The second of my devolution questions trying to tease out why Wales and Scotland think imposing extra taxes is good for the economy . The answer of course ducks the question. Wales gets more spending/grant per head than England and the HS 2 supply contracts were open to the whole UK. Welsh school standards and NHS waiting lists are worse than England despite the extra spending.
Sir John Redwood:
Were a future Parliament to grant these tax powers to Wales, would the hon. Gentleman think that in order to promote faster growth in Wales he should cut taxes below English rates, or would he put them higher than English rates?
Ben Lake:
I am not one to make up policy on the hoof, but the review could look at that, and if the evidence shows that tax decisions could be made to promote growth and to level up, which I think the right hon. Gentleman is in favour of, we should follow that evidence and do so.
Our continued reliance on the Barnett formula to allocate funds between the UK’s nations is problematic not only due to its flaws, but because of its inconsistent application in recent years, which has meant that Wales has lost out on billions of pounds of much-needed public investment. Members will be familiar with the concerns raised by communities across Wales regarding the way in which HS2 spending has been classified. Although not a single inch of track or rail was to be laid in Wales itself, it was categorised as an England and Wales project under the statement of funding policy, thus depriving Wales of significant consequential funding that the Barnett formula would otherwise have provided. The latest estimates suggest that Wales has lost £4 billion in consequential funding—money that could have transformed the country’s public transport infrastructure.
I understand that there will be reluctance within Government to move away from the Barnett formula, not least because devising a needs-based formula is far from simple. However, if we are to retain the Barnett formula, the funding floor should at the very least be updated to use census data from 2021 rather than the 2001 data it currently uses. I am sure the Minister will agree that much has changed since 2001—when I was actually still in primary school. The needs and population of Wales have changed considerably, so it is only reasonable that the funding floor element of the Barnett formula is at least brought up to date.
Such a consideration could be included in the review that I propose, as well as a review of the implications of UK tax policy in Wales. Again, all of this analysis and information could help inform debate for future tax policy decisions and ultimately ensure that we have a tax system that is fit for purpose and meets the needs of people in Wales.
May 13, 2024
Good morning.
There is simply too much money sloshing around. That’s my take, otherwise we would be pulling our belts. The thing is, ‘we’ the little people are pulling our belts whilst the government throw money around thanks to MASS BORROWING.
May 13, 2024
Yes, yet another unfortunate byproduct of HS2 that it gives something for Wales to moan about.
May 13, 2024
O/T fishy says we are in a dangerous era. He’s got some front after you’ve decimated the armed forces, gleefully blown up our base load generation and presided over a complete collapse of public services.
We are in this position entirely due to the gross mismanagement of the country after 14 years of non tory rule. Not to mention increasing the population by 5 million mainly unproductive people.
May 13, 2024
IW :
Correct.
May 14, 2024
IW,
Excellent spot on. Sunak’s mass immigration policy, betrayal of Brexit, wasting billions on Ukraine, importing millions of people around the world! Cameron cut defence spending and cosied up to the pandas as Republicans say! Open borders does not provide security, ask May about Manchester bomber!
Who got rid of jobs and manufacturing to India and China. Who got rid of our ability to make steel. Who is currently making our country dependent on EU for energy!
May 13, 2024
Or, as Harold Wilson termed it; “Tory misrule”.
May 13, 2024
It would be useful to point out Ben Lake is Plaid Cymru.
I did not know about HS2 charging policy, which he has taken up as a grievance.
It would be a lot better if all was level across the piece in Great Britain and Northern Ireland and separate funding was then allocated where it was decided there was a need.
May 13, 2024
This guy is on a losing wicket. Either Wales is totally self funding, which he doesn’t want, or its lumped with England and supported on the basis of a majority mandate across the piece, which he also seems not to want. The EU would call it cakeism.
May 14, 2024
Sunak is Balkanising the country for EU regionalisation by devolution, mayors etc. no one asked for mayors or police commissioners, they have achieved nothing and cost us a fortune, Sunak told them to raise taxes to the maximum!
May 13, 2024
Devolution has one purpose, divide and conquer. The economic arguments are facile and worthless. The aim is political in nature. This destructive process started in 1997 when a dog egg was elected into No.10.
Tax rates, GDP growth, spending per head, all meaningless if you have oppressive laws that govern what you can say in your own living room.
The voter must be able to recognise despotic intent in British politicians driven by a race based ideology. All the lessons are detailed in history. Socialism in all its forms is a cancer
May 13, 2024
Socialism is indeed a cancer whether from the Tories or even worse from Labour.
So new petrol motorbikes are to be banned from 2040. dailysceptic.org
Why? Just let people chose which suits them better for their particular needs and circumstances as the technology advances it is not a one size fits all situation. Synthetic fuel bikes or fuel cell bikes may well turn out to be far better than battery ones in 16 years time. Governments and politicians are useless at predicting such things. Most have no science beyond GCSE level.
May 14, 2024
Devolution was the first step to Balkanise the country into regions. Tories could have stopped or reversed it.
May 13, 2024
+1
May 13, 2024
HS2 like net zero, the soft loans for duff degrees, the road blocking agenda, the lockdowns, the net harm vaccines… are all government projects that spend vast sums to deliver zero negative value to the public. Unfair to both the Welsh and the English to lumber people with these counter-productive bills.
Rod Liddle yesterday, who usually is quite sensible, seems to have accepted that the Covid vaccines saved millions of lives. The statistics do not support this at all. Regions and countries with lower vaccination rates actually had lower all cause deaths not higher in general. What actually happened is the virus evolved to be less dangerous and hospital treatments improved by the time more people had been vaccinated. The evidence suggests that vaccination mad things worse not better.
Vaccinating especially young people and people who had had Covid (who had zero need of protection even had they been safe and effective) was criminal negligence in my view.
The ONS could easily release the raw data on deaths by age, cause and vaccination status but they choose to hide these and also to fiddle with the excess death statistics. If the vaccines saved million surely the government would want release the stats that would clearly prove this? But they choose not to do so which rather suggest they know they show the reverse.
May 13, 2024
A good X/ Tweet by Bridgen today on the failure of the polices to even acknowledge his letter ref. the vaccine crimes – let alone dain reply to it.
May 13, 2024
Zero or Negative value I meant.
May 13, 2024
Yup!
Flu season was over.
Like it mostly is every year!
May 13, 2024
The UK doesn’t need a regional assembly in Wales making it worse.
May 13, 2024
Ben Lake would be in favour of the massive increase in Welsh assembly members.
A waste of money just like the soon to be aborted 20mph limit.
May 13, 2024
Partly aborted raises more fine income that way as they can put the 20mph zones in random places to trap people and mug them.
May 13, 2024
Indeed! We live on one of the new 20 mph roads and it is almost universally being ignored.
May 14, 2024
and more and more town centres becoming closed off to cars. The small ‘ring road’ keeps getting extended and the fines keep getting bigger for the council purse.
May 13, 2024
Lost interest when the respondent complained about – I presume – not having an HS2 in Wales. Just can’t see the Welsh being pleased about the stupidity of tearing up their countryside for some route between where? Cardiff and Anglesey? There again, perhaps more appropriate than what’s actually happened.
May 13, 2024
I think we should build an HS2 link to Wales but limit it to 20mph.
May 13, 2024
OT “Britain will be safer under the Conservatives as the nation enters one of its most dangerous eras, Rishi Sunak will say on Monday as he kickstarts his general election campaign”.
PROJECT FEAR being wheeled out once again. Pathetic.
May 14, 2024
+1
May 13, 2024
On HS2 the travesty would be that Scotland got extra money as a result of this folly rather than Wales not getting more.
Barnett needs to be revised so that it takes into account taxes raised per capita not assigning money based on how much England spends. That just assumes if we spend on England we should spend on the other countries not rewarding success in generating money.
How many immigrants has Scotland taken? These require huge infrastructure spending and Scotland gets a proportion of this even though they don’t take many.
May 13, 2024
This government has made a mess of devolution, the system of devolution in the UK should use the same model for Scotland, Wales & NI (and England) …or no devolution
May 13, 2024
We know why Labour ignored England in their devolution act, so they could carry on using their Scots & Welsh MPs to help them govern England. Just shows the contempt that the fake Tories hold for England, the one part of the UK they owe their very existence to, otherwise they would have done something in the last fourteen years to address the rotten deal England has got ever since. Cameron said after the last Scots Indy ref that ‘the voices of the English must now be heard”. We’re still waiting. Time to either scrap the whole thing or give England the same autonomy as the rest of them. And that doesn’t mean regional devolution with Mayors nobody wanted, it means an English Parliament where we English, and only we English, make decisions affecting us and in our interests, unlike now.
May 13, 2024
Do these question actually achieve anything? Parliament gets more and more like the Oxford Union day by day – all talk and no purpose.
May 13, 2024
It’s all about anti – Englishness. England is ignored by Mr Redwood’s party and government, whenever it is mentioned it is connected with Wales or Scotland, never just about England.
We are punished because they are afraid of upsetting the others to whom they concede all the time. It must end. England must be respected.
May 13, 2024
Totally agree PW. England is the word that must never be spoken by them. We’re just a cash cow for the benefit of the devolved nations, anywhere except England. Not sure what Reform’s policy is on the English Question but certainly don’t expect any recognition or respect for England from the anti-English main parties.
May 13, 2024
perhaps it won’t be too long before we can say about Scotland, Wales & N.Ireland ‘I divorce thee, I divorce thee, I divorce thee’.
May 13, 2024
I see what you did there ….too clever by half
May 14, 2024
sadly there are plenty who don’t want divorce but it can be enforced.
May 13, 2024
So Wales wanted to devolve and head for full independence and it costs us £18 bn per year.
And now we have to consider further sweeteners to ease their passage.
We wanted to leave the EU ( a much more tenuous arrangement) and we never stop paying for it.
Westminster is actively enabling the establishment of little fiefdoms to be manipulated and ruled with a European iron rod. ( See what they did to Ireland)
And then in a hundred or so years they’ll start reuniting…all the better to fight wars!
Or maybe this is actually the end? Not with a bang …but with a little grey, exhausted whimper.
May 13, 2024
Communist, enemy government. Same in the U.S.
May 13, 2024
The devolved Government system is a violation of a United Kingdom ; it is costly to the tax payer , encourages a form of identity that does nothing but dissension . There should only be one government .
May 13, 2024
77 Young men, all illegal aliens /boat people arrived yesterday from the safe country of France
May 13, 2024
Rwanda doesn’t apply to NI ….soon it wont apply in Scotland or Wales
May 13, 2024
But in Scotland and Wales, the people keep voting for failure, as they have, again, in London.
What the Conservatives and the UK need at the moment is an inspiring leader who will be prepared to tell people some blunt truths. Let Scotland have financial independence for a few years, with no subsidy from English taxpayers, and no UK guarantees for loans taken out by the Scottish Government, then have a referendum on independence. Wales likewise needs to live within its means, but so does the UK.
Sunak says we are at a crossroads and the next few years are dangerous, so why is Defence spending not going up to 5%, no matter what has to be cut elsewhere? Perhaps some of the extra spending can be raised by not subsiding Scotland and Wales!
May 13, 2024
For the 2024/25 tax year, individuals living in Scotland will be taxed as follows:
The National Minimum Wage from age 21 years for 37.5 hours x £11.44 = £22,308 pa the 1% reduction from £12,571 to £14,876 gives you £23.05 pa but gets clawed back from those earning over £26,561.
Band name Income range Income tax rate
Starter £12,571 – £14,876 19%
Basic £14,877 – £26,561 20%
Intermediate £26,562 – £43,662 21%
Higher Rate £43,663 – £75,000 42%
Advanced £75,001 – £125,140 45%
Top Above £125,140 48%
Source: http://www.gov.scot
All Scottish residents have a Personal Allowance of £12,570 – this is the amount you can earn each year without paying any income tax. This allowance may be lower for high earners, however. For every £2 an individual earns above £100,000, their Personal Allowance is reduced by £1. For example, someone earning £120,000 would see their Personal Allowance reduced by £10,000 – to £2,570.
The Scottish gov said – 19 Dec 2023 — Around 80% of Scottish households will pay no more tax next year as a result of the Council Tax freeze as well as the Income Tax policy changes … so does that mean 80% of Scots earn less than £26,562?
The Times reported: 24 Apr 2024 — More than a thousand higher earners have left Scotland to reduce their tax burden, HMRC research suggests. Yet the MP above said this wasn’t true, why aren’t we told the truth?
May 14, 2024
Taxation is not the only way the reigns are being pulled on growth.The problem is multifactorial.As usual learning for a career is aimed on a level which doesn’t incorporate the daily workings of an industry.Take an up to date printer/ photocopier ,which is much needed everywhere as the general public need evidence and communication which e communication fails to deliver satisfactorily. The device can have 30 different uses with all the makers own icons in 30 different languages which nobody knows how to fully use.The answers are read the 100 page booklet in your own home time and work it out.Never mind about the families meals,go home and read it and apply it to your daily job whilst we give you minimum wage.
This example is a tiny fragment of thoughtless management.We need thinkers not pixcelled brains.