Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2018-10-29
Topic: Macroeconomics
Andrew John Bower Mitchell (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend eloquently makes the point that a Government can have a standstill for future income when they reform benefits, but they cannot take benefits from some of the very poorest people in the way that, I fear, we were trying to do My third topic is that of tax fairness. We are in a period of high income tax, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) made clear. Some people have taxation at 60% on their income. It is worth remembering that throughout the period of Conservative-led Government, since 2010, people in income tax have paid more every year than in any year in which Labour was in power. However, points have been well made, including by the hon. Member for Islwyn, about the way the giants of the tech world are avoiding their fair dues. For example, Amazon, on £2 billion of sales, pays only £4.6 million tax, Google, on £5.7 billion of sales, pays only £15 million tax, and Facebook on £5.1 billion of sales pays only £840 million through the "double Irish" or the "double Dutch" tax avoidance schemes. That is quite wrong, and I am glad the Government are going to start to rectify that. It would be better if it were rectified through OECD agreement across the piece, which was of course the subject of the British G8 conference, at which taxation reform and transparency and the importance of paying tax where revenue is earned were strongly supported. There was strong British leadership on that subject, and we need more of it. Also, the effect of digital platforms on town centres is important in areas such as mine. Royal Sutton Coldfield is suffering grievously from the rapid changes in Britain’s high streets, so the measures announced today are welcome The fourth and final area I wanted to mention today is the spending on mental health, which is very welcome indeed. We must ensure that this is genuinely incremental spending that buys new and expanded services. On 25 November 2015, George Osborne, in his spending review, mentioned the work that the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), Alastair Campbell and I were doing as part of the all-party group on mental health services. He pledged that for young people, particularly girls, there would be an increase of £600 million. That was very welcome, but the money, to our great sorrow and irritation, went mainly to pay off overspends in the system and very little genuinely made its way to the frontline as we had hoped. I hope that the Treasury will keep a very close eye on how this new money is spent to ensure it goes straight to the frontline The £20 billion increase in spending on the NHS is enormously welcomed by all of us, but I remind the House of the autobiography of Tony Blair, in which he singles out the fact that the extra money new Labour put into the public services did not lead to the reforms they wanted when they put the money in. He refers to the marks on his back from the difficulties of public sector reform. We must be sure that we really get the gains for our constituents that this enormous amount of extra money should bring, and address the ongoing issues relating to how public services are funded The burden of funding the NHS in the future, which above all will go to helping and caring for the elder generation, must not only fall on the income tax of working people to pay for asset-rich retired people. In spite of the very significant political problems of confronting this issue, we must ensure we do not make the intergenerational unfairness, which is so keenly felt by many of our younger constituents, worse by funding the NHS in the future in that way.