Inheritance Tax: Cohabiting Siblings

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Tuesday 20th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I do not think that is the rationale behind the approach. The rationale in distinguishing between marriage and civil partnership and other relationships is the unique legal status and the unique legal and financial obligations that people enter into in that regard. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, referred to, this question was also referred to the courts, which found in the Government’s favour.

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

Does my noble friend accept that the Treasury seems to regard inheritance tax as locked into the Ovaltine family of the 1950s with 2.4 children? As my noble friend Lord Lexden’s Question indicates, it is about time that it took a long look at how inheritance tax works for families that do not have 2.4 children. Can I add to the sibling argument, and I declare a personal interest, the parents who take responsibility for disabled adult children for all of their lifetime, where the amount of money that can be passed on during an adult’s lifetime is severely limited on the assumption that lawyers—looking round the Chamber now, there are lots of grins around me—will be able to manage the trusts for that money after the parent has died? The parents want to do what is right for their children during their lifetime.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I am happy to look at the specific circumstance that my noble friend raises. I do not think the Government have an old-fashioned view of how families are formed in modern times; that is why the benefits of being able to pass on inheritance, if you are married, is also extended to those who are civilly partnered.

Children and Vulnerable Adults: Abuse

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Browning (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Walmsley on bringing this important debate to the Floor of the House this afternoon, and I refer Members to my interests in the register, in addition to which I am patron of Action on Elder Abuse and the main carer of an adult with autism.

A report by Action on Elder Abuse states that abuse is often by more than one person—something that we sometimes overlook. There is often collusion in abuse between adults—23% of cases are by members of a family and 62% by paid staff. In respect of that, there are three things that I would like my noble friend on the Front Bench to take away from this debate. The first is training, which has already been raised. The Action on Elder Abuse helpline identified that the greatest number of problems it receives have at their heart poor training, so I hope that the Government will concentrate on training, particularly for care workers and those with professional qualifications.

The other is whistleblowing. I support the moves that the Government are about to take in forthcoming legislation to tighten up on whistleblowing. In that context it is also important to state that it is not just about whistleblowing on something that is evidently what we would all recognise as criminal abuse; it needs attention much further down the track than that. Before things get to the level of criminal abuse, people need to feel that they can report it, and do so safely, particularly regarding their own position.

The other thing that I have mentioned before, but which would be remiss of me not to press again, is that we need a proper register for care workers. They do not work just in organised homes; they work greatly in the community and do invaluable work. When we look at the people who are accused of and found guilty of a range of abuses, we still have that rather unquiet feeling that for many, if they have not received a custodial sentence, they can go back into the ether and re-emerge somewhere else to obtain a post caring for another vulnerable person.

My noble friend Lady Hollins raised the shocking case of Winterbourne View, and I take this opportunity to say that we have seen the government report Winterbourne View: 1 Year On, but I still have concerns about report-backs that I hear from the medical profession and others that far too many people with learning disabilities and who present as mental health patients are being detained for far too long and a long way away from their natural home and community. Much as I know that the Government have taken Winterbourne View very seriously, we cannot, as has rightly been said, just accept a tick-list on a well written report. This House needs to be reported to with evidence that change has happened and is happening for these vulnerable people.

Winterbourne View involved adults with learning disability and autistic spectrum disorders. I know the House would expect me to devote some of my contribution to people with autism. While I appreciate that the new Care Act does a lot to make improvements, there is one aspect of it that is going to cause a real problem for people on the autistic spectrum. It commits the Government to introduce a new national eligibility threshold for care and support, which will tell local authorities when they must provide adults with support. Until now, local authorities have had the power to set eligibility for support against one of the eligibility bandings—low, moderate, substantial and critical—which reflect different levels of care need. The new national eligibility criteria are intended to be comparable, but the banding is different. It should be a fairer system, but I suspect that many people on the autistic spectrum will fall through the net.

I would like to share with the House the case of Adrian, who was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome when he was 14. Social services assessed his need for support at the age of 18. His parents were concerned that he was putting himself at risk because of the people he was spending time with, and they thought he needed help with the transition to adulthood. The assessment found that Adrian had difficulty interpreting other people’s motives and actions—something that is very common with people on the autistic spectrum—and that he was easily led, which could place him at risk in the community. However, the local authority decided the risks were not sufficient for him to receive support.

Adrian was later bullied and intimidated. His parents continued to contact social services, as well as the police, asking for a reassessment and support for him. After Adrian reported being raped by one of the people who had befriended him, his parents again appealed to the police and social services. Eventually, a small package of evening support was approved. However, five days later, Adrian was murdered by the same person he had accused of rape. Under the Government’s new proposed criteria, Adrian would not have been eligible for support.

I draw my noble friend’s attention to the very first word of the debate we have before us today: “preventing”. With many people on the autistic spectrum, the right package of support—not necessarily a hugely costly package at that—can prevent abuse and neglect. I hope my noble friend will ensure that the Front Bench team from the Department of Health are aware of our concerns about the safety and security of people on the autistic spectrum, and about the change in the Care Act.

Budget Statement

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, I sense that I am going to disappoint my noble friend Lord Dykes. I am not going to be gloomy, but I have to say to my noble friend on the Front Bench that my mood today is cautious for the following reasons. My noble friend was not in the House when I made my maiden speech in 2010. I am sure that other Members present recall it very well. That was a joke. At the time, with the help of a friendly app, I gave the account of how much the country’s debt was when I stood up and how much it had increased when I sat down. I do not have that app with me today, but I took a quick look at it yesterday, and I see that we are still escalating, at £500 per second.

My concern today is primarily about the debt. There have been some very good things in the Budget. I support things that others have mentioned today, particularly raising the personal tax threshold to £10,000, and for small business, the £2,000 threshold before NI is paid by employers. I support that even more so than corporation tax coming down. For a lot of very small businesses, it is not quite the same as other companies coming in from outside and choosing to invest here. For small businesses, anything that comes off the bottom line before you make a profit is particularly helpful.

The Chancellor said yesterday that the Budget was,

“for people who realise there are no easy answers to problems built up over many years”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/3/13; col. 931.]

There has been a flavour today, and it is certainly more noticeable in the House of Commons, that whenever the inheritance from the Labour Government to the coalition Government is mentioned, a sort of groan goes around, as if we really should not mention the problems that we inherited. I use this opportunity to remind the House that a Labour Treasury Minister left that note in the drawer in the Treasury for the incoming Minister that said, “There is no money left”. In fact, that was only part of the story, because it was not only that there was no money left, but there was a huge debt: a debt of such proportions, and rising, that it brought together two political parties which historically had been opponents but which felt that there was a need to work together in order to address the seriousness of that problem.

Now that the Chancellor has come forward with the Budget, I hope that people across the House will recognise that these problems are bigger than many that we have faced in our lifetime. It is as serious as that. It is also important that the Chancellor continues to spell out the size of the problem and what that means. My noble friend Lord Marlesford mentioned Cyprus. I quite agree with the comments he made about the foolishness of what was said about top-slicing bank accounts. If anything was guaranteed to cause a run not only on Cypriot banks but on banks in other parts of Europe, that surely was the trigger. We will see what happens there. However, it is the case that when Governments lose control of the finances of countries, they have no hesitation in popping their hands into the personal assets of the population. We have seen these measures and their effects before.

I was very encouraged that the Chancellor made reference to the work of the Monetary Policy Committee. He said that the new remit,

“makes it clear that the committee may wish to issue explicit forward guidance, including using intermediate thresholds in order to influence expectations on the future path of interest rates”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/3/13; col. 935.]

I know that my noble friend on the Front Bench is only too aware that, given the state of government borrowing, it will require an increase of just a few points in interest rates for that to give us very serious problems indeed.

I was not looking to the Chancellor to produce an all-singing, all-dancing giveaway Budget, taking lots of risks. He needed to be cautious. However, I have one or two concerns about some areas on which I hope my noble friend will be able to reassure me. I am indebted to an article I read in MoneyWeek which outlined the history of the state pension. The state pension was introduced in 1909. The article states:

“Men aged 70 and above could claim between 2 and 5 shillings per week from the government”.

However,

“because back then the average working man could only expect to live to 48 years of age”,

the Government were not being that generous. Here we are, over a century later, and yet the liability to the public purse on pensions has resulted in an estimated £5 trillion of pension promises. I am not for one minute suggesting that we ban the state pension. However, I am worried about the implementation of Dilnot in putting a cap on the cost of care for elderly people. I know that that is not a popular thing to say. We would all like to do it and I am sure that most noble Lords have been through that situation on a domestic front with elderly relatives. It is very difficult. However, I must say to my noble friend that, rather like the state pension when it was first introduced, I am not convinced that we have the money, and particularly that we do not have the money at this moment, to underwrite that type of benefit in order to preserve the properties of the property-owning democracy. That is a strange thing for a Conservative to say. However, that I have to think twice about this shows the serious position that I believe the finances of the country are in.

I am equally concerned not that the Chancellor introduced measures yesterday to increase the housing stock—we all recognise the problems of the housing shortage—but that the taxpayer, not the Government, will underwrite mortgages for properties up to £600,000 for people who are not able to get a mortgage in the normal way. We know that the money supply from the banks is poor at the moment, and that that is affecting people’s ability to obtain a mortgage, but, as others have said, that will need careful handling if we are not to see some of the problems that we saw over the pond in America with what happened with its housing bubble.

Government: Economic Policies

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deighton]

My comments were not intended to imply that the economy was going so well. My comments were intended to imply that the economy is facing extraordinarily difficult circumstances that were a function of the historical debt we accumulated, and a very difficult global situation in terms of demand. With respect to the deficit, I confirm that it has been reduced by a quarter.

[Baroness Browning]

I think my noble friend will be aware that the fourth-quarter GDP figures in the USA have been missed by miles. Will he assure us that the UK Government will not emulate the Obama spending spree?

[Lord Deighton]

I thank my noble friend for reinforcing the fact that demonstrating to the world’s financial markets that our spending is properly controlled, and consistent with our capacity to repay the debts that we develop in the international markets, is absolutely at the foundation of our recovery.

Sunday Trading (London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games) Bill [HL]

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Myners]

My Lords, it is good to see the Minister back on the Front Bench. We missed him yesterday when we discussed the progress of convergence under Maastricht. He would no doubt have been as surprised as we were on this side of the House that in an important economic debate there was not a single speaker from the coalition government Benches in support of the Government’s economic policy.

I declare an interest as a former retailer, not as distinguished in my achievements as the noble Lord, Lord Alliance, who I see in his place, but as a previous chairman of Marks & Spencer.

I join my noble friend Lord Davies in making it clear that we on this side of the House support the fundamental intention of the Bill. We will take issue in Committee not with its intent but rather with its phrasing. That said, it is lamentable and shambolic that the Bill should be before the House now, so that the three-month notice period which the law allows for those who work in retailing in other circumstances will not apply. It is a shambles, although I do not think that that is the Minister’s fault.

The economic case that has been made for this proposal is equally shambolic and flimsy. I am sorry that I was not here for the Minister’s speech on Second Reading but I have read it in Hansard. It was a very good speech and he explained the situation very carefully. I was disappointed not to be here for what may well have been the Minister’s parliamentary high point in terms of his contributions to the House. He made an extraordinarily good speech on the issue of Sunday trading. However, the economic case—which is presumably one of the reasons why the Treasury is taking responsibility for the Bill—is extremely flimsy. On every key quantifiable metric we are told, “Not applicable”. Net present value: “Not applicable”. Impact on economy: “Not applicable”. To every question we receive the reply that it is not applicable. Indeed, no acknowledgement is given at all in the narrative to substantial data and evidence suggesting that the total number of visitors to the United Kingdom might be lower as a result of the Olympics. Those who come specifically to participate in, celebrate and observe this wonderful event—which we are clearly going to do a great job in hosting—will be offset by those who say, “It is not probably a good time to go to the United Kingdom”.

It does not seem that the Government have done a great deal of research among retailers. It has been difficult to find leading retailers that are enthusiastic about the intention of the Bill. Indeed, Mr Justin King, the chief executive of Sainsbury’s, who is Mr Boris Johnson’s representative on LOCOG, has said that he does not support this proposal. I find it extraordinarily difficult to imagine a family, having observed Usain Bolt in the 100 metres, deciding that now is a good time to go and do the weekly shop at Tesco. I do not think that the economic case that has been made is particularly good.

[Baroness Browning]

I have been following what the noble Lord has said very carefully and wonder if he can help me on this. I understand from papers available in the Printed Paper Office that the Centre for Retail Research estimates that the impact of relaxing these laws will benefit retailers by £189.8 million and that food stores will enjoy a boost of £61 million. That is clearly documented in papers available to the House today.

[Lord Myners]

Those data were not included—I shall give way to the Minister if he wishes to correct me—in the Bill’s economic impact assessment, at attachment C, when I obtained the documents from the Printed Paper Office yesterday morning.

[Lord Myners]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, for her intervention, and to the Minister for correcting the noble Baroness by saying that there was no impact assessment and that the data from which the noble Baroness quotes do not constitute an impact statement. The numbers quoted by the noble Baroness, incidentally, are probably less than a week-end’s takings at Westfield and take no account of displacement—that is to say, the spending which would have taken place in any case but is now being brought into these Sunday trading permitted-hours figures or displaced from smaller stores to larger ones.

I should like to talk about treating people fairly, because that seems to be the issue on which the House wishes to focus in Committee.

[Baroness Browning]

Will the noble Lord allow me to intervene?

[Lord Myners]

I will give way in a moment, but I want to talk about treating people fairly.

This is an issue of ensuring that employees have adequate notice. Sunday is a special day: many choose not to work on Sundays or to limit the number of hours they work. We know from research by USDAW that a very high percentage of shop workers already feel under great pressure to work on a Sunday when they would rather not do so and would rather be with their families, and to give people inadequate time to make a decision is a most regrettable outcome.

We have two amendments, but I believe that the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham is superior in its precision of expression. The key issue is to ensure that we treat employees fairly and that they do not feel pressurised—that they have time to reflect, to consult their families and to take into account other options that might be available to them. They should not be strong-armed and muscled into doing something that they do not want to do but perhaps feel they cannot avoid given the extraordinarily bad employment situation facing the economy.

I am willing to give way to the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, but I do not think that we disagree on the data. The data to which she refers are of course helpful and the Minister has explained, in a correct and proportionate way, that a full impact assessment would not have been justified for the proposal as made. However, it is clear that a very poor economic justification has been given. I shall support the amendment of my noble friend Davies of Oldham if I have the opportunity.

Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, as the final Back-Bench speaker, I wonder whether there is anything left for me to say. I hope your Lordships will allow me to touch on two issues, and I hope I will not repeat a lot of what others have already said, much of which I agreed with.

First, I say to the Minister that I support the Bill. However, as others have said, he would do a great service to the people concerned if he would share the information that has been expressed in today’s debate, particularly with Ministers in other government departments, because one of the weaknesses of government in its generic form is that it tends to think in silos and, if I may respectfully say so to my noble friend, none more so than the Treasury. If Ministers would just take concerns away from debates and share them with other Ministers, we might have what often is referred to as joined-up thinking in government. That would definitely be to the benefit of the way in which we legislate and its effect on the recipients of legislation that comes through this House.

I totally support the points that have been made on child trust funds. We also have had excellent briefing from Action for Children and Barnardo’s about the special case that is needed for looked-after children. I do not want to repeat too much of what has been said, much of which I support. I was particularly taken by the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about the 18 year-old threshold. If you make a will, however much or little you have to leave to your descendants, solicitors will always advise you to write in the age of 25 and not 18. They say that for very good reasons—and I hope that my own children are not listening to this. I am the mother of two middle-aged men, so it is a long time since they were 18 years old, but I would have been very nervous even for small sums of money to have been at their disposal at the age of 18, with them having total discretion as to what they spent it on. It is not that I am a bit of a killjoy of a mother.

There is a need to look, as I hope my noble friend will, at the case made for looked-after children and to take into account how any such money might be discharged. I hope that my noble friend will know that I am speaking in a very positive way about how money “will” be discharged. I feel that there is an imperative here today to make sure that that message goes from this House and that the case for the looked-after children is made.

When I was a Member of Parliament—I am sure that others in your Lordships' House will have shared this experience—I often had to intervene in the transition period for looked-after children when they came out of care and transferred into employment, education or sometimes absolutely nothing at all. It is a salutary experience to see not just the financial challenges that those young people face, but, if I have interpreted correctly a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, there is still an ongoing need for emotional and welfare support, over and above the finances. If we as a nation are to be in loco parentis—goodness knows, if those in this Chamber and in the Chamber in another place think about where the buck stops when decisions are made on just how that is delivered, surely the buck stops with us—we have to take this seriously.

Again I say to my noble friend that these are the sorts of issues that, if policy is changed in a Bill that comes through the Treasury, read across other government departments. I hope that he will not just take from this House the message about looked-after children to those with responsibility for local government finance, the Department of Health, the Department for Work and Pensions, and others, but that he will take it with enthusiasm to ensure that the message that has clearly gone from all sides of this House today is translated into something of which we can all be proud.

In January 2008, I had the great privilege to serve on the Health and Social Care Bill Public Bill Committee in another place, which led to the legislation that brought the health in pregnancy grant into being. When we came to the vote then, I opposed it and I support the Government’s decision to abolish it for the following reason. There was a lot of confusion around this legislation. When the previous Government started to talk about the purpose of introducing this grant, it had a focus.

As a reminder, I should like to share with your Lordships information that we took in evidence on this Bill before we started Committee—something which I would commend to almost all Bill committees. We took evidence from Rosemary Dodds from the National Childbirth Trust. Her first question was about this one-off payment of £190. She said:

“The important thing is the intention of the payment. Originally, there was a lot of discussion about impact on birth weight and prematurity, but the intention of the payment has not been made clear. In order to answer the question about what the impact would be, we need to know the intention of the grant”.

Right at the beginning, even in Committee, there was confusion about what the Government had said prior to printing the Bill and what actually happened when we got to Committee. She went on:

“If the impact is desired on birth weight and on prematurity”—

which quite clearly it was when the Government first started to talk about it—

“my understanding is that even 25 weeks is too late, from the evidence base, to have much impact”.—[Official Report, Commons, Health and Social Care Bill Committee, 10/1/08; col. 85.]

The Government’s intentions right at the beginning were extremely noble. They wanted to have an impact on prematurity and low birth-weights, which many of us could have supported, but they then discovered that if you do not set a higher threshold you bring into grants people who subsequently either elect to have an abortion or who unfortunately have a miscarriage. The threshold was therefore set much higher, so high in fact that the impact of early nutrition—both before conception and in the very early months of pregnancy, which were deemed to be the critical time if you were to avoid low birth-weights and premature babies—went out of the window. The alternative suggestion—of well-being and a general fund to help mothers in pregnancy—was therefore substituted for the original intention. I hope that my noble friend—again, this is not a Treasury matter—will convey this issue to the Department of Health.

I support the Government’s announcement of more health visitors, because clearly more health visitors on the ground could have an impact here. So, too, could more training in nutrition. Many years ago—a lifetime ago now—I trained as a home economist. I studied nutrition. Many people who are involved in the welfare and care of pregnant mothers, including some midwives, have very little real knowledge of nutrition; very few actually know the importance of the correlation between calcium and phosphorus in the early laying-down in pregnancy of healthy bones and teeth et cetera.

My noble friend is right to get rid of this fund, but I hope he will talk to the Department of Health about how we can help in other ways to mitigate the problem that we have in this country: the tragic problem for many individual people of low birth-weights and premature babies.

Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Grand Committee

[Baroness Browning]

Will my noble friend confirm that, in the event of the Treasury not using the OBR’s forecast, it will give a full explanation of why it differed from the office’s views?

[Lord Sassoon]

Yes, I can confirm that, although that is not in any way the expectation.

On the specific question of the ITEM Club and the model, the club will no longer have a statutory right to be given a copy of the Treasury model because that arose from the Industry Act 1975, which is being repealed. It will be for the Treasury to consider whether it continues to make the model available, but that will not be a statutory matter any more.

On how the arrangements between the OBR, the Treasury and other parts of government work, that will be set out in the memorandum of understanding, including use of the Treasury economic model, although of course it is entirely at the discretion of the OBR as to what tools, models and methods it uses.

On the question of where the assumptions are to be found, I can certainly find them littered throughout the document published last week, including, for example, table 3.6 on page 67, which as I read it is a mixture of inputs and outputs. There are other assumptions made right through the document.

On the critical question of the approach to economic forecasting raised by the noble Lord, Lord Peston, that is summarised in paragraph 3.7 on page 28. I am glad that people find the Treasury monthly report on the latest independent forecasts useful. It is intended that the Treasury will continue to publish that document and make it available on the Treasury website.

I think that the construct between the Bill and the charter covers all the issues on transparency, something that we all seek, and I suggest that the evidence so far of the OBR in practice means that we should have confidence in that construct. On that basis, I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, there will not be another official internal forecast. There will be the forecast of the OBR, but that does not mean that the Treasury should not have the capability to—and it will—look at underlying assumptions on which the forecast is based, to make sure that it understands where the OBR is coming from and feels comfortable with it. There will not be some other internal official forecast; there will merely be a capability within the Treasury—and it is important that there should be such a capability—whereby Treasury officials can look at and understand the assumptions on which the OBR’s forecast is made. That will not require, and there is no intention for, the Treasury to produce any separate forecast of its own.

[Baroness Browning]

My earlier question came from reading the evidence of Professor Wren-Lewis to the Select Committee. He considered that if,

“the Treasury decides that the OBR model is wrong in some sense, I think basically then it is up to the Treasury to decide whether it wants to move to an alternative model or an alternative way of doing things whereby it produces its own forecast and does not rely on the OBR”.

I understand that the Government accepted that when they responded to the Treasury Committee. That was what prompted my earlier question.

[Baroness Noakes]

Perhaps I may suggest to my noble friend that much of the debate in Committee has been concerned with establishing that the OBR is properly independent of the Treasury. One of the corollaries of having an OBR that is properly independent and that we are all jolly keen to see in a separate building, with staff who are not too intertwined with the Treasury, is that the Treasury will have given away the ability to make some its own appraisals of the economic position. Clearly, it cannot leave itself completely denuded. It would be frankly ludicrous if, in setting up the OBR as a completely independent body to inform the public debate and to be the official forecaster, as my noble friend the Minister has repeatedly said, we left the Treasury with no internal capability to judge for itself whether or not it was happy with what was coming out of the OBR. It would therefore be entirely logical for the Treasury to retain some forecasting capability. In extremis, the Treasury may wish to rest its judgments on its internal forecasts, rather than those produced by the independent OBR, but even without those extreme conditions the Treasury will need to be satisfied that what is coming from the OBR is fit for the purpose of decision-making.

Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2010 Grand Committee

[Lord Sassoon]

First of all, of course I take everything that is being raised this afternoon extremely seriously, but it would not be helpful to the Committee if I said, in some sort of Panglossian way and in approving terms, that I was equally sympathetic to all the points that were being raised. Points will be raised in this Committee to which I shall be more or less sympathetic and I shall try to give some indication of that, because I do not think that it is helpful to the Committee’s consideration, or to noble Lords at Report, if I just give an equally sympathetic ear to all points regardless of whether I believe that they have merit.

I am sorry that I failed to get across the key simplicities of where we are on Clause 1 and the proposed amendments, but the Bill’s purpose, which has been widely recognised, is to bring a new degree of independence to the construction of the forecast and to the establishment of whether the Government are likely to meet their fiscal policy mandate. Those are huge advances on where we have come from and the Bill is very much focused on that. Clause 1 and the linkage to the charter are all about that.

This Government have many other transparency objectives, but it is not the objective of the OBR and this Bill to stray into other areas related to economic policy-making. The purpose of the budget responsibility parts of the Bill is very much focused on the central core mandate of the OBR. Of course, it would be possible to turn the charter for budget responsibility into a much wider analysis of government economic policy, but that is not the charter’s purpose, nor is it the purpose of the Bill. The discussions about intergenerational transfer of fairness and all those things are important issues, but the key element for the consideration of Clause 1 is that the charter sets the appropriate and focused background in which the OBR can do its work.

We have set out a new and unprecedented set of objectives for fiscal policy, but it is not they but the mandate that flows from them that is the critical element. I am listening to questions about the drafting of the objectives, and I shall consider those carefully in the charter, but that is a very different matter from requiring in the Bill a direct linkage through to economic policy objectives.

[Baroness Browning]

Does my noble friend recall the concern expressed by the Treasury Committee when Sir Alan Budd appeared before it and the regrets expressed by Sir Alan when the interim OBR strayed into the area of employment forecasting? The feeling was that that was very unhelpful to the credibility and reputation of the OBR.

[Lord Sassoon]

I am grateful to my noble friend for reminding us that the OBR should be set a focused mandate. It is then up to the OBR what it considers is appropriate, in its analysis, to explain as background to the mandate that it has been given. It is clearly neither necessary nor helpful to give this Bill different purposes from those that it has—to set a remit for the Office for Budget Responsibility, which is what the charter intends to do, and only that.

Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, I support both parts of the Bill, but there are issues which I hope my noble friend on the Front Bench will be able to answer in Committee. To put the Office for Budgetary Responsibility on to a statutory footing is undoubtedly a good thing, but as we have heard, the office’s remit is ambitious to say the least. It is therefore important not only that it develops and maintains a reputation for trust, reliability and transparency, but also that the structure which is put in place resolves from the beginning some of the difficulties that have unfortunately arisen while it has been on a non-statutory footing.

I want to ask first about Clause 9 and the right to information given to the Office for Budgetary Responsibility. The Minister mentioned in his opening remarks that there is to be a memorandum of understanding between the OBR and the Treasury. I assume that such a memorandum will extend to other government departments such as the Department for Work and Pensions, which would almost certainly be another department where there will need to be a similar arrangement. Further, as my noble friend Lady Noakes pointed out, there is also the question of the Bank of England. There is a clear interface and how it is to be managed is very important.

More particularly, the word “reasonable” is writ large throughout Clause 9. That is a good thing. I am not a lawyer, but I am aware that lawyers love the word “reasonable” because it is open to many interpretations and is one on which many decisions are made. Can my noble friend advise the House today whether, in light of the reasonableness I have just mentioned and the detail of the subsections of this clause, the memorandum of understanding will be made available to noble Lords before we start our detailed scrutiny of this clause in Committee? It is always helpful when passing legislation, if something as important as this is going to come up, that we can anticipate that it is going to be available. It will be of interest not only to noble Lords but, I am sure, to another place. I am sure, too, that members of the Treasury Select Committee would also have an interest. I ask this because it seems to me that the future reputation and integrity of the OBR will depend on its ability to access and use information.

On that last point, Clause 9(4) quite properly states:

“This section is subject to any enactment or rule of law which operates to prohibit or restrict the disclosure of information or the giving of any assistance or explanation”.

I think we can all understand why the provision is there, but has my noble friend thought through how the OBR will deal with freedom of information requests when, for example, it is in receipt of information it has obtained from other government departments in order to carry out its own duties and fulfil its responsibilities? How will this interface with other government departments affect the OBR’s ability to respond to FOI requests before it publishes information and data?

I turn now to the second part of the Bill. Having for many years had the privilege of serving, along with a colleague on the Labour Benches of your Lordships’ House, on the Public Accounts Committee, I have a particular interest in the move to introduce corporate governance into the National Audit Office. I hold the National Audit Office in the highest regard. Its work is some of the finest that we produce in this country and it is an exemplar internationally. It was always a great privilege to be able to study its reports, although they sometimes seemed to come thick and fast.

The Tiner report in 2008 has already been mentioned. It was given a warm response by the Public Accounts Commission. By introducing this measure into this Bill, rather than picking up clauses from a former Bill which did not proceed, have the Government benchmarked this section against the Tiner report and, in particular, against the Public Accounts Commission’s response to the Tiner report? The commission made some important points and set out three particular issues that it felt should be looked at in terms of how corporate governance was introduced. The commission said:

“The C&AG must have the authority to form completely independent judgements about the audits and value for money and other studies conducted by the NAO and the presentation of these to Parliament”.

It went on to point out:

“The NAO must maintain systems of governance and internal controls consistent with best practice, applied in ways which do not fetter its independence from Government, and to report publicly on these systems in its Annual Report”.

The Public Accounts Commission pointed out that those two objectives are not quite compatible. I hope that my noble friend has struck the right balance in bringing forward these measures in the Bill. As the commission said in its third point, it is clear that:

“The NAO must conduct its work according to relevant auditing and professional standards and prevailing best practice”.

It is somewhat ironic that the NAO, which must be like Caesar's wife in the way that it conducts its own affairs, has for so long been without the protection of what I believe is put into the corporate governance of this legislation and which will be very helpful to it.

My noble friend Lady Noakes mentioned the board that would be introduced. The Public Accounts Commission, in its response to the Tiner report, expressed some concerns. It said:

“We have considered carefully the extent to which the C&AG should be constrained by the Board as regards the overall strategy of the NAO and control over resources. In our view it is important that the Board should not be able to prevent the C&AG conducting an audit which he or she considered necessary or oblige the C&AG to undertake an audit which he or she did not regard as of sufficient priority”.

I totally support that and hope that my noble friend will reassure me about the independence of the C&AG. It is the case that the NAO submits to the Public Accounts Committee lists of reports that it is engaged in. Those are debated in another place. It is at the discretion of the Public Accounts Committee which reports it uses for evidence sessions. It is also an important part of that flexibility and the responsibility of the C&AG that there have been times when the Public Accounts Committee itself has proposed to the NAO reports that it believes should be brought forward. For the independence of the Public Accounts Committee, it is important that it can collectively go to the Comptroller and Auditor-General and ask through him or her that the NAO should carry out certain studies that are deemed to be particularly important.

I support this legislation, but I hope my noble friend will reassure me that these matters will be addressed when we get to Committee stage and that he will bring forward more information on the sharing of information between particularly the Treasury—but also other government departments—and the Office for Budget Responsibility.

Comprehensive Spending Review

Baroness Browning Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. I apologise to my noble friend the Minister; I very much regret that I arrived just after he had sat down. However, I was here for the opening speech from the Labour Benches and am pleased to say that I heard it in full.

It was a great pleasure to listen to the maiden speeches today from my noble friend Lord Allan of Hallam and the noble Baroness, Lady Nye. I am looking forward to hearing the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Healy of Primrose Hill, in due course. This is the first speech that I have made since my introduction and maiden speech to your Lordships’ House.

The CSR is extremely radical and wide-reaching. We all appreciate that. I expected there to be challenges and criticism of it on all sides of the House; indeed, I alert my noble friend the Minister to the fact that I have one or two criticisms myself, on disability, which I will come to in a moment. None the less, I have been surprised by the collective amnesia on the Labour Benches. It is almost as though, after 6 May, the mists of Brigadoon descended over the Labour Party, not just in this House but in another place. I have observed some of its debates on the inheritance—the state of the economy and the state of the country generally as it was left by the outgoing Labour Government. I was in another place for many years. I understand what a bitter pill it is to swallow when you lose office. It takes a little adjustment. Sometimes I think that a period of quiet reflection is not too harmful. However, I have been surprised tonight by the total collective denial that there is a problem of the scale that has required the sort of actions that the coalition Government have needed to make in this CSR.

The thrust of the CSR is absolutely right and the scale of the problem is as outlined. It is not political shenanigans. We have a serious problem. In his opening speech, the noble Lord, Lord Myners, said that the problem with the national economy was sometimes likened to a domestic situation, which he did not feel was appropriate. That may well be the case, but every household in this country understands that, if you borrow and borrow on your credit cards to the extent that you have to take out new credit cards to service the debt on the existing ones, there is a problem that must be addressed. We now need to borrow to service debt that we have already incurred.

The questions—your Lordships have addressed them in this debate—are of the scale, the timing, the measures and the choices. All of them are quite legitimately subject to a debate on how the coalition Government have brought forward their proposals. The main thrust is right, but I will draw to the House’s attention some issues about how they are put into practice.

The Government have certain options. They can look at taxation and at cutting expenditure, which, of course, they have done. It is much easier to cancel projects that are already in the pipeline, many of which did not carry a purse of money to fund them, but nationally it is not popular to cut something that has already been announced or of which people have an expectation. However, these are perhaps some of the easier ways to bring down expenditure.

I wish to draw to your Lordships’ attention and that of my noble friend the fact that in another place I spent several years on the Public Accounts Committee, where, twice a week, we received well researched and well presented reports from the National Audit Office on matters right across government. The reputation of the National Audit Office, across the parties, was that it was reliable. You paid attention to its findings. I want to talk about the reports on procurement that we received. There is a systemic problem with procurement on larger projects across government departments. It is not just a matter of cutting expenditure, because the Government will still be spending money, as we know; it is a matter of addressing these problems. They go right down to basics. They involve how procurement works, how contracts are issued, how the specifications are drawn up prior to contract, how the project is managed—sometimes the project management goes on for many years—and how a project is delivered on time and on budget.

In some departments—I have to name the Ministry of Defence as being the worst—there has been the most outrageous waste of public money. We are not just talking about a few beans; we are talking about big sums of money. If we can address this problem, I believe that it will make a huge contribution to the need for the Government to bear down on waste, on the way in which public money is spent and getting value for money. The House will be relieved to hear that I shall not go into all the issues, but that is something that needs to be addressed.

People who come into politics from a business background, whether to your Lordships’ House or another place, often find the legislative process frustrating. There is no doubt that what happens in the two Houses is very different from what happens in the business world. I came from a manufacturing background, having worked for a market leader, after which I ran my own business for 10 years. I found it very frustrating. Often people make comparisons with business, saying, “Business does things this way and we need to be more businesslike”. We have not even scratched the surface as regards the way in which the Government do business and procurement. Businesses out there would have gone bust years ago if they had followed the procedures that government departments follow in procurement. Everyone has heard of the classics, such as the big IT project. I am glad to have my noble friend here, who I am sure will point us in the right direction. However, it is not just about expenditure, although we are concentrating on that in this take-note debate; it is about the consequences for those who are the end users of those policies and procurements. I urge my noble friend to take some specialised advice to ensure that, in the future, the Government address these problems and get them right.

Taxation is another arrow in the quiver. As someone who believes that tax should be used as much as an incentive as a penalty, I hope that in the next few years the Minister will bear in mind, in the interests of fairness, the need to ensure that taxation and bureaucracy do not overburden particularly the small business sector, on which I believe he will rely quite considerably for the growth that is being talked about in today’s debate. This is where the jobs and growth will come from. One of the big problems that we face in this country is with the growth of small businesses into medium-sized enterprises. Other countries have been much better than us in the past at making that leap from small business to medium-sized business. Again, I ask my noble friend to take a look at the microbusinesses that employ fewer than five people. I particularly draw attention to the requirements on them in providing pensions for staff, but there will be other areas as well. If we really want those businesses to grow, we need to ensure that we recognise that point.

My final point is about disability. I thought that the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, was very well made. It is a fact that there is no like-for-like comparison between people who are in residential care and people who are hospitalised. When we talk of residential care, all too often we think of very elderly, infirm people who cannot move and whom it would be difficult to take out. However, there are many people who are able get out to lead lives at some level of independence and maintain family contacts.

In that spirit, on disability, I say to my noble friend that one group of 250,000 people are still on severe disablement allowance, a benefit that was stopped in 2001. They were allocated that benefit at the time because they were deemed to have lifelong disabilities. Many of them—most of them, I would suggest—have never been in work. I declare an interest as a carer for one such adult. When we talk about getting people back into work, it is very worrying to me, as a carer. I am not saying that all of them could not be helped into some sort of work, but the nature of their lifelong disabilities—I am speaking particularly about conditions such as autism and people on the autistic spectrum—means that these are not people to whom we will be doing any service if we suddenly turn up one day and say, “It’s time for you to go to work after 38 years”. I hope that my noble friend will take that into account.