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Tag: Nigel Mills

  • Nigel Mills – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Nigel Mills – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nigel Mills on 2016-05-26.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what measures his Department is implementing to emphasise the importance of hand hygiene in the prevention of infection in hospitals.

    Ben Gummer

    Tackling healthcare associated infections is complex and requires a strong patient safety system that integrates cleanliness, infection prevention and control and antibiotic use. Hand hygiene is an important component and we continuously review and enhance national measures, systems and guidance. For example hand hygiene references in The Health and Social Care Act 2008 Code of Practice for prevention and control of infections and related guidance, were strengthened when it was revised in 2015. It will also form part of forthcoming guidance on reducing Gram negative infections such as E. coli.

    Auditing of hand hygiene is a local responsibility and information on hand hygiene compliance is not collected centrally. Therefore, no national assessment has been made of the potential links between hand hygiene compliance levels and the above infections.

  • Nigel Mills – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    Nigel Mills – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nigel Mills on 2016-01-26.

    To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many notices under section 93 of the Finance Act 2015 were issued by HM Revenue and Customs in the period from 1 April 2015 to 31 December 2015.

    Mr David Gauke

    The Diverted Profits Tax is designed to counter contrived tax arrangements used by some multinationals to shift their profits to other countries. It is deliberately set at a higher rate than corporation tax, so it acts as a deterrent and encourages more companies to pay corporation tax.

    No notices under section 93 Finance Act 2015 were issued during the period 1 April 2015 to 31 December 2015 but HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) received notifications from eleven companies under section 92 in relation to section 86 Finance Act 2015.

    For companies with accounting periods ending on or before 31 March 2016 the notification period is six months from the end of that period. HMRC is not able to disclose details of notifications relating to sections 80 and 81 of the Finance Act 2015 due to its duty to protect taxpayer confidentiality.

  • Nigel Mills – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    Nigel Mills – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nigel Mills on 2016-01-26.

    To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many notifications under section 92 of the Finance Act 2015 were received by HM Revenue and Customs during the period from 1 April 2015 to 31 December 2015.

    Mr David Gauke

    The Diverted Profits Tax is designed to counter contrived tax arrangements used by some multinationals to shift their profits to other countries. It is deliberately set at a higher rate than corporation tax, so it acts as a deterrent and encourages more companies to pay corporation tax.

    No notices under section 93 Finance Act 2015 were issued during the period 1 April 2015 to 31 December 2015 but HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) received notifications from eleven companies under section 92 in relation to section 86 Finance Act 2015.

    For companies with accounting periods ending on or before 31 March 2016 the notification period is six months from the end of that period. HMRC is not able to disclose details of notifications relating to sections 80 and 81 of the Finance Act 2015 due to its duty to protect taxpayer confidentiality.

  • Nigel Mills – 2022 Speech on the Finance Bill

    Nigel Mills – 2022 Speech on the Finance Bill

    The speech made by Nigel Mills, the Conservative MP for Amber Valley, in the House of Commons on 28 November 2022.

    It is a pleasure to speak so early in the debate. It is also a great pleasure to have a Finance Bill that is so short. I must have spoken on a dozen of them in my time in Parliament and to have one that has only 12 clauses is some sort of miracle. During this week, we have probably about as much time as we normally have for one of several hundred pages, so we can really scrutinise the 11 substantive clauses. Perhaps that is progress, compared with what we normally expect.

    I start by comparing this Finance Bill with ones we had at the start of the previous recession a decade and a half ago and ones we had at the start of previous measures to tackle a large budget deficit. If I recall rightly, the single biggest measure we had 14 years ago was a VAT reduction at the start of the recession, which cost something like £15 billion. I am not sure it had the effect we wanted. Interestingly, as we sadly slip into a recession, which we hope is shorter and shallower than that one, what we have not seen in this Finance Bill is any attempt to boost consumer confidence. We can argue that we tried that in September and it did not go so well, and probably the right thing here is to focus on how we reassure the markets that we can keep borrowing under control and therefore not risk a rise in interest rates.

    However, if this recession looks like it might be any longer or deeper than the Government’s forecasts, I urge them to think carefully about how we get consumer confidence to turn around. I fear that what we will see in the new year is a big retrenchment in people’s personal spending. We will spend the money for Christmas because we have to, but people will then take a very cautious approach in the early part of next year, knowing that energy bills will go up in April and that tax changes are around the corner. We would not want them to go too far and retrench too fast. So I hope the Government will think about the role that tax can play in turning the economy around if we need that next year.

    The other interesting comparison is with the approach George Osborne took in his Budgets in the first half of the last decade to introduce austerity to tackle the big public deficit we had. Let us look at what he prioritised. He had a VAT increase, which we are rightly not doing in this situation, but he increased the personal allowance and reduced corporation tax to try to put more money into people’s pockets from work and to encourage business investment in the UK. Interestingly, the Government are doing the complete opposite now. I am not sure whether we have worked out that that plan did not work, but there is evidence to suggest that the lower corporation tax rates we had for a decade did not achieve the additional investment that we wanted them to and we are probably better off sticking at about 25% than going lower.

    I am slightly intrigued. The great claim we made was that we were taking people out of the scope of income tax. We are now at great risk of putting them all back into the scope of it again. I accept the Minister’s point that the personal allowance by the end of this five-year period will still be £2,000 higher than it would have been by inflation, but I think that is not enough of an increase. I hope that the Government regard these personal allowance freezes for another five years to be a kind of last resort and if we get any improvement in the economic outlook they can be reversed. Especially at the lower end of the level, keeping people out of tax, letting them keep more of the income and making sure that work pays are strong arguments. Frankly, I am not absolutely sure why we need to legislate for personal allowances in five years’ time. We will have another five Finance Bills before we get to those and we could have brought those into law at any point. I accept that we want to give the market a clear steer that we are serious about closing the budget deficit. If we need those measures, fine, they are probably less bad than a rate increase, but what is the point of legislating for them in this situation?

    There is another contrast with what we have done on national insurance this year. We chose to—and I accepted the argument that we needed to—increase the headline rate of NI, but the compensation for that, when it became clear that that was a real problem at the start of the economic downturn, was to increase the personal allowance for NI—the starting point at which someone pays that tax. Yet now, rather than increasing the headline rate, we are effectively holding back the starting points of those taxes. So we have a tax on income and a tax on wages where we are taking one approach, and on the other tax we are doing something completely different.

    As we go forward from what I accept are emergency measures that we need to use to fill a hole, the Government need to have a clear strategy for what our tax system should look like. They should consider the things we are trying to tax and the things we are trying to incentivise. They should try to give people some long-term stability so that they can plan and understand and we can get the behavioural changes and incentives that we want, rather than having a clear direction one way, and then doing a U-turn and wondering why people do not do the things that we would really like them to do. Now we are through the real firefighting, I hope the Government can produce a strategy and plan for where they think the tax system should go, so that people can understand it and respond accordingly. I think that that is what we had under the Gauke doctrine in 2010. We need to revisit that, now we seem to have changed our mind on so many of those things.

    The bleakest bit of news in this Finance Bill was extending the windfall tax to 2028. I was hoping that the energy crisis might be over quite a bit before then and we would not need to have those measures in place. The fact we have done that suggests we are not expecting energy prices to come back down any time soon. Clearly, the windfall tax is the right thing to do. I have always taken the view that this is a level of profit that nobody could ever have thought they could get. These companies are earning it from extracting our natural resources; they are not their natural resources. We have given them permission to extract them, and they have rightly made some profit from doing so. However, we should limit that profit and accept that those are our resources and that we should take the right return from them, rather than the exploiter doing so, so I hugely welcome the introduction of the windfall tax.

    I am quite intrigued by the research and development stuff. It is right, even at the most difficult time, to say that we want to make sure that we are incentivising R&D. That is a sensible, long-term measure that shows some long-term planning. I remember being at work as a young accountant when R&D tax credits were introduced—in 2000 for small companies and in 2002 for large companies. The journey they have been on, with rates going up and down and approaches changing—above the line, below the line, cash incentives and all those things—makes me wonder whether, 22 years on, we are really sure that R&D tax credits are delivering the outcome that we want. I suspect that the speeches in the Finance Bill debates in 2000 were that these measures would make us a science superpower in the next generation. I think that we are still giving those speeches, and we have not quite got the superpower bit. I wonder whether the Government should stop at some point and ask whether those are working. I know that there is an ongoing review on combining the reliefs, but are they triggering the right thing?

    One piece of data that did worry me was that a disproportionate amount of those are claimed by companies in London and the south-east and they are not spread around the country in the way we would like. Is there a way we can use these tax measures to encourage that kind of investment and those kinds of skilled jobs in the regions of the UK, and not just focus them in the most prosperous parts?

    I have expressed the view previously to many Treasury Ministers that, outside the EU, the one thing that we can do is take a regional approach to certain taxation to encourage activity in different parts of the country that we do not need to encourage in London and the south-east. I urge the Treasury to look seriously at whether we could take a regional approach to some taxes so that we can get those differentiating incentives to move wealth outside London and the south-east. That would fit entirely with our levelling-up agenda, but we have not chosen yet to be that creative with our tax system.

    Given that we have plenty of time for detailed questions on clauses on Wednesday, I will just say that I accept the need for this Finance Bill. I will support all the measures in it and I will happily vote for it later. I will not be voting for the Opposition amendment, which I suspect will not come as a great shock. I think I support ending non-dom status, but we should have temporary residence relief. If somebody comes here on a secondment or for a short period, we should not try to force them to move all their tax affairs here. We should tax them on the income that they earn here. There would be a big disincentive and it would be out of step with other countries if we did not have a short period where somebody had that different situation to reflect the fact that they are not ordinarily resident here.

    The fact is that a person’s non-dom status depends on where their father was born. In theory, they can become a non-dom even if they have lived here all their life and never been resident anywhere else in the world. That shows how ludicrous those rules are. I urge the Government to look at modernising all our residence tests, including that on non-dom status. They are all far too complicated. We could have a far more effective system that works better and would achieve the advantages of attracting investment here. There is a real problem with just scrapping non-dom status; it may drive some people we do want here to leave. On balance, a change is better and we should continue with the direction of travel that we had a decade ago of restricting the time period. I think that we could restrict it with a more modern relief that would achieve what we want without having the big downsides.

    With that, I will happily support the Bill and oppose the amendment if there is a Division later.

  • Nigel Mills – 2022 Comments on Rishi Sunak Becoming Prime Minister

    Nigel Mills – 2022 Comments on Rishi Sunak Becoming Prime Minister

    The comments made by Nigel Mills, the Conservative MP for Amber Valley, on Twitter on 21 October 2022.

    A few weeks ago I changed my mind and didn’t back Rishi Sunak. I’m not making the same mistake again, he is clearly the Prime Minister we need to restore stability and tackle the many serious challenges facing the country.

  • Nigel Mills – 2016 Speech on Anti-Corruption Summit

    Below is the text of the speech made by Nigel Mills, the Conservative MP for Amber Valley, in Westminster Hall on 3 May 2016.

    I beg to move,

    That this House has considered the Anti-Corruption Summit.

    Hon. Members, members of the public and people watching this debate will not be surprised to learn that tackling corruption is one of the biggest items on the agenda this year. Barely a day goes by without it hitting the news. As co-chair of the all-party group on anti-corruption, I was keen to hold this debate so we can air the issues that the Government hope to tackle in the important summit next week and subject the summit to parliamentary scrutiny.

    I thank the Backbench Business Committee for awarding me this debate. Unusually for a Back-Bench debate, we are not here to criticise the Government. We may have some suggestions about how they can be a bit stronger, but we are here to congratulate the Prime Minister and the Government for holding the summit, for placing this issue at the top of the agenda and for consistently championing transparency and accountability as enablers of good governance. We want real actions and agreements from the summit next week, so that those important things can be taken forward and enforced. I will set the scene and explain how I see the agenda, and then I will ask the Minister some questions about how the summit will work, who will be there, what the key Government aims are and how we can enforce the actions that are agreed.

    In next Thursday’s summit, international partners will, we hope, agree a package of practical steps to expose corruption, punish the perpetrators, support the victims and drive out the culture of corruption. That is clearly timely, given what we have seen in recent weeks and months. It is difficult to measure the impact of corruption, but the scale has never been more obvious: the FIFA scandal, the Unaoil leaks and the recent Panama papers gave us a glimpse of the far-reaching and egregious damage that bribery, fraud, grand corruption and tax evasion can cause. As the Prime Minister said last July,

    “Corruption is one of the greatest enemies of progress in our time.”

    Bribes, tax evasion and grand corruption destabilise development, keep the vulnerable in poverty, add significantly to the cost of doing business and fund terrorism. We all agree that we need to find a way of fixing those things.

    Next week’s extraordinary summit is outside the usual gamut of United Nations, G20, G7 or even OECD processes. It is a one-off, stand-alone, unique summit, and we are all keen to understand how any actions that are agreed can be enforced. We do not want just warm words next week; real action must result from them.

    It is right that the UK takes the lead on this issue, because we are uniquely exposed to corruption. Our status as a pre-eminent global financial centre and the unfortunate financial secrecy touted by our overseas territories and Crown dependencies make the UK seem a safe haven for the proceeds of corruption and the individuals and organisations that facilitate and benefit from financial crime and tax evasion. We ought to recognise that.

    When MPs go around the world and look at the issues that developing countries face, we often think, “Isn’t it great that we’re not suffering from that level of day-to-day corruption? We don’t have to bribe public officials to get the service we want. We are not at risk of being stopped by the police and being asked for a charge to keep driving.” But the UK is not completely corruption-free. As a big financial centre, we are very exposed to corruption, and we are used as a way to launder money and hide the proceeds of corruption and crime elsewhere in the world.

    It is right that we praise what the Government have done in that regard. We will soon be one of the first countries in the world, and the first in the European Union, to have a public register of beneficial ownership. That is a real step forward, which will allow us all to see who owns the companies that operate in the UK. I am sure that it will give us some extremely useful and interesting information. We all welcome the recent consultation on extending that transparency to property ownership. We also welcome the new anti-money laundering action plan, which, if fully implemented, will bolster the regulators’ enforcement powers and their ability to identify and freeze suspicious transactions.

    Of course, we have issues with our overseas territories, and if we cannot convince them to get on board with this agenda, our reputation for being a truly anti-corruption jurisdiction will not be intact. As the Panama papers show, secret company ownership makes most cases of large-scale corruption, money laundering and terrorist financing possible. Without secrecy, much of that could not be done.

    A World Bank review of more than 200 of the biggest corruption cases between 1980 and 2010 found that more than 70% relied on shadow entities that hide ownership. Sadly, company service providers in the UK and the Crown dependencies are second on the list of providing the shell entities that facilitate those awful crimes. This summit and our international reputation will prevail only if we secure commitments from all our overseas territories and dependencies to introduce public registers of beneficial ownership and strip companies of the secrecy that allows them to hide the proceeds of crime, corruption and tax evasion.

    Success will depend on whether we tackle the risks that are somewhat closer to home. Trillions of pounds flow through the UK’s financial system every year, and sadly some of those transactions are less than clean. The National Crime Agency recently estimated that tens to hundreds of billions of pounds-worth of corrupt and illicit funds are laundered through the UK each year. Last week, the acting chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority appeared before the Treasury Committee, and when asked whether the UK system is suitably hostile to money launderers, she could only reply, “We could do better.” Clearly, we could and must do better. The laundered funds that are used to buy property here get into the system through the secrecy that our overseas territories allow. It is harder to spot and stop such funds once they are in the system, so we need to prevent them from getting there in the first place.

    We must tackle money laundering in the UK. We welcome the action plan, but having 27 different institutions to supervise the anti-money laundering rules in the bodies that they regulate is far too many. They cannot have a real picture of what is going on, what action is needed, the trends and who is not complying. Will the Minister say whether the Government plan to find a way to reduce the number of supervisors, so that we can be confident that the new rules and those that are already in place will be enforced?

    Law enforcement authorities identify three sectors that do not adequately report suspicious activity: the legal sector, accountancy and estate agency. Property ownership is a topical issue, and the fact that only 0.05% of all suspicious activity reports came from estate agents in 2013-14 suggests that action is needed to make that sector transparent. Recent research from Transparency International and investigations from Global Witness show how London’s property market is used for corrupt ends. More than 36,000 properties in London are owned by companies registered in offshore jurisdictions, and almost 10% of the properties in Westminster are owned by anonymous companies. We clearly cannot allow that situation to continue.

    Anonymity has a clear link to corruption. More than 75% of corruption cases involving property investigated by the Metropolitan police’s proceeds of corruption unit involved anonymous companies registered in secrecy jurisdictions, 78% of which were registered in the UK’s overseas territories or Crown dependencies. This huge problem is sadly centred in territories over which we have some influence, so it is imperative that we produce some action from them.

    Senior figures at the National Crime Agency have reported that corrupt investment in London’s most expensive properties is driving up house prices across the board. So money laundering not only is a problem for the rich and powerful, but has an impact on everyday life here in London. The longer we allow London to be a kleptocrats’ playground, the worse off we are making ordinary people.

    We have all those statistics to recount, and an APG inquiry is ongoing at which we have heard many anecdotes about how British firms working overseas are losing out on contracts to unscrupulous firms based in countries that do not have the same regulations and rules, and do not play fair, as we do. We are losing jobs and income here, because other countries around the world are not following the rules that they ought to be. It is right for us to make a stand. We do not want businesses bribing their way into contracts around the world. Where we find that happening, businesses and their executives will be punished, and serious action will be taken. We will not turn a blind eye to it. Recently, Ernst and Young’s 2016 global fraud survey of senior executives found that 98% of UK respondents believed that it was important to know who ultimately owns and controls the entities with which they do business. So this is not a minority interest; the business world agrees that we should all know about such things.

    Turning to the summit next week, will the Minister confirm exactly which countries are attending and the level of their representation? How many of the overseas territories and Crown dependencies will be present? Perhaps he will list which ones will not be. According to the recent statement, the two territories that had not agreed to have even a closed register of official ownership were Guernsey, which had some excuse to do with having elections and so could not agree—has any progress been made?—and Anguilla. Has some sense prevailed in that small part of the world? Has it seen the light?

    The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)

    I will try to answer the broader questions at the end, but I can confirm that Anguilla has signed up. Guernsey’s election was last week, so we expect discussions to begin in earnest very promptly.

    Nigel Mills

    At least we have all the territories over that first hurdle.

    Next week, the important thing will be to get real commitments on beneficial ownership and a timeframe for the register to be transparent and public, so everyone can see who owns every company established in a jurisdiction. For law-enforcement providers to be able to find such information in a timely way may be of some use, but we also want everyone to be able to search the register—for example, campaign groups could trace right through the system and see who owns properties. I suspect that law enforcement does not have the resources, sadly, to do that proactively, whereas sunlight and transparency will give us far more progress than a closed register ever could.

    Will the Minister confirm whether the summit agenda includes discussion of a certain time by which all those territories will have a publicly accessible register of who owns companies and, preferably, of trusts in the jurisdiction? I accept that trusts are more complicated, but we need to see some progress on them as well.

    Last autumn, I attended a meeting at which the Government’s anti-corruption champion, my right hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Sir Eric Pickles)—sadly, he cannot be present today—confirmed that the Prime Minister was pretty determined to get overseas territories on board with a public register. The words the anti-corruption champion used were

    “through legislation, guidance or naked pressure”.

    I am not sure whether the summit counts as guidance or naked pressure, but if those do not work, what other options do the Government have? My right hon. Friend said “legislation”—his word—so will the Government put that on the table? At some point, will they take action if the territories will not go as far as we want them to, or is that completely off the table?

    What other major countries are turning up? Are the Americans sending anyone next week, because they clearly have an important role to play in sorting out the world financial system? Those of us who would like to see greater action on global tax avoidance realise that the Americans have a real and vital role in that situation, so are they turning up next week?

    If some actions are agreed next week and, as we hope, they are specific and have a real timeframe, how will they be enforced? Presumably, there will be no binding global agreement, but are the Government conscious of that? We do not want to hear warm words and promises that have been made before, followed by years of drift; we want real, concrete actions that are reviewed, with a timescale and ways to enforce progress.

    If there is an agreement next week and some territories subsequently resile from it, what actions will the Government propose taking to convince the territories otherwise? It is not encouraging to see the Government announce that everyone has agreed to a closed register, and then senior people from some of our overseas territories glory in being able to say, “We’ve won. We’ve got everything we wanted out of this,” implying that it will be business as usual—presumably, not what we were aiming for. We want any agreement next week to be meaningful and strong, not just hot air.

    With those thoughts, I wish the Government and the Minister well at the summit next week. We hope that they will come out with a strong and binding agreement, which can take the agenda forward towards finding ways of materially reducing the amount of corrupt money that flows around the world, especially into the UK. Nations around the world should, rightly, keep the money that they earn and have the tax revenues necessary to grow their economies. Everyone throughout the world should be able to see our financial system moving in the direction of being open, transparent and honest, rather than corrupt.