Richard Fuller (24787)
This page contains possible times in debates that Richard Fuller may have disclosed an interest.
This match is loose and is likely to include false positives.
2023-09-07: Match score 73%
I am interested in that specific point
2024-04-17: Match score 68%
I wholeheartedly support the Bill. I have a couple of points to make to the Minister, and a couple of responses that the shadow Minister might be interested to hear. In response to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) on the loan charge, the Minister said that he was not minded to accept an amendment, but would always listen. I like the Minister. He will be aware that the loan charge has created significant concerns and problems for people. He will be aware that the loan charge policy has been in place for a long time and has not made the progress anticipated initially. May I say to him that it is time to draw a deadline on that policy and for HMRC to find a different way to provide resolution and, may I say, relief to those affected?
2023-09-04: Match score 67%
However, I want to talk about another amendment that affects small businesses, which no other hon. Member has referred to in this debate: Lords amendment 30 regarding the disclosure of profit and loss accounts for certain companies, which the Bill will require of small businesses and microbusinesses that had previously been exempt. It potentially causes considerable concerns for owners of very small businesses if they are to have their profit and loss and their balance sheets publicly declared through Companies House reporting.
2024-04-18: Match score 67%
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his response. The word “engage” is interesting in this context. It is the case that there is a church in my constituency where there was local opposition to the sale of allotment land. Discussions were held initially with the diocese, and then at Church House in Westminster. My hon. Friend will be aware that in such discussions there is an imbalance of power, so can he assure me that there is adequate guidance to enable parishioners and local communities to combat effectively pressures to sell land where there is clearly local opposition?
2024-01-10: Match score 67%
I would also be interested to hear from the Minister—perhaps not from the Dispatch Box today, but separately with the taxation Minister—where the definition of certain words is moving in the Treasury and HMRC when it comes to tax avoidance and tax evasion. I recall that, many years ago, the difference was that tax evasion was illegal and that tax avoidance, while perhaps not what the HMRC wanted to happen, was legal. We see in the Finance Bill references to tax avoidance that imply that it is illegal. I worry that there is insufficient clarity, from HMRC’s perspective, on the difference between tax evasion, which is illegal, and tax avoidance, which is legal but perhaps not desirable. Perhaps the Minister could give some clarity on that.
2023-11-22: Match score 67%
It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson). He always speaks a lot of sense in the House, and I listened with interest to what he said. It is also a pleasure to welcome the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), to his place. I am sure he will do a fantastic job in the Treasury, as will the rest of the team.
2024-02-02: Match score 66%
I am listening to my hon. Friend’s speech with great interest. He is providing a lot of detail, so I hope he will not mind my asking some specific questions. He will be aware that the Pension Protection Fund does not necessarily pay up 100% of what people would have got had their pension fund not become insolvent—and often, insolvency occurs through no action of the employees themselves, but is about how the directors of the companies made contributions. He will also be aware that shortfalls in the Pension Protection Fund are covered by a levy that is charged on other pension funds. I am almost certain that the effect of the changes—which, as my hon. Friend has rightly said, are supported generally throughout the House—will be significant, but has he made an assessment of the cost changes? Has he had any thoughts about what the implications might be for how the Pension Protection Fund might have to change its rules and/or what it might mean for the levy charged on other pension funds?
2024-02-02: Match score 66%
My hon Friend has made another interesting point
2024-04-17: Match score 65%
My second point to the Opposition—before I get on to what I want to say—is that I hold no torch for the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), but when the hon. Member and his colleagues talk about crashing the economy and about people’s mortgage rates, as I think the Leader of the Opposition did at Prime Minister’s questions, may I gently urge them to look at the Bernanke review that has just been completed on Bank of England forecasting? That has a number of important points about how the Bank of England could improve its forecasting. It also compares interest rates for the seven central banks that Ben Bernanke, the former head of the US Federal Reserve, has used as his comparators—in figure 12 in the report. If the hon. Member looks at that, he will see that UK interest rates in 2019 were in the middle of the pack, UK interest rates in 2020 were in the middle of the pack, UK interest rates in 2021 were in the middle of the pack, UK interest rates in 2022 were in the middle of the pack and UK interest rates in 2023 were in the middle of the pack. UK interest rates as we enter 2024 are in the middle of the pack. It is simply not true to say that something exceptional happened to UK interest rates in any part of this Parliament. Again, if the hon. Member wishes to be taken seriously in government, he needs to get a grip on reality, not on fantasy.
2024-02-05: Match score 64%
I was interested in what the shadow Minister was saying about what would happen if other countries changed their corporation tax
2024-04-17: Match score 62%
Thirdly, will the Minister be encouraged by the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) and his analysis of the charges imposed on the Treasury by the Bank of England as a result of the quantitative tightening policies? The UK’s policies on quantitative tightening are exceptional. Few other central banks—many of which indulged in the bizarre quantitative easing policy 15 years ago, after the financial crash under the last Labour Government—do it, and it is now a real charge that has real effects on the real economy in the country. The exceptional way in which we are treating quantitative tightening charges—essentially, we take them on the books, the Treasury gets charged for it, and it has to go into the scoring that the OBR and others do—does not go on in other European countries. There is discretion on how it can be put across, and in the US the charges are absorbed but the Government are not charged. That is an important policy point, and I would be interested to hear whether the Minister would accept an amendment on that in Committee, although I think not.
2023-12-04: Match score 61%
Under my proposal, this access to independent legal advice would be provided to victims in six specified situations, so we are not creating an open door or a difference that would occur in other cases. That is important because decisions about how credible the victim is deemed to be are often what drive the decision to continue with a criminal case. That is not the case in many other sources of crimes. A national scheme providing victims of rape and sexual assault with independent legal advice and representation will ensure that victims’ rights are respected where their interests diverge from those of the police, the CPS and other criminal agencies.