point I would make about the home life I grew up with was the amazing role model I had of a mother who understood that central importance of work in all its dimensions – for herself personally and for the sons she was raising on her own. That understanding underpinned her own journey from a position of crisis and dependency to a position of ‘economic independence’ – a process which took years by the way.
And I really do believe that a welfare system which does not elevate and reinforce that central understanding of how important work and fruitful activity is for us as human beings is actually very damaging for society.
In 2010, far too many people were being denied those benefits of work. Nearly one in 5 households had nobody in work. Two million children did not see a mum or dad going out to work each day.
There has been much progress since then to restore the value of work within our welfare system. The number of households where nobody works is down over 700,000. The workless households rate in the social rented sector is at its lowest level for 20 years.
Half a million more children are benefiting from having the role model of a parent that works – and the outlook this brings.
The value of this work and the dangers of dependency was something the architect of the welfare state, Sir William Beveridge, recognised and believed in.
His blueprint for the modern welfare state in 1942 was clear about the relationship between welfare and work. Beveridge said:
Getting work … may involve a change of habits, doing something that is unfamiliar or leaving one’s friends or making a painful effort of some other kind. The danger of providing benefits which are both adequate in amount and indefinite in duration, is that men as creatures who adapt themselves to circumstances, may settle down to them.
And he stressed:
The state in organising security should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility
But the welfare system we ended up with was one where: Incentives to work were being undermined. Opportunities to get on were being passed by.
The sense of responsibility people had for their own lives was being eroded.
Financial support for people facing poverty is vital – I always tell my colleagues….never, never underestimate the importance of a family in need getting that support in a timely and effective way – but on its own, cash support is rarely enough.
As a result, people were often trapped in the unfair position of being better off staying put on benefits rather than taking the first steps back into work.
The welfare system I believe in – and I want to see – is one that transforms lives rather than traps them.
One that recognises and responds to the fact that people do have hopes, they do have aspirations, they do want to take opportunities to better themselves and their family.
One that responds to the way real people behave in the real world.
It was out of the destruction and devastation of the Second World War that Beveridge’s principles for welfare were forged.
I want to restore and reinforce some of those founding principles of our welfare state that have maybe over the years have been forgotten or eroded.
So my vision for jobcentres is that they should be far more than places where people sign on and receive out of work entitlements. I want jobcentres to be places of true transformation. Places where motivated and skilled teams are supporting positive change in people’s lives.
And it’s already happening.
One of my early visits in the role was to a Jobcentre Plus in Enfield in North London, where I saw
….work coaches helping young people avoid the clutches of gangs and build a more positive life through work….I saw work coaches supporting people with mental health conditions to get treatment and stay connected to the world of work.
This is vital, life changing support on the front line.
And as part of my vision for the organisation I want those skilled work coaches to be really valued in the public eye, in a similar way that nurses and firefighters are respected and valued – because in terms of life-changing interventions, or crises being tackled what our teams of work coaches are doing and achieving is remarkable.
Whatever and wherever it may be in the department, I want everyone in DWP to go to work each day sharing in my twin objectives – protecting people from poverty and supporting people to transform their lives.
And that is what our reforms are about. In particular, Universal Credit.
Universal Credit is a very real human reform. It’s putting people at the very heart of the welfare system for the first time….It has, I believe, the potential to be the most important public sector change project for decades.
It works with people, recognising that people’s lives and circumstances are different. Universal Credit doesn’t treat a person as a number. It’s about a human being in the jobcentre staying with you as you move into work and progress…. ….coaching you….mentoring you….supporting you.
It also provides the right incentives for people to move into work. William Beveridge, I believe would have supported that.
So I am absolutely committed to leading a continued, successful roll out of Universal Credit. That is a priority for me, as is continuing to embed it as the spine that runs through the welfare system.
And to those who are sceptical of Universal Credit, I just say this: ‘look at the evidence so far’. When you compare those who are already receiving Universal Credit to a similar cohort receiving previous Jobseeker’s Allowance, you will see people on Universal Credit:
are spending roughly 50% more time looking for work
they are 8 percentage points more likely to be in work
and when they are in work, they’re more likely to be earning a higher wage
In the words of the chief executive of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, ‘it is a genuinely radical reform….that will clear up some of the most egregious complexities and disincentives that our benefit system has imposed for far too long’.
This month, we will reach an important milestone. Universal Credit will be available in every single jobcentre in the country for single people making a new claim. The next stage will be the ambitious full rollout, so that every person, in every circumstance, who steps into a jobcentre to make a new claim will be on Universal Credit. That will be my focus in the months ahead.
Universal Credit and our other reforms to support people into work are working.
There are now more than 2 million more people in work than in 2010; with the number of workless households at a record low.
But I know there is more to do to ensure the opportunities of work are available to everyone. The diversity of those in work should reflect the diversity of society.
And that, finally, brings me to an area of reform that is another one of my priorities:
And that is supporting disabled people and people with health conditions into work.
We are making progress. Nearly 300,000 more disabled people have moved into work over the last 2 years.
But despite this, there remains a very significant gap in the employment rate between disabled and non-disabled people. Whilst the employment rate for people who are not disabled is 80%, for disabled people it’s less than 50%.
In the context of a very strong labour market and the millions of people that have moved into work over the last few years, I think that gap is simply unacceptable.
I want to be clear. The employment gap isn’t because of a lack of aspiration on the part of sick and disabled people. We know the majority want to work or stay in work.
Some attitudes held by society have stopped disabled people from moving into work for many decades. So I want to challenge health and care professionals, employers and wider society to break down those barriers.
That’s why on my first day as Secretary of State, I announced to Parliament that I wanted to start a new conversation with disabled people, with their representatives, healthcare professionals and employers.
We need to recognise the role that work plays in supporting good health. And importantly, that a health condition or disability needn’t be a barrier to work.
To do that, the workplace, the welfare system, the health service will all need to work much better together….to help people stay healthy in the first place. If someone gets sick, they need the right support so they can stay close to the world of work and re-join it as quickly as possible.
It’s already clear to me that there are lots of interesting ideas emerging. I look forward, with my ministerial team, to listening to all of the ideas and views and discussing them with disability groups, employers and the health, care and welfare sectors.
Together we have an opportunity to do so much better for disabled people – to improve their health and their opportunities.
And this opportunity to have a decent job and the economic security that comes with a regular wage – as well as all the other positive aspects of being in work I have set out today – I think this should be universal.
As such, I want to make sure this opportunity is available in all communities, in all parts of the country, on every street and in every household, across all sections of society no matter what your background, especially for the poorest.
That’s what our life chances strategy is about.
Children growing up in families where there are healthy and strong relationships are the foundation from which they can be supported to step up and grasp those life opportunities.
I am somebody that does believe the state also has an important role to help transform lives. And I am determined that a restless, innovating spirit of reform should continue to shape my department as we place people at the very centre of everything we do.
Because there is still much more to do to create a welfare system that I think is true to its founding principles.
A welfare system that does protect the most vulnerable.
A welfare system that transforms lives rather than traps them.
A system that treats people as human beings with hopes and aspirations and provides the right support and incentives for those to be realised.
If my department isn’t transforming lives, helping people into work every day, it’s not doing its job.
That’s the welfare system that I believe in. That’s the welfare system people deserve. Thank you.
Below is the text of the speech made by Angus Robertson in the House of Commons on 11 April 2016.
Let me begin by welcoming the Prime Minister’s statement and the new measures that he has announced to deal with tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance. I also welcome the publication of his tax information, and, indeed, his apology for the way in which he has handled it.
It is estimated that between $21 trillion and $32 trillion of private financial wealth is located, untaxed or lightly taxed, in tax havens around the world. Illicit cross-border financial flows are estimated at more than $1 trillion per year, which is 10 times more than the global foreign aid budgets combined. The Panama papers leak is so large that if one printed the files, the final document would be 650 million pages long. It is right that a special taskforce has been set up to go through the leaked information, and the Prime Minister was right to say that charges will hopefully follow if criminality can be proven.
The public are indignant here and around the world. People are rightly angered by the rules for normal taxpayers being different from those for a small ultra-rich elite, but we must ask ourselves whether the scale of the problem has been taken seriously, because it has quite patently not been thus far, domestically or internationally. The UK bears a particular responsibility given that the UK and its overseas territories and dependencies collectively sit at the top of the Tax Justice Network’s financial secrecy index.
In Scotland, we are confronted by the reality of a small number of landowners owning huge swathes of the country, many through tax havens. From Perthshire to Jura and across Scotland, land is owned through non-transparent firms based in tax havens such as Panama and the British Virgin Islands.
I want to ask the Prime Minister the following specific questions. Will he please revisit his decision not to co-operate fully with European Union partners on overseas trusts? To whom will the welcome register of beneficial owners across all British Crown dependencies and overseas territories be available and when? Will it be publicly available? If not, why not? Will the Prime Minister prioritise bilateral tax treaties with Panama and other tax havens as part of global efforts towards better co-ordination against tax avoidance, and will he regularly update this House on progress? Lastly, given that the UK Cabinet agrees Government policy on tax rules, potential loopholes and arrangements with tax havens, will he ensure that all his Cabinet colleagues confirm whether they have ever benefited through offshore financial dealings?
Below is the text of the speech made by Jeremy Corbyn in the House of Commons on 11 April 2016.
I thank the Prime Minister for advance sight of his statement—it is absolutely a master class in the art of distraction. I am sure that he will join me in welcoming the outstanding journalism that went into exposing the scandal of destructive global tax avoidance that was revealed by the Panama papers. Those papers have driven home what many people have increasingly felt: that there is now one rule for the super-rich, and another for the rest. I am honestly not sure that the Prime Minister fully appreciates the anger that is out there over this injustice. How can it be right that street cleaners, teaching assistants and nurses work and pay their taxes, yet some at the top think that the rules simply do not apply to them?
What has been revealed in the past week goes far beyond what the Prime Minister has called his “private matters”, and today he needs to answer six questions to the House, and—perhaps equally importantly—to the public as a whole. First, why did he choose not to declare his offshore tax haven investment in the House of Commons Register of Members’ Financial Interests, given that there is a requirement to
“provide information of any pecuniary interest”
that might reasonably be thought to influence a Member’s actions? The Prime Minister said that he thinks he mishandled the events of the past week. Does he now realise how he mishandled his own non-declaration six years ago, when he decided not to register an offshore tax haven investment from which he has personally benefited?
Secondly, can he clarify to the House and to the public that when he sold his stake in Blairmore Holdings in 2010, he also disposed of another offshore investment at that time? In particular, were any of the £72,000 of shares that he sold held in offshore tax havens?
The “Ministerial Code” states that
“Ministers must ensure that no conflict arises, or could reasonably be perceived to arise, between their public duties and their private interests, financial or otherwise,”
and that all Ministers
“must provide…a full list…of all interests which might be thought to give rise to a conflict,”
including close family interests. So did the Prime Minister provide the permanent secretary with an account of his offshore interests and if not, did he not realise that he had a clear obligation to do so, when part of his personal wealth was tied up in offshore tax havens and he was now making policy decisions that had a direct bearing on their operation? For example, in 2013 the Prime Minister wrote to the President of the European Council opposing central public registers of beneficial ownership of offshore trusts. So, thirdly, does the Prime Minister now accept that transparency of beneficial ownership must be extended to offshore trusts?
The Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca registered more than 100,000 secret firms in the British Virgin Islands. It is a scandal that UK overseas territories registered over half the shell companies set up by Mossack Fonseca. The truth is that the UK is at the heart of the global tax avoidance industry. It is a national scandal and it has got to end. Last year, this Government opposed the EU Tax Commissioner Pierre Moscovici’s blacklist of 30 un-co-operative tax havens. That blacklist included the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands. So my fourth question is: will the Prime Minister now stop blocking European Commission plans for a blacklist of tax havens? It turns out that Lord Blencathra, the former Conservative Home Office Minister, was absolutely right when he wrote to the Cayman Islands Government in 2014 to reassure them that our Prime Minister was making a “purely political gesture” about cracking down on tax havens at the G8. It was designed, he said, to be
“a false initiative which will divert other member states from pursuing their agenda.”
Last June, Treasury officials lobbied Brussels not to take action against Bermuda’s tax secrecy. According to the European Union’s transparency register, the tech giant Google has no fewer than 10 employees lobbying Brussels. Bermuda is the tax haven favoured by Google to channel billions in profits. Conservative MEPs have been instructed on six occasions since the beginning of last year to vote against action to clamp down on aggressive tax avoidance. This is a party incapable of taking serious, internationally co-ordinated action to tackle tax dodging. Across the country and on the Opposition side of the House, there is a thirst for decisive action against global tax avoidance scams that suck revenues out of our public services, while ordinary taxpayers have to foot the bill. It undermines public trust in business, politics and public life. It can and must be brought to an end.
We welcome the Prime Minister’s announcement today about new measures to make companies liable for employees who facilitate tax cheating, but it is also too little, too late. In fact, it was announced by the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury a year ago. People want a Government who act on behalf of those who pay their taxes, not those who dodge their taxes in offshore tax havens. Yesterday, my hon Friend the shadow Chancellor set out a clear plan for transparency. He is a Member of this House who has spent all his time in Parliament exposing tax havens and tax avoidance. His paper included a call for an immediate public inquiry into the Panama papers revelations to establish the harm done to our tax revenues and to bring forward serious proposals for reform.
I say gently to the Prime Minister that a tax taskforce reporting to the Chancellor and the Home Secretary, both members of a party funded by donors implicated in the Panama leaks, will be neither independent nor credible. So will the Prime Minister back a credible and independent public inquiry into the abuses revealed by the leaks?
Our task transparency plan called for a specialised tax enforcement unit to be properly resourced, which is key. Since 2010, there have been only 11 prosecutions over offshore tax evasion—a situation that the Public Accounts Committee described as “woefully inadequate”. Having slashed resources and cut 14,000 staff since 2010, will the Prime Minister today guarantee that resourcing to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs will increase in this Parliament?
We support real action to end the abuses that allow the wealthy to dodge the rules that the rest of us have to follow. We need to ensure that trust and fairness are restored to our tax system and our politics and to end the sense and the reality that there is one rule for the richest and another for everybody else. The Prime Minister has attacked tax dodging as immoral, but he clearly failed to give a full account of his own involvement in offshore tax havens until this week and to take essential action to clean up the system, while at the same time blocking wider efforts to do so. There are clear steps that can be taken to bring tax havens and tax dodging under control—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. There is a Minister standing at the Bar shrieking in an absurd manner. He must calm himself and either take a medicament if required or leave the Chamber.
Jeremy Corbyn
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
I suggest that the Prime Minister’s record, particularly over the past week, shows that the public no longer have the trust in him to deal with these matters. Do he and Conservative Members realise why people are so angry? We have gone through six years—yes, six years—of crushing austerity, with families lining up at food banks to feed their children, disabled people losing their benefits, elderly care cut and slashed and living standards going down. Much of that could have been avoided if our country had not been ripped off by the super-rich refusing to pay their taxes.
Let me say this to the Prime Minister: ordinary people in the country will simply not stand for this any more: they want real justice; they want the wealthy to pay their share of tax just as they have to pay when they work hard all the time.
Below is the text of the statement made by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, in the House of Commons on 11 April 2016.
With permission, I would like to make a statement on the Panama papers.
Dealing with my own circumstances first, yesterday I published all the information in my tax returns not just for the last year, but for the last six years. I have also given additional information about money inherited and given to me by my family, so people can see the sources of income I have: my salary, the benefit in kind of living in No. 10 Downing Street, the support my wife and I have received as Leader of the Conservative party, the renting out of our home and the interest on the savings that I have. Since 2010, I have not owned any shares or any investments.
The publication of a Prime Minister’s tax information in this way is unprecedented, but I think it is the right thing to do. But let me be clear: I am not suggesting that this should apply to all MPs. The Chancellor has today published information on his tax return, in a similar way to the shadow Chancellor and the First Minister for Scotland. This begs the question of how far the publication of tax information should go. I think there is a strong case for the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, and for the Chancellor and the shadow Chancellor, because they are people who are or who wish to be responsible for the nation’s finances. As for MPs, we already have robust rules on Members’ interests and their declaration, and I believe that is the model we should follow.
We should think carefully before abandoning completely all taxpayer confidentiality in this House, as some have suggested. If this were to come in for MPs, people would also ask for a similar approach for those who ask us questions, those who run large public services or lead local government, or indeed those who edit news programmes or newspapers. I think this would be a very big step for our country. It certainly should not take place without a long and thoughtful debate, and it is not the approach that I would recommend.
Let me deal specifically with the shares my wife and I held in an investment fund or unit trust called Blairmore Holdings, set up by my late father. The fund was registered with the UK’s Inland Revenue from the beginning. It was properly audited, and an annual return was submitted to the Inland Revenue every year. Its share price was listed in the Financial Times. It was not a family trust; it was a commercial investment fund for any investor to buy units in. UK investors paid all the same taxes as with any other share, including income tax on the dividends every year.
There have been some deeply hurtful and profoundly untrue allegations made against my father, and if the House will let me, I want to put the record straight. This investment fund was set up overseas in the first place because it was going to be trading predominantly in dollar securities, so like very many other commercial investment funds, it made sense to be set up inside one of the main centres of dollar trading.
There are thousands of these investment funds and many millions of people in Britain own shares, many of whom hold them through investment funds or unit trusts. Such funds, including those listed outside the UK, are included in the pension funds of local government, most of Britain’s largest companies and, indeed, even some trade unions. Even a quick look shows that the BBC, the Mirror Group, Guardian Newspapers and—to pick one council entirely at random—Islington all have these sorts of overseas investments. To give one further example, Trade Union Fund Managers Ltd, based in Congress House, has a portfolio of over £50 million of investment in the trade union unit trust, with 3% of its net assets based in Jersey. This is not to criticise what it does; it is to make the point that this an entirely standard practice, and it is not to avoid tax.
One of the country’s leading tax lawyers, Graham Aaronson, QC, has stated unequivocally that this was
“a perfectly normal type of collective investment fund”.
This is the man who led the expert study group that developed the general anti-abuse rule—so much debated and demanded in this House—which Parliament finally enacted in 2013. He also chaired the 1997 examination of tax avoidance by the Tax Law Review Committee. He has said that it would be
“quite wrong to describe the establishment of such funds as ‘tax avoidance’”
and, further, that
“it would be utterly ridiculous to suggest that establishing or investing in such funds would involve abusive tax avoidance”.
That is why getting rid of unit trusts and other such investment funds that are listed overseas has not been part of any Labour policy review, any Conservative party policy review or any sensible proposals for addressing tax evasion or aggressive tax avoidance.
Surely, it is said, investors in these funds benefit from their being set up in jurisdictions with low or no taxes. Again, this is a misunderstanding. Unit trusts do not exist to make profit for themselves; they exist to make a profit for the holders of the units. Those holders pay tax, and if they are UK citizens, they pay full UK taxes.
It is right to tighten the law and change the culture around investment to further outlaw tax evasion and discourage aggressive tax avoidance, but as we do so, we should differentiate between schemes designed to artificially reduce tax and those that are encouraging investment. This is a Government—and this should be a country—who believe in aspiration and wealth creation. We should defend the right of every British citizen to make money lawfully. Aspiration and wealth creation are not somehow dirty words. They are the key engines of growth and prosperity in our country and we must always support those who want to own shares and make investments to support their families.
Some people have asked, “If this trust was legitimate, why did you sell your shares in January 2010?” I sold all the shares in my portfolio that year because I did not want any issues about conflicts of interest—I did not want anyone to be able to suggest that, as Prime Minister, I had any other agendas or vested interests. Selling all my shares was the simplest and clearest way that I could achieve that.
There are strict rules in this House for the registration of shareholdings. I have followed them in full. The Labour party has said it will refer me to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. I have already given her the relevant information, and if there is more she believes I should say, I am very happy to say it.
I accept all of the criticisms for not responding more quickly to these issues last week, but, as I have said, I was angry about the way my father’s memory was being traduced. I know he was a hard-working man and a wonderful dad, and I am proud of everything he did to build a business and provide for his family.
On the issue of inheritance tax, there is an established system in this country. I believe that, far from people being embarrassed about passing things to their children—for example, wanting to keep a family home within the family—it is a natural human instinct to do so, and is something that should be encouraged. As for parents passing money to their children while they are still alive, that is something that the tax rules fully recognise. Many parents want to help their children when they buy their first car, get a deposit for their first home or face the costs of starting a family. It is entirely natural that parents should want to do those things, and, again, something that we should not just defend but proudly support.
Let me turn to the Panama papers and the actions that this Government are taking to deal with tax evasion, aggressive tax avoidance and international corruption more broadly. When we came into office, there were foreigners not paying capital gains tax when selling their UK homes, private equity managers paying a lower rate of tax than the people who cleaned their offices, and rich homebuyers getting away without paying stamp duty because houses were enveloped within companies. We have put an end to all those things. In the last Parliament alone we made an unprecedented 40 tax changes to close loopholes, raising £12 billion. In this Parliament we will legislate for more than 25 further measures, forecast to raise £16 billion by 2021. No British Government, Labour or Conservative, have ever taken so much robust action in this area.
Through my chairmanship of the G8 at the summit at Lough Erne in 2013, I put tax, trade and transparency on the global agenda, and sought agreement on a global standard for the automatic exchange of information over who pays taxes and where. Many said it would never happen, but today 129 jurisdictions have committed to implementing the international standard for exchange of tax information on request, and over 95 jurisdictions have committed to implementing the new global common reporting standard on tax transparency. Under that new standard, we will receive information on accounts of UK taxpayers in all those jurisdictions. In June this year, Britain will become the first country in the G20 to have a public register of beneficial ownership, so everyone can see who really owns and controls each company. This Government are also consulting on requiring foreign companies that own property or bid on public contracts to provide their beneficial ownership information, and we are happy to offer technical support and assistance to any of the devolved Administrations also considering such measures.
As the revelations in the Panama papers have made clear, we need to go even further. So we are taking three additional measures, to make it harder for people to hide the proceeds of corruption offshore, to make sure that those who smooth the way can no longer get away with it and to investigate wrongdoing.
First, let me deal with our Crown dependencies and overseas territories that function as financial centres. They have already agreed to exchange taxpayer financial account information automatically, and will begin doing so from this September. That never happened before I became Prime Minister and got them round the Cabinet table and said, “This must happen.” We need to go further, however, and today I can tell the House that we have now agreed that they will provide UK law enforcement and tax agencies with full access to information on the beneficial ownership of companies. We have finalised arrangements with all of them except for Anguilla and Guernsey, both of which we believe will follow in the coming days and months. For the first time, UK police and law enforcement agencies will be able to see exactly who really owns and controls every company incorporated in those territories: the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Isle of Man, Jersey—the lot. That is the result of a sustained campaign, building on the progress that we made at the G8, and I welcome the commitment of the Governments of those territories to work with us and implement those arrangements.
The House should note that that will place our overseas territories and Crown dependencies well ahead of many other similar jurisdictions, and also—crucially—ahead of many of our major international partners, including some states in the United States of America. Next month we will seek to go further still, using our anti-corruption summit to encourage consensus not just on exchanging information, but on publishing such information and putting it into the public domain, as we are doing in the UK. We want everyone with a stake in fighting corruption—from law enforcement, to civil society and the media—to be able to use those data and help us to root out and deter wrongdoing.
Next, we will take another major step forward in dealing with those who facilitate corruption. Under current legislation it is difficult to prosecute a company that assists with tax evasion, but we are going to change that. We will legislate this year for a new criminal offence to apply to corporations that fail to prevent their representatives from criminally facilitating tax evasion. Finally, we are providing initial new funding of up to £10 million for a new cross-agency taskforce to swiftly analyse all the information that has been made available from Panama, and to take rapid action. That taskforce will include analysts, compliance specialists, and investigators from across HMRC, the National Crime Agency, the Serious Fraud Office, and the Financial Conduct Authority.
This Government will continue to lead the international agenda to crack down on tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance. That battle is important and must be combined with the approach that we take in this country—low tax rates, but taxes that people and businesses pay. That is how we will tackle these issues and build a strong economy that can fund the public services we need. That strong economy, creating jobs and rewarding aspiration is the true focus of this Government—something that would never be safe under the Labour party—and I commend this statement to the House.
Below is the text of the speech made by Adam Afriyie in Ghana on 4 April 2016.
Honourable Ministers, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure for me to visit Ghana, from where so much of my own family heritage comes, on my first official trip as the Prime Minister’s Trade Envoy to Ghana. I am looking forward to our discussions, understanding what your business and establishing how UK expertise can help your companies grow.
Tonight I am proud to formally launch the Business is GREAT campaign in Ghana.
Business is Great seeks to highlight the UK capabilities in Healthcare, Technology, Creative Industries, Education, Extractives (including mining and Oil and Gas), Agritechnology, Financial, Legal and Professional services. The UK has so much to offer in these sectors and we want Ghanaian companies to benefit.
As part of this, we are running an exciting online campaign aimed at Ghanaian buyers and business owners interested in sourcing products and services from the UK to help them grow. The message is that the UK is open for business.
I know that the UKTI team here at the British High Commission receive many enquiries from Ghanaian companies who are looking for innovative solutions. We want to build on that and provide a free digital service to buyers – to extend our outreach, and match UK and Ghanaian businesses more effectively. The demand is here. And UK companies can supply: there are over 20,000 suppliers in Healthcare, Creative Industries and Education alone. You can register your interest by accessing the link which is on the screen (point it out). Just outline the products and services you need and we will match them with the right British Businesses. It’s free, it’s easy and it’s online now. And for those who managed to register before 15 April I wish them luck in winning a sponsored visit to attend the International Festival for Business 2016 in Liverpool. The International Festival for Business 2016 will be a global marketplace of around 30,000 companies, with three weeks of expert-led seminars, large-scale networking, and multi-sector deal making. The festival will focus on manufacturing, energy, environment, creative and digital, and is fully supported by the British Prime Minister David Cameron and the UK Government.
Ghana is a country that demands innovation. The UK can help provide that: it rightly has a reputation as a global centre for digital technologies, with world-leading academics and businesses working in media, internet, communications and cyber security. So it has one of the world’s strongest and most advance communications sectors. London has become the FinTech capital of the world with more people employed in the sector than any other city worldwide, including New York!
In healthcare, the UK has one of the world’s most respected sectors, where the National Health Service (NHS) collaborates with the innovative healthcare companies and academia to provide innovative, integrated, high quality and cost effective systems of healthcare for all citizens. The UK has one of the most vibrant and productive life sciences sectors in the world, with over 5,000 companies.
UK architects are sought after across the world for their increasingly original, cutting edge designs. 3Dried and AndArchitect are involved in the venue design for the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games. UK Games producers are internationally renowned for their genre-defining originality, creating world-class titles and franchises such as Grand Theft Auto, Batman: Arkham, Monument Valley, Total War and LEGO Games.
Currently companies working in Ghana include Intellisence: energy and production efficiency through sensors, simulation and software; SolarCentury: solar and hybrid power solutions; Brinks/XL Catlin: Multi Asset Protection Insurance; Aggreko: innovative power solutions; BluePoint : Data and Communications Management and a company that was formed out of Southampton University; Drilling Systems UK: supplying Immersive Training Simulators for the Oil & Gas industry.
With access to products and services such as these Ghanaian businesses have a wealth of choice that will benefit them immediately and transfer skills to drive their businesses.
Although this online campaign focuses on just three sectors, we want to hear from you no matter what sector you operate in. The UK has vast experience in other areas such as consultancy, financial and legal services, education, power and argitech solutions. Exporters offer equipment, vehicles, chemicals, mining products, electrical and mechanical supplies. We can help you to take your business to the next level, to grow nationally, regionally and internationally.
