argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Finance Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-17
Topic: Labor
Charles Chetwynd-Talbot (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I agree entirely with my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Empey. They could not have hit the nail more clearly on the head. On the way to the station this morning to come down on an 11-carriage train from Stoke-on-Trent, with two people in my carriage, I listened to Ken Clarke, the former Chancellor, on Radio 4—as I am sure many of your Lordships did—deliberating on doom and gloom. When I got to the station, I realised what he was talking about The Government have done very well with their measures—furlough, bounce-back and this sort of thing. In my carriage on the way down here, there was one other person. He was a businessman who had an engineering company dealing with energy in Buxton in north Derbyshire, fairly close to where I live. He told me that he had not taken a penny in furlough money but was finding it incredibly difficult. Much of his business was done in London, and he was finding it difficult to travel here to meet the people whom he uses as financiers. A message came to me very clearly indeed: we have to get back to work and we have to do it soon Following on from what my noble friend Lord Empey said, I will mention two things which are key to recovering from this terrible situation. The first is training, retraining and the teaching of skills. I come originally from near Shrewsbury. Very close by is Ironbridge, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. In Bridgnorth, a town not that far away from there, there is an excellent firm called SD Technology, which runs training, retraining and skills courses. It is about to go under because of lack of funding, and we need it badly. Can I ask my noble friend on the Front Bench whether I can put his officials and SD Technology together so that they can discuss the way forward for the very necessary teaching and training of skills My second point is that I firmly believe that large infrastructure projects are a serious key to recovery. I have never been a fan of HS2—it is a dreadful scheme—but in these extraordinary times in which we find ourselves, I am sure that it is a key to the future. It will employ a lot of people. It will produce a lot of employment elsewhere in secondary places. With all these large infrastructure projects, so many things trickle down to fund other things. We really need to do that. It is much better than furlough. It is the way forward.
Finance Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-17
Topic: Macroeconomics
Michael Morris (Conservative, Centre-right): I sincerely congratulate the Chancellor. The Bill before us is sensible, with sensible policies. However, the key point which I remember from my economics lectures is the multiplier effect. The more people spend, it affects other levels of society, and that is the whole basis of the key to recovery Our economy in May was forecast to hit 5.5% but it hit 1.8%. However, there was an interesting test market there, which was the recommendation on 13 May that employees in manufacturing and construction should return to work, which they did. Sadly, however, someone in government decided that they should not take public transport and should drive to work. That was an error. Will it be better in June? Certainly, lockdown is being reduced, particularly for the services category. However, households remain very fearful, and the social distancing rules are likely to limit consumption of services until the population is vaccinated. Yes, some pent-up demand was unleashed in retail in June, but the footfall numbers are still way down on last year In my judgment, all employees should now return to work, in both the public and private sectors, and should not stay at home. All civil servants should stop working from home, and all Parliament personnel should stop working from home and come in to Parliament. The same applies to the private sector. We must, for their sake, reassure people that they will be safe, and they need to use public transport. Indeed, we need also to recognise that some of the services that are supposed to have reopened have not reopened. Around 50% of pubs and restaurants that in theory were going to be open are not yet open, and do not show much sign of doing so Frankly, social distancing going from two metres to one metre-plus is not progress. You either go from two metres to one metre or do not bother at all. That is the only way we will get back to normal life I say to my right honourable friend the Chancellor that the twin challenges are that, as unemployment rises just as government support fades, he will need to watch it very carefully, and he may yet need billions more. If that happens, I say to him: for heaven’s sake, make sure that you do it.
Finance Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-17
Topic: Macroeconomics
Patience Wheatcroft (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, the Chancellor has responded to the Covid crisis with unprecedented cash handouts. Some are clearly well judged, the furlough scheme most obviously. Others, however, look off target. When the head of HMRC, Jim Harra, questions the wisdom of measures, it would surely be wise to pay attention, yet the Government took the rare step of issuing a statement to HMRC, insisting that it should go ahead with implementing two measures of highly dubious worth The first is a bonus scheme to reward employers for doing what they were probably going to do all along: taking back some staff who have been on furlough. The second is a £10 bribe to eat out. Do people really seem likely to respond by going out to eat because of a £10 bribe when they were frightened to go into restaurants beforehand? I doubt it I also question the wisdom of the changes to stamp duty, as have others: £3.8 billion is a large amount to spend to encourage people to move house when our major problem is the shortage of housing. It seems slightly weird to bribe people to buy second homes or to swap their second homes when too many people in this country do not have a home of their own. I thought we were going to use this opportunity to build infrastructure and invest in our capital, but that is not happening with the changes to stamp duty Others have remarked on the mixed messages coming from government on distancing and whether people should be going to the office, and I echo that. It is not helpful when the Prime Minister and the Chief Medical Officer are giving completely opposite advice to the public. How much more confused will the public be when, in just a few months, Britain finally severs its relationship with the EU, and business has to cope with an onslaught of new form-filling and costs? Even the Trade Secretary has raised doubts about the preparedness of the UK’s ports to cope with the new regime that will dawn at the beginning of next year. We may need a job creation scheme, but 500 new members of the Border Force is a very unhelpful way of creating new jobs. Who is going to pay for these new jobs when the economy takes yet another hit? Brexit is an unnecessary onslaught on top of Covid. Can the Minister tell me that he really believes that it is the right time for such a drastic move?
Finance Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-17
Topic: Macroeconomics
Peter Lilley (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, it is unfortunate that because, during the worst recession in two centuries, we have not had a full debate on the economy, we have to use this debate on the Finance Bill, but so be it Most recessions are the result of a shortfall of demand. This, uniquely, is caused by suppression of supply. There is considerable pent-up demand. I agree with my noble friend Lord Lamont, who said we must end the lockdown and encourage people to return to work, and Parliament itself and this House should set an example in that If we do so, and if the economy is enabled to, many businesses will spring back—more rapidly, I suspect, than some suppose—to full activity, but some sectors will have permanently shrunk. Many viable businesses have spent the last few months devising ways to produce previous levels of output with fewer employees, so we face a vast potential increase in unemployment, and unemployed buildings and other resources. We need to make it easier and quicker for new businesses to set up and expand, and for existing firms to expand, grow and diversify During the crisis, we have learned that public regulatory bodies can, in an emergency and under public pressure, take in days and weeks decisions that previously took months or years. We need to ensure that they do so henceforth to enable businesses to increase their activities rapidly. In most areas, we cannot scrap regulations, so we should accelerate decision-making in planning, building controls, environmental measures, health and safety and so on by, for example, setting time limits. If those time limits are not met, consent will be deemed to have been given. Every department should be required to publish at six-monthly intervals the times that it takes to give approvals or refusals or to make decisions when requested by business. Every Select Committee should hold those departments to account. Past experience has shown that the British labour market is more dynamic than any other in Europe; if we do this, we will be able rapidly to bring people back into work in viable and productive employment.
Finance Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-17
Topic: Labor
Sandip Verma (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I too start by thanking the Government and congratulating them on the measures that they have introduced so far. I largely agree with my noble friends Lord Shrewsbury and Blencathra, and the noble Lord, Lord Empey, that we now need to move fast and encourage people to go out and back to work. I want to focus my attention on small and medium-sized businesses. In my own city of Leicester, we are in a second lockdown that only yesterday was extended. Many businesses will now look for further support from the Government, and I hope my noble friend can confirm that I can tell them that help will be available. Grants of £10,000 and £25,000 were issued for businesses at the start of the lockdown, but if money is still available in local authority coffers, it should be reassigned to provide further help for struggling businesses in cities like my own, because we are going to have to work even harder to ensure that they do not close down I would like my noble friend to speak to colleagues about skills, an issue raised by my noble friend Lord Shrewsbury. It is critical that in cities like mine where manufacturing was the main driver of economic growth, a skills programme be provided so that manufacturing can return and help support economic growth in the country. I am thinking in particular of the fallout from PPE production, which cities like Leicester and others across the East Midlands could deliver. Can my noble friend assure me that every step will be taken to put in place a skills agenda for young people in these industries? The spotlight has been shone on Leicester in recent days because of poor working conditions and workers being paid less than the minimum wage. Let us eradicate these practices and put in place proper working conditions, training and skills, so that not just the people but their local economies and the national economy as a whole can benefit. I hope that my noble friend’s response will be positive.
Finance Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-17
Topic: Macroeconomics
Sheila Masters (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I welcome the tax reductions in the Stamp Duty Land Tax (Temporary Relief) Bill; they should help to get the property market moving again. Stamp duty may well be an efficient tax for collection, but it is a terrible drag on the property market. It particularly hits homes in the south-east, which account for more than two-thirds of the total yield. I hope the Government will not simply allow the system to return to its previous state when the temporary relief expires next year. They would do well to look again at the impact the tax has on the property market, in particular on the property-owning aspirations of younger people In previous years we have been assisted in debates on the Finance Bill by reports from the Finance Bill Sub-Committee of the Economic Affairs Committee of your Lordships’ House. Its excellent report on the off-payroll working element of the Bill is hard-hitting; the Government’s response is tone deaf. I understand that my noble friend Lord Forsyth will seek a separate debate on this report later this year, and I certainly look forward to that. As other noble Lords have said, IR35 is an area that has never really worked well. It has led to tax rules with more unfairness than fairness in them—never a good look for a tax system I wish the Treasury were more joined-up. On the one hand, the Chancellor has provided massive support to businesses to help them through the pandemic and to enable economic recovery, and this has been terrific; on the other, the Treasury is legislating to make business rescue and business lending much more difficult. As the noble Baroness, Lady Burt of Solihull, noted, this Finance Bill reinstates Crown preference in insolvency for tax debts. As she said, R3, the representative body for insolvency and turnaround professionals, has called it a potential £1 billion blow. That may well be an understatement. The Crown preference proposals were heavily criticised before the Covid-19 pandemic hit us, and in the current context Clause 98 could well prove disastrous if business rescues are hampered or indebted businesses cannot access further debt My final point is about finance Bills and our tax system in general. We have long passed the point of having the longest tax code in the world. This Finance Bill is not particularly long—a mere 207 pages—but bears the hallmark of our tax system: complexity. We have a complex web of taxes to start with. They are then complicated by reliefs and exemptions, which are in turn further complicated by anti-avoidance provisions. This does not help business. In April the economy shrank by 20%, and the bounce-back in May has so far been modest. If we are to get to where we were before the pandemic hit us, we need everything to run at top speed. Complicating the tax environment for wealth creators will not do that. A good start for the Government next year would be a finance Bill of no more than 10 pages.
Finance Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-17
Topic: Macroeconomics
Patrick Cormack (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, faced with the greatest depression since the reign of Queen Anne, the Chancellor has displayed imagination and ingenuity. But his task will not be made easier when we come to 31 December and his Government’s insistence on the transition period being over by then, whatever happens. I worry about many aspects of the present situation, as do many colleagues. What will happen as furlough comes to an end? I welcome some of the measures announced last week—those on VAT in particular—but will the £1,000 bonus really help? Is the half-price meal voucher not a bit of a gimmick? We should be concentrating money on the self-employed, who include so many of the most talented and innovative people in our country My noble friend Lord Lamont, in a splendid speech, talked about the welcome package for arts and heritage, in which I take a particular interest. But there is a danger that it will be mothballed, in his words. We need some specific things to be done in that field. I warmly commend to the Chancellor a zero rating on all restoration and repair work on historic buildings. New build is zero-rated, and it would be a tremendous boost for craftsmanship. We will lose many of our craftsman in the next couple of years—and some much sooner than that—if we do not take a bold step here. I urge this on the Chancellor. I hope the Minister will refer to this in his wind-up and that tell the Chancellor himself that this would give an enormous boost to the heritage sector I completely agree with my noble friend Lord Blencathra in what he said about digital services. He juxtaposed Amazon and the high street, and made some telling points. I also agree noble Lords who said it was a pity that we were having to debate this subject in this manner. Parliament must lead by example. I was in the Chamber last week and, God willing, will be there next week, but I hope all noble Lords will be back in the autumn, because it is essential that the Government are held properly to account. This one-dimensional Parliament, with no opportunity for intervening or spontaneity, is not the sort of Parliament the country needs in the greatest crisis we have faced for three centuries.
Finance Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-17
Topic: Macroeconomics
David James Fletcher Hunt (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I draw attention to my entry in the register. The Budget on 11 March, first conceived in a time of peace, was delivered under heavy bombardment. The Bill was published on 17 March—the day on which theatres closed and the grim truth sank in that full lockdown was imminent. Since then, as a nation and as families, friends and neighbours, we have endured a period when fear ran rife and hope seemed forlorn. Many of the Bill’s provisions are, of course, technical, conceived in what now feels like a different, far-off world. While we discuss the principles of this Bill, far greater principles must be in all our minds The coronavirus hits indiscriminately, yet it also affects different individuals and different groups in very different ways. The furlough scheme—more properly the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme—has sustained millions of employees in this time of crisis. The brutal reality is, however, that as the furlough scheme tapers away, many jobs will disappear for good and many sectors may never recover fully. Hospitality and the performing arts are the most obvious but not the only ones. We may hope for the best, but we must also prepare for the worst. As my noble friend Lord Lamont of Lerwick put it at the start of the debate, the difficult part is yet to come As several noble Lords have referred to, the Prime Minister has alluded to Roosevelt’s New Deal—a highly effective response to mass unemployment in the 1930s when the free market failed. The nation needs not only tax reforms and short-term palliatives but a comprehensive response to a crisis that is obliterating the education, exams and employment of young people and leaving older people isolated and fearful. I strongly agree with my noble friend Lady Noakes that we need to see the Government being more joined up and working at top speed. We need a response that unites the nation as one nation—a response that is practical but securely founded in a shared sense of social justice. The Bill may be only one step on that urgent journey, but we will need to take many more steps before this year is out.
Finance Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-17
Topic: Macroeconomics
Rosalind Altmann (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, we are here to debate the Finance Bill, which is about fiscal policy. However, I would like to focus on the off-radar branch of fiscal policy that is not openly conducted by the Treasury, by which I mean monetary measures, supposedly operated independently by central banks So-called quantitative easing has had impacts that mimic tax changes but with rather perverse distributional and social side-effects. It has acted like a major tax cut for financial market operators, home owners and the wealthiest asset owners, while feeling like a tax increase that has reduced the disposable income of savers, first-time buyers and the young. It has also been an effective tax increase on pensions for companies sponsoring a defined benefit scheme and those trying to buy annuities Central banks around the globe have continued the massive monetary policy experiment that began after the 2008 financial debt crisis. It was meant to be an emergency measure to boost growth and stave off economic collapse. Economists insisted that this was not just money-printing with a fancy name, because it would be unwound as the stimulus imparted by forcing long rates lower stabilised economies and markets. However, despite growth, rising employment and record high stock and bond prices, quantitative easing has remained in place since 2009 and has entered a further round during the current crisis Monetary policy has now been used to fund helicopter money, which is effectively what the furlough scheme, restaurant vouchers and other government emergency measures are. However, the side-effects of this policy are that the wealthiest asset owners and financial institutions have done very well but the rest of the economy has not necessarily benefited, as much of the new money has leaked away. Therefore, I hope that my noble friend will consider taking seriously the need to boost growth more directly than through the use of QE, which is a very indirect route. I support the establishment of the sovereign wealth fund, and perhaps would also welcome the establishment of an organisation such as the KfW, which was so effective in rebuilding Germany. There is a potential domestic source of funding for this without creating new money. Long-term assets to be used for infrastructure, social housing and other revenue-generating investments that can deliver much better returns than gilts could be used by pension funds to help repair deficits and reduce the ongoing cost of funding in the long run. I hope that my noble friend and his department will take seriously the potential of using our long-term pension assets to boost growth directly.
Finance Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-17
Topic: Macroeconomics
Richard Balfe (Conservative, Centre-right): We are meeting, as has been said, in very different circumstances from when the Budget was delivered, but I would say that we are meeting against a background of obedience, fatigue and confusion. People are getting mixed messages: our buses are going around with seats roped off, our stations tell us not to travel, but our Prime Minister tells us to go back to work. We have message confusion and numbers confusion. Most people do not have the faintest idea what £1 billion is—or a billion of anything else—but the Government keep on saying, "A billion here and a billion there". The image created is that there is an unlimited amount of money, and I do not think that that is a good start There has recently been a report about 120,000 new deaths. If that figure is to be taken seriously, do we expect people to go back to work or to restaurants, et cetera? No, it is actually encouraging people to do the exact opposite. Do the Government have a financial strategy for another spike? They need a strategy I turn to taxes. The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, who like me is from the LSE but is more distinguished, mentioned the need for a crisis levy. This is probably the only practical tax solution that we can come forward with. There has to be a levy that affects everybody, with everybody contributing according to their ability, but one that is severely time-limited. We all remember the temporary nature of income tax, so any levy needs to be time-limited. I also endorse the idea of a delivery charge for online orders. This could get around some of the problems of a tax. A delivery charge on online orders would be environmentally sensible; it would also even up, to an extent, the fact that out-of-town shopping opportunities such as Amazon pay virtually nothing for their premises. This would put some more tax revenue into the Exchequer The third thing I suggest is that we even up the tax between unearned income and PAYE income. It is ridiculous that, at the moment, you can have unearned income taxed more lightly than your earned income. I hope that the Government will look at ways in which they can raise taxes—fairly—and also have something in reserve in case there is another spike.