Ian Swales

• May 21, 2013:
  • New Clause 15 - Marriages according to usages of approved organisations | Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill | Commons debates

    In the 2011 census, 25% professed no religion. That is more than 14 million people. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that they should have the opportunity to celebrate their marriages?

  • New Clause 15 - Marriages according to usages of approved organisations | Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill | Commons debates

    I should declare an interest: I am a member of the BHA. Is the hon. Lady aware that civil registrars are increasingly offering full ceremonies, so we already have a secular alternative, and this proposal does not make a new one but just adds one that a lot of people want?

• May 16, 2013:
  • Mental Health | Commons debates

    I would like to raise a small point about living with the condition on behalf of my constituent, Caroline Simpson, who has dementia but is physically capable of walking a certain distance.

    Her family have been unable to get a disabled person's parking badge. This is an example of the problems that occur in living with dementia.

• May 15, 2013:
  • Economic Growth | Commons debates

    Is the Minister aware that the number of jobs in the UK has gone up every single year since we joined the EU, except 2009, and went down in eight of the previous 20 years?

  • Economic Growth | Commons debates

    Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

  • Economic Growth | Commons debates

    I was pleased to see that the Gracious Speech mentioned tackling tax evasion, and that the Chancellor later added tax avoidance in a G8 conference interview. He often says he is proud of a

    corporation tax rate that is the most competitive in the G20. Unfortunately, large companies can easily move their profits and operations outside the G20. I want to speak about the effect that this is having on the UK economy and growth.

    There is widespread bafflement about how we can have an extra 1.2 million private sector jobs and so little growth. Part of the answer is tax avoidance, because many of those workers are employed by offshore companies. For example, Amazon is growing in this country at more than 20% a year. It employs thousands of people, but its sales of £4 billion do not appear in our economy. They appear in Luxembourg. Microsoft, eBay, Google and others have large businesses in the UK but their figures do not show up either, and the Google chief executive proudly talked about avoiding $2 billion in tax last year.

    Now let us turn to the companies that are based here. The tax system encourages them to move manufacturing and other parts of their supply chain overseas. The Government's change in controlled foreign company legislation makes this even more likely. Companies that do declare large profits here will find that they get a knock on the door from a well paid tax partner of a large accountancy firm, who will put forward schemes whereby corporation tax can be avoided, the simplest of which is to export the profits to Luxembourg via interest payments. This is a route followed by well-known companies such as Vodafone and Pearson, owner of the Financial Times. In fact, it is done by most of our national newspapers, which might explain why media reporting of this issue is patchy at best.

    If a profit-making company fails to succumb to the charm offensive of the tax partner, something more sinister is likely to happen. The next knock on the door could be from the vulture capitalists-representatives targeting an aggressive takeover of the company. Let us take a current example. The outstanding business success and growth of Betfair has led it recently to declare £247 million in profits. Its prospective suitors are CVC Capital. What will it bring to Betfair-better management; outstanding new internet technology? The clue is probably in the description of CVC as a London and Luxembourg-based venture capitalist. I am guessing that it will bring a shameless approach to exporting Betfair's profits to avoid paying UK corporation tax. Boots and Thames Water are just two of the many companies that have been taken over and had their UK profits stripped out of the country and placed in tax havens.

    The Government have themselves facilitated tax avoidance, not just through the tax framework but through their procurement and private finance initiative activity. The Green Book on PFI assessment still contains an assumption that 10% of total PFI payments, not profits, will come back to the Government in tax. This is risible when one examines the facts. The vast bulk of PFI deals now have an offshore element. HMRC's own offices are owned in Bermuda, the Home Office HQ is owned in Guernsey, PFI schools in my constituency are 50% owned in Jersey, and, most bizarrely of all, junction 1A to junction 3 of the M40 is 50% owned in Guernsey. This is the story throughout the country. It is high time the Green Book was changed.

    The leakage of money from our tax system and the incentives for companies to operate in certain ways are bad for the economy, bad for growth and bad for individual taxpayers. I welcome the moves that the Government have already made. Let us remember that nearly all the framework was put in place or left in place by the last Government, and they compounded the problem by sucking up to their friends in the City, stripping high-level resource out of HMRC and telling it to go easy on big companies.

    I hope that the Government will consider limiting offshore interest payments and closing the loopholes in Luxembourg and Holland, via our membership of the EU. They should prosecute tax evaders and expose and, where appropriate, prosecute their advisers. They should add advisers to their team who are not from big business or big accountancy firms and can speak up for ordinary taxpayers and small business, and they should increase specialist HMRC resources. Tax evasion and avoidance is a cancer in our society and I hope that the Government will keep on acting aggressively to cut it out.

• May 8, 2013:
  • Debate on the Address - [Ist Day] | Outlawries Bill | Commons debates

    Is my right hon. Friend aware of evidence from the continent showing that high-speed rail systems pull economic activity towards capitals, not away from them?

• Apr 17, 2013:
  • Energy Generation | Westminster Hall debates

    Does the shadow Minister agree that it is not just climate that companies are interested in? Although climate is obviously an important overall consideration, the companies want their specific arrangements to be grandfathered when they decide to invest.

  • Energy Generation | Westminster Hall debates

    I will cut my remarks short, Mr Gray. I was going to speak about the beneficial effects of all this for the Teesside economy and mention a number of projects, but I do not have time.

    Although there is good news for the local economy, not everything in the garden is rosy. The bioethanol plant in my constituency, set up in February 2010, shut

    down for more than a year. Having restarted, it has recently shut again, because of Government dithering over renewable transport fuel. We do not have full clarity from the Department about a biomass power station at Teesport, which three Korean companies have formed a consortium to build. We are getting mixed messages from the Department on that.

    As other hon. Members have said, we need local purchasing. A wind farm is being built offshore, literally outside my house. Although that is good news, I have seen the ships transporting all the materials coming past my house. We must act urgently to ensure that we have supply chain and local purchasing.

    I heard this week for the first time that there are concerns in the north-east about the national grid capacity not being in line with the Department's various energy generation plans. I hope that the Minister will provide clarity on that. Other hon. Members have spoken about the need for long-term certainty. That is not just about long-term targets, but about the grandfathering arrangements that the Department makes. The omens are not good. The retrospective change in combined heat and power has been bad for companies that thought they had a regime lasting until 2027.

    There have been seven Energy Acts since 2003. I hope that we are getting to the end of this and that the Minister will think about standing down the policy factory, or at least part of it, that has been working for 10 years, so that we can get on with all the investment that is required.

  • Energy Generation | Westminster Hall debates

    Does the hon. Gentleman not think that the exchange we are having demonstrates the fallacy of counting carbon on a production basis? Germany is a heavy exporter of manufactured goods-cars, for example. Whose carbon is it? Is it Germany's, or that of the person who buys the car?

• Apr 15, 2013:
  • Finance (No. 2) Bill | Commons debates

    The right hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech, but I am sure he is not suggesting that all this has arisen in the last three years. Can he remind the House of any steps that his Government took in this regard and does he welcome the steps that this Government are taking? They have resulted in, for example, Barclays closing down its structured capital markets department, which was basically about tax avoidance.

  • Finance (No. 2) Bill | Commons debates

    Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that the first two changes in the 40p band were to ensure that 40% taxpayers only got the same amount out of the threshold increase as a basic rate taxpayer? In other words, it was a measure of fairness across the spectrum.

  • Finance (No. 2) Bill | Commons debates

    The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case. Does he not welcome the Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Act 2012, which uses low Government interest rates to underwrite £50 billion of infrastructure spending?

  • Finance (No. 2) Bill | Commons debates

    HMRC is well aware that people with those sorts of income levels have many choices about what they do with their money, and we have seen the effects of that. Once tax gets to 50%, people do other things, and that is what we have seen.

    I wish to mention one or two relevant changes to pensions. I welcome the cut in allowances for pension savings. It is incredible that under the previous Government someone was allowed to save £255,000 a year for their pension and receive full tax relief worth £127,000. This Government have cut tax relief to £50,000, which will fall to £40,000, so the taxpayer cost of £127,000 will be £18,000 by next year-a huge change that will bring in, I believe, £4 billion. I also welcome the steps for 1992 Equitable Life annuitants. I have a number of constituents who felt very unfairly treated, and although the £5,000 they will receive does not go all the way to meeting their needs, it at least recognises the trauma they have experienced. I welcome the increase in the allowance for draw-down pensioners. That was also painful for some who took a big cut in their income when the Government Actuary changed the figures.

    The Minister mentioned tax avoidance. I will not replay the debate in this Chamber from last January, but it had lots of content and I am pleased to see the Government acting on some of that. However, there is still a lot more to do on the internet and international businesses, and I look forward to seeing further measures. I also feel that the lines between avoidance and evasion are getting more blurred. Cases such as that of the bogus charity that was headlined in The Times only a couple of months ago are not just about avoidance and when HMRC should take people to court to get the tax-people need to end up in jail as a result of such schemes. It is high time that we were clear about schemes that are entirely fictitious, and things such as assets changing hands at different prices at the same time need to be viewed as criminal activity.

    The Labour party has spoken a lot about the growth measures-or lack of them-in the Budget, and both I and the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), who is not in his place, would like to see an export-boom recovery. One problem is that under the previous Government manufacturing went from 22% to 11% of our economy. That amazing fall means there are a lot fewer makers in the march-we all want to see the march of the makers. I welcome the steps the Government are taking to do something about that, including the regional growth fund, which has given out large amounts, mostly to manufacturing industry; the fact that the Government will act on the Heseltine review, which made many of the same points, such as the need to support regions such as mine in the Tees valley; and the tenfold increase in capital allowances from £25,000 to £250,000, which will encourage manufacturers to invest, which we badly need. The new employment allowance of £2,000 will help the smallest businesses to make a bit more money and encourage them to take on more people.

    There are measures on infrastructure investment. The Budget plans contain a map of the country featuring the different infrastructure projects, so it is wrong to say that infrastructure investment is not happening. I welcome the Government's targeting of strategic sectors that they have identified for success, such as automobiles and life sciences. A lot of work is being done on that, and along with the investment in supply chains, which seeks to get our supply chains back onshore after so many disappeared, it is already paying dividends-car

    parts manufacturers are coming back to the UK and so on. I believe that many of those steps are in the right direction.

    On carbon taxes, all hon. Members understand the need to take care of climate change, but we must also ensure that our energy-intensive industries remain competitive. The Government are taking steps in that direction, but there is a lot more to do. We have increases in the climate change levy and the carbon price floor, both of which perhaps send the message to our heavier industry that it is not welcome here. We need to take steps to ensure that that is not the case.

    The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster said that we do not want retrospective changes. One specific example is the climate change levy for combined heat and power organisations such as Sembcorp in my constituency, which invested millions in new equipment on the expectation that the regime would remain until 2027. The regime changed retrospectively and, all of a sudden, its investment case was gone. I have written to the Minister on that, and it needs considering specifically. It is no good expecting people to invest in green technology if we do not make the ground rules clear. If people start to believe that the ground rules will move, they will not invest.

    I welcome the announcement in the Budget on the two areas that will benefit from carbon capture and storage. I would liked to have seen Teesside on the list, but I recognise that the decision was based on energy. I welcome the Government's recent heat strategy, which specifically mentions the need for carbon capture and storage for industry. I hope that future Budgets cater for a project on Teesside to do exactly that. Teesside has an excellent business case for the Government if they take into account enhanced oil recovery and the revenue that will flow from petroleum revenue taxes as a result of the CCS projects. I hope the Treasury considers that carefully in future.

    Generally, the Government are taking many steps towards encouraging green investment. I hope only that they can take the one extra step, which is to ensure that a lot of the investment that goes into new energy projects results in UK manufacturing and supply. Too much of the manufacturing has so far been offshore, including for a wind farm going up right outside my house in Redcar.

    I have listened carefully to the speeches today, including those from Opposition Members. I understand some of their points but am confused by others. The hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), in one of his characteristically passionate speeches, mentioned VAT. I believe that this is the wrong time to introduce a measure that gives the most to those who spend the most-the richest get the most out of cuts in VAT. Most people at the lower end of the scale do not spend much on standard rate VAT items, so the measure he proposed would involve borrowing £12 billion to, for example, cut the price of a Ferrari by £4,000. This is the wrong time to do that. There are much better ways to spend £12 billion if that is what he wants to borrow.

    Under the previous Government, three gaps widened: the gap between rich and poor, the gap between north and south, and the gap between the north and the south of the region where I live. That is a shameful record. I and the Liberal Democrats want a stronger economy and a fairer society, and I support the Budget.

  • Finance (No. 2) Bill | Commons debates

    I welcome most measures in this Bill, particularly the rise in the personal tax threshold to £9,440 this year. That is already cutting in half the tax bill of people on the minimum wage, and next year the threshold will rise to £10,000 and 24 million people will receive a tax cut. That is the No. 1 Liberal Democrat priority, and I am delighted to see that it is being delivered by this Government.

    We hear a lot about millionaire tax cuts, but I think that when the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) decided to raise taxes in the last month of his failing Government, he knew that it would be the gift that kept on giving in terms of headlines. Unfortunately, however, it was not the gift that kept on giving to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, as figures have shown. Millionaires will pay £381,000 more in income tax and national insurance in five years of this Government than they paid in the last five years of the previous Government.

  • Finance (No. 2) Bill | Commons debates

    When people engage in practices where assets are bought and sold for different prices-for example, film rights were headlined in a recent case-it is actually tax evasion, and prosecution should follow. Does the Minister agree with that analysis?

• Mar 20, 2013:
  • Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation - Amendment of the Law | Provisional Collection of Taxes | Commons debates

    Will the hon. Lady give way?

  • Biomass Power Generation - [Mrs Anne Main in the Chair] | Westminster Hall debates

    The hon. Gentleman is right to flag up the differences in data. Is he aware that the Renewable Energy Association says that there has been a 15% fall in wood prices in real terms since 1996?

  • Biomass Power Generation - [Mrs Anne Main in the Chair] | Westminster Hall debates

    Thank you, Mrs Main.

  • Biomass Power Generation - [Mrs Anne Main in the Chair] | Westminster Hall debates

    The hon. Gentleman is repeating one of the great fallacies about the industry, on which I think that the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) touched. Let us say that there is 20-year cropping of a stand of trees, with a 20th taken out and replanted. All the evidence shows that the overall carbon in that stand of trees at the end of the year will be the same, or will even have increased, despite the cropping, because all the other trees will have become bigger. The idea that when one tree is taken out-

Public Accounts Committee

Ian sits on the Public Accounts Committee; one of the most powerful committees in Parliament. The Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine "the accounts showing the appropriation of the sums granted by Parliament to meet the public expenditure and of such other accounts laid before Parliament as the Committee may think fit".

Find out more by following the link below.

Public Accounts Committee

Finance Bill Committee

Ian sits on the House of Commons Public Bill Committee on the Finance Bill. This committee is responsible for scrutinising and amending the Finance Bill before its next reading in the House of Commons.

Find out more by following the link below.

Finance Bill Committee

All Party Parliamentary Groups

Ian also sits on a number of all party parliamentary groups. These groups include:

• - The All Party Parliamentary Group of the Chemical Industry of which he is the Vice Chair
• - The All Party Parliamentary Group of Steel of which he is also the Vice Chair.
• - The All Party Parliamentary Group for ME of which Ian is an active member

Ian chose to be on these groups as he feels the knowledge and contacts he can make by getting involved will help his continuing work within the constituency which is an area with a large industrial sector.