Energy (Oil and Gas) Profits

None of the amendments has been selected, so I call the Minister to move the motion.

I beg to move,

That provision may be made for, and in connection with, imposing a charge on ring fence profits of companies (within the meaning of Part 8 of the Corporation Tax Act 2010).

This Bill deals with the taxation of extraordinary profits in the oil and gas sector, but it is important to remember that its effect is to allow us to focus on supporting families up and down the country at this difficult economic time. The Bill will help us to raise revenues and support families while continuing to encourage investment in North sea oil and gas.

I wonder whether the Treasury has made any assessment yet of how much money will be raised by this windfall tax, given the debt that will need to be taken on as a result of the tax cut for those drilling for fossil fuels. Is there an estimate of how much the Minister intends to raise by these means?

The estimate of the amount that the measure will raise is £5 billion over the course of the first year. I start by highlighting the context for our introducing the Bill. The oil and gas sector is making extraordinary profits. Those profits are not the result of recent changes to risk-taking, innovation or efficiencies; they are the result of surging global commodity prices, driven in part by Russia’s war. The profits are over and above what analysts and businesses in the sector could have expected to earn. Indeed, since early last year, oil prices have nearly doubled and gas prices have more than doubled. The Bill is being introduced at a time when many of our constituents are struggling with the cost of living, and at a time when we have said that the Government will support the most vulnerable and the least well off in getting the support that they need.

I would like to touch on how the Bill ensures that we tax extraordinary profits fairly while incentivising investment. To do that, we are introducing the energy profits levy, a new 25% surcharge on the extraordinary profits that the oil and gas sector is making. At the same time, the new 80% investment allowance will mean that businesses will, overall, get a 91p tax saving for every £1 they invest. This provides them with an additional immediate incentive to invest. That nearly doubles the tax relief available and means that the more investment a firm makes, the less they will pay. As set out in the energy security strategy, the north will still be a foundation of our energy security, so it is right that we continue to encourage investment in oil and gas. The Government expect the energy profits levy, with the investment allowance, to lead to an overall increase in investment.

I want to make clear what the investment allowance will apply to. First, the allowance will be calculated in the same way as the investment allowance for the existing supplementary charge. Therefore, if capital or operating expenditure qualifies for the supplementary charge allowance, it will qualify for the energy profits levy allowance, but unlike the supplementary charge, it will be available to companies at the point of investment. This makes it both more immediate and more generous. As the levy is targeted at the extraordinary profits from oil and gas upstream activities, it makes sense that any relief for investment must also be related to oil and gas upstream activities. Such spending can be used to decarbonise oil and gas production—for example, through electrification—so any capital expenditure on electrification, as long as it relates to specific oil activities within the ringfence, will qualify for the allowance. Examples of activity that may be carried out for specific oil activities include expenditure on plant and machinery such as generators, which includes wind turbines, transformers and wiring.

We have been waiting for many months for this day to come, but here we finally are: I am referring not to the news that has broken within the last hour outside this Chamber, but to the fact that the Government are finally implementing a windfall tax, even if the Minister absolutely refused to say those words in her remarks.

The Conservatives are finally introducing a windfall tax on oil and gas producers’ profits more than seven months after the shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), first set out Labour’s plans for one. In the seven months since Labour first called for a windfall tax, the cost of living pressures facing people across the country have grown relentlessly and oil producers’ profits have soared.

Since the start of the year, energy bills have spiralled by £700 for a typical household. Inflation has risen to 9.1%, the highest level in 40 years, and taxes on working people’s pay have jumped thanks to the Government’s decision to hike national insurance contributions. This year has seen the cost of living rise unremittingly, while oil and gas producers’ profits have in some cases tripled.

A fair solution has been staring the Government in the face: levy a one-off windfall tax on North sea oil and gas producers’ extraordinary profits and use that money to help to cut people’s energy bills at home. Yet when, on 9 January this year, the shadow Chancellor first called on the Government to levy such a tax, Conservative MPs were falling over themselves to oppose it. The Education Secretary—as it happens, a former oil industry executive—came out firmly opposing a windfall tax on oil and gas producers on the ground that they, the oil producers, were already “struggling.” The Business Secretary said:

“I’ve never been a supporter of windfall taxes.”

The Northern Ireland Secretary said that he thought that a windfall tax

As the motion relates to a Treasury matter, may I pay tribute to the former Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak)? He had to get the country through a difficult period in the pandemic. He produced a number of interesting schemes, such as the furlough and the self-employment income support scheme, where the software worked and where people were helped. I think he was very creative in the way he handled a difficult situation. I know that it is not always easy for senior politicians to take decisions such as the one that he has taken today. I wish him well, along with the former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid). We will see how events unfold.

Let me start by taking a traditional Conservative position and saying that I do not like windfall taxes. The North sea is a tremendous British success story. We have got oil out of deep seas using technology, investment and British initiative over decades and we have benefited the nation in doing so. We are a nation that has oil and gas all the way around its coast, as Professor Peter Odell used to say in the 1970s. It is just a question of whether it is viable to get it out, and whether the tax and investment regime is good enough.

The North sea is quite mature now. Although the rise in prices is unwelcome for motorists, it certainly gives the opportunity to extend the life of some fields and makes other oil fields with more marginal prospects more viable. If we are looking for a resilient future for our country, getting the best out of our natural resources in the transition to net zero, I think we ought to have a stable tax network, not act like a Venezuelan junta by jumping in and trying to take money away from oil companies. And what are oil companies? They are normally vehicles for pension funds for lots of elderly people living up and down the country who rely on that income to pay their cost of living bills. There is no such thing as a painless tax rise. There is no magic money tree if we go and punch the oil and gas companies in the mouth. I think this is a very short-sighted policy. It may raise money, but the consequences are long term, and it may have an impact on investment.

Apart from the creation of an oil industry, there are thousands of jobs in oil services in and around Aberdeen, in many other parts of the United Kingdom and, now, worldwide. I think we ought to be proud of what this country has achieved, and we ought to be doing what we can to support those well-paid and important jobs as we go towards net zero.

I am not going to divide the House today. I do not think I would get a seconder, as I am probably the only person who is against the windfall tax at the moment, but we will see how this transpires. I think that a stable tax system in which people in the oil and gas industry can look decades ahead—because investment decisions sometimes take decades—is a much better way of dealing with the situation.

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s arguments, although I do not agree with them, but has he an alternative proposal for helping people to bring down their energy bills? I am sure that many of his constituents are deeply worried about how they will make ends meet, particularly with the next increase in bills coming this autumn. How does he suggest we help them?

I am not sure that the £5 billion raised from the oil companies will find its way into the pockets of people who are worried about their energy bills. As far as I know, it is going into the Treasury.

I return to my original simple point. The Government have already undertaken a number of measures to help with bills; the problem is the lag between the decision making and the assistance that they are giving. So there is always more pressure to do more. I am hopeful that, as we proceed, people will suddenly see some of the bail-out help with bills that the Government have already factored in. But I think that a stable tax system is a better way of proceeding than adding a higher levy on top of corporation tax rates, which are already higher than the rates for most other companies. Let us not forget that many of these oil companies were losing money 18 months ago when we were in lockdown.

I am unhappy with this policy. I will find it interesting to see how the Government bring the positives forward. I am pleased that they have listened to representations—and the former Chancellor was talking to the oil industry—but I think that in the long term this is bound to have a negative effect on investment in the sector, and that what we should be doing is cherishing and encouraging the sector so that we import less from other countries and give ourselves more resilience and security of supply.

That is really all that I wanted to say. I wanted to make my reactionary right-wing comments about windfall taxes, and I did not want the motion to go through without my putting them on the record.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker. What a strange evening for us to be making speeches in the House. While the Minister did a good job of putting forward the policy, we have to ask who the Chancellor will be by the time the Bill comes to the House next week and, indeed, whether it will still stand when it does come.

The Tories have come here today with a “temporary refund adjustment”, an “energy profits levy”, a windfall tax by any other name. It is a tax that Tory Members were vehemently against all the way up to the point when the now former Chancellor announced it, yet he still came to the Treasury Committee to tell us that he did not believe in windfall taxes. So I can only speculate that this may be one of the reasons why he chose to resign this evening—one of the areas in which he and the Prime Minister apparently disagreed in private—and one of the reasons why he was no longer prepared to give a speech on the economy with the Prime Minister next week, as planned.

Today we see the UK Government finally getting round to doing something about these excess profits; as always, at the coo’s tail. They have the full suite of economic powers to act, but they continue, again and again, to lack the will or the imagination to do so—to support people through a cost of living crisis that they helped to create.

The SNP has been consistent in calling for a windfall tax on excess profits since June 2020, in response to the soaring profits then being made by Amazon and other online retailers during the pandemic. My colleague in the Scottish Parliament and evangelist for Paisley, George Adam MSP, raised that issue and the Scottish Government Finance Secretary Kate Forbes certainly agreed with the principle. It is disappointing that this UK Government, and indeed the official Opposition, have looked only narrowly and in a limited fashion at oil and gas and ignored all the other areas where super-extraordinary profits have been soaring during this pandemic.

This is a strange evening indeed to be discussing the motion before us, which is in the name of the now former Chancellor.

The Liberal Democrats first called for a windfall tax back in October last year. If a windfall tax had been brought in then, £3 billion more would already have been raised for the Exchequer. That is £3 billion that could have been used to offset the hardship faced by families and pensioners up and down the country who are struggling to cope with the cost of living crisis.

There are many more things that need to be taken into account, and I hope that the new Chancellor, whoever he or she may be, listens to the people of this country who have been taken for granted for far too long. However, I must admit that I find it strange to hear the SNP talking about the chaos created by Westminster when those of us who live in Scotland know about the chaos that is being created there—in the NHS, with its longest waiting times; in our education system, which is failing; and with record drug deaths.

Briefly—because this is an important night—I remind the Government that there was something they could have done earlier for the people of this country to alleviate the hardship of the cost of living crisis. There is more that they can still do: they can cut VAT. I hope that between now and Monday they might change the windfall tax to help it raise more money, and they might reconsider the money that will go into fossil fuels rather than green technologies.

The Government are introducing this Bill in response to the extraordinary profits being made by the oil and gas sector—profits that are not earned but are a consequence of high global gas prices, fuelled by Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. As families across the country are struggling to make ends meet, faced with rising energy bills and a cost of living scandal, energy companies operating in the UK are predicted to make an eye-watering £11.6 billion of unexpected windfall profits this year from oil and gas extracted from the North sea. Not only is it right that those windfall profits are taxed and redistributed to provide vital support to households, some 6.5 million of which are now living in fuel poverty, but, frankly, it would be morally reprehensible to do anything else.

I therefore welcome the fact that the Government are finally introducing a windfall tax—or an “energy profits levy”, as Ministers prefer to call it. That is something that I, too, called for a very long time ago. However, I am extremely concerned that it is being rushed through, with the consultation open for just five working days and the Bill receiving only one day of full scrutiny in this House. That is patently insufficient time to consider legislation of this complexity and importance.

We must consider first whether the tax is set at a level that constitutes an adequate response to the ongoing energy crisis. In the sixth richest country in the world, April saw more than 2 million adults not eat for a whole day because they could not afford or access food. The energy levy is one of the tools we have to tackle this social scandal. We have a deep responsibility to use it to full effect and to ensure that this is the beginning of the end for such grotesque levels of poverty and inequality.

Secondly, we must consider the impact of the proposed investment allowance on not just domestic but global emissions. I know that the Treasury does not even recognise the idea of subsidies in the fossil fuel sector, but that does not change the reality. Make no mistake: this is a subsidy. It is reckless, and its climate impacts make a mockery of the Government’s claim to global climate leadership.

It is a pleasure to respond to many of the interesting points that have been made, and I wish to touch on a few of them. The hon. Member for Ealing North (James Murray) suggested that this was his proposal for a windfall tax that we have adopted, but he will know that this is not Labour’s proposal, because it is significantly different. Not only does it bring in further revenues, but it introduces an investment incentive, to ensure that we get more from our oil and gas sectors.

The hon. Member also mentioned the cost of living. He will know that we are spending £37 billion on supporting people when they most need it, but the most important point is about fiscal responsibility. We on this side of the House believe in fiscal responsibility. That is why, unlike Labour, we have not made £100 billion-worth of unfunded spending proposals, which no amount of taxation would fund.

I understand the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Sir Robert Syms) makes. No Conservative Government is keen on additional taxes, but, as he will know, this is a temporary, short-term, focused additional tax that has a sunset clause and might well be brought to an end—there are provisions to allow that—when revenues return to normal.

I remind the House that the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) called for more windfall taxes on other industries. That is obviously something that we would oppose, but the interesting point she made was about what she said was the mismanagement of resources. I remind the House of the mismanagement of the SNP Government in Scotland, whose health, education and justice budgets are growing more slowly in real terms than UK spending, and that the reason for that is the 50% increase in their welfare budget.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) suggested that her proposal would have delivered £3 billion more if this tax had been introduced earlier, but she forgets that the Lib Dem proposal was significantly less than what we have proposed in terms of revenues. The Lib Dems were proposing a 10% increase in the supplementary charge. She will know that our proposal is for a 25% increase.