Elections Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Thursday 10th March 2022 Lords Chamber

The question that I have upmost in my mind is: why have the Government felt it necessary to take this power? The answer may be the one that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, gave; they feel that the Electoral Commission did not behave properly on the Brexit debate. It will be interesting if the Minister explains that that is the reason. But even if the Electoral Commission fell short of what was expected of it at that time, the right way to deal with that is not by the Government taking powers to direct it. That is why these clauses are very worrying and I hope they will be omitted from the Bill.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the processes of your Lordships’ House are enclosed in layers of impenetrable language, punctuated by archaic ritual and layered in complex paperwork that can confuse even the veterans among us. For International Women’s Day I have been exhorting the young people of Britain, particularly young girls, to watch the House of Lords—with some trepidation because it is not easy to understand if you just switch on Lords TV.

Many noble Lords will have noticed, in the great increase in our piles of letters and emails in our inboxes, that the House of Lords is—this is responding particularly to the comment of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox—a place where democracy is being defended. Several noble Lords have said, “Oh well, we don’t have to worry about this Government having the power of control over the Electoral Commission; it’s some other putative Government we are concerned about.” However, when I look at the police Bill, the judicial review Bill, the Nationality and Borders Bill and many others, and I look at my postbag of people saying they are concerned, I know that the public are asking us to represent them, and we have to worry about this Government as well as any potential future Government.

As a further piece of evidence, noble Lords may have seen, a week or so back, the Democracy Defence Coalition’s giant van and billboard parked—deliberately—outside Millbank House, where many of us have offices. That organisation represents hundreds of thousands of people who are concerned about this Bill. The top line in their list was concern about the independence of the Electoral Commission, which is what these amendments seek to address—particularly Amendment 4A.

Coming to the detail of this, I entirely understand the impulse from the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, to try to put some controls and limits in. But the only way forward is to get these clauses out of the Bill. More than that, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and others, that this Bill is an absolute mess. As others have said, the number of government amendments makes that very clear. We must not be proceeding with this Bill as an absolute minimum at the moment.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for tabling these amendments and setting an example for all of us in Committee to present our amendments with such brevity in such a concise nature. I declare my interests in the register which are relevant to this Bill.

The noble Baroness’s amendments do their utmost—if these two clauses are to remain part of the Bill—to keep the Electoral Commission as independent as possible from government interference. It might be worth looking at a dictionary definition of independence. It is: the ability to go about one’s business without being helped, hindered or influenced by others. The Minister may say that this is trying to help the Electoral Commission. Independence means that you stay out of the function of that commission.

In response to the noble Baronesses, Lady Noakes and Lady Fox, we have to be very clear what the amendments are trying to omit. The role of the Electoral Commission is not to carry out the priorities of the Government. Yet we see in new Section 4A(2)(b):

“The statement is a statement prepared by the Secretary of State”—


a Cabinet Minister—

“that sets out … the role and responsibilities of the Commission in enabling Her Majesty’s government to meet those priorities.”

The role of the Electoral Commission is not to meet the priorities of Her Majesty’s Government, it is to ensure free and fair elections for all parties—not at the behest of one political party. That is why these amendments, if the clauses stand part of the Bill, are important.

At Second Reading I said to the Minister that when the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and I are together, there must be fundamental flaws in the Bill. With what the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has just said, I feel like calling him my noble friend on this particular issue. His powerful words—as upsetting as they are to some noble Lords—are absolutely correct. At this time, when people are fighting for the basics of freedom and democracy, it is wrong that we are having to debate a Bill which tries to put the Electoral Commission’s strategy and priorities in alignment with those of Her Majesty’s Government—a political party. Those are not the free and fair elections which are the basis of a strong, functioning democracy.

It is for those reasons that if at a later stage your Lordships decide to see Clauses 14 and 15 stand part of the Bill, these amendments at least try to bring back a semblance of independence and take away the role of government. That is why these Benches support the noble Baroness’s amendments as drafted.

Elections Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this hugely rich and informative debate that has so comprehensively torn to shreds the Bill and the methods by which it arrived in your Lordships’ House. It seems unfair to pick out one speech among so many brilliant ones, but I will highlight the contribution of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, on such a crucial issue. On the global stage, should a nation emerging from dictatorship produce a constitution with an electoral commission under government direction, we would waggle our fingers and say, “Have another go”. I must warn the noble and learned Lord that I intend to ensure that his speech gets as wide a circulation as possible. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, may warn him about the potential consequences of that.

That leaves me with a challenge for I adhere to the principle of trying never to rise in your Lordships’ House unless I have something different and substantive to add. I begin with a statement that may come as a shock. I thank the Minister and the Government for this Bill and welcome its arrival in this House. I welcome it because, in bringing up all these issues—as the Government have found with Clause 9 of the Nationality and Borders Bill—and seeking to make disastrously bad elements of our current outdated, undemocratic, dysfunctional systems worse, while seeking to follow the Trumpian path of populist destruction, it provides us with a wonderful opportunity to show how much we need to radically transform our current system.

Those of us who understand that the people meant what they said in 2016, that they wanted to take back control—control of the planning in their communities, including protecting green spaces; control of their lives through decent jobs with a real living wage; control of Parliament, with a Parliament that actually reflects the view of the people, not just the 44% of those who voted handing over 100% of the power to Boris Johnson—now have a great opportunity. This is a stage to present all those proposals for making the UK a democracy.

This is rather like a bear that has dipped its paws into a bee’s nest and hopes to run away with some honey before its residents can muster a response. Yes, my use of that simile is deliberate, given the issues I raised earlier in Oral Questions over the Prime Minister’s inconsistent responses to my honourable friend Caroline Lucas’s questions in the other place about the Russia report. The Government are going to find that they have raised a swarm of opposition, and one that is determined to rebuild this hive into something stronger, smarter and more efficient, fit for the 21st century. This afternoon I saw the giant billboard from the Democracy Defence Coalition, involving groups including Unlock Democracy and Make Votes Matter, setting out all the things we can use this Bill to make better. Noble Lords who are in Millbank House and who looked out of the window will have seen it, too.

I am going to take a couple of minutes to create a portrait of what we could do to create a decent modern constitution for the UK. First, because they are the future and the generation that will live it, we should have votes at 16. We have them in Scotland and Wales; why should England’s young people miss out? I talk to a lot of 16 and 17 year-olds. They are at least as well informed as the average 60 year-old, and they are experts on being a 16 year-old today in a way that no one who speaks for them in either Chamber can be—and certainly, I am afraid, those in your Lordships’ House are not.

Next there is automatic voter registration. I follow the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, on this. Many noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Moore, in his maiden speech—and I must welcome him to the House as a fellow former newspaper editor—noted the gradual expansion of the franchise over history. The final logical step, making sure that everyone actually has a vote, is automatic voter registration, so you do not have to jump through those mysterious hoops. So many people naturally think, if they are on the council tax roll or enrolled in a university, living in official accommodation, that the state knows where they are and who they are. The voices who we must hear most, those struggling in poverty, suffering discrimination and exclusion from society, are the ones who are least likely to be able to navigate the current system. That is obviously the absolute reverse step of voter ID, which is restricting the franchise, going backwards. There is no way the Government can justify this voter suppression tactic, taken straight from the US far right. When only 30% of registered voters turn out in council elections and less than 70% in general elections, there is no justification for acting to reduce the turn out even further.

As the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, said, we need a proportional system for electing both the Commons and the Lords. We share the current first past the post system with Belarus. That is not really a recommendation, is it? The Minister in his introduction suggested that PR was too difficult. I say that it is first past the post that is extraordinarily difficult for voters. They have to guess how everyone else in their constituency is going to vote and try and adjust their vote accordingly, very often voting for the party they hate second most to stop the party they hate most getting in. We also need to see decentralisation, power taken out of here and put back into communities.

I finish by circling back to those Russian bears. We have to talk about political fund raising. We need extremely tight restrictions on individual and company donations to parties and campaigns. A maximum of £500 sounds about right. The Green Party in 2015 was a pioneer in crowd-funding political campaigns. Many thousands of people threw hard earned £5, £10, £20 to support our efforts. Combined with state funding for politics, that is how we get the politics of the people rather than a politics of the plutocrats.

The Minister said he wanted a system fit for the modern age. I am happy to work with people around your Lordships’ House to send the Bill out of this House looking exactly like that. It is a great opportunity.

Representation of the People (Proxy Vote Applications) (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

The noble Lord in his opening comments made reference to the previous SIs, which were debated in the Chamber on 4 March last year and which included a number of changes, as he indicated. One of them was in relation to the number of signatures that could be required for nominations for local elections: it was previously 10 and was reduced to two in the circumstances relating to coronavirus.

At the time the subject was debated, I indicated that I regretted that the change was time-limited to end in February 2022. Since then, consultations have taken place. I know that I speak in support of the views of the LGA and that this matter has been discussed informally at the Parliamentary Parties Panel in the presence of the Electoral Commission. There is therefore general all-party support—although I say this without having consulted the Green Party; I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is due to speak in a moment so she may express a view. But there is a general all-party view that the one, time-limited exemption to the end of February 2022 should now be lifted and that there should be an ongoing exemption. That would fit in with the spirit of the SI to which we are referring today.

I failed to say at the start of my comments that I had given the Minister and his office notice that I was intending to cover this point. Given that we are nearing the local elections, I hope that the Minister will be able to indicate that something which has all-party support can be expedited, that the time limit should be removed and that we can go on using two signatures, which is more than is required now in Wales and Scotland.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, as is evident, the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, and I have not consulted in advance on this. I very much agree with his comments, and indeed I offer further cross-party support to this amendment. I also wanted to raise a question about why this is only for 12 months and to look at the practical situation that we are in now.

The Minister in introducing this SI focused rightly— I have absolutely no disagreement on the democracy side of this SI—on the obvious public health element here. You do not want people with a contagious illness, very keen to vote, trailing into the polling station, with all the obvious risks of spreading that disease further. If we look back over recent history—SARS, MERS, swine flu, the threat of bird flu—we are in a new age where contagious illness is becoming more of a threat and a problem. We also have a big problem with antibiotic resistance to a variety of diseases.

To preserve both democracy and public health, the department, parties and everyone should think about the fact that contagious illness is a threat to us all. I do not necessarily expect a sudden big announcement today, but I want to put that on the agenda. People want to do the right thing both for democracy and not to spread an illness. Obviously, illnesses come on quite quickly—it is not something that you can predict—so it would make sense to have a measure like this for all relevant illnesses, both for democracy and for public health.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, as we heard from the Minister, this instrument extends the legislation which allows late proxy vote applications for those who are required to self-isolate. As the Minister and others have said, we fully supported the measures when they were first introduced and continue to support them, so I will be brief. At that time, we warned the Government that they may well need to extend the measures, which unfortunately they have now had to do.

Allowing for late urgent applications to vote by proxy when an individual is required to self-isolate, in response to other coronavirus-related medical advice or if things change for a proxy who goes through the same thing is, we believe, an important part of maintaining our democracy during these uncertain times. Unfortunately, the reality is that it looks like we will be dealing with the pandemic for some time to come as we learn to live with it. We believe that this instrument is a sensible adjustment to support democracy during this time.

The Explanatory Note states that the amendments to the regulations

“remove the ground for applying late where an applicant or their previously appointed long-term proxy has received notification that they are clinically extremely vulnerable or that they are at the highest risk of severe illness from coronavirus.”

I understand from the Minister’s introduction that this is to ensure that the regulations align with current medical guidance. However, just for clarification, can the Minister provide assurance that those individuals would still have access to a proxy in the way that they did, provided that that is in line with what their medical practitioner advises?

Beyond Brexit: Institutional Framework (EUC Report)

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, and to reassure him, or perhaps apologise to him, that this time I am not intending to tweet a video of his speech. That does not reflect a lack of importance in today’s debate. As the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, said, this is crucial to the well-being of all Britons, and perhaps particularly to those in some of the poorer areas of the country often subjected to the Government’s “levelling-up” rhetoric.

It is worth while going back a year to the ratification of the TCA by Parliament. The Institute for Government criticised the measly one day allocated to scrutinising the agreement. It also noted how the short time between ratification and implementation made it difficult for firms, particularly small firms. The Institute of Directors said:

“On the guidance … there were reams of it coming quite late in the day”.


A year on, it is worth asking: how much better off are we? We are now in this rather small Room, with an extremely distinguished panel participating. It is perhaps not the centre of the House’s attention, let alone the country’s, yet scrutinising what is happening is absolutely crucial.

There is an enormous amount of detail here. I will just pick out some points from each of these three reports. The Government’s responses to them all, which I will focus on, often stray towards the perfunctory, with phrases such as “world leading”, which sadly we are all too familiar with. I pick out the same point as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, in the response to the report on the institutional framework, which was so formidably introduced by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. The Government say:

“We are confident there will be the necessary regular political level engagement both with the EU institutions and bilaterally with the Member States at all levels.”


I have a direct question for the Minister: is he pleased? What adjective would he use to describe the contents, volume and results of contact with EU institutions and, bilaterally, with Ministers and officials in EU states?

I move on to the trade in services report. The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, talked about minor acts of mitigation on many of the issues that it covers. I will pick up on just two such areas of particular interest, which I have pursued very much over the past year, one about creative industries and the other about the loss of Erasmus+ and the inadequacy of the replacement, the Turing scheme. In the Government’s response on the crucial issues around haulage, cabotage and carnets, they say that

“the Department for Transport is looking at possible steps to support UK specialist hauliers”.

As many noble Lords have noted, Covid has been an additional, massive barrier, and has somewhat frozen the whole situation. We hope, at least, that we are coming to the point of this being unfrozen. What steps are the Government planning to support hauliers and the creative industries generally? I note again that the government response says:

“It is important that businesses and individuals confirm the processes in advance of their journey.”


That sentence stresses the difficulties faced by the creative sector, both artists and businesses that work to support them.

On the Turing scheme, the Government’s response talks about how Turing is only for outward mobility, and about relationships with individual institutions. Heidelberg University in Germany, the Sorbonne in France and many institutions across the Commonwealth are mentioned. Does the Minister acknowledge that the universities, which have also had so many pressures in the age of Covid, are facing enormous pressures if they have to build up one-to-one relationships? Are the Government working to make that easier?

Finally, I come on to the trade in goods. Here, the Government response again talked about the difficulties, as the committee did, for small and medium-sized enterprises. I want to point the Minister to the report from the Federation of Small Businesses, which came out just a few days ago and noted that only a quarter of small companies believe that they are ready for the new border checks that will come in in January. These include import customs declarations for EU goods; the companies will have to make those declarations and pay those relevant tariffs at the point of import. As a number of noble Lords have pointed out, when it comes to food, drinks and products of animal origin, they will have to give notice in advance. Can the Minister tell me whether he is confident that we will be ready for this yet further change?

I want to conclude with some brief reflections on the position of trade in general. I come to this debate with a different position from that of most other noble Lords, because I do not go “Yay—trade! More trade!” What I am interested in is the well-being of the people of the UK and of the planet, and the well-being of the planet. The Government often seem to be trying to push trade with other parts of the world while supporting free trade agreements—which are of great concern, particularly to our farmers—at great cost to the environment and to existing businesses. New Zealand is looking to operate through the living standards framework in all the decisions made by its Treasury and its other bodies. In the other place last week, the Green MP Caroline Lucas had a debate in which she talked about a well-being economy. I wonder if the Minister has given thought to the idea of well-being trade: trade that is not a win for us at the cost of someone else, but a benefit to people operating within the physical limits of this one fragile planet.

Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 30th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, I have noted the mood of the House that we have genuinely come together today to bury the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, not to praise it. Many noble Lords tell your Lordships’ House that they support this Bill and the burial of the Act in the interests of democracy. I am sure that they are honourable men and women, who support the status quo in our society and say they want to restore things to just the way they were.

That is not my position. Like the noble Lord, Lord Newby, I know that the good is being buried with the bad with the abolition of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. As the noble Lord said, the majority of the world’s democracies have fixed-term Parliaments—countries with modern, functional, democratic constitutions. None of those adjectives can be applied to the UK constitution, with or without the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. A Prime Minister who can call an election, with or without the support of a parliamentary majority that put him or her in place, has the advantage. As the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, said, shortening the election period would only magnify that advantage.

Of course that advantage can be lost, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, pointed out to the noble Lord, Lord Newby. But it is usually significant and often decisive and gives great benefits, particularly in fundraising, which is so important to the outcome of our elections—the country gets the politics that the few people pay for—and in planning, given the costs to opposition parties, which must plan just in case without the clarity of a known timetable. My political memory goes back to Gordon Brown’s election that wasn’t, and a living room filled to the ceiling with paper that was bought in case of the need for freepost leaflets that were never used for that purpose. That is the practical politics of a growing challenger party.

None the less, I am not going to go further down the route of arguing against the sense of set election times; that is not an argument I am going to win today. I will turn instead, as many noble Lords from all sides of your Lordships’ House have, to focus on Clause 3. Many expert legal minds have chewed over the detail and will continue to do so. I want to focus more on the principle. Why are the Government so concerned about their behaviour being judged against the standard of law? Surely that is what the rule of law is all about. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, said that Clause 3 would ensure that the courts were relieved of the embarrassment of being drawn into a sensitive area. Surely protecting the people, the constitution and the country from unlawful decisions is the role of the courts; we do not need them for the easy stuff. That they have become, as some see it, more active is, I suggest, because of the law-breaking at the centre of government becoming more extreme, the Executive chafing against the limits of control from the rights won by the people over centuries of campaigning—human rights that the Government are keen to destroy. This is not judicial activism but judicial defence of the law.

The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, noted that it was the poisonous distrust among the coalition partners that created the Act that we are working today to abolish. I do not need to quote the opinion polls. It is a well-known fact that poisonous distrust is also the people’s attitude towards our politics and politicians—a distrust that led to the desperate desire to “take back control” in 2016, a desire very clearly continually being frustrated by the lack of a democratic constitution and the concentration of power and money in Westminster. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, I do not regard “novelty” as a negative term. I desperately want the novelty of democracy in the UK.

Why are our politics so poisonous? I draw your Lordships’ attention to the recent coalition negotiations in Germany, where three parties from very different ideological starting points negotiated the formation of a Government and a platform for it. Yes, it took a little while. Talks proceeded and talks were concluded. I note the important comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about how British politics might look different—a little more like Germany’s in future—without even a change of electoral system. Around the country, there are 13 local councils where Greens are part of what are known as rainbow coalitions, the very kinds of structures that he was imagining. That is functional, grown-up, democratic politics—not something we have much experience of here in Westminster. Here we have a see-saw from one side to the other, and parties seeking power without principles or policies attached to them.

It is tempting to blame individuals—I promise you that I do—but this culture has persisted over many years. My thesis is that the problem is the system. The checks and balances in the UK are deliberately weak, because we have a feudal monarchy with occasional bits of democracy bolted on, scraps that were thrown to the people when the pressure became too great over centuries. The whole Bill is an attempt to knock off a bit of that bolted-on democracy and to test how far the Government can get away with taking back power from Parliament, the courts and the rule of law. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, rather gave the game away when she spoke about the events of the past—about Parliament defying the will of the Government.

The Minister acknowledged that it was only after pre-legislative scrutiny that it was ensured that the law provided that Dissolution was an automatic trigger for a defined polling date. But what happens if there is an emergency, real or created, such as a pandemic or a war? What if it is said that an election cannot be held in these emergency conditions—which are all too likely to be real, or easily created, in this age of shocks? Maybe this would be an act of obvious bad faith. But then redress against actions in bad faith is explicitly excluded by Clause 3. I can sense the scoffing, although my comments very much take the direction of those of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. But would it be so surprising from a Prime Minister who advised the monarch to unlawfully suspend Parliament; from a Prime Minister who planned to break international law, and was stopped from doing that only by this unelected Chamber; and from a Prime Minister looking in the policing Bill to end the right to protest, in the Elections Bill to take over the Electoral Commission and suppress the votes of his opponents, and in a promised judicial review Bill to further reduce the rule of law?

The Turkish thinker Ece Temelkuran, speaking about the West, said that,

“some … choose to believe that their mature democracy and strong state institutions will protect them”

from dictatorship. She warns of “dark dawns”, such as Turkey has experienced, being experienced possibly anywhere. We do not have a mature democracy, we do not have strong state institutions and we are not protected, and, if Clause 3 remains in the Bill, we will be even more vulnerable.

Health and Social Care Levy Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading & Order of Commitment discharged & 3rd reading
Monday 11th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, I wish to entirely dissociate myself from anything he said about general practitioners. That was an unacceptable attack on people who have given so much to our society under the extreme pressures of pandemics. The gendered nature of his remarks was particularly disturbing. I do not know if it is something that the House authorities will look at, but I certainly think that they should.

To go back to what I was going to say, it is a great pleasure to take part in this mostly extraordinarily high-quality debate, and its fine level of forensic scrutiny—most notably the tour de force from the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, who is not currently in his place. I also applaud the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, who rightly labelled this as a Johnson tax, with the poorest hit hardest. I will circle back at the end to the reasons why I think that is a particularly accurate label.

We must look at what is happening here in this debate: we have a huge democratic deficit. We in your Lordships’ House have torn this plan to shreds, but we cannot do anything. Such is the state of our antique, dysfunctional political system, Boris Johnson won 44% of the vote in 2019 and now he can do what he likes on anything at all, including taxation. The phrase “no taxation without representation” comes to mind, because the strange thing is that your Lordships’ House is more representative of the country than is the other place. If we had a vote in your Lordships’ House, it would be the Cross-Benchers—the non-party people—who would have the deciding votes.

It is worth thinking about what the words “social care” actual mean. Nobody that I have heard has really defined this or looked in detail at what it means; we tend to talk in the abstract. So I decided to look at Scotland’s definition, where, of course, social care—in a far more democratic political system—is free.

[A noble Lord]

Not entirely.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

It is a lot freer than it is here. What does it cover? Personal hygiene, assistance at mealtimes, immobility problems, medication and general well-being. In Wales—also more democratic—there is a cap on how much can be charged weekly for such provision, similarly defined. Just imagine for a second being in the position of not being able to get or afford such care—to eat, to bathe, to take your medication with confidence you are taking the right pills at the right time. It is really stressful to need that care, and to not be certain that it is available to you is very distressing and, indeed, unconscionable.

In the course of this debate, I also find myself unable to resist challenging a statement made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannan of Kingsclere, that this is taking money from the productive bit of the economy. I challenge the noble Lord’s definition of “productive”. A carer ensuring that a frail elderly person is able to feed themselves; an assistant enabling a profoundly disabled young person to live a full life—that surely is the definition of a productive use of the resources of our society. We come back to a really fundamental question: is the economy there to serve us, or are we slaves to the economy? This is where I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann—not currently in her place—who suggested that social care should not be a political issue. This is absolutely political; it is about the way people, particularly our most vulnerable, are able to live in society.

I want to address one crucial issue before I get to three points about the structure of the Bill and the way it works. Here I echo the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who asked the Minister to disavow the claim from the Health Secretary that social care should be provided by families. I very much hope the Minister will directly address this point and will disavow that comment, because it suggests that the Government indeed regard this, as many have suggested from different angles, as a temporary measure; that they plan for the state to eventually step back from any kind of provision for social care at all.

We heard from the right reverend Prelate that he takes a share, entirely commendably, of the care for his 93 year-old father. But how many families are in a situation to do that? The pension age is rising; many people who might have provided care for elderly relatives are now in paid employment—they have to be to meet their costs. It is a standard assumption that both members of a couple, where people are in couples, will work. Also, sadly, we are seeing the level of disability among middle-aged people rising. There is also the question of space: 1.5 million people who live in social housing are already in overcrowded conditions, which means circumstances such as children sleeping in the living room. Where are you going to put an elderly relative you are caring for—in the bathroom? I very much hope that in addressing this issue, the Minister will answer the questions at greater length than when he introduced the Bill.

We have heard some noble Lords refer to the idea of funding social care through individuals paying insurance, although most have accepted that is unviable. However, we should regard being a member of what we would hope is a decent, caring society as an insurance against hard times, illness and disability. That is why social care should be available without challenge at the point of use to all who need it.

I will address three specific points about the structure of this proposed Johnson tax: who is paying, how the money will be raised and where it is going. The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, referred to how costs fall particularly on low-paid workers. He made some further interesting and disturbing points about the way the Government’s illustrative analysis seems to put the idea of paying for healthcare linked directly to payment.

I want to pick up a couple of groups to see what that actually means. I credit the Liberal Democrats in the other place for uncovering the fact that NHS and social care workers will be paying 12% of the £7.4 billion expected to be raised from employees through the tax—£900 million. That does not include self-employed healthcare workers and social care workers, so the real figure is even higher—call it £1 billion. These are often low-paid workers, carers and nurses, far too many of whom we regularly hear are dependent on food banks to feed themselves. They are having money taken from them so that possibly a little more money goes into the system. I will quote an unusual source for me, Fraser Nelson in the Spectator:

“How can you justify increasing taxes on the working poor to safeguard the assets of the stonkingly rich?”


What we are seeing—I think the public is often not well aware of this, because for many it is an academic point which will never come into view—is the fact that the national insurance employee contribution falls from currently 12% of income to 2% of earnings over £50,270 a year, so that high-earners pay a lower proportion of their earnings in national insurance contributions than low earners.

Of course, national insurance contributions also kick in around £9,500, which means that even some people too poor to pay income tax are paying into the system. When we think about our broadly-speaking young people—the graduates paying back student loans—they will be taxed at 50% on any increase in salary above £27,288.

So, those are the people who are paying. How is it being arranged? I refer back to the excellent speech by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, who spoke about the need to combine income tax and national insurance and the missed opportunity for a simpler, fairer, flatter tax system. The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, was looking for an alternative solution. I can point him to the Green Party manifesto of 2019, which goes even further than the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. It merges employee national insurance, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, dividend tax and income tax into a single consolidated income tax. All income is treated the same way for tax purposes. This ends the injustice of people who work for their income being taxed more lightly than those whose income is derived from wealth, frequently arrived at by accident of birth or blind luck. I also note that our manifesto provides free social care to the over-65s.

Finally, I get to the point about where the money is going, and this picks up points made by the noble Lord, Lord Sikka. A large amount of this money is going into a privatised, financialised sector—large chains of care homes with hedge fund owners taking returns of 12% or more a year out of the provision of care for our most vulnerable citizens. I very much enjoyed and commend the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, who talked about the commendable work of MHA and gave us an insight into just how difficult that work has been, particularly in the last couple of years. We also heard about the excellent work MHA is doing through music therapy. All the funds it gets go towards providing care. Think about what would happen if you scooped out 12% or more in financial returns and then still tried to meet the basic needs of residents—that is certainly all you would be able to do.

Of course, that is academic because, as many noble Lords have said, while this is talked about as being for social care, the money, for the next foreseeable time, will go into the NHS. With one more executive power grab, from 2025 the Chancellor will decide what happens then.

It is often suggested that there should be a “truth in advertising” rule for government policy. If we were to see that, we might see a total gridlock of government—one to rival the chaos in our supply chains—as opposed to the tangle of unpublished strategies, undeliverable targets and fantasy announcements that we have now. Were trading standards and the Advertising Standards Authority asked to cover the announcements of government, I think their websites would do down in seconds.

This is billed as a health and social care levy; it is clearly nothing of the sort. It does nothing to fix the enormous financial and structural issues in our care system. It leaves underpaid, overstressed workers seeking to care for underserved, neglected patients while private profits are scooped out of the system. It does not even do more than apply sticking plasters across some of the gaping gaps in our NHS.

I conclude by referring back to that term, “Johnson tax”. It is misleading in its claims, it is fragile in its structure and it does not create any kind of solid framework for the future. I cannot help thinking of the London garden bridge, the Irish Sea bridge, the “Boris buses” and the so-called Emirates Air Line. It is misbegotten, unreliable and fundamentally unsound.

Net-zero Emissions Target

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 11th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I respectfully disagree with the noble Lord’s view of the Treasury’s position. I mentioned the emissions trading scheme that was announced earlier this year. We have published the Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy, which sets out the vision for a low-carbon industrial sector by 2050. In March this year we were the first G7 country to agree a landmark North Sea transition to support the oil and gas industry’s transition to clean energy. Through this deal, the sector has committed to cut emissions by 50% by 2030. The Treasury is closely involved in all these initiatives.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I follow on from the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, about the polluter pays principle. I am sure the Minister is aware of the International Monetary Fund’s report earlier this month recommending that polluters—fossil fuel companies—should pay for deaths and poor health from air pollution and heatwaves, and for the impact of global heating. This is the International Monetary Fund. Will the Government be following this advice and publishing a road map for when they will get to the point of really making polluters pay?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I repeat that we are moving very fast to decarbonising; we are one of the fastest in the G20, and indeed in the G7. If we push the envelope too hard, we will just see a boomerang of costs going back to consumers. We very much support the aspiration for polluters to pay but it must be done on a sustainable basis.

UK Government Union Capability

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, and to join many others in thanking the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, for securing this debate and his introduction to it. I think he referred to creaks and groans in the union, but I would probably say that they are rather gaping cracks and heaving frustrations, as a reflection of the mood. The timing of this debate and its length perhaps reflect the way the peoples of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland very often feel their importance is regarded in your Lordships’ House and by the Government.

I rise as possibly the only person in this debate who is a Green. The Scottish Green Party is campaigning very hard for independence, and the Wales Green Party has said that, if there is an independence referendum, it will campaign for independence. I offer one very important thought in the context of this debate: I believe that the Government and your Lordships’ House need to think constructively and deeply about what might happen if the union ends—what it would look like, and how it could be done in the best possible way. If we look back to 2016, we can see that that was not done with Brexit, and we are still dealing with all the fallout. That is a very important message.

I have one other brief message. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, that we need something much more radical, although I would not particularly fault anything in this report. But I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, that a parity of esteem has to be at the foundation of this—and not just esteem but money and resources. Green political philosophy says that power and resources should rest locally and be referred upwards only when absolutely necessary. Far too much power is concentrated here in Westminster, which is the foundation of the gaping holes to which I referred.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson of Glen Clova, has withdrawn from this debate, so we will now go back to the noble Lord, Lord Dodds of Duncairn.

Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 25th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to rise in this Second Reading to commend the noble Lord, Lord Bird, on this Bill and to offer the Green group’s support with anything we can do take it further forward. While walking down this morning to the House, I was listening to a podcast called “Big Biology”, in which Professor Kevin Gaston from the University of Exeter talked about the ecological impacts of lighting. This relates to a debate on the Environment Bill earlier this week. He was talking about the interactions and how the way we have lit up this planet is causing trees in many places to leaf out a couple of weeks earlier. We also know that the climate emergency is having similar effects. But when he was asked how those two things interact, he said “I just don’t know”.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, said that the future is difficult to predict. However, we now have knowledge, which we may not have had in the past, that human actions on this planet are having systematic and extremely deleterious effects, and that they are interacting with each other. We need to take a systems approach to thinking about the impact of all our actions: what impacts they have today but, crucially in the context of this Bill, what impact they will have in future. The Bill is giving us a way of doing that.

We might wonder why we made so many mistakes in the past. The noble Baroness, Lady Blower, referred to plastics. How did we come to put microbeads into large amounts of cosmetics, designed to be washed down the plughole, and not think about where they would go? This is the kind of issue that the Bill addresses.

That is all big, conceptual thinking, but can we deal with this practically? Again, the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, referred to New Zealand, which has a living standards framework that guides everything the New Zealand Treasury does. We have a Committee on Climate Change which, just this week, pointed out that the Government are not being guided by their own legislation in terms of all their policies matching net zero. Again, the Bill is another way of getting at these issues and making sure that they are law.

A number of people referred to the limitations of the Welsh Act and said that this legislation can and should be stronger. I believe that it is. However, a couple of weeks ago I was outside Norwich, standing beside a magnificent oak tree that had been a sapling when Elizabeth I was on the throne. According to the local plans, that oak will soon be in the middle of a motorway—demolished and taken away for it. Just a couple of weeks later, the Welsh Government announced that they were planning to put a moratorium on all new roadbuilding. That is a practical demonstration of what a well-being of future generations Act can achieve. As another noble Lord said, it is about a change in thinking and that is what we so desperately need.

Finance Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading
Tuesday 8th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise with the unusual luxury of 10 minutes’ speaking time, given because we have only a dozen Back-Bench speeches on this crucial taxation issue. I hope that some Peers in your Lordships’ House who specialise on issues of poverty and inequality—indeed, on any issues at all—will join these debates in future. Taxation, or the lack of it, shapes our societies. As the richly informative and powerful speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, outlined, decades of decisions about taxation have helped to give us our deeply unequal, poverty-stricken society. We have been taxing the poor and allowing large companies and rich individuals to get away without paying.

The noble Lord, Lord Leigh, suggested that your Lordships’ House may need more experts in tax, finance and business, but this is a far broader issue that needs a far broader input. I quote the American historian Albert Bushnell Hart:

“Taxation is the price which civilized communities pay for the opportunity of remaining civilized.”


It is clear now, on the streets of London, that there are strong and rich debates about how the people who benefit from the investments of this and previous generations—in roads, public buildings, electricity supplies, and the services that we all pay for such as schools, hospitals and policing—make a fair contribution to the maintenance and restoration of our degraded physical and social infrastructure, and the impacts of austerity that we see in potholed roads, closed libraries and inadequate social care provision. These are not technical issues, but are at the very foundation of our society.

Noble Lords might worry about where they get sources of information. I thank Tax Justice UK for an excellent briefing and for drawing attention to the work of the Women’s Budget Group, which has identified how women, people on low incomes and BAME communities will benefit least from the tax breaks in the Bill and bear the chief brunt of the scheduled spending cuts.

It is interesting that, in the debates so far, the failures of regulation and of culture in our financial sector have come up again and again. Noble Lords who took part on the then Financial Services Bill might reflect on this. The noble Lord, Lord Bridges of Headley, talked about umbrella companies, which is an area where the UK is world-leading in entirely the wrong direction. The noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, talked about the “many-headed Hydra” of tax-dodging schemes, as did the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, in great detail. The fact is that we have too large a financial sector, which is milking not just the UK but the entire world and particularly the global south. The centre of global corruption is on our doorstep.

It has been suggested that we all live in social media bubbles these days, but in your Lordships’ House I feel like I am in the vigorous Atlantic surf of strong disagreement on economic issues. I particularly disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, about their entire economic commentary. The ways and means mechanism and its implementation have existed for many years and show how the rules of the game have changed and that the old economic approaches failed disastrously and gave us the global financial crash. We are finally looking differently at how the economy works and what it is for. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and many others said that we need to get the economy going again and focusing on growth. I remind your Lordships’ House, in the country that is the chair of COP 26, that we cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet. That is not politics; it is physics.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, recommended some reading to us. I have some alternative reading to suggest, a book I reviewed this week in the House magazine by Professor Tim Jackson. He is quite a mainstream economist and his book Post Growth is well worth a read. I also pick up on the points of the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, which focused on the importance, as he sees it, of giant multinational companies. I stress that 61% of employment in the UK is in small and medium enterprises. The Government talk of levelling up, but I would rather talk about spreading out prosperity. The foundation of prosperity for every community in this land needs to be built on strong local economies of small independent enterprises and co-operatives—a different and stable kind of economic model.

Having set the scene, I turn to some details in the Bill. I take the point made by several noble Lords about the thickness of the paperwork but, when you look at the measures, you see that it is actually a modest Bill. It talks about tidying up some Northern Ireland and VAT Brexit issues—another reminder that Brexit is by no means done. There are some modest measures that noble Lords have referred to about plastics, red diesel and cycling—very modest again for the chair of COP 26, when you think about the need to act on the climate emergency. We also have an increase in stamp duty land tax for overseas purchases of residential property in England and Northern Ireland which, should your Lordships take an imaginary scan of the boroughs around where we sit today, might be best described as shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

The headline measure is a super deduction for the largest companies, many of which have done very well out of the great tragedy and suffering of the global pandemic. This is estimated to be going to cost the Treasury £25 billion. That would be a lot of social care or a large injection that our education sector so desperately needs. The Office for Budget Responsibility said that £5 billion of the spending that would be covered by this will be spent on previously planned investments. The Times reported that tax advisers specialising in capital allowances have pointed out that jacuzzies are listed as one investment that could receive a 130% rebate.

Perhaps we also need to think about what is not in this Bill. It is interesting that, despite widespread debate in society now, both in the Bill and in the debate around it in the other place, no amendment was put down about a wealth tax. There was no real discussion of it in the other place despite that now being a major topic of discussion among even some quite mainstream economists and certainly among the public.

Of course, there is a lot of discussion about the levels of corporate taxation, led not by the UK but by Joe Biden’s America. When I asked the Minister on 14 April about the US President’s plans, he effectively gave me a “no comment” response when I asked what the UK stance would be. I am pleased to see that we have now signed up to the US initiative. The noble Lord in his answer to my supplementary question then said something very interesting. He said the Government had always been one that wanted to reduce taxation wherever possible. Perhaps he might like to consider the words of the Chancellor in deciding to end the race to the bottom in corporation tax by increasing the headline rate to 25% in 2023 after Her Majesty’s Treasury found that the cut in the headline rate since 2010 did not drive inward investment. To quote the Chancellor, it

“might not be the most effective way to drive capital investment up”.

I also refer to the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, about those statistics. He referred to inward investment. I would say that that inward investment very often has been the selling off of the family silver, whether that is our water companies, publicly held land or, indeed, the family beds when it comes to selling off our care homes to the hedge fund industry.

If we did have, let us say, a wealth tax, where might it go? Despite the Government’s talk of an end to austerity, a £15 billion cut in annual government departmental spending is planned. These budgets are already cut to the bone and, of course, are being hit by the huge and continuing impacts of the pandemic.

There is some very useful information about who is paying and who is not. I have referred noble Lords to a report from the CAGE institute at the University of Warwick. In 2015-16, a quarter of people who had more than £1 million in taxable income paid less than 30% tax, while one in 10 paid just 11%—the same as a person earning £15,000 a year. This is a key issue.

I come back to the inequality and the poverty in our society, issues so well covered by the noble Lord, Lord Sikka. We are talking about capital gains tax and inequality in the way income is taxed. These issues are all missing from this Bill. They will need to be confronted soon.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, and the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, have withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer.