Mr.
Hammond: I do not disagree, but the Minister could have
reassured the Committee hugely and avoided this debate if the clause
had referred narrowly to the creation by statutory instrument of
criminal offences related to the disclosure of confidential
information. The purpose would then have been clear and narrowly
defined. Whatever she tells us today, I have not yet heard a clear
statement from the Government Dispatch Box that the legislation will
not be used to create offences other than those relating to disclosure
of confidential
information.
Angela
Eagle: It is important to say that the auctioning
of emissions allowances is novel, and that the framework needs to be
flexible to allow the Government to learn from experience. I am not in
a position to say that the measure will not be extended into other
areas, but the issue about which we are most concerned is the
inappropriate disclosure of information. Given that the situation is
evolving, it is important not to cut off attempts to put flexibility
into the Bill so that we can evolve structures as our understanding of
how the markets work and what would destabilise them evolves.
The
Government will clearly not do outrageous or unreasonable things, and
the law requires that measures must be reasonable. The hon. Gentleman
should take some comfort from that. At this stage in a fast-moving
situation, I am reluctant to close down the Government’s options
so that we have to keep coming back to primary legislation. Things move
quickly, and measures will be subject, too, to multilateral
negotiations at the EU and international levels.
Nobody has
auctioned carbon or carbon permits before in that manner, and we are
developing our approach and policy as we go along. We think that it is
important that the carbon market should be robust and liquid, and that
it should not be subject to the risk of being laid low by the behaviour
of people wishing to profit from the inappropriate disclosure of
confidential information. That might well have other detrimental
effects from a wider public policy
view. I
agree that we are in a rather odd situation with the statutory
instruments—the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge was
right to point that out. The main regulations for auctioning permits
were laid on 3 June. They set a flexible framework to accommodate a
number of different auction designs, because we had not made final
policy commitments to a design. However, we have set a deadline for the
first UK Government auction by the end of the year, so we want to
signal how we will proceed to those who are ready and willing to
involve themselves in the first auction of permits some time this year.
At the moment, the main regulations for auctioning, which were laid on
3 June, deliberately set a flexible framework to accommodate a number
of different auction designs.
Mr.
Hammond: I am grateful to the Minister for that
clarification. I have to say that my search—I should say my
researcher’s search—this morning did not turn up the fact
that they had been laid, and the copy that has been circulated is a
draft copy without a statutory instrument number. Has it occurred to
the Minister that people’s willingness to participate in the
process might be affected by the knowledge that another statutory
instrument will be introduced that will create criminal offences that
could apply to them
personally?
Angela
Eagle: I expect that they might be put off engaging in the
auction if they intended to leak inappropriate and commercially
confidential information.
However, most of the people whom I have met to discuss the design of
auctions and approaches to them do not intend to do that. I believe
that those who want to become involved in the auctions, at least the
vast majority of them, do not intend to do so by cheating. I have not
heard it said that it would put them off. Emissions trading is novel.
The Government must be able to respond to the experiences of those
people and of the market. Any new offences created by the
regulation—there may not be any—would be considered by
Parliament. We would not just be writing them in Her Majesty’s
Treasury.
Mr.
Hammond: The Minister says that there may not be any new
offences, but a draft has been circulated. Unless the Government manage
to lose their majority in the statutory instrument Committee that
considers the matter, she surely is not signalling that it is not their
intention to proceed along the lines of that
draft.
Angela
Eagle: No—the hon. Gentleman may not be a lawyer,
but he is taking me very literally.
The hon.
Gentleman spoke earlier about further extensions, and I tried to
reassure him. The clause seeks, through secondary legislation, to make
it a criminal offence inappropriately to disclose information that
might destabilise the carbon market or compromise an auction unfairly,
which may also lead to profit being acquired in a way that no one in
Committee would approve. That is the behaviour that we are trying to
prevent. The Government clearly intend to use regulations to make it a
criminal offence to compromise an auction by the inappropriate release
of confidential information. I hope that that is clear.
The hon.
Gentleman is worried about widening the range of criminal offences. We
may not wish to widen them, but given the novel nature of the process,
and the fact that it is a new market in an area of which we have little
experience, we have finally to decide on the form that the auction
should take. By definition, it is in the public interest for us to be
as flexible as possible and not to close our options too early, and we
have a legislative system that does not easily allow us to do so.
Parliament would have to consider any further extensions. I suspect
that it will not have to do so, but I hope that I have reassured the
hon. Gentleman about our intentions.
Mr.
Hammond: I am grateful to the Minister for clearing up the
issue over the two draft regulations. I shall go back and check why it
was not possible this morning to establish that the first set of
regulations had been laid.
The Minister
argues for flexibility. I am sure that Henry VIII would have argued for
flexibility, and the Government, particularly on Treasury matters, have
quite a lot of legislative flexibility. The Finance Bill has high
priority, and it takes precedence in the legislative timetable. The
longest that a Government could ever wait to cast legislation on the
subject is one year. No other Department can be as confident. I am
afraid that I take a rather old-fashioned view, despite the fact that I
accept at face value the Exchequer Secretary’s clear assertion
she is concerned about disclosure. The clause
allows the creation of offences in any area. I remain firmly of the view
that the creation of criminal offences is the stuff of primary
legislation. Notwithstanding the relatively limited number of examples
that she gave, all but one of which were enacted by this Government, we
should not cede to the Government the power to create new criminal
offences by statutory instrument, certainly not when they are
ill-defined. If it was simply a question of offences on disclosure, and
if the Government had given us a clear indication of what they were
doing, the situation might be different. However, the Exchequer
Secretary has been unable to give us the reassurance that we seek, so I
will press to a Division. Question
put, That the clause stand part of the
Bill. The
Committee divided: Ayes 16, Noes
10.
Division
No.
17] Blackman-Woods,
Dr.
Roberta Question
accordingly agreed to.
Clause
158 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
22Periods
of
residence Mr.
Jeremy Browne (Taunton) (LD): I beg to move amendment No.
47, in
clause 22, page 12, line 4, at
end insert— ‘(1C) Subsection
(1) does not apply to an individual who is enrolled in a higher
education institution in the United
Kingdom.’.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss
amendment No. 48, in
schedule 7, page 153, line 19, at
end insert ‘(excluding
each year the individual was enrolled in full-time higher education in
the
UK)’. 6
pm
Mr.
Browne: Good afternoon, Sir
Nicholas— [Interruption.] Indeed, the room
is emptying. I thought that the Conservative spokesman was going to
resign his seat as a matter of principle on the last clause, but we had
to content ourselves with a mere Division.
The purpose
of Amendments Nos. 47 and 48 is to exempt students from the
Government’s new definition of residents. It may assist the
Committee if I explain
how the amendments seek to achieve that. The Russell group, which
consists of about 25 of the leading universities in the United Kingdom,
has provided me with background information, which the Committee may
find useful. It explains the scale of overseas students’
contribution to higher education in this country. In 2006-07, there
were 239,210 non-EU students studying in the United
Kingdom—almost 250,000—and 112,260 EU students.
International students’ fees amount to £1.5 billion a
year, which is a sizeable amount of money. About 15 per
cent. of students at Russell group universities are from overseas, but
some universities have a much higher proportion. The London School of
Economics derives one third of its total income from overseas
students’
fees. In
2005-06, the most recent year for which numbers are available, there
were 31,477 overseas academics teaching at UK universities. Higher
education in this country is extremely diverse. We operate in an
international marketplace and many of our universities have partnership
arrangements with universities in countries such as China and Malaysia.
We cannot divorce the issue of students from that wider international
set of considerations.
Stephen
Pound (Ealing, North) (Lab): It will come as a
considerable surprise, not just to the Committee but to anybody who
knows me, to learn that I am a graduate of the London School of
Economics. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point, but the amendment
does not refer to an individual who is enrolled in a Russell group
higher education institution; it refers to “a higher education
institution”. We must bear in mind the vast number of highly
suspect bucket shops, which exist the length and breadth of this land,
that call themselves higher education institutions, frequently to allow
people to avoid immigration regulations. Would the hon. Gentleman
consider tightening the wording to the elitist definition that he and
the Liberal Democrats have used, or would he spread the measure far and
wide?
Mr.
Browne: I think that I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman.
I am very pleased to say that I attended a Russell group university as
an undergraduate. I shall only observe that every hon. Member becomes
rather less snobby in this regard when a new institution is proposed
for their constituency. I would not wish the definition to be drawn too
narrowly. The figures that I gave were relevant to the UK higher
education sector as a whole—they were merely provided to me by a
representative of the Russell group.
Amendment
No. 47 is a minor amendment and would insert new subsection (1C ) into
the clause, with intention of expressly excluding foreign students
enrolled in UK higher education institutions from liability for the
183-day test for residency. There is some HMRC guidance on the matter,
but it is not
legislation.
Mr.
Greg Hands (Hammersmith and Fulham) (Con): I am
sympathetic to the hon. Gentleman’s argument. How much potential
might there be for people trying to avoid taxation by signing up to
additional courses? Let us take the example of bankers in London who
decide to sign up to an evening course, which might be at an institute
of higher education and might be linked to their jobs and justifiable
to their employers, but who would then, seemingly, be exempt from
taxation.
Mr.
Browne: I am genuinely grateful for that contribution. My
honest answer is that there probably is scope for abuse and the
Government would need to consider how they framed the legislation
carefully to try and prevent it. If the Exchequer Secretary were to get
to her feet and suggest that the intentions behind my amendments were
honourable and that she agreed with them but that the Government needed
to produce more watertight versions, I would regard that as
considerable
progress. I
say that because the current proposal is for a seven-year threshold
before the £30,000 levy kicks in for people who are
non-domiciled and working in this country. Longer courses such as
medicine, engineering and other vocational courses may in themselves
last five or six years. For example, people who come here to study
medicine—that is increasingly common—do a five-year
course and are then fully qualified doctors. There are then shortages
in the national health service in the area in which they have
specialised, they apply for a job and make an important contribution to
the well-being of our citizens. However, they already have five of the
seven years on the clock. That is a serious disincentive to continue to
serve people in the national health service for more than a year or
two, before they choose to go home or to another
country. We
are talking about a fluid marketplace and somebody with such skills and
qualifications may be able to find alternative employment in another
country. They have already demonstrated a willingness to travel by
being in the UK in the first place. There is a danger that that
person’s skills will be lost to our country and there will be no
mutual benefit. There is also a perhaps even greater danger, which is
that the potential student sitting in their country of origin and
considering where to do their higher education course, would look at
Britain and consider the incentive to study here as less strong than it
was, because they will fall foul of this test if they choose to work
here after gaining their qualification, and as a result be much poorer.
The purpose of amendments Nos. 47 and 48 is to address that serious
point. The
hon. Member for Wirral, South and I were part of an extremely
informative delegation to China about three weeks ago. We visited a
joint university venture with the university of Liverpool, and had a
meeting with a representative of the university of Nottingham which has
three campuses, one in Nottingham, one in Malaysia and one in China.
That is indicative of the desire of higher education institutions in
the United Kingdom to operate on a global stage, and to attract the
best-qualified students and potential students from across the board,
particularly in the disciplines that I mentioned such as science and
engineering. We do not want to put that international leadership and
the reputation that British universities enjoy at
risk.
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