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Tuesday, 26 November 2013

Margaret Hodge attacks 'voluntary' tax policies for rich

Hodge has led the cross-party committee through a wide-ranging investigation into how multinational firms pay UK tax

The chair of parliament's public accounts committee, Margaret Hodge, has delivered her most outspoken attack to date on the coalition's tax policies, describing the tax system for corporations and the super-rich as "increasingly voluntary".

She also criticised the "growing gap between rhetoric and reality" coming from David Cameron on tax reform.

Speaking at an event organised by tax campaigning charities in London, Hodge said: "They [ministers] believe we should engage fully in the global race to the bottom … I now believe David Cameron doesn't mean what he says when he says multinational companies should 'wake up and smell the coffee'."

Despite tough language on combating tax avoidance, the coalition government has been acknowledged among tax professionals as accelerating the pace of tax competition in a drive to lure in foreign investment. Measures such as new rules for overseas finance subsidiaries, tax breaks for groups owning patents in the UK, and the plunging corporation tax rate, have been cited by critics of Cameron's approach to tax reform.

Hodge's attack on Cameron harked back to a speech he gave at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, shortly after the use of aggressive tax avoidance strategies at Starbucks' UK operations had been exposed by a Reuters investigation. The coffee chain had taken £3bn of sales in the UK over 14 years, but paid only £8.6m in tax.

Cameron told the audience of business leaders in the luxury Swiss resort: "When some businesses aren't seen to pay their taxes, that's corrosive to the public trust … Some forms of avoidance have become so aggressive that I think it is right to say these are ethical issues and it is time to call for more responsibility."

In a blunt jibe at Starbucks, he urged multinationals to "wake up and smell the coffee".

Hodge has spent the last two years leading the cross-party committee of MPs through a wide-ranging investigation into how multinational firms pay UK tax. Her tough questioning of company executives, big-four accountancy partners and HMRC bosses has played a major role in keeping tax reform high on the political agenda.

After firms such as Google and Amazon were subjected to a barrage of angry questioning from Hodge's committee, George Osborne responded a year ago by issuing a joint statement with his German counterpart Wolfgang Schäuble, calling for urgent reform of the international tax rules. "Some multinational businesses are able to shift the taxation of their profits away from the jurisdictions where they are being generated, thus minimising their tax payments compared to smaller, less international companies," they said. "We want global companies to pay those taxes."

Since then, however, Schäuble has dramatically switched his view of Britain's commitment to shoring up the integrity of international tax regimes, attacking Osborne's "patent box" tax break. "That's no European spirit," he said. "You could get the idea they are doing it just to attract companies."

Behind the scenes, a growing number of fellow G8 nations have also become increasingly irritated at the apparent gap between Cameron's use, on the one hand, of a language of ethics on tax reform, and, on the other, what some see as begger-thy-neighbour measures to poach business activity from rival economies.

Article Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk
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Zero-hours contract workers in UK find their shifts are cancelled at will

Many told shifts cancelled just hours before starting work – but CIPD says survey shows the contracts are unfairly demonised

Almost half of zero-hour contract workers have had their shifts cancelled without any notice, according to the first in-depth study of the way more than 1 million people on the controversial contracts are treated.

Two out of five workers on the contracts said they had been informed only hours before starting work that a shift had been cancelled. A further 6% had been told as their shift was about to begin.

The study also found that 20% are sometimes or always docked wages or penalised in some way if they are not available for work. But the survey of 1,000 zero-hour workers by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) found they were happier with their work-life balance than the average worker and equally satisfied with their job. Almost half of zero-hour workers were satisfied with their job against 27% who were dissatisfied.

A CIPD spokesman said the findings showed calls for restrictions on the contracts' use were misplaced and firms using them had been "unfairly demonised".

"The use of zero-hours contracts in the UK economy has been underestimated, oversimplified and, in some cases, unfairly demonised," he said. "Our research shows the majority of people employed on these contracts are satisfied with their jobs."

But the CIPD admitted that employers exploited the contracts to cancel shifts with little or no notice and penalised staff who were unable to attend a shift.

"However, we also recognise that there is a need to improve poor practice in the use of zero-hours contracts, for example the lack of notice many zero-hours staff receive when work is cancelled.

"If this is unavoidable then employers should at least provide some level of compensation. In addition, it seems that many employers and zero-hours staff are unaware of the employment rights people on these types of working arrangements may be entitled to."

In the summer the institute said the initial findings of its employment survey found that 1 million workers were employed on the contracts, at the time quadrupling the official figure.

The contracts, which allow an employer to hire staff without an obligation to provide any minimum working hours, are used widely in the care industry, hotel and leisure sector and by many retailers. In the last two years public sector organisations have transferred staff to zero-hour rotas.

Labour said the findings showed there was still widespread abuse of the contracts and the government needed to act.

Ian Murray, shadow minister for trade and investment, said Labour would ban employers from insisting workers be available when there is no guarantee of work. It would also let workers work for more than one firm without being penalised and force firms to give a minimum hours contract to longstanding zero-hours workers. "While the government has failed to act, Labour would outlaw the exploitative use of zero-hours contracts," he said.

Ian Brinkley, policy director at the Work Foundation, an employment thinktank, said the report showed there was a large minority of affected workers citing significant problems around pay, hours and the fear of being penalised.

Monday, 25 November 2013

Energy firms' profit from customers has risen 77% in a year, says Ofgem

The big six energy firms have been exposed to further accusations of profiteering after the industry regulator revealed that profits per customer last year rose by 77%.

On the eve of a protest by anti-poverty campaigners against power suppliers, Ofgem said the profit per household had risen from £30 in 2011 to £53, driven by higher prices and increased demand for heating during last year's winter snap.

The average profit margin for supplying energy to households in 2012 was 4.3%, up from 2.8% in 2011, with total profits from supplying energy to households and businesses rising from £1.25bn to £1.6bn last year.

"Any profit margin at a time when people are dying because they cannot afford to turn their heating on is unacceptable," said Clare Welton at the Fuel Poverty Action group, which will mark the publication of the latest winter mortality figures on Tuesday with a protest at RWE npower's headquarters in central London. Protests will also be held at the new British Gas headquarters in Oxford. Alex Smith, a spokesperson for UK Uncut, a co-organiser of the protests, described the latest data as unsurprising. "We have seen nothing but profiteering from the big six," he said.

The big six – British Gas, npower, SSE, Scottish Power, E.ON and EDF – argue that their industry is misunderstood and higher bills are the inevitable consequence of external factors such as green levies passed on by the government, higher wholesale prices and increased power transmission costs. However, the industry's trade body admitted this month that the big six had become a "lightning conductor for the general concern about the cost of living."

As a result, the companies have faced cross-party condemnation for average increases to consumer bills well above inflation. Labour leader Ed Miliband has pledged a price freeze, while former prime minister Sir John Major has called for a windfall tax on profits. The Ofgem data does not cover profits related to the latest series of price rises, which has reignited the debate about whether the big six make "fair" profits.

Ofgem said rising prices, rather than lower costs, were a factor in the profit increase. "There is some evidence of rising profit margins. This rise has been due to a combination of higher prices and volumes rather than lower costs," said the regulator.

But Richard Hall, director of infrastructure at Consumer Futures, a consumer watchdog, said Ofgem had "produced a lot of evidence that would persuade a third party that there is a trend [of rising prices]".

He pointed out that other Ofgem data showed "a steady escalation in profit". The regulator's own forecast data shows an average profit per customer of £105 in November 2013.

Caroline Flint, Labour's spokesperson for energy and climate change, said the Ofgem report showed why a price freeze is needed: "Labour's price freeze will save money for 27 million households and 2.4 million businesses and our plans to reset the market will deliver fairer prices in the future. People are sick and tired of paying over the odds because David Cameron is too weak to stand up to the energy companies and just stands up for a privileged few."

A spokesperson at the Department for Energy and Climate Change said: "Profits are a matter for energy companies to justify to their customers and shareholders, but profits are needed if they are to continue to invest in Britain's energy security and infrastructure."

Although energy companies have been making more money from supplying households, overall profits were down 3.4% in 2012 on the previous year, from £3.7bn to £3.9bn, as firms were hit by depreciation costs and declining profitability from their gas-fired power stations.

Consumer groups are calling on Ofgem to compel energy companies to publish financial information closer to real time. The regulator has been criticised by MPs for dismissing recommendations from its own consultants to make the energy market work more transparently. Ofgem had "room for significant improvement" said Hall. "It feels as though we are only now starting to see the implementation or possible implementation of changes that we could have been done a couple of years ago."

Sunday, 24 November 2013

Top five UK bankruptcy blackspots all on coast

Survey finds Torbay has highest insolvency rates as seaside towns and cities get trapped in 'vicious cycle' of decline

Coastal towns and cities account for the five worst places in Britain for personal bankruptcies, and 21 in the worst 50, according to an analysis highlighting the speed at which seaside resorts and ports are falling behind the rest of the country economically.

They include Hull, newly crowned city of culture, which is said to have the fifth-highest rate of insolvencies. The findings are based on 2012 figures, well before the recent announcement by BAE Systems that there will be no more shipbuilding in Portsmouth, costing 940 jobs.

The highest numbers were in Torbay, Devon, with 54 new cases of insolvency per 10,000 population, compared with a national average of 25, said accountants Wilkins Kennedy. The town was followed by the Rhyl and Prestatyn area in north Wales, with 53; Scarborough and Blackpool, with 48; and Hull, with 44. Other coastal areas featuring prominently included Runcorn and Widnes, Cheshire, in eighth place and Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, in 10th.

Stoke-on-Trent and Tamworth, in Staffordshire, and Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire, took up the other places among the worst bankruptcy rates. Figures include bankruptcy orders, individual voluntary arrangements and debt relief orders.

Anthony Cork, partner at Wilkins Kennedy, said: "Many of our coastal towns have been suffering a slow decline for many years, as tourism struggles to compete with cheap overseas travel, fishing quotas are slashed and other maritime industry has all but died off. These figures highlight how desperate their plight still is – with even traditionally popular tourist destinations suffering severe pain.

"Within just the top five of the personal bankruptcy league table, you can see a pretty broad cross-section of the UK's picture-postcard seaside economy failing. Many will be surprised to see places like Torbay, with its reputation for luring genteel, affluent holidaymakers to the 'English Riviera', sitting right at the top alongside Blackpool, the UK's answer to Las Vegas, and more traditional bucket-and-spade resorts like Rhyl and Scarborough."

Although there were exceptions in the south of England, such as Brighton or Bournemouth, which had diversified, the vast majority of towns relying on the seasonal tourist trade were struggling badly. "The recession has hit hard despite the temptation for more people to stay and holiday in the UK instead of going abroad," said Cork. "For every hot-spot like Newquay or Padstow, there are many more places where flagging tourism plus the lack of permanent, well-paid employment are taking their toll."

Cork said the government's £29m coastal communities fund was a step in the right direction but that such investment was unlikely to go very far.

He added: "Students and graduates with high levels of debt will find it hard to return to their home towns if they can't find a decent job, but unless young talent can be persuaded to stay, it's difficult for businesses to invest, creating a vicious cycle.

"Funding for small businesses remains very tight at the moment, particularly where trade is seasonal, putting a huge strain on the self-employed, who may have ploughed a substantial proportion of their personal assets into their businesses or put them up as security."

Switzerland votes against cap on executive pay

Referendum on limiting bosses' pay to 12 times that of lowest-paid staff follows vote on 'golden hellos and goodbyes'

Swiss voters on Sunday decisively rejected a proposal to cap "fat cat" pay, in a ground-breaking referendum on the issue.

Final results showed that votes against carried the day by 65.3% to 34.7% in favour. David Roth, the president of Switzerland's Young Socialists and the referendum's leading sponsor, said: "We're disappointed [we] lost today."

His proposal would have meant executives would have been unable to earn more in a month than their lowest-paid workers in a year. The so-called 1:12 referendum was the second ballot this year in traditionally conservative and business-friendly Switzerland on the subject of executive remuneration.

In March, voters approved a measure that boosted shareholders' power over managerial salaries and banned one-off bonuses – so-called "golden hellos" and "golden goodbyes".

Roth blamed Sunday's defeat on "scare tactics" by his opponents. Employers had mounted a vigorous counterattack, claiming approval of the initiative would undermine Switzerland's competitiveness, slash tax revenues and breach a taboo on giving the state a role in relations between employers and employees.

Christian Keuschnigg, professor of public economics at the university of St Gallen, said a study he had carried out for the employers found the cost to the state would have ranged from "close to zero to as much as Sfr4bn [£2.7bn]", depending on the reaction of business. The proponents of the scheme, backed by the Socialists and Greens, argued that the savings in top executive pay would be redistributed among the lower paid.

But, said Keuschnigg, companies might have increased their dividends or relocated to other countries. "Multinational corporations could easily switch their headquarters elsewhere," he told the Guardian. "That danger in our view was quite real."

Both the government and parliament had called for a "no" vote.

Claude Longchamp, head of the polling group gfs.bern, said that, unlike the sponsors of the March referendum, "the Young Socialists were unable to convince older voters".

Deborah Warburton, a partner in London-based executive search firm Hedley May, highlighted the radicalism of what voters had been asked to endorse.

"The Swiss proposal was much stricter even than the 20 times ratio that the TUC is calling for in the UK, so it's perhaps not surprising that it was rejected," she said. "Even though it was a 'no' vote, the question of how to make executive pay fairer is still very much a live issue, with the UK having implemented a law giving shareholders a binding vote on executive pay only last month, France and Germany also considering such measures, and the EU working on potential draft legislation to give shareholders voting rights over executive pay."

Nor will Sunday's verdict dispel concerns over pay imbalances in Switzerland. A separate initiative by the trade unions, aimed at the introduction of a minimum wage, is expected to go to a national vote next year.

Roth said: "Our fight will continue against 'fat cat' salaries and an unfair pay system. This system has no future. We succeeded in mobilising many people and launching a broad debate."

The issue leapt into the headlines earlier this year after the Swiss drug group Novartis agreed to pay its outgoing chairman Daniel Vasella SFr72m (£49m). The payment, which the firm scrapped, was aimed at preventing Vasella from using his knowledge to help rival pharmaceutical firms.

The young Socialists claimed during the 1:12 campaign that the ratio of the average salary among Swiss CEOs to the average wage had leapt from six to one in 1984 to 43 to one in 2011. Calculations based on figures compiled by the trade union Travailsuisse indicate that the biggest pay imbalance is at another drug company, Roche, where the salary of the best-paid executive is 236 times that of the lowest-paid worker.

Other firms where the ratio was in excess of 200 to one were ABB, Novartis and Credit Suisse. They were followed by Nestlé, UBS and Lindt & Sprungli.

Britain's oldest manufacturing firm rings in changes with online launch

Whitechapel Bell Foundry launches first online store, selling handbells and doorbells direct via Swedish service Tictail

It has cast and sold bells to Britain and beyond since 1570, but now the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, Britain's oldest manufacturing company, is ringing in the changes by launching its first online store, selling handbells and doorbells direct to the consumer.

The east London foundry has set up a store using the Swedish service Tictail, a startup that began 18 months ago in Stockholm and already runs 30,000 stores worldwide, with the UK the site's fastest-growing market. The company, which Wired magazine called "Tumblr for e-commerce", lets business owners set up online shops free of charge.

Kathryn Hughes, a director of the family-run foundry, says she and her husband had discussed setting up an online store many times over the years but had no idea how to go about it. "Tictail approached us and said they were a new, free online shop, and I thought 'nothing to lose really'," she said. "The sort of things we're selling start with our smallest bell, which can be used for ringing for tea, that sort of thing. Then there's our table bell, our bracket bells – the sort used in school playgrounds – and doorbells. People are into doorbells at the moment, real ones, not buzzy ones."

Tictail operates on a "freemium" model, not taking a cut on sales, but selling functionality such as voucher codes, mailing lists and analytical tools.

"Our mission as a company is to democratise selling online," says the company's co-founder, Carl Waldekranz. "To make it available for people who don't care about e-commerce but just want to sell the best thing they can.

"There's so many things about the UK market that's right for Tictail, and one of them is that Napoleon was right: it's a nation of shopkeepers, and it fits us really well."

When the foundry was established in Whitechapel in 1570, Elizabeth I was on the throne. In 1752, it cast the Liberty Bell, an icon of American independence, and in 1856 it cast Big Ben, although the bell cracked while being tested and had to be recast in 1858. Specialist sales, largely church bells and musical handbells make up the majority of its turnover, but Hughes hopes that will change once the store goes live.

RBS accused of pushing small businesses to the edge to boost profits

Dossier claims business assets were seized cheaply amid call to end turnaround arm's 'conflict of interests'

City regulators have been handed a dossier of evidence compiled by an adviser to Vince Cable which claims that Royal Bank of Scotland was deliberately wrecking viable small businesses to make profits for the bailed out bank.

The business secretary – a long-time critic of the banking industry's lending practices – said some of the allegations were so serious that he had handed the report, compiled by businessman Lawrence Tomlinson, to the regulators and the bank. It has also been given to Sir Andrew Large, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, whose report on lending failures by RBS will also be released on Monday.

Tomlinson, appointed by Cable as "entrepreneur in residence", has compiled evidence from hundreds of businesses which have approached him after ending up in the bank's global restructuring group (GRG), and subsequently had their properties sold to its specialist property arm, West Register.

"There are many devastating stories of how RBS has wrecked good businesses and the ruinous impact this has on the lives of the business owners," said Tomlinson.

His redacted report, which removes the names of the businesses, also calls for RBS and Lloyds Banking Group to be broken up into six banks with a 10% market share to foster competition on the high street.

The accusations centre on the reasons businesses are referred to the GRG arm, run by the veteran banker Derek Sach, and the process by which West Register ends up taking control of some of the properties.

RBS argues that most of the businesses that end up in GRG are successfully turned around. It has promised to review the allegations made by customers.

Tomlinson, who initially posted requests for ideas on lending on the professional networking site Linked-In, cited "shocking examples of business owners being confronted with last minute demands for information and money" that forced businesses into financial difficulty. One business said dealing with GRG had cost them £256,000 while another claims it had to hand over £40,000 immediately to carry on borrowing from the bank.

These claims have yet to be confirmed. Businesses found themselves referred to GRG because the bank considered the value of their property had fallen or because of technical breaches of loan terms, such as late filing of information.

"The profit-making nature of GRG significantly undermines its position as a turnaround division, in which good businesses should be restructured and returned to normal banking. The temptation to get hold of assets and take additional profit from these businesses to boost GRG's balance sheet is clear," said Tomlinson, a Leed-based entrepreneur.

"From the cases I have heard, it is clear that a perception has arisen that the intention is to purposefully distress businesses to put them in GRG and subsequently take their assets for the West Register at a discounted price. This needs to be addressed and the conflict of interest removed," he said.

Cable, who did not commission the report, said: "Some of these allegations are very serious and I am waiting for an urgent response as to what actions have been taken. I am however confident that the new management of RBS is aware of this history and is determined to turn RBS into a bank that will support the growth of small and medium sized businesses."

Stephen Hester, who ran the bank for almost five years after its £45bn bailout, left in October and was replaced by New Zealander Ross McEwan. The bank said on Sunday: "In the boom years leading up to the financial crisis, the over-heated property development market became a major threat to the UK economy RBS did more than its fair share to fuel this and commercial property lending was one of the key drivers of our near collapse as valuations rapidly plummeted."