argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-11
Topic: Energy
Melvyn John Stride (Conservative, Centre-right): I am afraid I have to completely disagree. To give them credit, the Government were in the vanguard of making the commitment to net zero by 2050. Indeed, the Chancellor made a very important announcement just now about a huge investment in carbon capture and storage, which could be a part of further revolutionising the production of power and energy in our country, and making sure it is greener Turing briefly to the remarks the Chancellor made in respect of the Green Book and how investments are analysed, it is very important that we get that right, not least in encouraging green investment. The Chancellor might want to look at the kind of discount rates we apply to green investment propositions to make sure that the Government are encouraged to invest upfront rather than further back in time. On levelling up, the Green Book needs to accommodate the fact that we need to get away from the natural returns we get in London and the south-east, and get investment out into the regions, particularly the south-west of England. [Interruption.] I see the Chancellor nodding again. That all helps to meet our net zero quest.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
Melvyn John Stride (Conservative, Centre-right): On where the investment is going, I have yet to pore over the granular detail, as the hon. Lady suggests, in the Red Book. What I do know, with regard to looking after the less advantaged and the lowest paid in our society, is that important reference was made by the Chancellor to the increase in the national living wage, worth £1,000 a year. Of course, this is a Government who increased the personal allowance, taking millions of people, particularly the lowest paid, out of tax altogether. The changes to the threshold of national insurance contributions to £9,500 will also serve that particular purpose Turning to the support that the Chancellor has identified for small and medium-sized enterprises, this is absolutely vital and lies at the core of how we will cope, or otherwise, with what is to follow over the coming weeks and months. We face both a supply and demand-side effect for SMEs. The Bank of England dropped the base rate by 0.5% today, which was clearly co-ordinated with the Budget, and made changes to the counter-cyclical buffers that banks have to hold. That is all well and good and will help banks to put more money into those businesses, but the real issue will be around the fiscal measures that the Chancellor has announced, particularly relating to business rates, time-to-pay arrangements and the deferral of taxation I will just say to the Chancellor that the Committee will look at three particular aspects, the first of which is how quickly help can be got out there and whether HMRC is spring-loaded to ensure that businesses are aware of what is available and how to take advantage of it as quickly as possible. I am encouraged by his comments about the helpline. Secondly, is it enough support? That needs to be monitored very carefully. Finally, there is the targeting aspect. Businesses in particular sectors are hurting more than others. We need to make sure that additional help is provided for them, just as we did in similar circumstances in the 2001 foot and mouth crisis, when the agricultural sector needed support. We need to recognise that there are particular types of businesses in that situation I am conscious of the time that I have taken and the fact that other Members will want to come in, so I will end by touching on a specific measure that the Chancellor raised: entrepreneurs’ relief. He has taken a brave step, and the right step, in that respect. He is absolutely right that making the changes that he suggested—a reduction from £10 million to £1 million—is not about beating up on the self-employed or entrepreneurs; it is about making sure that tax reliefs are fit for purpose. The changes that he has made, including the increase in R&D tax credits, the more generous treatment in the structures and building allowance and the changes in the employment allowance, will be much more meaningful and powerful in supporting small businesses than entrepreneurs’ relief ever was.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
Melvyn John Stride (Conservative, Centre-right): The Prime Minister has been consistently clear that we will engage with other parties over the issue of social care, and those discussions will occur. My plea to the House is that people do not seek to take political advantage of the situation and that they engage in a constructive manner Finally, the fundamental review of business rates is most welcome. We know why business rates have generally been there—they are easy to collect and it is difficult for tax avoidance and so on to occur—but they are a huge burden on many small and medium-sized enterprises up and down the country. There was no mention in the Chancellor’s remarks of the digital services tax, and I hope I can take that to mean that we are going ahead with that—he is nodding—in the matter of a short few weeks. It is right that we do that Google, Facebook and Amazon—those kinds of businesses—need to pay fair taxes in our country. It is not a case of tax avoidance, but of the international tax regime being unfit for the 21st century. We have to get away from attributing tax rights simply to where the bricks and mortar, the people and the intellectual property are, and where management decisions are taken, and look more at where value is created. In the case of those businesses, a huge amount of that value is created here and we must tax it appropriately. I know the Americans will apply quite a lot of pressure and have done so already, but I urge him to stand up to that. We have engaged multilaterally with the OECD and the European Union for the preferred outcome of a multilateral approach, which will avoid double taxation problems and issues associated with going unilaterally, but we have waited too long. We must not, like other countries, step back under pressure. We must go forward with that tax as of the start of the next tax year I say to the Chancellor that we in the Committee are his candid friends and we look forward to working with him. Given the kind of pressures and difficulties for our economy and our country at the moment, we are, right across the House, all in this together, and we look forward to him appearing before our Committee on Wednesday next week.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
Theresa Mary May (Conservative, Centre-right): There is no doubt that, as my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and other speakers have acknowledged, this Budget has had to be delivered against the very difficult background of the coronavirus. We had already seen a slowing in world growth and expectations of that in the coming months, and we have now also seen the negative impacts for economies around the world of the coronavirus. These are not theoretical impacts; we have already seen, through things such as what happened to Flybe, that this is a real, day-to-day issue that has an effect on people’s lives and livelihoods. Against that background, it must have been difficult to have crafted a Budget, and made the predictions for future Government spending and revenue, let alone dealt with the challenges of preparing and ensuring that we had the best possible background for a post-Brexit Britain, in order to establish that global Britain that we all want to see. Having said that, the Chancellor was absolutely right to deal with coronavirus, to set aside the sums of money as he has suggested and, in particular, to recognise the impact on not only individuals but on businesses and on particular sectors of the business community, such as the hospitality sector.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-11
Topic: Technology
Aaron Stuart Bell (Conservative, Centre-right): Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s announcement about investing £800 million into a model based on the US Advanced Research Projects Agency? That will make a huge difference to research and development.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
Theresa Mary May (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend for intervening. That is important—one of the interesting and exciting aspects of where we are going as a Government is the emphasis on science and on recognising that, if we are to have the economy of the future, we have to generate and develop ideas that will deliver prosperity for the future On the subject of ideas, I should say that people are very important. The Augar review, published about a year ago, set out very clearly the need to invest in further education, so I welcome the investment in further education in the Budget I also want to touch on something referenced by the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) in his rather lengthy speech; he spoke for longer than the Leader of the Opposition. He mentioned the shared prosperity fund, which is another part of ensuring that our country works for everyone. This is particularly important: the purpose of the shared prosperity fund is to reduce disparities between and within regions. That will not be done if the Government adopt a "devolve and forget" approach to the fund We must recognise the importance of the fund in maintaining the health of the UK economy as a whole. Yes, we need to work in partnership with the Northern Ireland Executive, the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government, but our approach needs to be holistic to ensure that the fund is indeed delivering on the need to reduce disparities within and between regions. I was sorry that the leader of the Scottish nationalists failed to welcome the £640 million extra going to the Scottish Government.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
Theresa Mary May (Conservative, Centre-right): I will not give way. If I allow the right hon. Gentleman to intervene, the time will be taken out of my time, so I apologise for not doing so I simply want to make this point: it is important that we take a holistic approach to the use of funds from the shared prosperity fund, so that we genuinely deliver that country that works for everyone. To conclude, I simply say that a country that works for everyone is within our grasp, so let us get on with it.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
Sajid Javid (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson). I congratulate her on her maiden speech. I cannot say I agree with everything she said, but we do have something in common as the children of working-class migrants. I very much welcome her to the House I want to begin by warmly congratulating my right hon. Friend the Chancellor on his first Budget. He had only four weeks to write this Budget, and he has risen to the challenge. Although I do recognise much of it, it is different in one significant respect—there has been a dramatic change, as he set out, in the global economy. This means that we must of course face these challenges as a nation. Therefore, he has been absolutely right to focus his attention on the threat posed by coronavirus, so before I turn to a few other measures in the Budget, let me say a few words about that. First, on the economic context, back in October, the IMF downgraded global economic growth forecasts, including, of course, those for the UK. The UK also faces a trio of other structural changes over the coming years: our new trading relationship with our European friends, a new immigration system, and the transition to carbon neutrality by 2050. All three of those are absolutely the right things to do, but they will mean adjustments for business Now we have a new challenge to contend with. We must do all we reasonably can to delay the spread of coronavirus and to care for the sick, so my right hon. Friend has been absolutely right today to pledge that every resource necessary will be made available for the NHS, for the DWP and for local authorities. While our No. 1 priority must of course be public health, we are facing the most severe threat to our economy since the global financial crisis. As the Chancellor said, it is first and foremost a supply-side challenge, but it is also a demand-side problem. We must also get on to the front foot to support the financially vulnerable, who will be as fearful for their economic security as they are for their health. Likewise, a number of otherwise viable companies may be unable to withstand the downturn, so while I welcome the actions that my right hon. Friend has set out today, he must stand ready to do more as the situation demands, and not necessarily wait for the comprehensive spending review or the next Budget.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): There is a £6.6 billion saving this year on interest on Government debt anyway, but of course there has been another major collapse of interest rates since those figures were put together, so there is something on the other side of the account. I would therefore urge my right hon. Friend indeed to say that we need to spend what it takes.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
Sajid Javid (Conservative, Centre-right): I was pleased to hear the Chancellor say that this Budget is within the fiscal rules, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) said, we do not yet know the impact of these emergency measures. We also do not know the impact of the term funding scheme announced today by the Bank of England. A lot of the fall in debt over the next few years is because of the term funding scheme coming to an end, but that might now change, so it is worth keeping that in mind The British economy is in a strong position to weather the current storm, but we must not forget that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor is only able to deploy the firepower that he has today because of the choices that consecutive Conservative Chancellors have made—choices to control spending, to control borrowing and to control debt. That is why the fiscal rules that we set out in our manifesto are important. Sticking to those rules in normal times is what separates us from Opposition parties. They help us to keep our economy strong and to keep taxes low, and they preserve our flexibility for when we need it most. It is not always possible to forecast when the next threat will emerge, nor what form it will take, but it is possible to prepare, and I know that the Chancellor and I are grateful that our predecessors had the foresight to do so.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
John Alan Redwood (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend and I think that, but more importantly, that is what the Scottish people voted for just a few years ago, when we very wisely and democratically said, "Yes, let the Scottish people decide." They did decide and I wish their elected representatives here would understand the result of the referendum and remember that their colleagues told us at the time, when asking for it, that it would be a once-in-a-generation matter. While I am a democrat who thinks that these things occasionally need exploring, we cannot explore them every five years. These are fundamental things that are very disruptive if we keep going into them. I had to wait many years to get an EU referendum—rather longer than I wanted—but I do not think we should have one every five years. That would be quite inappropriate To go back to the Budget judgment, I was interested to see that quite substantial increases in spending, which we need in health, education and police, for example, have been relatively easily accommodated. It is good to see already in the first-year figures—for 2020-21— £4.6 billion of Brexit savings coming through. It is very good to see that there will be another £10 billion on top of that by the end of the forecast period, so the Brexit bonus is available and is beginning to come into these figures It was also good to see the £6.6 billion of interest cost reduction, thanks to the quite substantial falls in interest rates that had occurred before this month. The point that I was making to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) is that those savings would be considerably bigger if we forecast them at today’s interest rates, because interest rates for Government borrowing have fallen even further. He countered and said, "Yes, but you still have to be very careful because you can’t necessarily assume that that will go on into the future." The bad news is that interest rates are going to stay low for a bit, but the good news is that the Government can borrow for 30 years for practically nothing, so now is surely a very good time to lock those interest rates in so that the future interest rate programme is very cheap, as well as the present one. It is something the Government need to think about. I know they have issues about how long they fund, but this is surely a time to move in the direction of longer funding so that we lock the very low rates in.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): I was teasing. It is also a great pleasure because one would not know from listening to the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks and criticism of our economic record that he was, of course, the outgoing Chief Secretary to the Treasury who had to write the note reminding us all that there was "no money". [Interruption.] I hear the groans from Labour Members, but it is worth reminding them that the difficult decisions we had to take from 2010 onwards were all because we were left an unsustainable budget deficit, the highest in the developed world, and it had to be dealt with.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): I fundamentally do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman on that, and I will come on to say a little about tax in my remarks. I do not agree with him because the tax burden is very high and was then. I forget which Opposition Member alleged this, but we have never said that the financial policies of the Labour party in government caused the financial crisis, as that was a much more complicated problem. Our criticism of the Labour Government, particularly under Gordon Brown as Chancellor, was that they assumed when they made their spending judgments that there would be perpetual economic growth and that there would never be a downturn. The root problem is that they were spending too much money, assuming that the tax revenues would continue forever, and when the financial crisis happened and the tax revenues fell, we were spending too much money. That had to be dealt with and we had to make the necessary decisions.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
Mark James Harper (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not agree with that either. We had to make some difficult decisions when the crash happened and they were the right decisions. As the Chancellor set out today, because we made those difficult decisions and put the economy in good shape, we are well positioned to deal with the challenge facing the country and the challenge of tackling the coronavirus.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-11
Topic: Government Operations
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): There have been some fine maiden speeches, and I particularly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Gareth Davies). He is a fellow Lincolnshire MP and he spoke without notes—a worthy successor to Mrs Thatcher from the birthplace of our great former leader Although we have had a fine victory, it is important that we maintain our sense of momentum as Conservatives, so I will now do what I usually do—I know this is deeply unfashionable in these debates—and give a Thatcherite speech, as I happen to believe that that is the best way of creating wealth in our country. I will start by drawing attention to three items of public expenditure, as examples of waste in public spending. I have just completed 18 years on the Public Accounts Commission and Committee, and I am convinced that we have a lot more to do to root out waste in public spending. Unless we do that, it is neither advisable nor prudent to go on increasing public spending at the current rate I will begin with one example that is close to home, because expenditure on decant from our own parliamentary building is now set to rise to more than £10 billion. The incompetence of that project does not bear any scrutiny whatsoever. First, the Joint Committee on the Draft Parliamentary Buildings Bill was told that Parliament could decant because there was room to build a temporary Chamber in a courtyard of Richmond House. Once it produced its report, however, it was told that the measurements were wrong, and that the Chamber could not fit in it. We are now told that we will have to demolish Richmond House, which will produce 25,000 tonnes of carbon. Costs are rising all the time—we have seen the exponential rise in the cost of refurbishing and renewing Elizabeth Tower. Where will it all end I have been working with SAVE Britain’s Heritage, the architectural heritage association, and we have proven that far from it being necessary to demolish Richmond House, we could build, at much cheaper cost, a perfectly satisfactory temporary Chamber in one of its courtyards. Even better, we could do what they did in the war—this House could decant to the House of Lords, and we could take services in from outside. That is one example. It is very close to home, and involves expenditure of up to £20 billion in London. We do not need to be spending that much money on ourselves in London; we should be a one-nation Government, and there is a much cheaper solution with which we can save public money.
Budget Resolutions — House of Commons, 2020-03-11
Topic: Macroeconomics
Stephen Crabb (Conservative, Centre-right): I will not give way I also strongly welcome the measures on statutory sick pay to protect family incomes. If I had a couple of concerns to put on record, one would be that we are placing an awful lot of faith in the banks to do a lot of the heavy lifting in providing support to small and medium-sized businesses. Most of us who have been in this place for the past 10 years will have seen constituency cases of small businesses not being treated well by the banks, being treated unfairly and, at times, being thrown under a bus. We are looking to the banking sector, especially in light of the measures taken by the Bank of England this morning to help the sector’s balance sheets, to make good on delivering support to small businesses at this time My second area of concern would be about the self-employed weathering the storm that coronavirus potentially places on them. As a number of hon. Members have already said, this crisis will highlight the vulnerability and fragility of some workers in our economy. We are proud of our labour market record, and the United Kingdom’s record of creating and sustaining jobs over the past 10 years is nothing short of remarkable. One of the keys to that has been flexibility, but we should not make a god of flexibility. One area we will need to look at in the weeks ahead is how we ensure that the self-employed, freelancers and people working in the gig economy can get better social protection at a moment of crisis I will wrap up there, other than simply to say that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor did a superb job of delivering a very good, strong first Budget.