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Voting record of Derek

Thomas MP for St Ives
constituency, Cornwall

Derek Thomas was voted in as the MP for St Ives in 2015

During his tenure as MP for St Ives since 2015, Derek Thomas has voted to: ....... 3
Cut local government funding ............................................................................................ 3
Cut school funding and promote academies ............................................................... 6
Cut welfare support for the most vulnerable ........................................................ 7
Reduce taxation for the better off .............................................................................. 9
Block measures to prevent climate change ............................................................. 12
Restrict the role of Trade Unions .............................................................................. 14
Weaken our human rights ...................................................................................................... 15
Promote failed market solutions to the housing crisis .............................. 19
Reject electoral reform ...................................................................................................... 20

Notes
1. Text in blue is hyperlinked

2. The way our MP is voted, dates of votes etc is often qualified by

certain phrases such as ‘almost always’. This text is copied from
Theyworkfromyou.com

e.g. ‘Derek Thomas almost always voted to….’. You will need to
click on the blue hyperlinked text to see why his voting is qualified
by the term ‘almost always’. Right click on blue text to open up
drop-down menu then click ‘Open Link in New Tab’. Then scroll
down Theyworkforyou.com to see how he voted

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During his tenure as MP for St Ives since

2015, Derek Thomas has voted to:

Cut local government funding

Derek Thomas consistently voted for reducing central

government funding of local government

Derek Thomas also generally voted against more powers

for local councils

On 5 Feb 2019: Derek Thomas voted to set the main central government grant to
local government for 2018-19 at a level 56% lower than it was set for 2017-18.

On 7 Feb 2018: Derek Thomas voted to set the main central government grant to
local government for 2018-19 at a level 28% lower than it was set for 2017-18.

On 22 Feb 2017 Derek Thomas voted to set the main central government grant to
local government for 2017-18 at a level 44% lower than it was set for 2016-17.

By 2020 councils will have lost 60p out of every £1 the Government had
provided to spend on local services in the last 10 years

“Without additional resource, the worst is yet to come." Cllr Paul Carter,
chairman of the County Council Network and leader of Kent County Council

Cornwall Council funding cuts from central government has already amounted to £300
million with a further projected £75 million of cuts by 2020. Nationally the picture is
worse: funding cuts of £16 billion mean councils will have lost an average 60p out of
every £1 the Government had provided to spend on local services in the last 8 years. 168
councils will receive no revenue support grant at all next year1.

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Local Government Association press release 1 Oct 2018
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To plug the council funding gap, councils are being pushed to raise local
taxes and sell off public assets.
Nearly all English councils plan on increasing council tax this year while slashing
frontline services due to Government cuts, survey reveals2. This includes cuts to
libraries, adult social care and recycling.

For Cornwall, recent figures suggest that an “extra” £17 million promised
by this government to Cornwall Council will come entirely from local
taxpayers3
While the government trumpets income tax cuts and raising the tax threshold, it
quietly shifts the burden of taxation on to local councils.

Nationally, 4,000 publicly owned buildings and spaces in England are

being sold off every year4.

They are our libraries, youth

centres, allotments and public
swimming pools, the everyday
places at the heart of our
community where local people
come together, access vital
services and support each
other. Once sold off to private
developers and short-term
speculators they are lost to us
forever.

Figures and graph taken from report by

Locality

Short term funding to stave off the crisis in social care has failed to
address 8 years of real term reductions
That’s according to an open public letter to the Prime Minister by the Directors of
Adult Social Services5. Local authority social care services in England have
experienced 45 per cent cuts to their funding. The most deprived areas have been

2
Nearly all English councils to increase council tax. LGA press release 14-Feb-2019
3
Taxpayers will fund extra £17m for Cornwall Council. Falmouth Packet 18-Dec-2018
4
The Great British Sell-off. Report by Locality (membership network for community organisations)
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https://www.adass.org.uk/media/6421/social-care-green-paper-adass-letter-to-pm-210518.pdf
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the hardest hit seeing cuts of more than £220 per head compared with under £40
per head for the least deprived authorities6 .

The result is that many people are trapped in to taking on unaffordable

debt to fund their care – and finding themselves in court when they can’t
pay.

An investigation by GMB, the union for carers, has revealed at least 166,000
people are trapped in debt for their social care7.

The Freedom of Information requests, submitted to every local authority in Great

Britain with responsibility for social care, also show at least 1,178 people have
been taken to court by local authorities for social care debts.

“These stark figures show the UK’s social care ticking timebomb has now blown a
gaping hole in families’ finances.”
Sharon Wilde, GMB National Officer

6
Closer to home project. Centre for Welfare Reform
7
At least 166,000 trapped in social care debt. GMB Union 4-June-2018

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Cut school funding and promote

academies

Derek Thomas voted in favour of turning all primary and secondary

schools in England to become academies, shifting control over them from
local councils to central government.
Academies are, to all intents and purposes, state-funded independent schools outside
local authority control. They receive their funding from central government. They were
brought in to improve educational achievement.

This included a separate vote by Derek Thomas not to oppose the

forced transfer of good or outstanding schools from local authority control
as independent academies.
This vote was purely ideological: if schools under local authority control are
classed as ‘outstanding’ it begs the question of why they should be transferred to
academies.

Two in three academy chains 'fail' poorer pupils

“Improving their educational achievement was the original reason why academies were
set up. In this regard they have not succeeded”

comment by Sir Peter Lampl, founder of the Sutton Trust.

When it comes to a comparison in performance between local authority run schools and
independent academies the record is mixed, but on the whole suggests there is no
substantial difference in performance8.

However, when it comes to poorer pupils, one recent study suggests that two in three
academy chains 'fail' poorer pupils. Poorer children in 38 of the 58 academy chains
performed below the national average last year for all state schools, according to
research from social mobility charity the Sutton Trust9.

While academy trusts are set up as not-for-profit organisations there have

been serious concerns about their financial probity and lack of
transparency

8
Academies and Maintained schools: what do we know? By FullFact
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Two in three academies fail poorer students. Article in the Independent 20-Dec 2018
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For example:

• The collapse of the Perry Beeches free school network in Birmingham occurred
after £1.3m was paid into a company owned by a governor for “executive services”
and, from there, a second salary was paid to its chief executive. The schools were
left with £1.5m worth of debt.
• The collapsed Wakefield City Academies Trust sucked up more than £1m of
reserves from the 21 schools it took over, before returning them back to the
government once the cash was depleted. The trust’s chief executive was paid more
than £80,000 for 15 weeks’ work and procured almost £440,000 worth of services
from his own private IT and clerking companies.
• The Bolton Wanderers free school, which paid its football-club namesake more
than £300,000 a year for rent of a classroom in an otherwise empty stadium, but
was punted back to government with a £380,000 debt and a £200,000 pensions
deficit. The school has now closed.

The Guardian article from which these examples are taken stresses that none of this was
illegal. There are no caps on chief executive pay and only poorly policed rules on buying
from related companies. As the trust pointed out at the time, it followed all the rules and
said the contracts were the “best value” available.

Cut welfare support for the most

vulnerable

Derek Thomas consistently voted against paying higher benefits over

longer periods for those unable to work due to illness or disability

"I can no longer represent a government and a party who can't open their
eyes to the suffering endured by the most vulnerable in society, suffering
which we have deepened whilst having the power to fix." Heidi Allen, ex
Conservative MP10

Fact: Amber Rudd, the Work and Pensions Secretary has admitted that
Universal Credit roll-out is a key cause in rise in use of food banks11.

10
Tory MPs Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston leave party and join ex-Labour Independents. ITV
news 20-Feb-2019
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Amber Rudd links universal credit to rise in food bank use. BBC News 11-2-2019
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Since this government came in power the number of food packs given out has
risen from 41,000 food packs in 2009/10 to 1,332,952 in for the year 2017/8.
484,026 of these went to children12

note these figures are ‘uses’ not ‘users’:

an individual user may use more than once

The 2017/8 figure is a 13% increase on the previous year. This is a higher increase
than the previous financial year, where foodbank use was up by 6%.

The top four reasons for referral to a foodbank in The Trussell Trust network in
2017-18 were ‘low income – benefits, not earning’, ‘benefit delay’, ‘benefit change’
and ‘debt’.

These figures come from the Trussell Trust and their report cites the roll-out of
Universal Credit as a significant factor in the increased use of foodbanks (see also
second section of this report Local Constituency Profile, Universal Credit below)

“Households with at least one disabled adult and a disabled child will lose
over £6,500 a year - over 13% of their annual income”
Report by Equality and Human Rights Commission March 2018: The Cumulative Impact
Assessment of Tax and Welfare Reforms

The reports key finding is that changes to taxes, benefits, tax credits and Universal
Credit (UC) announced since 2010 are regressive, however measured –that is, the
largest impacts are felt by those with lower incomes.

Those in the bottom twenty percent will lose, on average, approximately 10% of
net income, with much smaller losses for those higher up the income distribution.

Source: The cumulative impact of tax and welfare reforms by the

Equality and Human Rights Commission

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End of year stats: Trussell Trust
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Reduce taxation for the better off

Derek Thomas voted to reduce the rate of corporation tax

Since 2010 the rate of corporation tax has fallen from 28% to 19% in April 2017 with an
election manifesto promise to reduce corporation tax to 17% by 202013

Derek Thomas consistently voted for raising the threshold at which people
pay income tax
While raising the threshold is always a popular measure, this is a sleight of hand because
the biggest beneficiaries are the better off. The top half of households will benefit from
84% if income tax cuts announced in the Autumn 2018 budget14. It also overlooks
increases in VAT that takes money out of the pockets of the poorest.

At the same time local people and businesses are being asked to pay more in council
tax instead. For Cornwall, recent government figures suggest that an “extra” £17 million
promised to Cornwall Council will come entirely from local taxpayers15 This is simply
giving with one hand and taking with the other.

Derek Thomas also voted to reduce capital gains tax

Capital Gains Tax is a tax on the sale of an asset that’s increased in value such as a
property or an investment.

Derek Thomas voted against higher taxes on banks

The richest 10% pay just 34% of their income in taxes, but the poorest
10% pay 42% of their income.

VAT, which hits the poorest hardest, is a growing proportion of UK government revenues,
while corporation tax is shrinking as a percentage of the total tax take. Source
http://www.taxjustice.uk/

▪ Inequalities from both income (wages and income from rents and share) and
wealth inequality (the actual value of shares, property, land and other assets)
remain deep and enduring.
▪ Between 2010-2012 and 2012-2014, over half of the increase in personal wealth
went to the top 10 per cent of households. A political focus on income inequality
alone has masked the true extent of inequality in the UK. It must widen to include
wealth.

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Financial Times 19-11-2017
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Budget income tax cuts 'to overwhelmingly benefit the rich'. Guardian 30 Oct 2018
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Taxpayers will fund extra £17m for Cornwall Council. Falmouth Packet 18-Dec-2018
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▪ Wealth inequality is twice as great as income inequality. The wealthiest 10 per cent
of households own 45 per cent of the nation’s wealth, while the least wealthy half
of all households own just 9 per cent.
▪ The next generation is set to have less wealth, largely due to housing inequalities.
Fewer than half of ‘millennials’ (those born between 1981 and 2000) are expected
to own their own home by the age of 45, based on current trends

Sources:
Wealth in the twenty-first century, discussion paper by the IPPR Commission on Economic
Justice pub 2017
Tax Justice UK http://www.taxjustice.uk/

Block measures to address Corporate

Tax Avoidance

While the TheyWorkForYou website states that “Derek Thomas voted a mixture of
for and against measures to reduce tax avoidance” this statement does not stand
scrutiny.

On 13 Apr 2016 Derek Thomas voted against implementing a series of

proposals intended to reduce tax avoidance and evasion

On 19 Apr 2016 Derek Thomas voted against measures to combat

abusive tax avoidance arrangements.

On 28 Jun 2016 Derek Thomas voted against requiring multinational

enterprises to publish a country by country tax strategy including
information on their attitude to tax planning.
Country-by-Country reporting requires companies to publish information for every
country they operate in rather than only provide a single set of information at a global
level that blankets all their operations

Tax avoidance estimates vary from £2.5 billion to £25 Billion – the latter
figure is more than the £20 Billion the NHS needs from Philip Hammond
Report by Tax Justice Network 21-10-2018

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This matters hugely not just because of cash-strapped public services funded through tax
revenue – but also because outsourcing of public services often go to private companies
who avoid paying any tax at all.

In UK the volume of tenders to tax haven companies is described as

‘severe’ - 13.4 % of their total value.
Source: Datlablog

Examples include this tender for provision of agency workforce worth £700 million,
awarded to Capita Business Services Ltd. co-owned from the Bermudas (22%), or a £700
million contract awarded by Bath and North East Somerset to Richard Branson’s VIRGIN
CARE LIMITED company co-owned from British Virgin Islands.

The government has recently been accused of defying parliament by delaying plans to
require British tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands to bring in public registers that
reveal the true identity of owners of companies sheltering assets.

Other key Points:

▪ Corporate tax avoiders include local popular retail outlets such as Caffé Nero and
Starbucks. Caffè Nero has not paid a penny in UK corporation tax for a decade
despite selling around £2billion of lattes and flat whites.
▪ It also includes popular online retailer Amazon whose UK corporation tax bill
almost halved to £4.5m despite tripling its pre-tax profits at its UK business from
£24m in 2016 to £72m in 2017.
▪ A widely supported proposal to tackle corporate tax avoidance is to implement
Country-by-Country reporting. This requires companies to publish information for
every country they operate in rather than only provide a single set of information
at a global level that blankets all their operations
▪ the compliance costs for multinationals to do country-by-country reporting would
be near zero since they collect the data already. And the impact would be global,
since around one in five of the world’s biggest multinationals are in the UK
▪ The UK government already has power to implement this but has failed to do so (it
passed legislation two years ago)

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Block measures to prevent climate

change

Update: None of the MPs for Cornwall turned up to debate climate

change in Parliament after the school strike16

Derek Thomas consistently voted against measures to prevent climate

change

Some of the votes cast by Derek Thomas are as follows:

On 3 May 2016 Derek Thomas voted not to reduce the permitted carbon
dioxide emission rate of new homes.
40% of UK emissions come from households according to the Committee on Climate
Change. See more (This figure includes transport, waste and aviation)

On 14 Mar 2016 Derek Thomas voted against requiring a strategy for

carbon capture and storage for the energy industry.
Carbon Capture uses technologies to capture, transport and store carbon dioxide
emissions from large point sources, such as power stations. . See more

On 14 Mar 2016: Derek Thomas voted against setting a decarbonisation

target for the UK within six months of June 2016 and to review it annually
thereafter.

On 8 Sep 2015 Derek Thomas voted to apply the Climate Change Levy
tax to electricity generated from renewable sources.
This was a deeply regressive policy. The Climate Change Levy was originally
conceived as a tax on business energy use from fossil fuel sources (the main
source of carbon emissions) Its aim was to increase energy efficiency and to
reduce carbon emissions.

16
MPs debate climate after school strike – but only a handful turn up. Article in Guardian 28-Feb-2019
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We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN

The naturalist Sir David Attenborough has said climate change is
humanity's greatest threat in thousands of years. See more

In 2018 we have seen forest fires in the Arctic circle; record high
temperatures in parts of Australia, Africa and the US; floods in India
and devastating droughts in South Africa and Argentina.

The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global
warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will
significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds
of millions of people.

Urgent and unprecedented changes are needed to reach the target, but the authors of
the report stress this is affordable and feasible if we act now. The UK has already signed
up to the Paris agreement pledge to keep temperatures between 1.5C and 2C. but
questions remain as to whether the present government is genuinely committed to
implementing them.

The UK leads the European Union in giving subsidies to fossil fuels,

according to a report from the European commission. It found €12bn
(£10.5bn) a year in support for fossil fuels in the UK, significantly more
than the €8.3bn spent on renewable energy.

Commission report found €12bn (£10.5bn) a year in support for fossil fuels in the
UK, significantly more than the €8.3bn spent on renewable energy17.

Transport emissions
shows no sign of falling

17
EU Commission report, as reported in Guardian article UK has biggest fossil fuel subsidies in the EU, finds
commission 23 Jan 2019

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Cornwall Council has declared a 'climate emergency'.

The authority says the declaration "recognises the climate change crisis and the need for
urgent action". It follows a motion debated at a full Council meeting 22 January, where
the Council called on Westminster to provide the powers and resources necessary to
achieve the target for Cornwall to become carbon neutral by 2030 and committed to work
with other Councils with similar ambitions.

Restrict the role of Trade Unions

Derek Thomas consistently voted for more restrictive regulation of trade
union activity (see more)
This is in keeping with Conservative government policy which seeks to restrict and
curtail Union activity. This has resulted in a weakening of trade union power has
hit workers pay.

Trade Union membership has been associated with higher pay

“Trade union membership has been found to result in a pay premium for workers.
In the UK, this premium is typically found to lie in the range 10-15%, though it may
have fallen over time.” Speech by Andrew G Haldane Chief Economist Bank of England

Other Key points:

▪ The IMF published evidence in 2015 showing that strong unions make economies
more equal, and therefore more prosperous. See their paper
▪ Research presented by the Greenwich Political Economy Research Centre reveals the
labour movement and the workforce it represents to be in the backbone of economic
prosperity, dispelling the predominant narrative of keeping labour costs down in the
interests of competitiveness. See their paper

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Source: The Great

Wages Grab, TUC
publication

If you are interested

in finding out more
and in joining a Union,
go to
https://www.tuc.org.
uk/join-union

Weaken our human rights

Derek Thomas voted against largely retaining the EU "Charter of

Fundamental Rights" as part of UK law following the UK's withdrawal from
the European Union.
The EU Charter went further than the Human Rights Act by including explicit protection
for members of the LGBT community (Article 21)18. It also included rights of the child
(article 24), and rights of the elderly (Article 25), as well as Social Rights such as healthcare
and environmental protection.

Derek Thomas voted in favour of repealing the Human Rights Act 1998
The Human Rights Act incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights which
sets out civil and political rights among which are: the right to life (article 2), Liberty
(article 5), the protection of property (Protocol 1 article 1), and the right to a fair trial
(article 6); freedom of conscience and religion (article 9), freedom of expression (article
10) and freedom of assembly (article 11).

18
Other rights include the right to social security, health care, and the right to environmental
protection. For the full list of rights see the English version of the Charter on EUR-LEX, Access to
European Union Law

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The Human Rights Act has not yet been repealed but it is a long standing intention of the
Conservative government to replace it with a British Bill of Rights which may be much
more restricted in scope.

Derek Thomas voted against calling on the Government to ensure

women and protected groups are not disproportionally impacted by tax
and benefit changes and against publication of a gender equality strategy
to improve the position of women.
“At an individual level, women lose on average considerably more from changes to direct
taxes and benefits than men. Women lose about £400 per year on average, and men only
£30, although these figures conceal very substantial variation within both
genders.” Report by Equality and Human Rights Commission on the impact of tax and
benefit changes since 2010 to the end of the financial year 2021/2

Derek Thomas voted against carrying out an assessment of the impact of

Government policies on women; against mitigating any disproportionate
burden on women and against publishing a gender equality strategy.

Derek Thomas voted against requiring an annual report from the

Equalities and Human Rights Commission analysing information on the
gender pay gap and making recommendations to close it

This government is taking an axe to the Rule of Law

Equality and human rights are the cornerstone of the Rule of Law, namely that ‘no-one is
above the law and everyone is equal before the law’, including governments.

Without the Rule of Law, we are left with the rule of the strong.
Human rights are often portrayed by the popular press as protecting undeserving others
such as prisoners, and suspected terrorists. But human rights are for all of us.

In addition to reducing our human rights, there is now a crisis in our legal
system as a result of steep cuts to legal aid brought about by this
government’s Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act
(LASPO) in 2013.

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This Act has overseen cuts of up to 34 per cent to the Ministry of Justice
expenditure from 2010-11 to 2015-16.

Half of all magistrates courts have been closed since 2010( down from 323 to 161)
and land and court buildings that could have been used for cheap housing or
community use have been sold to private developers 19 and the number able to
access legal aid has fallen by 80 percent. This means people have to travel long distances
for their hearing and pay for steep legal fees.

In effect, this means that if you are subject to discrimination at work, experience family
breakdown, are a tenant about to be evicted, or a benefit claimant whose entitlement has
been miscalculated, you are on your own: either you pay for expensive legal help or you
represent yourself in court and risk losing your case - or worse still, wrongful conviction
through failure to understand the criminal justice system.

Charles Falconer, a former Lord Chancellor has highlighted just how serious these
developments are in relation to employment:

“More than 350,000 cases a year will probably no longer attract costs in the future.
This will have a huge impact in particular on claims for employers’ liability for
injuries at work. Many union and non-union employees alike will have to bring
claims themselves rather than with solicitors. The promoter of this change is the
insurance industry. It benefits substantially; the employee loses”.

And the Bach Commission Report also stresses the danger inherent in the breakdown of
the Rule of Law: “unless everybody can get some access to the legal system at the time in
their lives when they need it, trust in our institutions and in the rule of law breaks down.
When that happens, society breaks down”20

The ease with which our rights can be removed and access to justice
denied, demonstrates the urgent need for a proper, codified constitution
for the UK
A written, codified constitution acts as a protective firewall over fundamental laws and
rights but the UK doesn’t have one. Instead, it has an ‘unwritten constitution’; an outdated
set of unwritten rules and conventions, piecemeal legislation and unelected Lords.

19
Constituency data: Magistrates’ court closures. House of Commons Library 7-Jan-2019
20
The Right To Justice. The final report of the Bach Commission September 2017
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Rights can be removed by a simple majority of one, the same legislative means to change
the speed limit or amend VAT. By contrast written constitutions insist on a higher order of
democratic approval for their amendment, such as super-majorities in both houses.

Graphic taken from article by Charles Falconer in the Guardian

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Promote failed market solutions to the

housing crisis

Despite the ongoing housing crisis Derek Thomas has followed the government line and
dutifully voted as follows:

On 12 Jan 2016: Derek Thomas voted to phase out secure tenancies for
life.
On 5 Sep 2018: Derek Thomas voted against higher fines for landlords or
letting agencies breaching the law limiting what tenants can be charged
for.
On 5 Sep 2018: Derek Thomas voted not to further restrict the
circumstances in which landlords and letting agents can charge tenants
for losses arising from a breach of a tenancy agreement.

Fact: local authorities and housing associations in England have built one
home for every two sold under the right-to-buy scheme.
Source: Guardian reference to
Resolution Foundation think tank

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Reject electoral reform

Derek Thomas has voted against electoral reform and the proposal to
replace our present First Past The Post System with Proportional
Representation.

“Proportional representation is a voting system in which the share of the seats

that a party wins matches a share of the votes that a party receives”
definition by the campaign group Make Votes Matter

Our present voting system is broken.

It wastes millions of votes and awards disproportionate power to governing parties based
on a minority of votes

Source: Make Votes Matter, Kernow

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