argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Barbara Mary Keeley (Labour, Centre-left): No, I have nearly finished As I have argued, the Bill provides no protection for millions of hard-working families, and if the statutory instrument on tax credits is voted through by Conservative Members, those families will be £1,000 a year worse off on average. That will be a direct result of the Chancellor’s fiscal decisions, and I believe many Conservative Members will come to regret it. Ministers should not be wasting their time on legislative gimmicks such as this so-called tax lock.
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Barbara Mary Keeley (Labour, Centre-left): Yes, it is. I am the shadow Treasury spokesperson responsible for the Bill today. [Interruption.] Well, I am standing here today. We made the pledge first. I am very pleased that the hon. Lady raised the question in the manner she did. As I say, we made the pledge first: it is our pledge. Let us get back to that point Rather than wasting their time with gimmicks such as this so-called tax lock, Ministers should perhaps direct their focus on supporting low and middle-income families. [Interruption.] Ministers should really bear in mind that every time they sit there laughing on a day when they are going to take £1,000 off 8 million hard-working families, they simply provide grist to the mill of people who contribute to newsletters up and down the country. The Government’s fiscal policies are too serious for Ministers to sit there laughing. I really advise them to stop it. They should direct their focus at supporting low and middle-income families who will be worst hit by the summer Budget of this Conservative Government—with or without a tax lock.
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Kelvin Peter Hopkins (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman talks about inflation as if it were the danger, but the real danger at the moment is deflation. Japan has been struggling with deflation for a decade and more. There is a serious problem across the world caused by prices rising below the threshold deemed appropriate by central banks, especially in Britain, and in America, the threat of rising interest rates is terrifying the world that we may be plunged into another economic crisis. It is deflation that is the problem; inflation is not even on the horizon.
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Kelvin Peter Hopkins (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman mentioned VAT and the lock that the Government propose. Does he agree it would have been more impressive if they had had that lock before they raised VAT from 15% to 20% rather than after?
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Kelvin Peter Hopkins (Labour, Centre-left): I have a great deal of sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman has been saying. He mentioned the tax rises that have taken place which have brought the Government considerable increases in revenue, but does he agree that those taxes tend to be regressive and the one thing the Government are protecting is the progressive tax, which is much fairer, called income tax, which they have sought to reduce for high income earners?
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): I am pleased to take part in this debate, even though it is on a gimmick, and we are not so used to debating gimmicks in the Chamber. The Chancellor is a paradox. He constantly wants legislation that prevents him from doing things—measures in the Finance Bill to avoid taking further decisions on income tax or VAT, today’s legislation on not making any changes to NICs, and legislation at some point in the future on the fiscal stance and his proposals to have a permanent budget surplus I am afraid that this Bill is completely unnecessary. As the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) said, the truth of the matter is that if there were a crisis and the Chancellor suddenly needed to raise more money, he could repeal this Bill. It does not give us the stability and certainty that the Government claim.
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): I am afraid that I do not accept that. This is purely weak willed on the part of the Chancellor. I thought that the Economic Secretary to the Treasury did not give us nearly as good a defence of the Bill as the hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse). He managed to situate it within the needs of the business community and give some rationale for it. The more the Minister spoke, the clearer it became that this is indeed a gimmick. I find that odd, because I thought that the Chancellor of the Exchequer wanted to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer and to take decisions, but clearly he does not. He just wants to tie his hands behind his back at every verse end I think it would be a good idea to vote against the Bill, and I am slightly disappointed that we are not opposing it. [Hon. Members: "Ah!"] It is not for me to say what the official Front-Bench position is, unfortunately. I want to point out to Conservative Members that we live in a world where the Chancellor has a desire to bring the deficit down very quickly. That is a difficult thing to do, as we saw when he failed comprehensively to achieve his target during the last Parliament. He is now having to go through some very choppy waters to get this done. He made a promise to introduce this legislation to fix VAT, income tax and national insurance because he thought that that would make him a low-tax Chancellor in the eyes of the British public. The fact is, however, that since then he has increased VAT to 20%, increased vehicle excise duty and increased the insurance premium tax, as my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) pointed out. He is not a low-tax Chancellor.
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend makes an astute point. That is one of the things that is going on here The Chancellor is also shifting more and more from direct taxation on income to indirect taxation on spending. In doing so, he is pushing the burden of tax from those on middle incomes to those on lower incomes. They are the true target of this Government, as we shall see in the debate on tax credits later this afternoon The hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer) claimed that this measure was about low tax, but I would ask her to reconsider that. For whom is it about low tax? For all the reasons given by the hon. Member for North West Hampshire, including the fact that not raising the basic rate of national insurance is a good thing to do, it is clear that this is a tax on labour. At a time when we want more people to have more good jobs, that seems rather perverse The most perverse thing about national insurance is the upper earnings limit, and including that in the legislation is a highly political act. We shall have a debate on tax credits in a little while. Let us look at the marginal rate that the Chancellor is giving to people, taking account of the tax and benefits system. After the Budget, the effective marginal tax rate faced by second earners in couples on very low incomes with two children will be 75%. However, for those earning more than £150,000 a year, the normal marginal tax rate of less than 50% will apply. Even when universal credit is introduced, the marginal rate for people earning around £10,000 a year will be 65%, but the withdrawal rate for people earning more than £150,000 will be 48p in the pound. That is not about low tax or certainty. It is clearly about protecting the Tory party’s rich friends and rich donors.
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): I am saying that it would be perfectly reasonable to consider that, rather than pre-committing in the way that the Bill is doing. That seems to be common sense It is surprising that the Treasury thinks that it can simply continue to switch off policy levers and that that is an intelligent way of carrying on. As my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South has said, commentators including the Financial Times and PricewaterhouseCoopers have pointed out that this measure will force the Government into a more difficult and tricky situation. The position will become more constrained, and it will be more difficult to take sensible decisions on raising money. The Bill will put more pressure on the Government to cut public spending.
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman knows the way to my heart; he knows that I am half Danish and that I would much prefer the Danish model to the Mexican model Hon. Members have been talking about certainty, but the Bill will provide certainty only for the very well off. The Government are not worried about certainty for people on very low incomes, as we shall see in an hour’s time when we discuss the cuts to tax credits.
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): That is rather a silly remark. If the Chancellor makes decisions on tax, we can question him about them. This Bill is more a non-decision about a non-tax. It does not do what the hon. Gentleman suggests. Conservative Members have reiterated some of their well-known mantras, but have added nothing of substance to the debate. There is no positive agenda in this Bill addressing the needs of the British economy. It is, I am sorry to say, a gimmick.
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Social Welfare
Kelvin Peter Hopkins (Labour, Centre-left): That would certainly be one way of dealing with it, but I think that not cutting tax credits, which are coming up for debate this afternoon, would be a much more important way of helping people on low incomes. We should certainly do that.
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Kelvin Peter Hopkins (Labour, Centre-left): I have to agree with the hon. Gentleman, but the great deregulation occurred in 1979 with the abandonment of exchange controls. During the period of the New Labour Government, I was one of those who called constantly for reregulation rather than deregulation. I was out of step with my colleagues at the time, but I think we have now learnt a lesson and believe in more regulation. I certainly look forward to a more regulated economic world in the future, and if we have another crisis, I believe that regulation will come back I ought to get on to the question of national insurance contributions, as those comments were by way of a preamble to my speech. The suggestion has come from the Conservative Benches that we should abandon national insurance contributions and merge them with the tax system. That has been discussed over some time and I have flirted with the idea myself, but I have come down against it. I believe that although there should be a threshold so that people on very low incomes do not pay national insurance contributions, they reinforce the sense of all of us paying into a system and having a sense of entitlement to what the system can do for us when we are in need Tying us all into a system on a relatively equal basis for at least part of the income revenues is important. We pay national insurance contributions and we therefore have a right to pensions, the health service and so on. There is clearly not enough and much more has to be paid out of other forms of taxation. I prefer the more progressive forms of taxation, income tax being the most important, and I regret that income tax rates at the higher end have been cut pretty savagely since 1979. I remember the 1988 Budget, when Nigel Lawson cut the top rate from 60% to 40%. I had lunch in the City shortly afterwards with a number of City people, and they were amazed by it. They had watched the Budget on television and asked, "Why has he done this? We don’t need the money." That is what people in the City were saying about the cut in the top rate of tax. I have no doubt that there are some people in the world who are so greedy that they want even more money, despite having millions already, but most people think that having a high rate of tax for the very highest earners is a good and progressive thing.
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Kelvin Peter Hopkins (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but the fact is that successive Governments have failed to ensure that the rich pay their taxes properly. We have a tax gap of £120 billion a year. The fact that fewer people might fiddle their finances is not an argument for reducing the top rate of tax. We ought to have a proper regime for enforcing tax payment by those who get away with it: the corporates and the billionaires who manage to avoid and evade tax on a massive scale. If we collected only a third of what is fiddled every year, we would have another £40 billion a year to spend. I think that we have failed on that because all Governments have opted for a light touch on the rich. That is the truth.
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Kelvin Peter Hopkins (Labour, Centre-left): I must say that I have not had lunch in the City recently. Indeed, my contacts with City people have not been of the highest order since 1998. I once had lunch with the Governor of the Bank of England, shortly after being elected, and very enjoyable it was too. That was when "steady Eddie" was in charge—he was a splendid Governor and I am sorry that he is no longer with us I believe that there are ways of ensuring that we collect the taxes that are due from the rich. Personally, I believe that I should pay more income tax, along with everyone else on my kind of salary—I earn £74,000 a year. Indeed, the majority of the population have said that they would be happy to pay a little more tax in order to help our health service, which is still seriously underfunded I believe that national insurance contributions set at a modest level are an important part of our tax and revenue-colleting system. It gives us all a sense of collectivity, which I think is right. We call that the contributory principle. It means that we have a sense of duty in paying taxes as well as a sense of entitlement in receiving what they pay for. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland, who is no longer in her place, on the upper earnings limits VAT is a regressive tax. It was noticeable that Gordon Brown, when Prime Minister, cut VAT from 17.5% to 15%, which boosted demand at the moment that was needed and, together with a substantial depreciation of sterling, helped to keep the economy relatively stronger than some other economies. We have since survived, but I think that we are now making a mistake in allowing sterling to appreciate. It has moderated a bit in recent weeks, but it is still far too high, and manufacturing is suffering as a result I understand that the Opposition are going to acquiesce in what the Government are proposing today, but I agree entirely with the view put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland. I look forward to my party coming into government next time around with our new leader committed to ensuring that the rich, the corporates and those who have been getting away with it for years pay their taxes so that we can build a decent society on the revenues that they should provide.
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Barbara Mary Keeley (Labour, Centre-left): I am astonished that the Minister can talk about things that happened in the past and not reflect on the more recent pledge made and broken by his Government not to raise VAT. How can he stand there and talk about any issue when that is in recent memory? How hard did that hit many millions of families in this country? I think he would be better leaving that topic alone.
National Insurance Contributions (Rate Ceilings) Bill — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Barbara Mary Keeley (Labour, Centre-left): My points are about the way the public feel about broken pledges. This gimmick of a tax lock means nothing if, whatever the circumstances, the Government are prepared to change their mind on things. I read the Minister a long list of pledges that his Prime Minister and Government have broken, and every time such things happen, the public get sick of it.
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Social Welfare
Stephen Creswell Timms (Labour, Centre-left): A couple with two children, in which one works as a senior schools admission official earning £26,000 a year, will be more than £2,500 worse off next year because of the measure the Minister is proposing. Does he recognise that it will wreck the solvency of that working family? What does he think they should do?
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Helen Catherine Goodman (Labour, Centre-left): The Institute for Fiscal Studies, following a request from the Treasury Select Committee, sent us a new analysis showing that lone parents earning less than £20,000 will have marginal deduction rates of either over 90%, if they are on the old legacy system, or 75%, if they are on universal credit. How does the Minister square that with his claims at the Dispatch Box?
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Labor
Christopher Michael Leslie (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister knows that this is a serious matter, and Members on both sides are concerned about the work incentives and making sure we do not unfairly penalise people who want to get back into work. My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) was right about the rapid increase in the marginal deduction rate to 93% from next April. He needs to address that specific point. How is it not a penalty to work?
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Labor
Alexander Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): I am grateful to the Minister. He talks about an environment in which wages are rising. Wages are rising in some areas, but public sector workers have seen a tremendous reduction in their income capacity, and many of them will be affected massively by what the Government want to do. The Government need to think more about public sector workers, whose wages are not going up.
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Seema Malhotra-Saluja (Labour, Centre-left): What we have just heard is a Government in denial about the impact these changes will have on what my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) has described as "wrecking family finances". We are here today only because of the efforts of the Chairman of the Select Committee on Work and Pensions and of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who wrote to the Prime Minister in July to insist on a full debate on these cuts to tax credits, which were not included in the Tory manifesto. The original intention had been to implement these changes with the scantiest possible parliamentary scrutiny—through a statutory instrument not debated by the whole House, but considered by a short Committee session of no more than 15 MPs and without scrutiny in the House of Lords.
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Social Welfare
Seema Malhotra-Saluja (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman does not make it any better for his Front-Bench team, as what we have seen is a rise in child poverty. We absolutely agree that we need to find ways to encourage families to come off tax credits, but it should be done by a rise in income and through growth in the economy.
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Government Operations
Seema Malhotra-Saluja (Labour, Centre-left): My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and it is shocking that a Government who profess to care about democracy should be so afraid of scrutiny Today’s changes are substantial and highly controversial, and we oppose them.
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Social Welfare
Seema Malhotra-Saluja (Labour, Centre-left): I will give way in a minute The measure is part of an ongoing attack on the incomes of some of the most hard-working families in our constituencies, the very strivers whom the Chancellor purported to support.
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Clive Stanley Efford (Labour, Centre-left): The Chancellor said that Britain deserved a pay increase and Britain was going to get a pay increase. The Tories over there cheered him to the rafters when he increased the national minimum wage, but we now know from a document produced by the House of Commons Library—I have a copy here—that the changes in tax credits will more than wipe out the increase in the national minimum wage. At the same time, the Tories are cutting taxes for millionaires. It is an absolute disgrace.
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Seema Malhotra-Saluja (Labour, Centre-left): I will in a moment This measure will attack families in which people are working hard to do the right thing and to achieve what we all want to see: a higher-wage economy in which people are less reliant on tax credits to make ends meet. What is before us today must be called out for what it is. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, it amounts to what will be a cut of more than £3.4 billion annually by 2020—a cut that the Government have sought to slip through without even having the courage to carry out an impact assessment.
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Andrew John Gwynne (Labour, Centre-left): I welcome my hon. Friend to her new position. I am very pleased that we are taking such a strong stance on tax credits. After the Prime Minister said that he would not cut tax credits, we are seeing the most pernicious and unfair cut imposed on some of the poorest people in society. Is that not why it is right for us to stand up for them today?
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Macroeconomics
Seema Malhotra-Saluja (Labour, Centre-left): I will give way in a moment Effectively, these regulations, which come into force in April next year, will lower the level at which working tax credit starts to be withdrawn from £6,420 to £3,850, and increase the taper rate at which tax credits are withdrawn from 41% to 48%, meaning that for every £1 earned over the threshold there will be a 48p reduction in the level of tax credit entitlement. As a consequence of these changes to working tax credit, the level at which child tax credit begins to be taken away is lowered from £16,105 to £12,125. This change was not announced in the summer Budget, but is a consequence of steepening the taper for working tax credit.
Tax Credits — House of Commons, 2015-09-15
Topic: Labor
James Dolan Cunningham (Labour, Centre-left): Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government have created a new phenomenon regarding zero-hour contracts? Women cannot get tax credits because of those contracts, as they have no continuity of employment, which affects families in many different ways.