13/04/2016 Prime Minister's Questions

behavioural change, leading to more people supporting their own families

and contributing to the economy. When you look at the figures for the

Wrexham economy, he should be welcoming the changes, not

condemning them. Questions to the Prime Minister.

Warning this morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and in

addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings

later today. Last week I visited a manufacturing company, which

supplied the Tower of London poppies. Would my right honourable

friend agree with me that supporting small businesses and personal web of

further increasing personal income tax allowance shows that we on this

side of the House are the party of enterprise and inspiration and

believe in enabling hard-working people to keep more of the money

they earn? Let me join her in congratulating the firm that she

mentioned. She's absolutely right that it is small and medium-size

businesses that predominantly will be providing the jobs of the future

and we want people to keep more of their own money to spend as they

choose. That's why the historic move last week to an ?11,000 personal

allowance means that people will have gained, by 2018. They'll be

paying ?1000 less per taxpayer and we will have taken formally and of

the lowest paid people out of tax altogether. That is the action of

the Progressive Conservative government. Jeremy Corbyn. Thank

you, Mr Speaker. I'm sure the whole house will join me in mourning the

death today of the dramatist Arnold Wesker, one of the great playwrights

of this country, one of those wonderful angry young men of the

1950s and, like so many angry young people, actually changed the face of

our country. Yesterday, Mr Speaker, the European Commission announced

new proposals on country by country tax reporting, so that companies

must declare where they make their profits in the EU and in blacklisted

tax havens. Conservative MEPs voted against the proposal for country by

country reporting and against the blacklisting. Can the Prime Minister

now assure us that Conservative MEPs will support the new proposal? First

of all, let me join the right honourable gentleman in mourning the

loss of the famous playwright and all the work that he did. It's quite

right to mention that. Let me... Let me also

welcome... Let me welcome the country by country tax reporting

proposal put forward by Commissioner Jonathan Hill, appointed by this

government, the United Kingdom Commissioner. This is very much

based on the work that we've been doing, leading the collaboration

between countries, making sure that we share tax information. As we

discussed on Monday, this has gone far faster and far further under

this government than under any previous government. Mr Speaker, if

the proposals were put forward by the British Government, wider

Conservative MEPs then vote against them? Their scenes to be a bit of a

disconnect here. -- there seems to be. The Panama papers exposed

scandal situation, where wealthy individuals seems to believe that

corporation tax and other taxes are something optional. Indeed, as the

Member for Rutland and Melton informed us, it is only for low

achievers, apparently for top so when the HMRC says that the tax gap

is ?34 billion, why, then, is he cutting HMRC staff by 20% and

cutting down tax offices which loses the expertise of people to close

that tax gap? I'm glad he wants to get onto our responsibilities to pay

our taxes. I think that's very important. I thought his tax return

was a metaphor for Labour policy. It was late, it was chaotic, it was

inaccurate, it was costed. -- un-costed. He's absolutely right to

identify the tax gap and that is why we closed off loopholes in the last

Parliament, equivalent of ?12 billion. We aim to close loopholes

in this Parliament equivalent to ?16 billion, so the HMRC is taking very

strong action, backed by this government, backed by the

Chancellor, legislated for by this House, and I think I'm right in

saying that since 2010 we put over ?1 billion into HMRC to increase its

capabilities to collect the tax that people should be paying. The

difference, I think, between this side of the House on the right

honourable gentleman is we believe in setting low tax rates and

encouraging people to pay them and it's working. Mr Speaker, I'm

grateful to the Prime Minister for drawing attention to my own tax

return. There warts and all, the warts being my handwriting all my

generous donation to HMRC. I paid taxes for companies that he might

know quite well. The Prime Minister... Mr Speaker, the Prime

Minister isn't cutting tax abuse, he's cutting down on tax collectors.

The tax collected helps to fund our NHS and all the other services. Last

month, the OBR reported that HMRC doesn't have the necessary resources

to tackle offshore tax disclosures. The Government is committed to

taking ?400 million out of HMRC's budget by 2020. Will he now commit

to reversing that cut, so that we can collect the tax that will help

to pay for the services? I'm afraid his figures, rather like his tax

return, aren't entirely accurate. The summer budget 2015, we gave an

extra ?800 million to HMRC to fund additional work to tackle tax

evasion and noncompliance between now and 2021. This is going to

enable HMRC to recover equivalent of 7.2 billion in tax over the next

five years and we've all be brought in more than 2 billion from offshore

tax evaders since 2010. -- we've already brought in. I think we

should try and bring some consensus to this issue. For years in this

country, Labour governments and Conservative governments have an

attitude to the Crown dependencies and overseas territories that their

tax affairs were a matter for them and their compliance affairs were

out of them and their transparency was a matter for them. This

government has changed that. We've got the overseas territories and the

Crown dependencies the table. We said, you've got to have registers

of ownership, you got to collaborate with the UK Government, you got to

make sure people don't hide their taxes, and it's happening. So when

he gets to his feet, he should welcome the fact that huge progress

has been made, raising taxes, sorting out the overseas territories

and Crown dependencies, closing the tax gap, getting businesses to pay

more, giving international leadership to this issue, all things

that never happened under Labour. Mr Speaker, I thank the Prime Minister

for that answer. The only problem with it is that the red book states

HMRC spending will fall from 3.3 billion to 2.9 billion by 20 20. And

in regard to UK Crown dependencies and overseas territories, only two

days ago the Prime Minister said that he had agreed that they will

provide, the overseas territories, UK law enforcement and tax agencies

with full access to information on the beneficial ownership of

companies. There seems to be some confusion here because the chief

minister of Jersey said, in response to a need for information without

delay, where terrorist activities are involved. We welcome his

commitment to fighting terrorism but is Jersey and all the other

dependencies actually going to provide beneficial ownership

information or not? The short answer to that is yes, they are. And that

is what is such a big breakthrough. I totally accept they are not going

as far as us because we are publishing a register of beneficial

ownership. That will happen in June and we will be one of the only

countries in the world to do so. I think Norway and Spain are the

others. What the overseas territories and Crown dependencies

are doing is making sure that we have full access to registers of

beneficial ownership, to make sure that people aren't invading or

avoiding their taxes. In the interests of giving full answers to

his questions, let me give him the figures for full-time equivalents in

HMRC in terms of compliance. The numbers are going from 25,020 ten to

26,798 in 2015. It's not how much money you spend on the organisation

but how many people you have out there collecting the taxes and

making sure the forms are properly filled in. The Prime Minister is

quite right. The number of people out there collecting taxes is

important. Therefore, why has he laid off so many staff at HMRC who

their four cannot collect those taxes? In 2013, Mr Speaker, the

Prime Minister demanded that the overseas territories rip aside the

cloak of secrecy by creating a public register of beneficial

ownership of information. Will he now make it clear that the

beneficial ownership register will be an absolutely public document,

transparent for all to see who really owns these companies, and

whether they are paying their taxes or not? Let me be absolutely clear.

For the United Kingdom, we have taken the unprecedented step, never

done by Labour, never done previously by Conservatives, of open

beneficial ownership registers with the Crown dependencies and overseas

territories. They have to give full access to the registers of

beneficial ownership. We did not choose the option of forcing them to

have a public register because we believed if that was the case, we'd

get into the situation that he spoke about, where some of them might have

walked away from this cooperation altogether. That's the point. The

question is, are we going to be able to access the information? Yes. Are

we going to be able to be sued tax evaders? Yes. Did any of these

things happen under a Labour government? No. The Prime Minister

does talk very tough and I grabbed him that. The only problem is, it's

not a public register he's offering us. He is only offering us a private

register that some people can see. It's quite interesting that the

premiere of the Cayman Islands is to day apparently celebrating his

victory over the Prime Minister because he is saying the information

certainly will not be available publicly or available directly by

any UK on an Cayman Islands agency. The Prime Minister is supposed to be

chasing down tax evasion and tax avoidance. He's supposed to be

bringing it all into the open. If he cannot even persuade the premiere of

the Cayman Islands or Jersey to open up their books, where is the tough

talk bringing the information we need to collect the taxes that

should pay for the services that people need? I think he's

misunderstanding what I've said. In terms of the UK, it is an absolute

first in terms of a register of beneficial ownership that is public.

He keeps saying it's not public. The British one will be public. Further

to that, and I think this is important because it goes to a

question asked by the right honourable member for Tottenham, we

are also saying to foreign companies that have dealings with Britain that

they have to declare their properties and the properties they

own, which will remove a huge failure of secrecy over the

ownership, for instance, of London property. I'm not saying we've

completed all this work but we've got more tax information exchange,

mortgage so beneficial ownership, more chasing down tax evasion and

avoidance, or money recovered from businesses and individuals and all

of these things are things that have happened under this government. The

truth is, he's running to catch up because Labour did nothing in 13

years. Thank you, Mr Speaker. My constituents John and Penny Clough,

whose daughter Jane was tragically murdered by her ex-partner whilst he

was out on bail, are campaigning to save Lancashire's nine women's

refuges, which are currently at threat because Labour run Lancashire

County Council are proposing to cut all of their funding. Does the Prime

Minister agree with the Clough family and me that Labour run

Lancashire County Council should prioritise the victims of domestic

violence? First of all, my honourable friend does raise a very

moving case and I know the whole house will wish to join me in

sending our sincere condolences to Mr and Mrs Clough. In terms of

making sure we stop violence against women and girls, nobody should be

living in fear of these crimes. That is why we committed ?80 million of

extra funding to 2020 to tackle violence against women and girls and

this does include funding for securing the future for refuges and

other accommodation based services. But it obviously helps if local

councils make the right decisions as well. The United Kingdom and its

offshore territories and dependencies collectively sits at

the top of the financial secrecy index of the tax Justice network.

Since the leaking of the Panama papers, France has put Panama on a

blacklist of uncooperative tax havens and the Mossad Fonseca

offices have been raided by the police in Panama City. What have

British authorities done specifically in relation to Mossad

Fonseca and with Panama since the leak of the Panama papers? First of

all, in terms of who is at the top of the permit of tax secrecy, I

think it is now an fair to say that about our Crown dependencies and

overseas territories as they are now going to cooperate with the three

things that we asked them to do in terms of the reporting standard, the

exchange of tax information and access to register the beneficial

ownership. That is more than we get out of some states in America, like

Delaware. So I think in this House we should be tough on all those that

facilitate lack of transparency but we should be accurate in the way we

do it. He asked what we are doing about the Panama papers. We have a

?10 million funded cross agency review to get to the bottom of all

the relevant information. It would hugely be helped if the newspapers

and other investigative journalists now share this information with tax

inspectors, so we can get to the bottom of it, and his final question

on blacklists - we are happy to support blacklists but we don't

think you should draw up a blacklist solely on the basis of a territory

raising a low tax rate. We don't think that is the right approach.

That approach the French have sometimes taken in the past was in

terms of taking action against tax havens, this government has done

more than any previous one. 3250 DWP staff has been specifically

investigating benefit fraud while only 300 HMRC staff have been

systematically investigating tax evasion. Surely we should care

equally about people abusing the tax system and those abusing the benefit

system. Why has this government had ten times more staff dealing often

with the poorest in society abusing benefits than with the super-rich

evading their taxes? I will look carefully at his statistics but they

sound to me entirely bogus for this reason. The predominant job of the

DWP is to make sure that people receive their benefits. The

predominant job of HMRC is to make sure people pay their taxes. The

26,000 people I spoke about earlier are all making sure that people pay

their taxes, the clue is in the title. Many farmers in South

Herefordshire are still awaiting their 2015 payments from the rural

payments agency. Nearly four months after they were due which follows

the failure of the RPA website last year which is causing great personal

and financial distress and threatens the future of farm businesses so

will the Prime Minister agreed to meet farmers on this issue and press

the RPA to make the payments by the end of this month and does he share

my view that farmers should receive interest on the amount overdue? I

have recently met with both the NFU and Welsh NFU and have continued to

have meetings with farming organisations including in my own

constituency and I know that have been problems with the payment

system. The latest figures are some -- that 87% of claims have been paid

and bowed -- I believe that the figures in Herefordshire are in line

with the national average but that is no consolation for those who have

not received payments which is why we have a process and we are working

with charities and we made payments amounting to over ?7 million but we

have to make sure that the system works better in the future. If the

British people vote to leave the European Union, will the Prime

Minister remain in office to implement their decision? Yes.

CHEERING Again on Europe, does the Prime

Minister agree that the European Union is not just the world's

biggest single market but also an ample source of foreign and direct

investment providing 50% of the investment we receive and also an

excellent platform for supplying James to thrive and prosper meaning

the ability to get the skills they need and the innovation they need

and for my constituency means a whole load of high-tech companies

thriving and prospering as they do in the UK? I remember my visit to

his constituency when the company showed me a world first in a bicycle

that was printed on a 3-D printer. I did not give it a try but it looked

like it might even carry some of my weight! The single market is 500

million people and that is a great market for our businesses and

services and increasingly the market that the supply chain is getting

more integrated and that is why we should think carefully before

separating ourselves from it. Brain tumours are the biggest cancer

killer of children and people under 40 but despite this, research into

them received less than 1%, just over 1% of the UK's national spent

on cancer research. This will be the subject of a debate next Monday in

Westminster Hall. Will the Prime Minister at a word with the

Secretary of State for Health so that the minister answering that

debate might be able to bring with him or her some long overdue good

news of change in this area? I'm very happy to do exactly as he says.

It is an important issue. We invest something like 1.7 billion a year in

health research but there is always a question when it comes to cancer

research, the spending has gone up by a third over the last Parliament

the daily 100 35mm hounds but there is the question of whether that is

fairly distributed -- ?135 million. I have a still produce in my

constituency and share concerns about the future of the industry.

The North of England still had significant manner that drink but it

has been held back by green taxes, high energy costs and emissions

targets. What more can he do to help energy intensive industries? I think

he raises an important point and the changes we are making will save the

steel industry over ?400 million by the end of this Parliament and that

is a good example of what we can do. There was an excellent debate

yesterday about this issue, we have to work on everything we can in

terms of procurement, making sure we are taking action in the EU against

dumping and we are. We have to make sure we reduce energy costs where we

can and we stand by to work with any potential purchaser of the Port

Talbot works which will safeguard steel jobs in other parts of the

country to see how we can help on a commercial basis. I'm satisfied with

doing everything we can. We cannot totally bucked the global trend of

this massive overcapacity of steel and decline in prices but those are

the key areas in terms of power and plant and procurement, all areas

where we can help. Research by the Sutton trust shows turning schools

in the academies does not necessarily improve them. Thousands

of excellent primary schools, parents want them to be continued to

be maintained by their local authority so why are ministers are

planning to overall parents and force those schools to become

academies? I think the evidence shows that academies work as part of

our education reforms. Let me give the evidence. If you look at those

schools that converted into academies, 88% of them are other

outstanding or good schools. If you look at the sponsored academies,

often failing schools, if you listen and look at what happened with the

schools that were often failing but were now sponsored by academies, you

have seen on average a 10% improvement over the first two

years. All the evidence is that results are better, freedoms lead to

improvements and where there are problems, intervention happens far

faster with academies. We have 1.4 million more children in good or

outstanding schools and we should finish the job.

The Prime Minister has met many great people but I believe he has

yet to meet the Vale of Evesham very open does the asparagus man. Would

you like to join me for the upcoming British asparagus festival which

starts on St George's Day and show his support for our fantastic

farming industry? I'm happy to say that my honourable friend's

constituency is only one constituency away, we share the same

railway line so if there is an opportunity for some great British

asparagus I would be happy to join him. Can I take the Prime Minister

back to his response to the honourable member's drop handle, it

was a truly dreadful case. Women's refuges are facing absolute crisis.

The changes the government proposes to make to housing benefit will

force the closure of women's refuges. He needs urgently to look

again at these changes because unless he makes refuges exempt, they

will be closing up and down the country. Can he do it? What I would

say is what we did in the last Parliament with rape crisis centres

we are doing the same type of thing with these refuges and that is why

the ?80 million of funding is so important. It is widely Secretary of

State has written to local authorities to explain that this

money is available to make sure those refuges are there. As part of

world autism awareness week last week, the National Autistic Society

launched its biggest ever awareness campaign. Young Alex Cunliffe the

star of the film, was here in the house and met many MPs this week --

Ruairidh Young Alex, the star some 50% of autistic people don't

even go out in public because of what people think and their

reaction. Will he meet with me and the Cherokee to discuss how the

government can support this campaign and how we can tackle the social

isolation of so many families -- and the charity. Let me pay tribute to

my right honourable friend who has been campaigning and legislating on

this issue now for many years including the landmark legislation

that went through in the last Parliament. We have been working

closely with the autism aligned and have invested some ?325,000 since

2014 but we don't do more in terms of helping -- helping families with

autistic children and raising the profile of the understanding of what

being autistic is all about. Let me put in a plug for the strange

incident of the dog in a night which is still available at the Whitehall

Theatre, it is excellent and will give you a better explanation of

autism and perhaps anything we can discuss in this house. Authorities

in the room, El Salvador and Panama have raided offices of Mossack

Fonseca, seizing documents and computer equipment but nobody has

knocked on the door of their branch in the UK. While recognising the

operational independence of our enforcement agencies, does he share

my deep concern that come as we speak, documents are no doubt being

shredded and databases being wiped, undermining the opportunity to bring

further potential wrongdoing to like? She makes an important point

which is that we need to make sure that all the evidence coming out

Panama is properly investigated and that is right we have set up a

special cross agency team including the National Crime Agency, HMRC and

other relevant bodies to make sure we get to the bottom of what

happened. She is right to reference the fact that these organisations

are operationally independent and it would be quite wrong for a minister

or Prime Minister to order an investigator into a particular

building in a particular way, that is not a river, we want to cross in

this house. Empower the National crime agency and HMRC, give them

resources and let them get on with the job. Can I draw his attention to

the tragic death of a 20 month -- 21-month-old baby when she was

stamped on by her mother so violently that it prompted her

heart. Yet she had been known to social services since the day she

was born, they knew about the violent boyfriends, the domestic

violence, they saw the doors kicked in and smelt the cannabis, they saw

the bruisers, the cuts, the fingerprints on her little thighs

and they did nothing -- bruises. He will understand that people want to

know how this could have happened yet they are concerned to know that

the serious case review has on its panel people who are directly

involved in the organisationorganisations are being

investigated. Will he look at what we can do to make this and other

serious case reviews more independent so we can make sure that

no other child suffers the life and death that this little girl did? I

think my honourable friend is absolutely right to raise this.

Obviously in the work we all do we hear about some hideous and horrific

incidents but anybody watching television that night and seeing the

description of what happened to that girl could it simply took your

breath away that people could behave in such a despicable way towards

their own children. There is no punishment in the world in my view

that fits that sort of crime carried out by their own parent. There will

be a serious case review and I will look carefully at the suggestions he

makes and I know the Secretary of State for Education will do so as

well. There are criticisms of the way these cases are done but in this

case we must get on with the review because we have to get to the bottom

of what went wrong. There are currently over 7000 people in the UK

needing an organ transplant including 139 children and many will

die because of a shortage of available organs. The Welsh Labour

government has already introduced ground-breaking legislation for opt

out organisation in Wales so will you join me in supporting the

campaign for opt out organ donation throughout the UK? I'm always happy

to look at this again having looked at it before and have not come out

in favour of opting out. We debated in the last Parliament and made a

lot of moves to making opt in much easier and we found that if you look

at different hospitals and areas of the country there are different

record in terms of how well they do. My position is that it is something

we should support and continue to drive but this house can vote on the

issue about whether it wants to go down the Welsh track rather than the

track we are on but personally I say we should make opt in better. He

will be well aware that our colleague Lord Bates has just

started a 2000 mile walk from one is Iris to Rio de Janeiro, arriving in

time for the Olympics -- Buenos Aires. Will he join me in wishing

him well on this epic journey and committing his government to uphold

the values and principles of the Olympic truce? I have already

written to Michael Bates to wish him well and give support for the work

he has done over many years. He leaves me a bit of a hole in the

House of Lords where he has been doing fantastic work for the Home

Office on security issues so we wish him a good walk and a speedy return.

At Ealing hospital the experienced doctors I met with last week are

dismayed that the government's own equality assessment of their new

contract find it discriminates against women which is over half of

them. As he is a self-confessed feminist, leading a progressive

government, will he... So he says. Will the reverse this blatant

injustice which has no place in 2016? I am grateful for her question

and backhanded compliment! I would say that this contract is actually

very pro-women because it involves a 13% basic pay rise, because it

restricts the currently horrendous hours that some junior doctors are

working that are unsafe, and because it gives greater guarantees about

levels of pay and the amount of money that doctors will get. As

people start to work on it and with it, they will see it is very

pro-women. Over 200,000 economic migrants came from the European

Union in the period for which we have figures and yet the propaganda

sheet said at the British people says we maintain control of our

borders. As we withdrawn from the free movement of people all sit --

is it simply untrue? The truth is that economic migrants coming and to

the EU don't have the right to come to the UK, they are not European

nationals. They are nationals of Pakistan or Morocco or Turkey. None

of them have the right so it is very important and it is important we

send information stew households because then they can see the truth

about what is proposed. What he has put forward is classic of the sort

of scare stories we get, Britain has borders, Britain will keep its

borders, we have the best of both worlds. Still at university at the

University of sporting excellence elite sports have been rocked in

recent months about an international doping scandal that threatens the

entire country is thrown out or major and petitions. Does he agree

that the world anti-doping agency needs further support and can he

tell me what further action can be taken? I think he is right to raise

it, Wada has made a lot of advances in recent years. There is a

relevance to our anti-corruption Summit in May when we will be

looking at corruption in sport and bringing forward new codes of

practice to adopt in this country and we hope others also do. There is

also the question about whether doping should be a specific criminal

offence which is something we should be debating. What progress has been

made in impairment in Sir Bruce Keogh's ten clinical standards

published in December 2013 which are essential for rolling out the

seven-day NHS? Perhaps I can write specifically on the clinical

standards but the truth is that what is good is that he and others in the

NHS support this vision of a seven-day NHS and recognise that we

should pay tribute to all those doctors and nurses who work at

weekends already because it is very important but what we are trying to

move toward is an NHS where the individual has access to their

family doctor seven days a week and also where hospitals work on or

seven databases because it will save lives and improve care and I will

write to him about the specific detail. Parent governors play a key

role in local schools supporting their children's education and

performing an important civic duty. If the Prime Minister aware of the

sadness and anger which has resulted from the forced Academy 's

announcement that the duty for each school to have parent governors will

be removed? Will he urgently review this attack on parents? I'm

delighted the Honourable lady asked this question because we will be

debating it later but let me be clear, we support parent governors,

we think they have a great role to play but no school should think that

is simply -- that by simply having parent governors you have solved the

problem about engaging with parents. Let me say that there is something

in the Labour motion today that it actually inaccurate and should be

withdrawn. It says, the white Paper proposes the removal of parent

governors from school governing bodies. It does no such thing. As

well as not getting his tax return in on time coming is bringing

forward motions that are simply wrong.