argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Loan Charge 2019: Sir Amyas Morse Review — House of Commons, 2020-03-19
Topic: Macroeconomics
Fleur Anderson (Labour, Centre-left): I, too, congratulate the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on securing this important debate at a time of national crisis. This is a crisis for 50,000 people across the country, and it will exacerbate the already difficult mental health and economic situation they face. I welcome the agreement we have heard across the House during the debate Let me make it clear at the outset that the debate is not about protecting and keeping in place loopholes and avenues for tax avoidance. I join other Members in saying that tax avoidance is a scourge, and any initiative or legislation aimed at tackling it has my full support. However, I do not support cruelly punishing more than 50,000 people and their families—hard-working entrepreneurs who acted in good faith—and often driving them to suicide. I have met many constituents at surgeries who have been in tears as a result of the effect of this issue on their family One constituent was hit with a bill for £158,000 plus interest five years after retiring. There is no way that he can repay that charge. He was advised by his accountant in 2007 that entering into employment via a loan remuneration scheme was entirely legal. That is a theme among the constituents who have come to see me. They say they found out that these schemes were QC-approved, they felt they were entirely legal and they did their due diligence, but the law has failed them. Although the Government’s decision to accept most of Sir Amyas’s recommendations is a very welcome step, the loan charge is still grossly unfair and is destroying lives in my constituency and across the country In the interests of time, I will cut to the six changes that I urge the Minister to consider. First, he should call off the dogs during the coronavirus situation and remove the threat of these huge charges from our constituents. This is a mental health crisis for many people. Secondly, the date that the loan charge looks back to should be amended from December 2010 to the date of Royal Assent of the Finance Act in July 2017, as the law was not clear Thirdly, the Government should accept the Morse review recommendation that unprotected or closed tax years should remain closed. Fourthly, they should accept the Morse review recommendation that people with incomes of under £30,000 should have any outstanding tax balances written off after 10 years of making a genuine attempt to pay on the terms that have been announced. Fifthly, the legislation must treat business owners and directors equally with individual contractors. Finally, anyone still using these schemes—I was astonished to find out that that is still going on—should be told immediately of the liabilities that they face We have to tackle tax avoidance, but using retrospective charges, which are ruining the lives of hard-working contractors and entrepreneurs and putting them in hundreds of thousands of pounds of debt overnight, is not right or just. The companies that promoted these schemes should be penalised, and the Government should accept the blame.
Loan Charge 2019: Sir Amyas Morse Review — House of Commons, 2020-03-19
Topic: Macroeconomics
Peter Christopher Dowd (Labour, Centre-left): It is a long time since I read Adam Smith, but as I recall, the fourth maxim goes along the lines of, "Take from the taxpayer only that which is needed for the public realm." Of course, the converse of that is that the more people do not pay their taxes, the more the rest have to pay to balance up, so Adam Smith’s statement is not absolutely unambiguous As almost everyone has said today, tax avoidance should not be allowed. It should not be encouraged. It should be discouraged in any way possible, because the rest of us who do pay our taxes have to support those who do not, so I do not have a problem with the concept of clamping down on tax avoidance. Retrospection has been used since the second world war, but it has always been commensurate with the needs of the nation. I do not want to get into a big argument about retrospection, but the issue is there. An excellent document from the House of Commons Library sets it out perfectly reasonably, and people have to take their own view I completely accept that many people took advice from a variety of organisations and that advice was wrong. I do not dispute that. These enablers ripped people off. Their scams were like other scams we have had, whether it is the recent leasehold scam, the payment protection insurance scam, or the endowment mortgage scam. These scams have existed for a long time, as the south sea bubble scam shows. They go back an awfully long time—
Loan Charge 2019: Sir Amyas Morse Review — House of Commons, 2020-03-19
Topic: Macroeconomics
Peter Christopher Dowd (Labour, Centre-left): Well, that is a view. The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) talked about how something that looks too good to be true is too good to be true. People have to take that on board when they become in involved in such schemes, as lots of people have, right across the spectrum, from those who are pretty wealthy all the way down to people who earn quite small sums It is the responsibility of this House to ensure that people are treated fairly. I do not want to get into the argument about whether HMRC has treated people fairly or unfairly. I accept in good faith what Members have said today about how their constituents have been treated. That has to be set in the context of the issue of HMRC’s resources. A third of its staff have gone since cuts in 2005 and later in 2010. Any increases in the cash amounts available to HMRC for its running have, in effect, been blocked. That is a factor that we must take into account as well The primary issue here is whether the enablers—the people everybody has talked about today—are getting away scot-free. I suspect that the Minister will tell us the extent of the Government’s and HMRC’s action to tackle these enablers, but I suspect that it will not be enough and the Government will have to sharpen up their footwork Whether HMRC has been aggressive is, again, a moot point. However, we know some of the enablers have also been incredibly aggressive. The Rangers FC issue trundled on for the best part of 13 years, with enablers—the accountants and lawyers—taking it right to the line and beyond, so let us not pretend there was not aggression from those who were attempting to push and push the boundaries, hence the reason for commensurate potential retrospective legislation. I do not want to take much time, and everything has already been said today. It is important not just that the letter of the report and all its recommendations are put in place, but that the spirit of the report in relation to closed cases and so on is taken into account, and specifically the recommendation for a £30,000, 10-year limit, which the Government rejected The Government should have a word—I put it as gently as that—with HMRC about people’s perception of how it has behaved. It is important for Ministers to get that view across to HMRC. As the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) said, it is about balance. We need balance in dealing with this matter, and I hope the Government can get that balance right.
Loan Charge 2019: Sir Amyas Morse Review — House of Commons, 2020-03-19
Topic: Macroeconomics
Christian John Patrick Matheson (Labour, Centre-left): The Minister knows that I have all the time in the world for him, but nobody in this House disputes the fact that it was tax avoidance and that loopholes needed to be closed. He is spending his time explaining why they were avoidance schemes, but hon. Members understand that. It is the question of retrospection and unfairness that is exercising us in this debate.
Loan Charge 2019: Sir Amyas Morse Review — House of Commons, 2020-03-19
Topic: Labor
Ruth Margaret Cadbury (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the right hon. Member for the points he is making about advice and information. However, I again come back to the fact that the low-paid and the averagely-paid—generally public sector workers—are still being sold these schemes. They cannot be paid through a personal services company, but they need to work freelance and locum, and this is still happening to them. If the Government see these schemes as contrived, why are they not doing more to stop the mass marketing of them, such as by making the promoters personally liable for defeated schemes and similar?
Horizon Settlement: Future Governance of Post Office Ltd — House of Commons, 2020-03-19
Topic: Government Operations
Kevan David Jones (Labour, Centre-left): I will come back to that, which is something that I think my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) will refer to in his contribution The board minutes from 1999 show that the Post Office knew there were bugs in the system and software problems. It denied all the way through that, for example, the amounts that sub-postmasters inputted could be changed. That was just not true. It could be remotely done, and the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire and his constituent Mr Rudkin, who visited the headquarters where the data was being stored, proved that. In classic style, when he raised that the Post Office denied that he had ever visited the data centre in the first place, until he proved that he had. It was just one cover-up after another. The denial culture in the Post Office was described by Judge Fraser, in what I thought was a very good his judgment, as "the 21st century equivalent of maintaining that the earth is flat", because the evidence was there all the way through. There is no way that anyone who took an objective look at the system, in terms of the Post Office or Fujitsu, the contractor, could argue that it was perfect.
Horizon Settlement: Future Governance of Post Office Ltd — House of Commons, 2020-03-19
Topic: Government Operations
Kevan David Jones (Labour, Centre-left): It was even worse than that: for many years the Post Office denied that that could ever be done. It was only in 2011, after campaigning by me and others, that the Post Office had the forensic accountants Second Sight take a look, and it discovered exactly what the hon. Gentleman has just outlined. But what does the Post Office do? It set up a mediation service, but still denied that there was any problem, even though the evidence was there As for the operator, Fujitsu, it knew that there were glitches. Indeed, I have to say that it is as guilty of the cover-up as the Post Office. I cannot comment on the judgment—I think the judge has possibly referred the case to the Crown Prosecution Service to get its involvement, so I do not really want to go into the detail—but Fujitsu has a lot to answer for.
Horizon Settlement: Future Governance of Post Office Ltd — House of Commons, 2020-03-19
Topic: Government Operations
Kevan David Jones (Labour, Centre-left): I shall come to that, which is a very good point. The complete opposite: most have been promoted or, in one case, appointed as a Government adviser when she left the Post Office That denial then led the postmasters to get the group action together, with 555 taking the Post Office to court. The Post Office was still denying that there was a problem when it went into court; indeed, its consistent approach has been to deny any type of liability Let me turn to the role of the Post Office and that of Government. The Post Office is an arm’s length body from Government, but the sole shareholder is the Government. They have a shareholder representative on the board. Despite that, millions of pounds of public money are spent every year. In fact, it is a nationalised company, whether we like it or not But we are unable, as parliamentarians, to scrutinise the Post Office. For example, in spite of what it knew, it is estimated that the Post Office spent between £100 million and £120 million defending the indefensible in court. That was basically designed to whittle down the case, so that the other side ran out of money. Trying to scrutinise the Post Office and get it to account for that is virtually impossible. When I have asked parliamentary questions, they are referred to the Post Office. I will come on to the role of Ministers, but I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) is no longer in his place, because I would have liked him to answer for his role—or lack of role—when he was the Minister The Post Office falls somewhere between a private company and a public company, but then there are the individuals involved, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) said. Paula Vennells was the chief executive of the Post Office. She left last year. Obviously, as a board member she knew what was going on, including the strategy in the court case and the bugs in the system. What happened? She got a CBE in the new year’s honours list for services to the Post Office. That is just rubbing salt into the wounds of these innocent people. There is a case for her having that honour removed, and I would like to know how she got it in the first place when the court case is ongoing. Added to that, she is now chair of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Again, I would like to know why and what due diligence was done on her as an individual.
Horizon Settlement: Future Governance of Post Office Ltd — House of Commons, 2020-03-19
Topic: Government Operations
Kevan David Jones (Labour, Centre-left): I do not know whether the hon. Lady has read my speech, but I am just coming on to the Cabinet Office, because lo and behold, guess where Paula Vennells also ended up? She was a non-executive member of the Cabinet Office. I am told that she was removed from that post yesterday; I do not know whether it was because of this debate. I welcome that, but why is someone who has overseen this absolute scandal still allowed to hold public positions? Worse than that, she is a priest. I respect those who have religious faith, and she does, but the way that she has treated these people cannot be described as very Christian—she certainly would not pass the good Samaritan test, given the way she has ignored their pleas. I hope she thinks about people like Tom, who have lost their livelihoods and are now living in social housing because of her actions. It angers me that these individuals have gone scot-free, and they need to be answerable for their actions.
Horizon Settlement: Future Governance of Post Office Ltd — House of Commons, 2020-03-19
Topic: Government Operations
Kevan David Jones (Labour, Centre-left): It is, but how could somebody be given a CBE when this scandal was out there? How could somebody be appointed to the non-executive board of the Cabinet Office and a healthcare trust, given what is coming out of this court case? I find that remarkable Then there is the role of Government. When the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton was the Minister, he said that the Post Office "continues to express full confidence in the integrity and robustness of the Horizon system and also categorically states that there is no remote access to the system or to individual branch terminals which would allow accounting records to be manipulated in any way." That is despite a board minute of 2009 which said that remote access was possible. What his role in it was I do not know, but he clearly did not ask many searching questions of the Post Office I turn to how we scrutinise the Post Office. I have tabled numerous written parliamentary questions, but because the Post Office is an arm’s length body, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy shift them over to the Post Office—it is at arm’s length, and therefore it is nothing to do with the Department. There is a question here about how we can scrutinise the Post Office. This week, I asked a question about what the complex case review team in the Post Office is. My able assistant rang BEIS and asked, "What is it?" BEIS did not even know about it. The parliamentary question has now been given to the Ministry of Justice, but it does not know what that team is. I know that last week two cases were settled out of court, each for £300,000. This is public money we are talking about here, and we need full scrutiny. I would love to see whether the Minister can shed some light on what this organisation actually is Then we come to the role of Ministers. I have already mentioned the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton, but Jo Swinson, Claire Perry and the Minister’s immediate predecessor the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst) were all involved. They all completely believed what they were being told by the Post Office, never asked any questions about how public money was being spent and allowed the Post Office to continue what it has been doing. The Government cannot say that they never knew about this, because when the new Government came to power in 2010, myself, James Arbuthnot and the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire went to see Oliver Letwin, then a Cabinet Office Minister, to put our case to him. He had sympathy for it, because he had a similar case in his constituency. What happened to that? Nothing happened at all. Clearly there is an issue that the Government cannot hide from it.
Horizon Settlement: Future Governance of Post Office Ltd — House of Commons, 2020-03-19
Topic: Government Operations
Karl Turner (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Lady is absolutely right. These sub-postmasters were respected in the community. The Post Office is a respected organisation that we should all be incredibly proud of, but that was part of the problem. The Post Office was believed. The lies that Ministers, officials and everyone else were told along the line were believed as well. That is why only a judge-led inquiry can possibly sort this out. We need to know who knew what, what they knew, when they knew it and why they acted as they did I want to say something briefly about one of those senior people in the Post Office, Paula Vennells. I do not know Paula Vennells but I do know that she apparently earned something in the region of £5 million over a six-year period. I believe wholeheartedly that she would have had a very good inkling of what was going on at the time. This is utterly scandalous and a judge will be the person who can get to the bottom of it.
Horizon Settlement: Future Governance of Post Office Ltd — House of Commons, 2020-03-19
Topic: Law and Crime
Charalambos Charalambous (Labour, Centre-left): The Post Office Horizon scandal must rank as one of the most shocking and badly handled ever. Its impact on honest, hard-working sub-postmasters has been truly devastating and life changing. Even the compensation won by the sub-postmasters in their class action against the Post Office will do very little to replace the lost years of pain, suffering and social stigma due to being classed as criminals, when all these people set out to do was to earn an honest living. One of those affected is my constituent Kamran Ashraf, whose wife was a sub-postmaster, and together they ran the business. Right from the beginning, using the Horizon software provided by the Post Office, there were shortfalls. In September 2003, the Post Office carried out an audit of their branch and found a shortfall of £25,000. Following investigation, the Post Office prosecuted Kamran and his wife, but because they had two small children, even though they had done nothing wrong, Kamran decided to plead guilty so that their children would not risk both their parents being incarcerated. In February 2004, he was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment at Kingston crown court and, to add insult to injury, was fined £25,000 Kamran and his wife lost their business and their home and had to enter into an individual voluntary arrangement to pay off creditors. Because of his conviction Kamran struggled to find work, and although his conviction is now spent and he has found employment, he still has that stain on his reputation because his conviction has not been overturned In August 2015 Kamran happened to chance on the BBC "Panorama" TV programme, which highlighted other cases identical to his, where sub-postmasters were prosecuted and convicted due to shortfalls in their takings following an audit. Dozens of sub-postmasters were affected and came forward and formed an action group called the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, or JFSA for short. The JFSA, led by Alan Bates, brought a class action with a total of 557 sub-postmasters which was vigorously fought by the Post Office, and on 11 December 2019 the sub-postmasters were awarded £57.75 million in damages My right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) is right when he says that the biggest scandal of all was the fact that the Post Office denied that there was any flaw in the system but knew all along there was a problem, while innocent people were sent to prison.
Horizon Settlement: Future Governance of Post Office Ltd — House of Commons, 2020-03-19
Topic: Government Operations
Charalambos Charalambous (Labour, Centre-left): The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and makes an excellent point. Evidence about the infallibility of the system would have led to the conviction of these sub-postmasters, and that is why we need to look at how to progress this further. While after the trial the Post Office chairman conceded that it had got things wrong in the past, the fact was that the Post Office fought the action until the bitter end, and that speaks volumes.
Horizon Settlement: Future Governance of Post Office Ltd — House of Commons, 2020-03-19
Topic: Law and Crime
Charalambos Charalambous (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Lady is absolutely right. The Post Office seemed to have unlimited funds at its disposal to fight this action, whereas the sub-postmasters had to collectively bring the action together and rely on support from free solicitors to get them through the case. The Post Office is an arm’s length organisation, but there seems to be no accountability for its actions, and in this matter there seems to be no scrutiny, despite it receiving public money for its functions Although the civil action may be over, the nightmare continues for my constituent. Kamran is still trying to get his conviction overturned. The Criminal Cases Review Commission board is meant to be meeting next week to discuss what steps it will be taking; I am not sure if that will be going ahead, but I hope it does. He is also still considering further civil action, and he is not alone. After having been failed by the legal system, it seems that justice is now finally being done, but at a very slow pace I therefore invite the Minister to do whatever it takes to get justice for the sub-postmasters, and I also join the call for an independent, judge-led public inquiry into this shocking scandal.
Horizon Settlement: Future Governance of Post Office Ltd — House of Commons, 2020-03-19
Topic: Government Operations
Mathew Richard Allen Rodda (Labour, Centre-left): The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses are at the heart of many local communities and not only have the respect of those communities but deserve the respect of the Post Office and people in authority? This whole sorry saga shows a complete and utter lack of respect and trust. It is deeply disappointing and, as he suggests, it is deeply wrong.