John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con):
Madam Deputy Speaker, I have declared my business interests in the Register of Membersâ Financial Interests.
I strongly welcome all the measures in the Budget to try to help more people into work. The Government are absolutely right that we want to move away from the model of always inviting in many hundreds of thousands of people from abroad to take low-paid jobs here. We need to work away at having more worthwhile and better-paid jobs here, with the right supporting investment and training.
I look forward to seeing the benefits in my constituency of Wokingham: more and cheaper childcare of a decent standard, better help for the disabled, improvements in the tax and benefits system so that it is even more worthwhile to go into work, and any supporting training packages or confidence-building activities that may be needed so that those people can get into jobs. Those benefits are very welcome, and they will make an important contribution, not just to our economy and its prospects, but to our wider society.
Where I take issue with the Chancellor and the Government is over their correctly specified need to boost investment and to get a lot more company activity in growing what we do here in Britain. I welcome the aim, and I of course appreciate that the 100% first-year allowance will be helpful. However, we need to remember that it is a replacement for an even more generous allowance, and that it is coming in at the same time that the Government propose a 31% increase in the rate of business taxation on profits.
On a couple of occasions in the past, I led industrial international companies, and as I have no more interests in those areas, I can draw some conclusions from my experiences. When we were making decisions about where to put the new product or the new investment, where to expand the workforce or where we might need a new factory, the headline rate of taxation in any country on our longlist was, of course, a relevant consideration. When we got down to a shortlistâcountries with high rates did not tend to get on to that shortlist, unless we were already thereâwe then did detailed analyses of the project. Any first-year allowance or initial allowance would make a positive difference, but if over the 20 or 25-year life of the factory or project under consideration we would be paying 31% more profits tax, it would clearly not look nearly as good as it does this year in the United Kingdom, when we have one of the lower tax rates in the world.
The Government need to understand that at exactly the time that they are putting the rate up, our competitors are going the other way, particularly the United States of America. Although the Government say that its headline rate is slightly higher than ours, the details of the Inflation Reduction Act make it very clear that there will be all sorts of tax breaks, incentives and subsidies for a wide range of industries, including some of the industries that the Government wish to target here, such as digital and green. That will be a very important counter-magnet for the investment that we could otherwise get. The United States is, like us, an English-speaking country with common-law principles and so forth; it has many advantages, and we need to have a better offer to counter those.
Even closer to home, we have proof that lower corporation tax rates work for businesses and for the society that uses them, in the Republic of Ireland. The Republic of Ireland has the lowest tax rate of the main advanced countries competing for investment. A relatively small country, it has achieved giant steps in attracting large amounts of investmentâmuch of which would, I think, have otherwise come to the United Kingdomâby having a much better rate of corporation tax. The proof that lower rates produce more revenue and help growth is that GDP per head is much higher in Ireland than in the United Kingdom, and business tax raised per head is much higher in Irelandâfour times higher, I thinkâthan here at home in the United Kingdom. As such, I ask the Government to look again at that issue.
The final point that I can fit in is that the Government need to look at this issue on a sector-by-sector basis. The energy sector is capital intensive. It is one of the areas where we could get a lot of big investment quite quickly with a lot of very well-paid jobs. We could improve our national energy security, cut the import bill and gain an awful lot of future tax revenue, because we tax energy at a much higher rate than other things. However, because we now have this incredibly complicated system with price controls on domestic energy, windfall taxes and carbon taxesâas well as subsidies to the industry itself because we realised the difficulties that those high tax rates were creatingâwe are causing complications. More importantly, we are putting off many big potential investors who would otherwise get more oil and gas out of our reserves, produce more deliverable renewable power and help to expand the grid, which will need to happen if we are going to carry on with those developments.
If we take heavy industryâceramics, steel and so forth, which are big energy usersâI think we have the highest carbon taxes of any major country. We have some of the highest energy prices on top of those very high carbon taxes, which means that we are not competitive in areas such as steel and ceramics. The Government then have to provide taxpayersâ money to those businesses, giving back some of the tax revenues in the form of subsidies, but that is often too little, too late, and we end up losing capacity. As such, I say to the Government, âStop this subsidy, windfall tax, high-tax model. It is not working for the businesses, it is not working for our country, and it is not raising additional revenue to spend on other things.â
I am conscious that colleagues wish to get in, so all my other analysis and comments will be put on my website in the usual way.
March 16, 2023
What is UK100? Where does it get its grants from? Why are local councils members of it? Who is actually ruling us?
March 16, 2023
+1
Just try finding out from your local councillor and higher (as I have done several times) whether your council has signed up to it. (Ie signed up to 15 minute city nonsense etc. Khan is chairman of it I believe)
It is a TOTAL SECRET.
I get no answers on the phone or by e mail.
Yet we pay for it all.
See what Plymouth council has done!!
March 16, 2023
The UK100.org website has the list of the councils that are members. And if one subscribes to their quarterly newsletter âeverything will be revealed for there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the openâ (Luke 8:17).
March 16, 2023
hidden in plain sight?
March 16, 2023
I am fully aware of that website.
However, councils, as far as possible, should be held to account.
Usually I vote Independent but not this May. Nor will I allow the candidate to put his billboard in my front garden as I usually do.
The function of local govt. is to catch rats, empty bins and fill potholes. Not to flirt with Common Purpose and Act Beyond Authority! Town Clerks need to be brought to heel by a strong government. Some hopes.
March 16, 2023
hear hear
March 16, 2023
Iago, ‘UK100 is a cross-party membership organisation that supports the most ambitious councils to go further and faster on their Net Zero and Clean Air targets.’ (from their web site)
How is it funded? They don’t fancy telling you straight out: ‘UK100’s core operations are funded by various grant-giving organisations. You can find out more about UK100’s accounts on the Companies House website.’ Good luck with that.
What about 15 minutes cities? Are Oxford City Council and County Council, and Canterbury City council members? You might want to have a guess.
March 16, 2023
People only voted for one Green Party MP and yet councils up and down the land are spending taxpayers money on these green think-tanks and projects âŠ.their only mandate comes from the UN
March 16, 2023
The Budget seems to consist of taking money and then giving it back, minus a chunk to pay for the bureaucracy to do so.
March 16, 2023
Plus it can only be claimed back if you do certain things with it and comply with expensive red tape. Pay in ÂŁ10,000 get back in value perhaps ÂŁ2,000 in things you did not want. Perhaps a bus pass you do not use or expensive insulation you did not wantâŠ
March 16, 2023
@Ex-Tory +1 lets them off actually managing and maintains the situation of it being the âBlobâ running the UK not the Government
March 16, 2023
Exactly, as you say âStop this subsidy, windfall tax, high-tax model. It is not working for the businesses, it is not working for our country, and it is not raising additional revenue to spend on other things.â But certainly ditch net zero too.
I see the Gov. promise going forwards they promise to borrow only to invest. The problem is that the Gov. think Net zero, HS2, test and trace⊠are âinvestmentsâ. Not that anyone trusts them on anything they promise after the last 12 years.
March 16, 2023
You say in your second paragraph you want better paid jobs, but then in the third paragraph cheaper child care. Well if those better paid jobs feed into child care, it will make it more expensive not cheaper.
Both objectives might be achieved in effect by reducing the cost of living, for example by reducing housing costs. Bearing down on immigration numbers will reduce demand for housing and make it cheaper.
Reply Not so. Better paid more productive staff.
March 16, 2023
âBetter paid, more productive staffâ: I really wonder how that translates for a childminder or within a nursery school. How do you define âproductivityâ apart from changing the ratio adult:children. Rather a vacuous statement.
March 16, 2023
Why do you find it difficult to comprehend hefner?
Productivity in many differing professions can be measured.
In your examples a childminder or nursery nurse can be measured by customer feedbacks or progress of the children against set procedural targets.
Seems pretty easy to me.
March 16, 2023
So what do you expect as a reply when you hand the childminder a list of areas by which they will be judged? I somehow think there will be numerous ‘f’ letters.
March 17, 2023
Sorry, but applying âbusinessâ-type criteria (procedural targets) only shows (at least to me) you must not have been very present in your childrenâs education (if you have had children).
March 17, 2023
Sad you resort to a personal comments Hefner when I merely just suggested how it is actually done.
March 16, 2023
Speaking for myself as for that great, late institution, The British Housewivesâ League, we want mothers to stay home and care for their babies – 1 to 1 attention – no âproductivityâ tests, no minimum wage! They donât want to hand their children over – itâs CRUEL to demand they do so.
We donât need more people in the workplace, we just need those working to do a full days work instead of these part-time; work-from-home clock watchers are NOT earning the salaries they are demanding.
And if you donât want doctors to retire before they have done a lifetime of work, just stop them from retiring after all you employ them âthe NHS is the biggest employer!!!â You donât have to pay ÂŁ2.5 billion of Danegeld.
March 16, 2023
+1
What a great shame that all political parties have concentrated on destroying the family rather than supporting it.
There should be no need for childcare.
Nor should there be a need for newcomers.
But unfortunately those who have seized the reins of power have always got everything utterly wrong.
March 16, 2023
Fully Agree
March 16, 2023
Yes, quite we should be going back to single earner young families but housing costs are now such that this is not possible.
Our lives will continue to be miserable while rent and mortgage payments require two earners
March 16, 2023
If one child minder can only look after four or five children how do you increase productivity?
In Primary classes there is one teacher to 15 or 20 children
March 16, 2023
often 30, with luck an assistant helps with the hand up for toilet or mishap etc.
March 17, 2023
It was 1 teacher to 40 kids when I was at primary school. Twice as productive. And half the class passed the 11+ and went to grammar schools and on into the professions. We were all working class kids. Social mobility then!
March 16, 2023
I understand from one of the financial reports issued as a comment on yesterdays Budget, that the Office for the Simplification of Tax is now going to be shut down. !
Says it all really, the Government would rather hide behind all of the built in complications of the tax system, because it hides the true rate of tax take, and makes it easy to fine people who could make an honest mistake due to a simple lack of knowledge. !
So as usual we have smoke and mirrors policy, which few really understand, so thus many have to pay so called financial professionals for advice on the detail, just to fill in a tax return form.
Quite shameful really.
March 16, 2023
Unfortunately, ignorance of the law is no excuse.
March 16, 2023
Hefner
Fully appreciate that, but a shame that the Government with its constantly changing the goalposts, and with most of their help desk staff still working from home, seem not to be able to be able to answer very simple questions when you eventually manage to make contact with them.
Appreciate they are not alone, many Private sector organisations not much better, but at least with them you have an option to go elsewhere, not so with HMRC.
March 16, 2023
The revenue make such a difference when they assess penalties and interest.
Honest mistakes are treated differently to deliberate evasions.
March 16, 2023
I would say âfortunatelyâ and hold Ministers to that principle too.
Oh and âI did not deliberately misleadâŠâis no excuse. You did it or not.
March 16, 2023
Well they certainly managed to help double the complexity of the UK tax system over since (Osborne?) set them up. How much did they spend doing this over the years.
March 16, 2023
Very balanced comment, but who is listening, not the present incumbents I fear. One point I would add is that of energy. We have a further five to ten years of fossil fuel dependency. Longer if government have any involvement with SMRs, because government are incompetent and a drag on developement. Witness HS2.
We need to exploit our own resources of gas oil and coal and cease being driven by nett zero and its technically illiterate acolites.
Finally we need a sane market for the exploitation and distribution of these assets to all UK users who should not be exposed to the fluctuations of a volatile world market. This is UK fuel for UK use. Not a means wherebye someone well placed in the supply chain can make obscene profits at UK end users expense, and that includes government.
The startling ommission in this budget was the cost of government. When are government going to accept that we as individuals can spend our money infinitely better than can any UK government. Government needs to back off and confine their incompetence to a much smaller playing field, where they can learn to get things right.
March 16, 2023
Apparently the public sector will be 43% of the UK economy this year, it’s highest since the 1970s. The OBR also forcasts GDP growth of 2% in coming years but a quarter of this growth is based on net immigration rates of 240K per year (so some 1.2M+ over the next five years). It seems (in reality) Government has given up trying to get that 21% (5M+) of our existing economically inactive citizens back to work.
So more Tax, more Government, more Immigration, more Net Zero, more Dependancy – Less Wealth, less Freedom, less Common Sense & much less Self-Reliance.
March 16, 2023
but much less Tory government – always look on the bright side!
March 16, 2023
The world economy is on the edge of collapse, yet all the Tories do is tinker
Jeremy Huntâs Budget has its good parts, but it fails to address the pathologies leading us to disaster
Allister Heath today in the Telegraph.
Alas they do far more than tinker they are – with Net Zero, the lock downs, the vast government waste and insane red tape the main causes of the UKâs problems.
March 16, 2023
Such a great pity that the opportunity was not taken to effect the measures that are so needed, i.e. to radically simplify and lower the tax regime, and institute savings in public expenditure. Such a lack of common sense emanating from numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street.
March 16, 2023
I’m very pleased that I no longer own a business – there was nothing in this budget that would have encouraged me to grow or invest in it.
I was happy to see the mention of SMRs but it seems they will not be here in quantity till 2050 (so not in my lifetime). This news was also dampened by the annoucement of Carbon Capture investments. Apparently we are going to spend of lot of money sucking (Chinese-generated CO2) out of the atmosphere. The big ‘reveal’ was child-care support but that won’t actually happen until after the next election. So basically a lot of smoke and mirrors and in the meantime our taxes continue to go up and up and up. Stop spending money we don’t have!
March 16, 2023
Rishi’s friend will tax us all
Mr Hunt
Day or night he’ll tax any time at all
Mr Hunt
Mr Hunt
Wants us all to be his fans
Wants us all to understand
He must tax everything he can
Mr Hunt
Mr Hunt
Is he a man to be believed?
While taxing everyone in need
No one can succeed like
Mr Hunt
March 16, 2023
+many
Terrible/difficult name to use in a poem?
March 16, 2023
I imagine you should sing along to the song Taxman, by the Beatles?
March 16, 2023
Try again Mickey as Mr Wilson and Mr Heath have long gone.
March 17, 2023
Doctor Robert?
March 16, 2023
+1
Yes, another clever parody ( I think a parody on that particular songâŠbut shorter verses)
And it does fit the music.
So yes! Letâs all sing in protest.
March 16, 2023
This is a socialist WEF inspired budget
Still the refusal to remove VAT from energy because Rishy has agreed the NIP which precludes this.
Fingers in ears ignoring everyone with regard to the increase in CT.
The man’s a charlatan and doesn’t have the interest of Britain in his agenda.
March 16, 2023
”I say to the Government, âStop this subsidy, windfall tax, high-tax model”
hear hear
March 16, 2023
Sir John
Thank you for your handwork and diligence in supporting the UK.
Its just a short time now and before any of these announcements get enacted on that we will be engaged in a General Election.
A Labour, Liberal Democrat, SNP tie up to remove this Socialist Cabal. Then it is back to rebuilding a proper Conservative Party â what a waste, a waste of years, purgatory for nothing.
March 16, 2023
Let’s hope that Starmer and Reeves are listening to you, because Sunak and Hunt clearly have their ears tight shut, and their brains in neutral.
March 16, 2023
Sir John
A good follow up in todays Telegraph – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/16/labours-socialist-economics-will-lead-britain-path-venezuela/
And as some of the commentators noted Labour’s Socialist agenda in no different to the Conservative Governments Socialist agenda. Its a case of who do the electorate wish to punish.
Same paper Nigel Farage âThe Toriesâ legacy: higher taxes and lower living standardsâ
At least there is hope, Mark Rutte centre-Right Dutch prime minister, another Socialist pretending to be a Conservative has seen a massive setback for his Socialist doctrine of green legislation. The newly formed Farmers Party(sic) have become the equal biggest party.
March 16, 2023
What a pathetic budget from a pathetic Chancellor! It seems neither Mr Hunt or the PM listen to what people & businesses say. Put up CT by 31%, but then give half of it back in capital allowances, so much more complicated than it needs to be. No encouragement for ordinary taxpayers at all with allowances frozen for years. This is supposed to be a conservative budget, what a joke. Tax cuts next year before the General Election will be too little, too late. A budget with no vision, no imagination, no leadership, no common sense, no boldness, no excitement, no sparkle and no desire to help the UK and its people grow in a stable & sustained way. Total mediocrity & as dull as ditchwater but the Treasury & the OBR will think it is great.
March 16, 2023
So Ireland can set its tax rates to which Sir John refers perfectly happily as a full member of the European Union, then.
Right – that’s that cleared up.
Why ever would any international company prefer to come to the UK rather than Ireland with its membership of the SM and CU in the world’s most developed market, even with the same tax advantages though?
This really is some claim.
March 16, 2023
‘the worldâs most developed market’ – This really is some claim.
March 16, 2023
Every nurse is getting an average cash bonus of ÂŁ2,000, very nice (and thatâs on top of this years pay rise, next years pay rise and job incremental annual payments)
So there is a direct correlation between nurses pay increase and the reduction in waiting timesâŠdoes the tiktok ban apply to the NHS ?
Donât tell the private sector
March 16, 2023
SJ, I fear these excellent proposals, based on your knowledge gained from actual personal experience will again fall upon blinkered eyes and be heard only by deaf ears in Downing Street and Whitehall.
Such is the disrespect Government now has to any who would challenge their policies.
Sadly this country is now led by tiny TINOs, ‘Tories in name only’ and that will cost too many true Conservatives their Parliamentary seats next year.
I believe the decline in ‘true blues’ within Parliament began when Mrs Thatcher was ‘Brutusised’ from number 10 and a succession of neo-social democrats took over the Party because they would have failed if they flew under their true colours in any General Election. As have proven the case in the past.
This budget does not scream of “Growth” – it does not even invite growth from new investment. Instead, discourages it by taxing our investors more than our competitors. And those infamous predictions now tell us we will not fall into recession. Hmm! I won’t hold my breath nor bet on it.
March 16, 2023
There is no value in getting people into work and then paying them top up benefits. Accepting that 16 hours a week classifies as a full time employment to some.
No incentives for reducing the horrendous waste that is inflicted on us taxpayers. No admission that they have got it so wrong. As many comment the Tories have lost any credibility to lead and run the country.
March 16, 2023
I forgot to remark in the previous article, us poor pensioners will find rising State Pension means more income taxation, because the kind Chancellor has frozen Personal allowance for years.
Scrooge!
March 16, 2023
You are absolutely right in every aspect Sir John,m and it clearly illustrates that either we have a cabinet with zero business acumen or a PM and Chancellor who clearly don’t want this country to be a success and upset their global masters!
March 16, 2023
Why do I have to pay vehicle excise duty or car tax to own and journey the UK, then pay again when I go though a tunnel, and again to cross a bridge, and again to enter a ULEZ region, and again to enter a congestion zone, and again to use some parts of the motorway âŠ.there should be a law that you can only be taxed once for owning a car
March 17, 2023
The Road Fund licence cost is going up by ‘inflation rate’ – quickly introduced while it may seem acceptable before inflation might fall. Parking a car on your property does not suffer any inflationary cost, but as glen writes everything else you might do with it is taxed already.
March 16, 2023
With brexit the people voted for less less immigranrs coming here but with one stroke now it looks like the chancellor has reversed policy on this and tens of thousands are going to be invited in. If this is the case and we need workers so badly then why don’t we train up the refugees asylum seekers already here and now sitting in hotels and get them working. Could be some good coming out of it.
March 18, 2023
I see Silicon Valley Bank UK arm hands out ÂŁ15m in bonuses days after ÂŁ1 rescue – so annoyed that I did not buy it – I had a ÂŁ on that particular day!