I thank all Members who have taken part in the debates on the Finance Bill so far. Today we are focusing on a number of potential amendments to the Bill. Many of the amendments seek to ensure the proper functioning of the legislation in response to stakeholder scrutiny and feedback. Others take forward responses to substantive issues that have emerged during the Bill’s passage. I will address each amendment in turn.
Amendments 1 to 8 to clause 36 relate to the Bill’s measures to establish a residential property developer tax, or RPDT. These amendments ensure that those holding a specific type of build licence giving them effective control of the land are subject to RPDT. That will ensure that the legislation works as intended, and closes a potential loophole.
Amendments 9 and 10 to clause 58 relate to the Bill’s clauses on the economic crime (anti-money laundering) levy. These amendments seek simply to amend clause 58 by replacing two references to “entities that are” with “persons”, providing further clarity by using terms consistently throughout the legislation.
Amendments 11 to 13 form part of the extensive action that the Government are taking to address the current heavy goods vehicle driver shortage. As Members will remember, at the last autumn Budget, the Government temporarily extended cabotage rights for foreign operators of heavy goods vehicles until 30 April this year to ease supply-chain pressures. That change was made on a short-term basis to support essential supply chains. These amendments seek to introduce an enabling power through the Bill to make temporary changes to vehicle excise duty legislation should the Government decide to introduce a further temporary extension of road haulage cabotage flexibilities beyond April and up to 31 December 2022. These amendments do not, in themselves, extend those flexibilities. The Government have made no decision to extend the cabotage easement. Any such decision would be taken only after consulting with interested parties, and in consideration of wider pressure on supply chains at the time.
Amendments 14 to 17 are technical amendments to clauses 7 and 8, and to schedule 1, which seek to abolish the basis period rules for the self-employed and partners, and introduce the tax-year basis from April 2024. The amendments will ensure that eligible taxpayers are able to benefit from certain tax reliefs, including double taxation relief, that are given as a deduction against tax rather than against profits during the transition to the new tax-year basis. The amendments are required to avoid an unintentional outcome of the basis period reform transition rules.
Amendments 18 to 30 address a number of technical points in the new asset holding companies regime to better reflect the original policy intentions. These amendments follow engagement with industry. They will make the rules of the tax regime clearer for companies that will use it, and will ensure that it can be more effectively implemented.
Amendments 31 to 33 relate to accounting standards. They make minor technical changes to part 2 of schedule 5, which revokes the requirement for life insurance companies to spread their acquisition costs over seven years for tax purposes. These changes will simply ensure that the legislation functions as originally intended.
I turn now to the Government new clauses and new schedules. New clause 1 and new schedule 1 will deal with provisions about regulations regarding freeports. These new provisions seek to build on our existing powers that allow us to introduce, amend and remove conditions to enable businesses to qualify for freeport tax reliefs. The provisions do that by allowing the Government to use secondary legislation to remove and recover those reliefs from individual businesses, if necessary on a prospective basis. This power could be used to enforce compliance. For instance, it would allow the Government to introduce new reporting requirements if needed, and to respond if companies did not adhere to them by removing reliefs or taking other action.
These provisions support our critical freeports programme, which will help to create employment in left-behind areas, and allow them to prosper with additional and much-needed investment. We look forward to seeing them, and the businesses within them, prosper.
New clause 3 and new schedule 2 seek to legislate for a new public interest business protection tax. Energy groups will often enter into derivative contracts to hedge their exposure to fluctuations in wholesale energy prices, and help to ensure that they can supply energy to customers at the prices fixed and under the price cap set by Ofgem. They will typically use a forward purchase agreement to buy energy in the future at a price that is fixed at the time when the contract is entered into.
The Government have been monitoring the global rise in wholesale energy prices very closely. We have a serious concern about certain arrangements whereby energy suppliers do not own, control or have the economic rights to the key assets needed to run their businesses, including forward purchase contracts. It is currently possible for an energy business to derive value from such a valuable asset for its own benefit and the benefit of its shareholders, while leaving its energy supply business to fail, or increasing the costs of a failure. The costs of that failure would then be picked up by the taxpayer or consumers, because it would trigger a special administration regime or a supplier of last resort scheme. These are special Government-funded administration routes that help to ensure that UK customers continue to be supplied with energy.
Ofgem is now consulting on a range of regulatory actions that it proposes to take to ensure that the right protections are in place in these circumstances. That work will ensure the ongoing resilience of energy supply businesses. However, it will take months for these changes to come into effect. The Government recognise that it would be unacceptable for a Government to allow business owners to profit from engineering this kind of outcome in the interim period, at great and direct expense to the taxpayer.