Finance (No. 2) Bill — House of Commons, 2022-02-02
Topic: Macroeconomics
James Stewart Murray (Labour, Centre-left): When we first debated this Finance Bill on Second Reading in November last year, it was clear to us that it offered nothing to help people struggling with the rising costs of living and facing tax rises this April. Since that time, pressures on people across this country have only become more intense, and the need for the Government to act has only become more urgent Inflation is now at its highest rate in decades and energy bills are set to soar in April, just as the Chancellor is set to hike national insurance on working people. That tax rise, when combined with energy price rises and other tax hikes, will leave families on average £1,200 worse off a year. Yet there is nothing in the Bill to help with the cost of living. There is, however, a tax cut for banks in the Bill, despite bankers being widely expected to receive large bonuses this year, as investment banks’ profits have soared off the back of a wave of takeovers and mergers caused by the pandemic. It shows just how out of touch this Chancellor is. At the weekend, he decided to dig in over his tax rise for working people. By the middle of the week, he is using the Bill to cut taxes for banks by £1 billion a year. In earlier debates on the Bill, we were critical of the Government for not doing enough to combat economic crime. We welcome the principle of a levy, but we are left wondering why on earth legislation that would set up a register of overseas owners of UK property—a critical tool to tackle money laundering—has been left to gather dust. On Second Reading, we challenged the Government over their failure to establish such a register. Our country has earned the shocking reputation as the world’s laundromat for illicit finance. A new public register would bring desperately needed transparency to the overseas ownership of UK properly, and would help to stop it being used for money laundering Since that time, the need to bring transparency to the question of who owns high-end property in the UK has only become more urgent. Economic sanctions against Russia will never have the effect that they should as long as our Government let those who are linked to Putin and his regime hide their wealth in the mansions of Knightsbridge and Belgravia We also asked what the Bill does for another type of property: buildings with unsafe cladding that need to be remediated. We questioned Ministers on how they had arrived at their decision on the level of the residential property developer tax when so much more was needed to protect leaseholders from bearing the cost. Since we first raised our concerns about the detail of that tax, the Government have realised that they were wrong to make leaseholders in buildings of between 11 metres and 18 metres take out forced loans to cover the cost of cladding remediation in their buildings. The Housing Secretary now says that he is planning to convince developers to hand over £4 billion voluntarily. If he fails, we want to know how leaseholders and those in need of affordable homes will be protected. Despite our questioning earlier today, Treasury Ministers have been unable to offer people the reassurance they need Finally, there is no plan for growth in the Bill. We are stuck in a low-growth, high-tax cycle. With strong growth, we would have the chance to create new jobs, with better wages and conditions, in every part of this country. With low growth, it gets ever harder to meet the challenges we face, and the Tories have no choice other than to put up taxes The shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), has set out Labour’s plan for growth: investing in skills, research and development, and the industries of the new green economy; choosing to buy, make and sell more in Britain; and creating jobs in every part of the country. We would build a stronger economy with our plan to give working people the respect they are due, to give people real economic security, and to ensure prosperity in every part of Britain. That is the approach that our country needs in order to grow and meet the challenges of the future Right now, people across the country need the Government to protect them from the cost of living crisis and protect our country from dirty money from Russia. All we have instead is a Prime Minister who does everything he can to protect himself. We opposed the Bill on Second Reading and, as our reasons for doing so have only grown stronger, we will vote against it tonight.