Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, I rarely speak to such a thronged House. The number that we should focus on is core inflation, which removes the volatile issues over which we have little control and which has shockingly risen to 7.1%—a 31-year high, as the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, said. This number is key to interest rate rises and captures the sheer economic incompetence of the Government, as well as their wholly inadequate trade relationship with Europe post Brexit—the sharp drop in exports, British firms removed from supply chains, a collapse in business investment, the fall in sterling, customs friction driving up the cost of imports, labour shortages and incredibly low productivity.
Three groups of people will be particularly hard hit by the sharp and continuing rise in interest rates: mortgage holders with variable-rate or expiring fixed-rate mortgages, renters whose landlords face significantly higher mortgage costs and small businesses with short-term loan exposure. The mortgage charter will help some to push the pain into the future, but at a price. The hardest hit who face repossessions will feel the full force only after the next general election; I understand the Conservative strategy there.
Unlike this Government, I do not think it acceptable for the hardest hit, who face the destruction of their family finances, to take the bullet for the economy as a whole. Will the Government now put in place the emergency proposals that these Benches have made to assist those in the toughest position, who will get no help from the banks because they are regarded as unattractive customers? This is a voluntary system and the banks will use their standard approach of favouring customers with whom they want long-term relationships and denying opportunity to those with whom they do not.
Reversing cuts in the bank levy and the surcharge would do more than cover the cost of this, and I am with the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, in saying that the banks are really in a position of profiteering at this point because of their rejection of any pressure to share higher interest rates with their savers.
The Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury (Baroness Penn) (Con)
My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their contributions and their questions. The reason we are having this Statement today is the action the Government took on the back of the announcement by the Bank of England last week to raise interest rates to 5% as the UK, like other countries, grapples with high inflation.
There are many different international comparators that can be used in this debate, but the primary drivers of the inflation we are seeing in the UK and across the world are the global shock to energy prices, the impact on supply chains still coming out of the Covid pandemic and, in the UK and countries such as the US, tight labour markets. Interest rates are higher in the United States, Canada and New Zealand, and that will all be impacting mortgage payments. When it comes to inflation—and noble Lords have talked about the measure of core inflation—the UK is not alone here either, with 14 EU countries having core inflation higher than the UK’s.
First and foremost, the Government’s aim is to tackle inflation; our number one priority is to halve inflation by the end of the year to ease the cost of living pressures for everyone. That means that we back the Bank of England in its work to drive down inflation and we will not take measures that would potentially make this worse. We have looked at what we can do to help families who are struggling with the higher interest rates that we now see. We already have a big package of support in place to support families with the higher cost of living that we are seeing—one of the largest support packages in Europe, worth £94 billion, or £3,300 per household on average.
On Friday, my right honourable friend the Chancellor went further, with the mortgage charter for families up and down the country. The noble Lord, Lord Livermore, asked whether we would make the mortgage charter mandatory. I say to him that, when the mortgage charter was announced on Friday, it covered 75% of lenders but by Monday that had extended to 85%. We encourage all lenders to sign up to the charter.
There is the question of how one might make the charter mandatory. The Bill that we have just completed could potentially have had a power of direction within it towards the regulators, but I do not believe that is something that the Labour Party supported; in fact, it welcomed that such a power was not in the Bill. Thinking about the powers by which we can implement policies is perhaps something that we have to consider more carefully in government than in opposition.
The noble Lord asked what we are doing for renters. He mentioned the Opposition’s commitment to end no-fault evictions. I am sure that he was pleased to see the Renters (Reform) Bill that has just come before Parliament, which will do just that—the result of a commitment by this Government, long-standing for a number of years, to take action there. As has been noted, the action through the mortgage charter where landlords are mortgage holders may also provide some help and support to renters along with our wider cost of living support.
The noble Lord rightly said we should not do anything to inject money into the economy right now. It is for the Labour Party to explain how that squares with their own plans to borrow £28 billion a year until 2030. For the Government’s part, we will continue to focus on getting inflation down, supporting the Bank of England in its work and showing responsible fiscal policy.
The noble Lord asked about action to ensure that rising interest rates are not just passed on to mortgage holders but that savers would also see the benefit of those changes. My right honourable friend the Chancellor met the FCA again today along with other regulators, including the CMA, Ofcom and Ofwat. Among the measures agreed at that meeting, the FCA agreed to deliver a better deal for savers by driving competition, including reporting by the end of July on how the savings market is supporting savers to benefit from higher interest rates. The Government fully support the FCA’s review and the new consumer duty, which gives it stronger powers to take action if necessary.
We stand by families who are facing higher costs at this time, with both direct help to support the cost of living and specific help to support mortgage holders, all the while remaining committed to tackling high inflation. That is the core of the challenge that we face today and is the Government’s number one priority.
Baroness Kramer (LD)
My Lords, could I ask the Minister, when she goes back, if she could look a little more closely at the numbers she provided us with for core inflation? I just took a quick look to make sure that I had not got this wrong. The European Union as a whole has core inflation at 6.13%. In the eurozone it is significantly lower at 5.3%. There are some outlier countries, such as those which have particularly taken Ukrainian refugees. Hungary has a distorted number, as have a couple of the other countries which are very close, such as Estonia and Latvia. For the kind of economies against which we compare ourselves, we are definitely on the high-water mark and by some measure.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I am always happy to go back and double-check my figures. The two averages quoted for the euro area and the eurozone are not what I was referring to. I simply said that 14 countries in the EU have core inflation that is higher than the UK’s. That would not just indicate a few outliers, but of course I am happy to go back and double-check and write if I need to.