argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Animal Welfare (Service Animals) Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Agriculture
Oliver Heald (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very eager that the law covers the whole United Kingdom. The position in Northern Ireland is slightly difficult because it has a different animal welfare law from the 2006 Act, which covers only England and Wales. When I looked into this with the House authorities, I found that it would be very difficult to amend my Bill to cover Northern Ireland, for example because the long title refers to the 2006 Act, which applies only to England and Wales. I was told that if I tried to amend the Bill to include Northern Ireland, I might lose it. However, this is clearly a very important thing to look at, and I am certainly supportive of doing something for Northern Ireland.
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Macroeconomics
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time I presented the Bill on 5 September 2017, and it is with a wry smile that I rise to speak to it today, with some four hours ahead of us—perhaps not all of that time will be needed to consider it. I put it down on the Order Paper for consideration very late in the Session because I anticipated that it would be a topical matter on the eve of our departure from the European Union. We are now just seven weeks away from the UK’s independence day, on 29 March, when UK citizens will end their enslavement by the European Union There has been a lot of discussion about trade, but leaving the EU is about much more than that; it includes control over our own taxes. Reducing VAT, as the Bill proposes, will reduce the cost of living for consumers and the burdens on business, and it will reduce significantly the cost of living for people living in fuel poverty, which is also topical, bearing in mind yesterday’s announcement that what we all thought would be a cap on fuel prices has turned out to be more like an opera hat—it can go up very significantly at short notice. The Bill is therefore particularly relevance at this time When the Prime Minister made her Lancaster House speech some two years ago, she talked about the UK being able to develop an alternative economic model in the event that the European Union tried to impose what are effectively punishment terms as part of the withdrawal agreement. I think that we are now in that situation. The deal that the European Union is offering is not satisfactory. We are moving towards leaving without a deal, but in circumstances in which it will be open to the Government to take back control over important parts of the economy, and VAT is an important part of that The history of VAT goes back to 1 January 1973, when the United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community and, as a consequence, purchase tax had to be replaced by value added tax, which came in on 1 April that year. The then Conservative Chancellor, Lord Barber, set a single VAT rate of 10% on most goods and services. That standard rate is now 20%, which indicates the increasing burden of taxation upon ordinary people up and down the country.
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Macroeconomics
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing the Bill. It is certainly very timely, but the increase in the tax rate and in taxes generally is due to the increase in our outgoings on the national health service, the state pension and so on. Although I welcome the principle, I am concerned that to fund any significant changes in VAT will be expensive to the Treasury at a time when we face increasing costs in the health service and so on.
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Macroeconomics
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): The estimate made is not mine but comes from the OTS paper: "Raising the threshold significantly, for example to £500,000, would potentially impact around 800,000 businesses. Of those, between 400,000 and 600,000 businesses might choose to deregister, while 200,000–400,000 might choose to remain…registered. This would simplify the tax obligations for businesses that chose to deregister, reduce VAT-related competitive distortions between registered and unregistered small businesses, and reduce the administrative burden on those businesses. However, raising the threshold to such a high level would cut the funds available for public services by between £3bn and £6bn a year." My hon. Friend will be conscious, however, that those figures are much lower than the £39 billion figure that is on the lips of most members of the public, if not Members of this House, as we prepare to leave the EU on 29 March, when we will have the opportunity to save ourselves £39 billion.
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Law and Crime
Neil John O'Brien (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing the Bill to discuss this important issue and this potentially big simplification, but am I right that the £6 billion price tag is roughly equivalent to half the budget for the entire police force of England? This is a substantial sum. Beyond the £39 billion, does he have an suggestions for how to raise enough money to make good the hole?
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Macroeconomics
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): I do. It is a mistake to look at these issues without considering the dynamic behavioural effects flowing from changes in the regulatory environment. We are all agreed—certainly the Treasury and the Chancellor have expressed concern about it—that the country is suffering from a crisis in productivity, and it is clear from the OTS reports and the consultation that people in the engine room of our economy find VAT to be very burdensome and that it adversely affects their productivity. The problem of productivity centres around this bunching issue. Why are we inhibiting businesses from expanding and becoming more economically productive by imposing an artificial threshold? To an extent, it has been imposed on us by the EU, but we can break free on 29 March. I hope my hon. Friend will take a dynamic perspective and not just look at the straight line figures produced by the Treasury.
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Macroeconomics
Anne-Marie Belinda Trevelyan (Conservative, Centre-right): I want to highlight the point my hon. Friend is making. When the income tax rate went up to 50%, I had small businessmen come to me saying, "I’m not going to work any harder if I have to hand over 50%. I’ll work four days a week and play golf on Fridays. I’m not going to invest my capital in a business if the Treasury doesn’t understand the pressures of running a small business," and they stepped away from increasing their productivity—indeed, went backwards—until we started to reduce the rate. Too often, we fail to understand the consequences of tax policy on behavioural patterns.
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Macroeconomics
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a brilliant point. This used to be at the heart of Conservative thinking and policy making on the Treasury Bench. It was that dynamic thinking that was behind past decisions to significantly reduce the top rates of tax. I hope we can rediscover that much more dynamic approach to the behavioural consequences of high taxes and artificial thresholds.
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Macroeconomics
Neil John O'Brien (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend for being so generous in giving way again. I think he is wrong to say that it is not the approach of our Front Benchers to think in dynamic terms: the Treasury has produced a wonderful paper showing that a third of the cuts in corporation tax are made up for by dynamic gains. Active work is being done on this; it is a Conservative belief. However, I would only ask my hon. Friend what proportion of the £4 billion or £6 billion loss to the Exchequer that he is talking about does he think might be made up for by dynamic effects? I agree that there are dynamic effects and I agree that this is a wonderful simplification; I just caution him that another Conservative principle is sound money and not running a huge £150 billion a year deficit like Labour did.
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Macroeconomics
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): I hate to sound like a stuck record but want to repeat a point. My hon. Friend gave a basic estimate of the cost of raising the threshold, but it seems to me that this would bring a separate cost to the Exchequer; has he a cost for these exemptions in terms of potential lost revenue?
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Energy
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, of course I do. I have an estimate—not quite done on the back of an envelope, but on a rough piece of paper. The Government’s figures say that the reduced rate—5% instead of 20%—for domestic fuel and power, which is by far the largest item here, currently costs the Exchequer £4.8 billion. That implies, based on my maths, a yield of some £1.6 billion from having the rate at 5%. Therefore, of all the measures in clause 2, that is by far the largest cost. However, I would have thought that that cost was more than justified by the social and economic benefit of introducing such a policy The Government told domestic consumers of electricity and gas that they were on their side and that they wanted to cap their costs, so they introduced, with the sounding of trumpets, a cap on energy costs. We then found out yesterday that the cap is being increased by some 10%, the consequence of which will be an increase of £100 on an average household bill of about £1,200 a year. If we add VAT, that is another additional cost. If we removed VAT from a £1,200 bill, that would be a saving of about £60 per household on average. I would have thought that that would be worth while, and it would be one way of mitigating the effects of rising energy prices across the world and rising prices of the raw materials. Why not go for that? If we look at all this like an accountant—although I am not an accountant, I did once work for a large firm of accountants, so I know the mindset that can be associated with such activity—why are we not considering the political benefits that will flow from eliminating VAT on domestic fuel and power?
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Macroeconomics
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): Many households in my constituency, including my own, use heating oil, and I am sure that people would be very grateful. However, it is not an accountancy view to ask about the impact on the Treasury given the cost of vital public services, such as health and education, which we all want to see better funded. That is my angle, and it not about accountancy.
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Macroeconomics
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): Yes, but the problem is that all that was subject to decisions by the European Court of Justice. Can my hon. Friend think of anything more ridiculous? If the matter had been under the control of our domestic laws set by Parliament, we would have been able to amend a finance Bill to redefine something, and the situation could have been changed overnight. However, because this all comes under the complex regime in the European Union, all of which is subject to the European Court of Justice, lawyers who specialise in this area can have a field day. The volume of law on VAT is vast, and surely there is a case for keeping it much simpler and well defined It would also be useful to have more transparency over what is subject to VAT. Supermarkets do not currently provide VAT receipts, so people do not know whether the digestive biscuits or the Jaffa Cakes that they just bought were or were not subject to VAT. However, there are various blogs that enable people to discover the best value items to purchase that are not subject to VAT but are quite similar to other products that are subject to VAT. Speaking of transparency, clause 2(2)(c) would exempt from VAT goods that are already subject to excise duties, because I strongly believe that we should not have double taxation. Why should somebody who is paying duty on petrol then also have to pay VAT on that duty?
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: International Affairs
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my hon. Friend share my concern that if we do not leave on 29 March without a deal, people will have had their expectations raised that we will have left the EU, but will be frustrated by knowing that such issues cannot be resolved by this Parliament?
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Macroeconomics
Anne-Marie Belinda Trevelyan (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Personally, I would rather leave with a deal that ensures that the bucket of issues that have to be sorted out are dealt with as we move forward from our legacy relationship into a new relationship, because that would make things easier for everybody, but the approach has to be right. The reality is that until we have left the EU, we have to follow the VAT directive, which means that we are not able to control that part of our tax law. I am grateful that we are leaving and that we will not move into the whole area of tax that the EU is looking to take control of across the board, which is a terrifying issue of taxation without representation. I am very glad that the British people have decided to step off the EU train before we move into that part of its policy making It would be a shocking failure not to remedy the discriminatory tax on sanitary products, so I hope that, in the most visible and practical of senses, the Government appreciate that constituents feel we have lost the ability to make good choices. We must take the opportunity, as soon as possible, to set the train in the right direction on this issue The VAT directive may not sound sexy or dramatic, but it has long been one of my most hated of all the directives under which we have had to work as members of the EU, as it emasculates Chancellors of whatever political colour in critical policy areas and disenfranchises us from being able to support small business, our poorest and, indeed, the female 52% of our population. It has meant that in a major area of tax policy, we have had to suffer taxation without representation for far too long. We will be able to send the clear message to the senior people in the EU Commission who determine, without oversight, what EU laws should be, that as in so many policy areas, the UK will lead the way in improving our citizens’ lives. I commend the Bill to the House and wish it every success in reaching deep into the Treasury’s conscience, which I know is there, so that we can make these proposals a reality after 29 March.
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: International Affairs
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): In her zeal to leave the European Union, surely my hon. Friend has not forgotten that we will be able to keep a big dividend in the form of the £10 billion to £20 billion a year that we currently pay to the European Union. Why can we not spend that on our own priorities?
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Macroeconomics
Margaret Ann Throup (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes an important point; this is about priorities, and our priority may not actually be changing the level of VAT I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response and analysis of the proposed changes in this Bill.
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Macroeconomics
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup). She has highlighted how the VAT rules do somewhat take the biscuit when it comes to gingerbread men. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) has shown that, on Europe, we really cannot have our cake and tax it I wanted to clarify one point that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch made earlier in reference to me. He very kindly referred to me as a former senior Treasury adviser. In fact, I did serve a brief apprenticeship after leaving university at the Policy Research Unit when it was founded, but I then started my own business. I was never at the Treasury—although it can feel like that when running a business Interestingly, when I was a mortgage broker, I found that mortgages were exempt—mortgage commissions are exempt from VAT. We were very much of the belief that mortgages would one day be done online—this was back in 2004—and, of course, many of them now are. When we invested for the first time in a new souped-up piece of IT kit, we received a very expensive bill with VAT on it, which we could not offset, and that created many problems for us. Since then, we have diversified. Most of our income is VATable: we run a big home show at the QE2 and a property portal for shared ownership properties. It is a good business. The great frustration that I have with VAT is that it is very unpredictable in those quarterly comings and goings, particularly as we have a home show every six months. As my hon. Friend said, we should run our businesses as if we are reviewing them quarterly to make sure that we can fund them The key point that I wanted to touch on with this Bill is the issue of unfunded tax commitments—a central point on which, in effect, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and I debated through interventions. We were joined by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien) who was here earlier. That is not to say that any of the measures in this Bill would not be desirable. As I said earlier, I represent a rural constituency. Most of my constituents are on heating oil, so why would I object to cutting the VAT on heating oil? Of course I would not do so on principle. The same is true for sanitary products. My hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan) made a very good case for reducing the VAT on those to zero, which I am sure the Treasury will do once it has the power. The question is not necessarily about desirability, but, of course, about affordability.
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Macroeconomics
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): Of course. Although that is a very good point, it does assume a competitive marketplace where that tax change would be passed on in full to the consumer, and it remains to be seen whether that would be the case The point that I was trying to make is that when the Labour party makes unfunded commitments, we talk about the magic money tree. I have to say that I was trying to keep a tally as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch was speaking, and he seems to have opened up something that we might call a wondrous wonga arboretum of revenues. At one point, we were looking at £7.6 billion, once we added in the heating exemptions and the potential increase in the threshold to half a million pounds. These are not inconsiderable sums of money. The key thing that we have to remember is that, yes, there are those who argue about dynamic effect on behaviour, which means that these things are revenue-neutral. Perhaps I am a small c conservative, like a former great Chancellor, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), whom I admire greatly. He was talking about this very Budget. He used to take the view that we should never rely on forecasts; everything has to be paid for. If we make a commitment, we have to find a corresponding item to fund it. I take that view as well. That is how one should run a business. It is cautious—one always assumes that there is a downside and an upside. Unfortunately, we now live in an era in which we cannot talk about downsides, because there is this "Project Fear" thing, but that is the sensible way of politics and prudence.
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Foreign Trade
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): That is an excellent point. What worries me is that if we make unfunded commitments that do not result in the so-called dynamic behaviour that has been predicted and the Treasury loses revenue, the people who pay will not be us in this Chamber or anyone outside, but people who have not yet been born. We will stick the balance on the national credit card and, ultimately, the national debt. That is what happens if we do not take control of public finances I also want to talk about the transition period and leaving without a deal. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch seemed to suggest that we would benefit from not having a transition, because we would be able to vary VAT. He will remember that in his speech in the recent no-confidence debate—he spoke eloquently, although it took me some time to work out whether he had confidence in the Government or not—he advocated a WTO-terms exit. I intervened on him to ask what he would do about the 40% tariff on sheep meat, and he said to me that that was "Project Fear" In fact, if we leave without a deal, we will have to have the default WTO schedule, because there is nothing else. That schedule includes some very onerous tariffs indeed, not least for our farmers and exporters. In a debate about the cost to consumers of VAT, it is quite something to advocate allowing certain household items that we take for granted—such as dry pasta and tinned tomatoes—to be tariffed at 15% or 20% in a few weeks’ time. This is most significant for our exporters. In my constituency, I have household name companies—by that, I mean that they are very well known in the constituency—that have written to me about no deal. The matter is critical for them; in one case, the default tariff exceeds the margin that the company makes. That is serious stuff, which we need to be prepared for.
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Agriculture
Victoria Mary Boswell Prentis (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is making an important point about tariffs on agricultural products. Does he agree that it is very difficult for farmers, who are dealing with living animals, to plan their sales in the most helpful way? I meet a farmer regularly—indeed, whenever I drop my children off at the school bus—who tells me that he is selling sheep at the moment, much earlier than he would have liked, because he is worried about the effect of no deal.
Value Added Tax Bill — House of Commons, 2019-02-08
Topic: Foreign Trade
James Roger Cartlidge (Conservative, Centre-right): That is a good point. I was simply trying to make the point that we are talking about the impact of VAT on the consumer, yet if the no-deal scenario that some Members wish for happens, consumers will face onerous costs. By the way, even if we decided that we wanted to cut tariffs unilaterally, we could not; we are not taking back control of France, Germany and the rest. We cannot cut tariffs on our exports, and we would have far less leverage in trade deals. That is an extremely serious prospect, and we need to think about it.