Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill — House of Lords, 2015-03-09
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): My response to that is that it is a fair cop. He is absolutely right that I should have made this speech three months ago. I had no idea, along with, I suspect, 99.99% of the country, that this measure was included in this Bill. I had not read about a desire to set up a register, adding £1 billion to the cost, in any newspaper or seen any great debate about it. Perhaps I have been a little remiss. It is perfectly true that the occasion of this amendment has given me an opportunity to draw attention to the considerable cost involved, which I appreciate was argued at an earlier stage of the Bill However, in his speech, the noble Lord argued that the Minister had argued at an earlier stage of the proceedings that she could not accept his amendment because it would add to the costs on small business. I support my noble friend in arguing that we should not add to the costs on small businesses. Therefore, I think I am in order in arguing against this amendment because, as the noble Lord said, it was an issue at an earlier stage I apologise to the House that I was not involved at an earlier stage but when one of my noble friends pointed out to me what was in the Bill, I could not believe it. I looked up the Government’s assessment of compliance costs. Certainly, when I was in government, as the noble Lord will remember, impact assessments invariably turned out to be less than what they were. Even at this late stage, I hope that, in rejecting these amendments, my noble friend will think very carefully about introducing this measure at this time of great stress I could understand it if all the other G8 countries had their legislation in place; then I could see how it could work. The noble Lord is not addressing my main point; namely, that if we are concerned about people setting up shell companies to hide where their interests lie, passing this legislation will not deal with that problem because people will operate outside other countries. I made a speech the other day which upset Amazon and I received a letter from its public affairs person. I said that Amazon did not pay business rates and corporation tax in the same way as ordinary retail outlets. She pointed out that Amazon pays business rates on its distribution centres. I wrote back and said, "But you haven’t dealt with the point about corporation tax". We understand that one of the reasons that Luxembourg will meet the quota on overseas aid is because it is based on gross national income, which includes revenues that really should have been in other countries. Therefore, although the amount that it is spending on overseas aid is tiny, it appears to meet the target because of the number of companies that use Luxembourg in that way. If the Government wish to recover the tax that my noble friend is concerned about, the answer is to pass the necessary legislation in the Finance Bill. It is not to ask hard-working people up and down this country to burn the midnight oil filling in registers of the kind proposed, nor to complicate the statute book I cannot believe this Bill, which is dealing with small business. It is pages and pages of stuff. The Explanatory Notes would take a whole evening to read. It seems to me that this amendment and the provisions in the Bill relating to the register drive a coach and horses through the Government’s declared policy of reducing the burdens on business and allowing it to concentrate on wealth creation.