I hear on a near daily basis from local residents with the serious concerns they have about the 2019 Loan Charge. As a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group, I’ve been doing all I can in recent months to support them by raising these concerns with Ministers and speaking in Parliament on behalf of those affected in our community.

The charge is being levied against self-employed contractors who were told to use disguised remuneration schemes some years ago. In many cases, employers required their employees to use them as a condition of employment and tax advisers told them that the schemes were perfectly legal. Whilst HMRC signed off on them without issue at the time, they’re now saying they were never legal and are chasing ordinary, hardworking people for backdated tax going back decades.

I’m always very supportive of Government action to tackle tax avoidance, but it’s equally important that HMRC don’t behave in a way that is grossly unjust. It strikes me as hugely unfair to go back on previous advice given that made people feel that they were being compliant with the law. Residents impacted are rightly very mentally and physically stressed about this, particularly given how little notice HMRC has given them to pay the fines.

I’ve been arguing that the right thing to do is to pause the rollout of the policy and hold a proper review into how people are being treated and the toll this is taking on people’s mental health.

During the recent Conservative Leadership hustings, the now Prime Minister Boris Johnson, said that he agreed the Loan Charge should be paused as he found the retrospective nature of the charge to be deeply unjust. This is why I’m hopeful that Prime Minister Johnson will urgently reconsider this policy and I’ll continue to hold him to his word.

  • Richard Harrington is Conservative MP for Watford