argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Government Operations
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): I did not avoid the question at all. I pointed out that most PFI contracts were signed under the Labour Government. When I was a Secretary of State, I remember being offered a PFI route to financing a new hospital. I looked at the numbers and did not think they worked, so I said, "I’d rather finance it in the normal way by public borrowing because that would clearly be cheaper and give us more control." That was a bit of a surprise to my officials but they quite liked the advice I gave them on the subject. It is the job of a Minister to understand these things, but a lot of Labour Ministers did not understand the contracts they were signing, and those contracts had weaknesses. If the hon. Lady has problems with contracts that Ministers are currently signing, it is her job as an Opposition MP—she will not be shy about doing this—to give chapter and verse. She has not been specific, but we do not have time to turn this into a debate about individual contracts. I am sure that my ministerial friends, particularly in the Treasury spending department, would be very interested to hear where she thinks they have gone wrong. However. we probably need to move on.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): I have no evidence that makes me believe they will not pay their fair share of tax. I am sure that my ministerial friends have heard the hon. Lady’s point and will look carefully at the issue. It is good that a lot of our future infrastructure programme will be privately financed, but I always apply a simple test. If the thing is going to be privately financed, I want to ensure that the private sector is bearing significant risk in return for the reward it wants to earn. I do not like phoney PFIs, whereby the private sector cajoles the public sector into taking all or most of the risk while giving a higher reward than one would get on a normal Government bond in order for the contract to be signed. There were quite a lot of those under the Labour Government and the taxpayer is much the poorer as a result. It is part of the reason that we did not get the gains in public sector productivity that we would like to achieve. If we do not discipline the big investment spend, we do not drive forward the productivity gains that we clearly need to make across a large public sector In conclusion, the best way to raise the extra money we need to pay wages and improve public services—an aim that is shared across the Chamber, contrary to Labour’s belief—is to drive further growth in the economy so that more people are in jobs to pay tax, and so that more companies are doing things here and making profits here on which they can pay tax. We need a series of tax rates that are not too complicated and that are low enough to be sensible so that we are internationally competitive. Then individuals and companies will have every incentive to do more, invest more, work harder and work smarter in order to carry the economy forward. I trust that is what my hon. and right hon. Friends will be doing I do have some worries about the length of modern Finance Bills. It is useful to have another doorstop, but it is a bit of a barrier to our reading every page and giving it the credit that it undoubtedly deserves. It would be good to see whether we could have a period of fewer and simpler taxes so that we do not need quite so much language in Finance Bills. It would also certainly be good to look at what one can learn from the success of raising more revenue from richer income tax earners by going from 50% to 45% and getting more revenue out of companies by going from 28% to 19%. We could apply that principle more generally to other taxes because we would then have a win-win situation. We would have more money for our public services, more economic growth, more people in jobs and more people keeping more of the money they earn. That might make for happier constituents, and that is my main aim in being here.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): Is the hon. Lady aware that there was also a sharp upward spike in inflation in Germany and the United States of America, and that the main underlying cause was, of course, energy prices and world commodity prices?
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Macroeconomics
Ross Thomson (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Lady says that we have to protect the income of hard-working households, yet although the First Minister had made a promise not to increase basic rate income tax, she now, in her programme for government, talks about increasing it, which will hurt the very people whom the hon. Lady is talking about protecting.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: International Affairs
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): I was not casting aspersions. I was simply reminding everybody that the Scottish nationalists—that is what they are; they are a nationalist party—want to break up the United Kingdom, and I was simply congratulating my colleagues from Scottish constituencies on helping to strengthen our United Kingdom.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: International Affairs
Brett Charles Anthony Elphicke (Conservative, Centre-right): I think that my right hon. Friend is being too generous to the Scottish nationalists. They are not simply nationalists; they are incompetent. They were warned on the question of VAT and the police before they took those reforms though, and they went ahead regardless. It is their fault and their mess, and as usual they are trying to blame everyone else for it.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Macroeconomics
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. By the way, Madam Deputy Speaker, I did not think that it would be out of order for me to make some brief remarks about something other than the Finance Bill, given that the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson spent 10 minutes talking about yesterday and the hon. Member for Aberdeen North spent quite some time doing the same Let me move on to finance and the essential capability of the Bill, which is, of course, to raise revenue. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) talked about that, and of course the central point is about balancing the public finances. I shall not talk about that at length because I was fortunate enough to secure a Westminster Hall debate on the subject which, much like today’s, was well attended, with more than 20 Conservative colleagues and only one Opposition Back Bencher, the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans). To be fair to him, he spoke extremely well, but he was the only Opposition Back-Bench Member to speak in that debate, which demonstrated that when it comes to balancing the public finances, Opposition MPs are very good at spending money, but not so good at thinking of ways of balancing the books and ensuring that we have sound public finances. That is important because the sound public finances that the Bill helps to put in place will ensure that the country continues to grow and that we can continue to deliver pay rises for people across the country.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Macroeconomics
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very pleased that the measures in this Bill, which Opposition Front Benchers seem so unwilling to support, raise something like £1.6 billion—I am sure that the Financial Secretary will correct me if I am wrong—on top of the £1 billion we have raised from non-doms. Put together, that is £2.6 billion, which is more than the Labour party raised in all the time it was in government. If the hon. Lady compares Labour’s record in government with ours, she will see that we have been much more effective in raising taxes from non-doms to spend on our public services than her Government ever was.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Macroeconomics
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): Again, I am sure that the Financial Secretary will correct me if I am wrong, but the Treasury’s estimate of an extra £1.6 billion is, I think, robust. The hon. Lady ought to be aware that in the seven years the Government have been in power, we have introduced significant measures to clamp down on aggressive tax avoidance and evasion, and the Finance Bill continues those measures. We have managed to reduce the tax gap and are collecting more of the revenue that we should collect. Again, that record is better than that of the hon. Lady’s party in office.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Macroeconomics
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman has put his finger on an important point. There are measures that we can take here in the United Kingdom to raise more money from multinational corporations, and we have taken some of them, but to do a proper job we have to take measures in accordance with international partners. That is why I am pleased that the Government have been leading a lot of the work on the OECD’s base erosion project to come up with international definitions of profits and international agreements on how to tax those profits. Individual countries are not able to take those steps by themselves.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: International Affairs
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): First, I am clearly not going to get in the way of the sophisticated political alliance between the hon. Members for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and for Ilford North. On the EU, I was on the same side of the argument as the hon. Gentleman—I campaigned for remain—but I am also a democrat. The country made a different choice and everyone in the House needs to support the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, as we did yesterday, to ensure that we have a smooth exit from the EU. However, that does not mean that we should stop co-operating with our international partners. Even when we have left the European Union, I want to work closely with colleagues in Europe on finance, security and trade matters. We can work well with our neighbours, and we can also work with our international partners outside the European Union. Indeed, if we are to deal with global multinationals, we will have to deal with the United States and other countries where those multinationals are headquartered if we are to make progress.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Macroeconomics
Rebecca Faye Clark (Pow) (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is making a sound case, but would it not be right to suggest that it is even more important, in the light of Brexit, for us to be in total control of our finances at home and that we should draw in all the money that is owed to us in the best possible ways? That is going to be so important in keeping us productive.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Macroeconomics
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, that is why the Financial Secretary to the Treasury set out a number of important areas in the Bill that deal with those issues I want to pick up on an issue that, interestingly, has been referred to by a number of colleagues. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) touched on the question of public sector productivity, and the hon. Member for Aberdeen North, who speaks for the SNP, also alluded to productivity. I think the hon. Lady got it a little wrong, however, when she talked about improving productivity by giving people higher pay. It is actually the other way round. We all want our constituents to get a pay rise—I think that that unites everyone in the House—but the only sustainable way to drive up pay in the public and private sectors is to improve productivity in both sectors. I shall set out a few areas in which we could do that First, however, I want to make a slightly humorous point to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. I do not want to see an increase in the productivity of the parliamentary draftsmen in Her Majesty’s Treasury. Producing Finance Bills as thick as this one is perhaps not what we ought to be doing. I understand the complexity of these matters—I declare an interest as a non-practising chartered accountant—but I know from talking to colleagues in the business that they do not enormously welcome Finance Bills this thick. Much as this might upset them, I have to say that creating jobs for tax accountants is also perhaps not something that we ought to be doing. Slimmer Finance Bills with simpler, less complex legislation introducing lower tax rates from which we collect more revenue are the way to go. If we were to do that, we would be doing everyone a service, and those in the tax business could perhaps find more productive things to do. This gentle chiding is perhaps directed less towards my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury than towards officials in his Department.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Macroeconomics
Craig Mackinlay (Conservative, Centre-right): I declare an interest: I am a practising chartered accountant, when I have the time. My right hon. Friend said that lower rates can produce more revenue. Is that not exactly what has happened since 2010 with our reduction in corporation tax rates, which is paying the dividend of a greater return for the Treasury?
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Macroeconomics
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and he is exactly right. This was one area in which the debate about corporation tax rates during the general election campaign became rather confused. The Opposition kept saying that we were cutting corporation tax, and making it sound as though we were therefore going to collect less revenue. What we were doing, of course, was to reduce corporation tax rates. The purpose of doing so was to collect more corporation tax revenue, both to attract more businesses to locate in the United Kingdom and to enable the businesses that are already here to be more successful. That is an admirable aspiration but it is, as my hon. Friend said, what has happened in practice One of my concerns about the Labour party’s plans is that an increase in corporation tax rates would lead to the collection of less corporation tax revenue; and we would have less money, rather than more, to spend on our public services and our hard-working public sector workers. [Interruption.] I see Opposition Members, including those on the Front Bench, shaking their heads, but since we cut corporation tax rates, we have collected more corporation tax—
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Macroeconomics
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): It is no good the shadow Minister shaking her head. The fact is that that is exactly what has happened. We are in the business of collecting revenue to spend, not putting up rates to punish people in order to make ourselves feel good.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Macroeconomics
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): I am always grateful to have excellent suggestions from colleagues in Northern Ireland. It is worth remembering that they bring a particular perspective to Brexit, given that they have a land border with the Irish Republic. We need to be very conscious of tax effects across the border as we leave the European Union I set out in my Westminster Hall debate, which I will not reprise now, our good record on economic growth since 2010, our reduction of the deficit and the significant number of jobs that businesses in the United Kingdom have generated. That is all very positive. But I am perfectly happy, as are the Government, to accept that there is one area in which the country’s economic record since 2007-08—under both the Conservative party and the Labour party, when it was in government—has been less impressive, and that is productivity. Since the economic crash, productivity growth has stagnated, and the level of productivity is significantly below that of the G7 As I have said, it is essential to raise productivity if we are going to increase pay in both the public and private sectors. I want—I think all Conservative Members want—to give public sector workers a pay rise, just as much as Opposition Members do. But we understand that that has to be paid for. There is also an element of fairness. Private sector wages fell, in cash terms, after the crash, but that did not happen in the public sector. The work done by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that after a number of years of pay restraint, pay in the public and private sectors is now roughly in balance. It is, perhaps, a little ahead in the public sector if we take account of the more generous pension schemes. I want workers in both the private sector and the public sector to be properly rewarded; I do not want to favour workers in one sector at the expense of those in the other. That idea is missing in the comments we have heard today from the trade unions about public sector workers. We have to have a balanced settlement for workers across the economy, not just those in one area of it It is not clear what has caused the lack of growth in productivity. It will probably not surprise anyone in the House to learn that according to economists—I apologise if there are any economists in the Chamber; I stopped my economic training when I left university—a number of things seem to be at the root of this, one of which is that there could well be a lack of wage growth, which means that companies are not investing in capital equipment to make work more effective. As a former Minister for Immigration, I think that having unlimited unskilled migration—it is definitely at the lower end of the labour market, keeping wage growth low—has certainly not encouraged companies to invest in machinery and equipment to drive up productivity. Leaving the European Union gives us the opportunity to reduce importing unskilled workers from the current level. That does not mean reducing it to zero, but reducing it a little will help to improve such an incentive.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): To help my right hon. Friend, let me say that there is a good reason and a bad reason why productivity has been disappointing. The good reason is that we have generated lots of lower-value jobs—it is better to have a job than no job—and we now need to help those people to work smarter so that they can be paid better. [Interruption.] Labour Members do not want jobs for their constituents, but I do, and I then want to go on and get them, when they have been trained and skilled up, into better-paid work. The bad news is that we have lost a lot of top-end jobs in the North sea oil industry because of the maturity of the fields and the decline of output, as well as the hit on the price, and we have also lost quite a lot of top-end jobs in the City—some people did not like those top-end jobs very much, but the crash destroyed quite a lot of them in the City—and that has obviously depressed the overall productivity figures.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Labor
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. I agree with him that the response to what he said about the growth in jobs was very disappointing. One thing I touched on in my Westminster Hall debate was the comparison between this country and some of our European neighbours. I must say that in Britain, where the level of unemployment for young people has fallen from 20% to 13%—I accept that that is still too high—the record, particularly for younger people, is phenomenally better even than in countries such as France, where the rate remains at 20%, while in some European countries that have completely lost control of their public finances, the rate is—
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Macroeconomics
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. It would be helpful if we reduced the level of air passenger duty, but the Government have to be mindful, since I have heard lots of bids in the debate for money to be spent, that we also have to raise it. If we want to reduce air passenger duty and we think that that will reduce the amount of revenue we collect, we will have to look at areas where we can reduce spending, at other taxes or at growth in productivity in the public sector, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham said, in order to do that. It is not a simple question. The Chancellor will no doubt look at it in the round as he makes his Budget judgments later this year.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Transportation
Christopher Laurie Malthouse (Conservative, Centre-right): I understand my right hon. Friend’s explanation, but perhaps the point the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) was making—one with which I have some sympathy—was that, in the same way that we make the argument about corporation tax that if we lower the rate we will collect more money, perhaps if we lowered air passenger duty more people would fly and we would gather more revenue. There may also be more economic activity generally around the airports that would see an increase in passengers.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Macroeconomics
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I accept that this is an area that is difficult to model, but when the Treasury does its Red Book and its economic forecasting—I think I understand this correctly —it uses a largely static model for tax forecasting. It assumes that if we reduce the rate of tax, we will collect not more money, but less. I understand that there is difficulty in doing the opposite, which is a dynamic model that tries to take into account the fact that there might be more economic activity and that looks at whether more or less revenue would be raised. I accept that that is a difficult process and I suspect that, on balance, the Treasury is trying to be relatively conservative with a small "c". However, there is merit in looking at that. The Financial Secretary might want to consider the extent to which the Treasury, in making judgments about taxes, can look at how much we would drive up economic activity if we were to reduce tax rates, and therefore whether we would produce more tax.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Transportation
Christopher Laurie Malthouse (Conservative, Centre-right): There is a particularly strong case where aviation is concerned—a number of airlines, such as easyJet and Ryanair, rely on dynamic pricing and the elasticity of demand to fill their planes. They recognise that the lower their prices, the more likely they are to fill their planes, and that the greater frequency with which they fly their planes, the more people are likely to come. In my view, lower APD would therefore result in more economic activity and more people flying.
Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2017-09-12
Topic: Macroeconomics
Abimbola Afolami (Conservative, Centre-right): What is my hon. Friend’s view of the fact that many economists, notably the American economist Tyler Cowen, have recently discussed how innovation has been slowing down not just in Britain but in America and across the developed world? Not disregarding his point about taxation, I think that points to something more fundamental about western economies and how the economic system is working.