I thank the Minister for that point, but obviously the Bill is about Making Tax Digital and the intra-EU process is digitised. That is what makes it so seamless for so many companies. When we are making legislation about making VAT a digital entity and working online, surely we should be joining these things up to make it as easy as possible for our constituents who have to deal with these issues, rather than separating it out. My point is simply that this Bill is now coming towards the House at the same time as those negotiations are happening. Our constituents deserve clarity on how these things are going to work together.
That applies particularly to our self-employed constituents. Clause 64 could help many of them who have to deal with the errors relating to their welfare entitlement and their tax entitlement. We know that 18% of self-employed people get tax credits, compared with 10% of people who are employed, yet there is nothing in the Bill to help them. I am sure that my colleague—another gentleman from the SNP, whose constituency is I am sure as beautiful as Moray but unfortunately I have forgotten what it is—would agree that we could help those people through this legislation by joining up the way in which the state works with self-employed people. Issues such as how they deal with VAT, with universal credit and with insurance will all be covered in the Bill, but there is an absence of ideas from the Government on how to help those people.
The Government also seem to be overlooking some of the poorest people in our society. I know this because, 18 months ago, I took part in the consultation on tips, gratuities and service charges—the disguised remuneration that the Government are so concerned about—yet, 18 months on, we are no further forward on finding out what the Government are going to do to prevent some of the poorest workers in our retail industries from being ripped off by employers who dip into their tips and use them to prop up their businesses. I have given examples of this to the Treasury and to HMRC, and these issues could have been dealt with in this Bill, but there is nothing there. There is nothing in the Bill to protect workers who get their tips through an electronic system or to ensure that their employers are not taking a surcharge from them. There is nothing in the legislation that even gives a legal right to a payslip—a very basic piece of information that would help to stop those people being exploited.
Those 10 ideas reflect the things we could have done, through this Bill, to help the poorest hard-working people in our communities who will be stamped on by that Brexit “Monty Python” foot. I look at the gaps in the Bill and at the ease with which non-doms will slip through the loopholes, and I see a Government who are not only running out of ideas but running out of road on Brexit. God willing, with the work that we will do, they will also run out of time soon.
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