Autumn Budget 2024
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, this first Budget from a woman has some good news for women, as we have already heard, especially the investment in our much-depleted public services—though sadly not nearly enough in social care—the very welcome improvements to carer’s allowance and the increase in the national living wage. But, important as it is, a living wage has less effect on poverty than is often assumed. Women are the main shock absorbers of poverty, which has grown so much worse under the Conservatives. Yet it was mentioned only once in the Budget speech and there has been considerable disappointment among charities that the Budget did not promise more.
That is not to discount the positives. There is the new fair debt repayment rate for universal credit, although the money will still have to be repaid eventually and the five-week waiting period which accounts for many of those debts must be tackled. There is the extension of the household support fund, although there is no mention of work on a longer-term plan for local crisis support, and additional investment in free breakfasts, but nothing on free school meals.
We are told that these represent downpayments on the plan to drive down poverty being drawn up by the child poverty task force, whose work I warmly applaud. After 14 years of slash and burn policies, which have, according to CPAG—of which I am president—cut £50 billion a year from social security, experts agree that social security has to be central to such a plan. To quote Brian, a benefit claimant from the Changing Realities project, these
“positive steps … do not tackle the core issues of inadequacy within our social security system”.
Of course, rebuilding social security cannot be done overnight. But surely it was possible to address now the two interrelated key drivers of child poverty, including deep poverty—the two-child limit and the benefit cap—without awaiting the full strategy. There was not even a commitment to the inflation proofing of the cap to prevent it hitting harder and trapping more struggling families whenever benefits are uprated. Seven out of 10 of those caught are lone parents, mainly women. As the Resolution Foundation warns,
“leaving the two-child limit and the benefit cap intact even for the next five months prolongs the burden on low-income families … and intensifies the effect as new families are affected”.
And what a burden it is for mothers struggling daily to meet their children’s needs. The foundation estimates that 63,000 more children will be hit by the two-child limit by April, and there is no hint that it will even be scrapped then. That is 109 a day, according to CPAG. The continued freeze in the local housing allowance is also disappointing, given the extent to which private sector rents are contributing to high poverty levels. Instead of hope of future repair of the shredded social security system, those claiming disability and sickness-related benefits face possible further cuts, which is causing considerable anxiety. Yet, according to the Women’s Budget Group—of which I am a member and which has already been mentioned—disabled women are among those who have been hit hardest by Tory cuts.
The Chancellor is rightly asking those with the broadest shoulders—largely men—to forego some of their tax privileges, but many argue that she could have gone further and released the money needed to take more decisive action on poverty and inequality, in the interests of women and children. Without it, as Trussell warns, we will not end what the manifesto described as the “moral scar” of mass dependence on food banks. The case for transformative action is not only moral but economic, as it would bring cash into deprived communities and reduce pressure on services, and it is political, given inequality’s role in fuelling right-wing populism.
To conclude, in the Budget debate, the Work and Pensions Secretary promised a
“bold, ambitious, cross-Government strategy to tackle child poverty”
next spring, but that
“we will not wait to act, particularly for those facing the deepest poverty”.—[Official Report, Commons, 4/11/24; col. 68.]
These are encouraging words. All I ask is that we act more resolutely now.
Spring Budget 2024
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(8 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, the message I get from anti-poverty, children’s and women’s organisations in response to the Budget is one of weary disappointment. They are weary because here is yet another Budget that fails to put first the interests of those for whom they speak, and there is disappointment because, as the cost of living payments come to an end, living costs are still a life-sapping struggle for those on low incomes—witness the unprecedented numbers turning to food banks, and the evidence of tired and hungry children in schools. These organisations had hoped for more.
There are some welcome crumbs, including the abolition of the debt relief order charge and the extension of the universal credit budgeting advance loan repayment period, although the latter touches only the surface of UC’s deeper problems. Welcome too is the last-minute reprieve for the household support fund, but giving local authorities only 26 days’ notice and then creating a new cliff edge in September is not an effective or efficient way to plan local crisis support. It is particularly alarming for those living in the 37 English authorities that no longer run a discretionary local welfare assistance scheme, which replaced the national Social Fund.
Rather than lurch from cliff edge to cliff edge, would it not make sense to integrate the temporary fund with local welfare assistance, creating a single statutory scheme, centrally funded, on a multiyear and ring-fenced basis, with clear guidance, but still providing local authorities with some discretion as to how the money should be spent? I should be grateful if the Minister could take this suggestion back to the relevant department.
The additional money announced for the next two years for childcare will certainly help—Commons Ministers seem to have forgotten that it was the previous Labour Government who first recognised government responsibility for childcare—but it will not fill the gap between what providers receive per hour and the real cost of delivering those hours. This is according to the Women’s Budget Group, of which I am a member, wearing my academic hat.
I welcome the rise in the child benefit high income charge threshold and the smoother taper. However, while I certainly recognise the unfairness created by the present system, I do not believe that the answer is to jettison the important principle of independent taxation. After all, this was pioneered by a Conservative Government back in 1990, and endorsed by the Minister the other week. Moreover, as tax experts have warned, and the Chancellor has conceded, it will require significant reform to the tax system. Such reforms are likely to pose considerable administrative problems. If introduced on a cost-neutral basis, they would create as many losers as gainers, according to the IFS. I ask that the consultation include the option of abolishing the charge altogether.
As the Minister said, and to quote the Chancellor, child benefit
“is a lifeline for many parents because it helps with the additional costs associated with having children. When it works, it is good for children, good for parents, and good for the economy because it helps people into work”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/3/24; col.850]
In the words of Sebastian Payne of Onward:
“There would be no greater sign that Hunt and Sunak are on the side of families”.
Reversion to universal child benefit, supported by the Conservative Party in the past, would also do more for the simplification the Chancellor seeks, according to his letter to Peers.
The traditional rabbit in the hat, which jumped out prematurely this year, was the cut in NICs. True to form, this particular rabbit favoured the better off rather than the worse off and men rather than women. It is difficult to see how this could have been a priority over investment in our crumbling public services, social care, housing and a social security system which fails to provide genuine security. As it is, according to the Resolution Foundation, the scale of cuts to unprotected departments is equivalent to almost three-quarters of the size of those inflicted in the first austerity Parliament. This will mean more cuts for local authorities. I speak as a citizen of Nottingham, which faces the heartbreaking destruction of vital public and voluntary services, jobs, parks, the arts and libraries, hitting women in particular, as workers, service users and unpaid care providers.
The Chancellor has made clear his longer-term ambition to scrap NICs altogether. We now learn that the Prime Minister hopes to fund this through a further squeeze on social security benefits, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont. This again is a repeat of how social security claimants were demonised and how benefit cuts paid for tax cuts at the height of austerity, leaving a social security system not worthy of the name.
Moreover, in framing the scrapping of NICs as a simplifying tax cut, the Government appear to be indifferent to the implications for not just pensions but working-age contributory benefits. It took the Daily Telegraph to observe that:
“It would completely remove even a semblance of the contributory principle”.
As a letter to the i newspaper warned, this could represent a nudge towards private insurance, the only alternative being means-tested UC, with potentially damaging implications for women in couples’ independent social security entitlements. Can the Minister please clarify what the Government think this will mean for contributory benefits for working-age people, as well as pensioners?
Whether the Budget represents the final or penultimate fiscal event of what Tim Bale calls this “fag-end Government”, it underlines the need for a strategy that prioritises social justice in the interests of people in poverty, especially children, together with women and other marginalised groups.
Social Security (Contributions) (Limits and Thresholds, National Insurance Funds Payments and Extension of Veterans Relief) Regulations 2024
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The Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)
My Lords, these two sets of regulations are made each year to set the national insurance contributions—NICs—rates, limits and thresholds and to update tax credits, child benefit and the guardian’s allowance. First, the Social Security (Contributions) (Limits and Thresholds, National Insurance Funds Payments and Extension of Veterans Relief) Regulations 2024, which I will refer to, if I need to, as the social security SI, sets the NICs rates, limits and thresholds of a number of NICs classes for the 2024-25 tax year with all limits and thresholds remaining fixed at their existing level. The regulations also make provision for a Treasury grant to be paid into the National Insurance Fund, if required for the same tax year, which is a transfer of wider government funds to the National Insurance Fund, and for the veterans employer NICs relief to be extended for a year until April 2025. The scope of the regulations under discussion today is limited to the 2024-25 tax year.
NICs are social security contributions. They allow people to make contributions when they are in work and to receive contributory benefits when they are not working—for example, after they have retired or if they become unemployed. NICs receipts fund these contributory benefits, as well as supporting funding the NHS.
I will begin with NICs for employed and self-employed people. The primary threshold and lower profits limit are the points at which employees and the self-employed start paying employee class 1 and self-employed class 4 NICs respectively. At Autumn Statement 2022, the Government announced their intention to maintain the primary threshold’s alignment with the income tax personal allowance, with both rates being fixed at £12,570 until 2028.
Fixing the primary threshold at £12,570 does not affect an individual’s ability to build up entitlement towards contributory benefits, such as the state pension. For employees, this is determined by the lower earnings limit, which will remain at £6,396 per annum or £123 per week in 2024-25, and for self-employed people by the small profits threshold, which will remain at £6,725 in 2024-25. Fixing these thresholds will mean that more low-earning working people will gain entitlement to contributory benefits and build up qualifying years for their state pensions.
The upper earnings limit, the point at which the main rate of employee NICs drops to 2%, and the upper profits limit, the point at which the main rate of self-employed NICs drops to 2%, are aligned with the higher rate threshold for income tax at £50,270 per annum. It was announced previously that these thresholds would be fixed until April 2028 as part of the Government’s commitment to supporting the public finances.
These decisions are starting to pay off, with inflation falling, growth more resilient than expected this year and debt forecast to reduce. This makes it possible to return some money to working taxpayers, while keeping the public finances on track. As part of the Government’s long-term plan to grow the economy and reform the tax system, we are cutting taxes for 29 million working people. From 6 January 2024 onwards, the main employee rate of national insurance contributions was cut from 12% to 10% and, from 2024, the main rate of class 4 NICs for the self-employed will be reduced from 9% to 8%. These cuts have already been legislated for.
At Autumn Statement 2023, the Government also announced that, from 6 April 2024, self-employed people with profits above £12,570 will no longer be required to pay class 2 but will continue to accrue and receive access to contributory benefits, including the state pension. Those with profits between £6,725 and £12,570 will continue to get access to contributory benefits, including the state pension, through a national insurance credit, without paying NICs as they currently do. Those with profits under £6,725 who choose to pay class 2 NICs voluntarily to get access to contributory benefits, including the state pension, will be able to continue to do so.
Turning to employer NICs, the secondary threshold is the point at which employers start paying employer NICs on their employees’ salaries. At Autumn Statement 2022, the Chancellor announced that this threshold will remain at £9,100 in 2023-24 and will be fixed at this level until 2028. This supports the public finances while ensuring that the largest businesses pay the most. The employment allowance, which the Government raised from £4,000 to £5,000 in April 2022, means that the smallest 40% of businesses with an employer NICs liability pay no employer NICs at all. The employment allowance supports our smallest businesses to grow by helping them with employment costs. The thresholds for employers of employees eligible for NICs relief—the relief for employers of under-21s, under-25 apprentices, veterans and new employees in freeports and investment zones—have also been fixed in these regulations at their 2023-24 levels.
The majority of national insurance contributions are paid into the National Insurance Fund, which is used to pay state pensions and other contributory benefits. The Treasury has the ability to transfer funds from wider government reserves into the National Insurance Fund. The regulations also therefore make provision for a transfer of this kind, known as a Treasury grant, of up to 5% of forecasted annual benefit expenditure to be paid into the National Insurance Fund, if needed, during 2024-25. A similar provision will be made in respect of the Northern Ireland National Insurance Fund. The Government Actuary’s Department report, which was laid alongside these regulations, states that the Treasury grant is not forecast to be required in 2024-25, so it is being legislated for as a precautionary measure, because the Government consider it prudent to make provision at this stage. This is consistent with previous years.
The regulations also make provision for the NICs relief for employers of veterans to be extended for a year until April 2025. This measure means that businesses pay no employer NICs on salaries up to the veterans’ upper secondary threshold of £50,270 for the first year of a qualifying veteran’s employment in a civilian role. This relief is part of the Government’s commitment to make the UK the best place in the world to be a veteran and it is intended to further incentivise employers to take advantage of the wide range of skills and experience that ex-military personnel offer.
I will refer to the second statutory instrument, the Tax Credits, Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Regulations 2024, as the “tax credits SI”. The Government are committed to delivering a welfare system that is fair for claimants and taxpayers, while providing a strong safety net for those who most need it. These regulations will ensure that the benefits for which Treasury Ministers are responsible and that His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs delivers are uprated by inflation, in April 2024. Tax credits, child benefit and guardian’s allowance will increase in line with the consumer prices index, or CPI, which had inflation at 6.7% in the year to September 2023. Uprating by the preceding September’s CPI is the Government’s typical approach.
In summary, the proposed legislation fixes all the limits and thresholds for NICs at their 2023-24 levels for the 2024-25 tax year. It makes provisions for a Treasury grant, extends NICs relief for veterans’ employers and increases the rates of tax credits, child benefit and guardian’s allowance in line with prices. This legislation enacts announcements from the Autumn Statement and previous fiscal events. I beg to move.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I will make a couple of brief points about child benefit. While of course I welcome the inflation-proofing after all the speculation there has been about it, it is important to put on record that it still represents a cut in the real value of child benefit since 2010, according to the Child Poverty Action Group, of which I am honorary president. Even allowing for this uprating, child benefit needs to rise by 25% to restore its real value.
I can remember when child benefit was introduced. I was working at the Child Poverty Action Group at the time, and child benefit replaced personal tax allowances as well as the family allowance. The Conservative Party then accepted the argument that child benefit should be thought of as, in effect, a tax allowance for children and treated the same as personal tax allowances. An increase in the real value of child benefit now could represent an effective way to target a tax cut on those below the tax threshold, whose needs are the greatest. Given that there is all this speculation about tax cuts, that would be my recommendation.
I realise that this is not part of the SI that we are debating, but the speculation that the Chancellor is also looking, for the Budget, at the high-income charge on child benefit is relevant. The threshold has not been uprated since the charge was introduced in 2013, so fiscal drag means that a growing number of basic rate taxpayers are now affected, whereas it was originally intended purely for those who are considered better off. Could the Minister give us an update on the numbers who have been pulled into the charge—perhaps not now, because I recognise that she may not have the figures here, but in a letter, because it would be good to know where exactly we are at?
Personally, I would like to see the end of the high-income charge on child benefit, because it compromises important principles of universality in child benefit and of independent taxation, as the Women’s Budget Group pointed out. At the very least, the threshold should be restored to its original value. I hope the Minister will convey that message to the Treasury.
Lord Sharkey (LD)
My Lords, I will speak first to the draft social security contributions SI. Let me say at the outset that we support this instrument. However, we regret the announcement in the 2022 Autumn Statement that all NIC rates that are in line with income tax will be fixed at the 2023-24 levels until 2027-28.
This instrument is simply part of the long and damaging freeze of all the main personal tax thresholds across the entire period of the OBR forecast. HMT’s policy paper of 21 November 2022—Income Tax Personal Allowance and the Basic Rate Limit, and Certain National Insurance Contributions Thresholds from 6 April 2026 to 5 April 2028—is relevant here. The paper notes the fixing of thresholds up to and including the 2027-28 tax year, after which the default position is that they will rise by CPI inflation. It then goes on to say:
“This measure is expected to bring 92,000 individuals into Income Tax and 55,000 into paying NICs by 2027 to 2028”.
It also asserts:
“This measure is not expected to impact on family formation, stability or breakdown”.
These are very strong assertions. Can the Minister set out the evidence for them?
Carers in England
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Baroness Penn (Con)
I will happily take the suggestion from the noble Baroness back. I, or perhaps someone else in the Government, could meet her to discuss it. She talked about many people juggling unpaid care with working responsibilities. That is why I am pleased that the Government are backing the Private Member’s Bill on carer’s leave, which will provide one week’s unpaid leave for carers.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, carer’s allowance is the lowest benefit of its kind. Research by Carers UK found many unpaid carers in poverty and struggling to make ends meet. Why, therefore, do the Government continue to refuse calls from Carers UK and others to raise the real value of carer’s allowance if, as they claim, they genuinely recognise and value the work that carers do?
Tax Credits, Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance Up-rating Regulations 2023
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I wish to speak to the child benefit uprating regulations, which of course I welcome, as there had been fears that the Government would resile from the convention that the benefit should be uprated in line with inflation. Before we get carried away, however, it is important to remember that even after this increase, child benefit will be worth over 16% less than it was in 2010, due to its having been cut and frozen. Do the Government ever intend to make good that cut, the product of austerity policy, which disproportionately hit children in a number of ways?
Earlier this month in the Commons, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury emphasised that
“Child benefit is an incredibly important form of state assistance”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/2/23; col. 200WH.]
Last year, in your Lordships’ House the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, stated
“Child benefit ensures that families receive predictable, consistent support from the Government for the additional costs of raising a child”
and went on to say
“the Government are committed to making the benefit system simple and navigable for claimants. Child benefit is therefore a simple and well-understood benefit, paid at a consistent flat rate to parents”.—[Official Report, 8/7/22; cols. 1213-14.]
That is certainly true in theory, and was so in practice in the past, but try telling that today to those caught by the high-income child benefit charge which passed—I will not say celebrated—its 10th birthday last month. That 10th birthday was marked by highly critical pieces in the Sunday Times and the Telegraph, the latter referring to the charge’s bizarre rules. I resist the temptation to make the case against the charge in principle, other than to remind noble Lords that it is not only a parent’s child benefit that can be at stake but their pension credit, if they do not claim child benefit because of the charge.
Instead, I want to focus on the fact that the £50,000 to £60,000 income band, above which child benefit is withdrawn, is exactly the same in cash terms as it was when introduced 10 years ago. According to the Resolution Foundation, the recent note of which I am drawing on, if uprated in line with CPI the figures today would be £64,000 and £77,000. This total freeze in the threshold has serious, and in some cases bizarre, consequences.
The Resolution Foundation estimates that
“around 2 million families, or 1-in-4 … of those with children, will have some Child Benefit effectively partially or fully withdrawn because one person has an income over £50,000”.
This compares to one in eight when the charge was introduced 10 years ago. In other words, the proportion of those with children affected has doubled. It estimates that one in 13 families—that is 600,000—has someone earning between £50,270 and £60,000, and thus experience high marginal tax rates of 55% for one child, 63% for two children, and 71% for three children, with a further eight percentage points for each additional child.
The Resolution Foundation describes
“a relatively small, but rapidly rising, number of families”
who are in the bizarre position of being entitled to universal credit while also having their child benefit withdrawn. It argues that the result is
“truly punitive marginal deduction rates”
of 80% for those with one child, 83% for those with two children and 87% for those with three. In practice, the rates could be even higher, but I will spare noble Lords the additional complications.
UC recipients affected are likely to have high rents or childcare costs. In the absence of official figures, the foundation estimates that, from April, roughly 50,000 families will fall into the child benefit charge/UC trap, and that there could be 90,000 by the end of the decade. Can the Minister confirm these estimates, and say how the Government justify this state of affairs? Is the Resolution Foundation correct to say that the charge thresholds are currently set to be “frozen forever”, given that there is no statutory obligation even to review them? Will she take back to the Treasury the message that it is high time they were reviewed, even in the absence of such a statutory obligation?
The Resolution Foundation rightly describes this as “a serious design flaw”, and argues that
“no rational policy maker would ever have drawn up the current system”.
It warns:
“Unless we are to accept that ever-more families will face a £10,000 stretch of income where there is no point in seeking higher earnings, the Government will have to fix this situation”.
Not to do so, it suggests, is “unserious”.
I cannot believe that a Government who care so much about incentives and marginal tax rates are willing to countenance the continuation of a situation that can only get worse at the expense of a growing number of families with children. At the very least, the Chancellor should announce a rise in the thresholds in next month’s Budget.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I too thank the Minister for setting out these two instruments. I also thank my noble friend Lady Lister for her attention to the detail of these matters and to the ease with which an apparently rational change can compound itself through the complexity of the rules into extremely unhelpful marginal tax rates. I hope the Minister will give her some comfort that there will be some review in the foreseeable future of the very high marginal tax rates emanating from these complex rules.
The Minister outlined an increase in tax credits, child benefit and guardian’s allowance of 10.1%—that is, CPI inflation between September 2021 and September 2022. While acknowledging that further instruments are to come on other social security benefits, I will make some general points about the current economic context and the Government’s approach.
Families across the country have faced an incredibly difficult time of late, with household bills climbing significantly. Although there has been energy support for low-income households, there has not been equivalent help as they face soaring food, phone and broadband bills. Food inflation has been running at far higher than 10% for many months, leading many households to cut back and to a worrying number of parents skipping meals to provide for their children.
The Government’s reluctance to commit to the usual uprating process when asked has caused a significant amount of anxiety for social security claimants across the country. For months, successive Prime Ministers and Chancellors—we have had many of each—ducked the question and even floated alternatives such as lower percentage increases or lump-sum payments. We are glad that the current Chancellor finally did the right thing, but I hope the Minister will acknowledge that months of indecision were not helpful for household planning or people’s mental health.
The second instrument gives effect to the annual re-rating of national insurance contribution rates, limits and thresholds. Although the Autumn Statement fixed many of those rates limits and thresholds at the 2022-23 level, some of them—class 2 and class 3 contributions—were increased by 10.1%. This will bring tens of thousands of individuals into national insurance by the 2027-28 tax year. However, the Government have not been prepared to specify what the practical impact will be. The statutory instrument’s Explanatory Memorandum refers to a small tax increase in cash terms but, with household budgets as stretched as they are, any increase is likely to cause concern. This was the subject of a debate in another place, but Minister Atkins was unable to provide a figure. Can the Minister do so today?
We do not oppose these measures, so I will not detain the Committee any longer. However, once again, I hope that the Minister will acknowledge that the Government could have provided certainty sooner. Let us hope that they do better later this year.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their contributions to today’s debate.
I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, recognised the significant uprating of child benefit brought forward in these regulations. I note her point about the overall value of child benefit if you look at it over a longer time period. Child benefit is one of many ways in which the Government support families with children. Over the same period, we have introduced other significant measures, such as free school meals for infants and 30 hours of free childcare.
On the figures and analysis that the noble Baroness brought forward on the child benefit high-income charge, I am afraid that I cannot confirm them as they go beyond the scope of the regulations we are discussing, but I will take her comments back to the Treasury and ensure that they are considered properly.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for that. However, can I also point out that there may be other forms of support but, in terms of financial support for children, it is not just child benefit that has been cut in real terms? All financial support for children has been cut in real terms: tax credits, universal credit, whatever. The fact is that families with children have been disproportionately hit by austerity.
Baroness Penn (Con)
In some ways, that takes me on to the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, about the broader decision to uprate benefits by 10.1%, which has been welcomed across both Houses, at a time when families face significant pressures. That process followed the normal course for the uprating of benefits.
It is important to recognise that other significant support has been put in place at the same time to help those families to which the noble Lord referred. This includes not just energy support through the £400 energy bills support scheme and the £150 council tax rebate scheme for most households living in a property in council tax bands A to D; it also includes the targeting of support for millions of the most vulnerable households through cost of living payments, which were targeted specifically at those on means-tested benefits, pensioners and those who receive disability benefits, who are less able to meet those cost of living pressures. That has been at the forefront of the Government’s mind. Benefits uprating has been an important part of addressing that, but we took action in advance of the uprating; that support continues into next year.
Financial Inclusion in England
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Baroness Penn (Con)
We absolutely want citizens to invest more and we have products, for example to help those on lower incomes form saving habits. We also want institutional investors to invest more in this country, which is why we are taking action on things such as Solvency II.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, the primary cause of financial exclusion is poverty. What exactly is the Government’s anti-poverty strategy?
Living Standards: Inequality
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what policy lessons can be learned from the forecast of growing inequality in the Resolution Foundation report Living Standards 2017.
The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)
My Lords, according to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics, income inequality in the UK is at its lowest level since 1986. The key to economic success and to reducing inequality is to improve productivity, which determines living standards in the long run. That is why the Government have established a national productivity investment fund and published a Green Paper on an industrial strategy, highlighting the role of improved skills, infrastructure investment and R&D.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, the Resolution Foundation argues that preventing the biggest increase in inequality since the 1980s requires a shift in social policy choices, notably the freeze in most working-age benefits in the face of rising inflation. Will the Government now follow the advice of Iain Duncan Smith and reconsider the freeze? He warned that it was never intended that it should have such a “dramatic effect on incomes”—his words. Would that not be the right thing to do, to protect low-income families in and out of work, for a Government who claim to be working for everyone?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
My Lords, I think we have to have a little context. Savings are necessary to reduce borrowing and to put the public finances back on a sustainable footing after the financial crisis. Between 1980 and 2014, spending on welfare trebled in real terms to £96 billion, while GDP increased by much less. Our approach is a different one. We are committed to supporting working families with a whole host of measures to get people back into work, to innovate, to grow and to put the country on a good footing. It is only a forecast from the Resolution Foundation. Forecasts are not always right, and we are determined to make the changes we need for this country.
Autumn Statement
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Lord Deighton
There were five questions there. First, I obviously accept the point that my noble friend makes about real wages, although wages exceeding inflation has been coming through only in the last year. He is absolutely right that the forecast from the OBR is that that will continue and that we will see earnings outstrip inflation, which would be a good thing.
Secondly, what is the story behind the spending cuts, which are quite significant? The simple story is that we plan to continue at the rate we have successfully implemented in this Parliament. We know that we can do it. In fact, we have managed to do it every year and still end up with an underspend. My right honourable friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office put out a paper this morning on how we will find another £10 billion of efficiency reforms on top of the nearly £15 billion that we have achieved in this Parliament. There will of course be a continuing review of welfare to ensure that we are focused on getting people back to work and that we are targeting those who really need to receive it. It represents a significant amount of our public expenditure, so that has to be part of the programme.
My noble friend asked whether we would effectively ring-fence the infrastructure investment. There is a commitment—effectively a fiscal rule—that we will retain public sector gross investment at a consistent level. If we stick to that, that is what will happen. Of course, the great success of all that we have accomplished is that so much of our infrastructure has been financed by the private sector, so it is not constrained by that measure anyway.
I think that postgraduate loans are a terrific initiative because not having money was becoming a constraint on people doing research. Therefore, that is a good thing on a number of grounds.
The multinational tax measure is looking at companies which put in place elaborate structures effectively to move their profits to offshore locations with a lower tax rate. The mechanism to capture that will dismantle those structures and look at the real profits, which we can then tax.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, like earlier Autumn and Budget Statements since 2012, there is no reference in this Statement to the likely impact of the measures on child poverty levels, despite the legal duty to eliminate child poverty by 2020. Can the Minister therefore tell your Lordships’ House what the impact of the two-year freeze in benefits for working-age families will be on child poverty levels? Also, how did that freeze fare when set against the new family test, particularly taking into account the significant reduction in the real value of benefits for children under this Government?
Lord Deighton
The fundamental approach of this Government to addressing poverty is to get people back into work and to ensure that real earnings recover and outstrip inflation, as we discussed earlier. In looking at the distributional analysis to see who is contributing towards the benefits, the top 20% pay more than the remaining 80%, so that is how the balance of our distribution looks.
Economic Inequality
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(10 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Newby
My Lords, the Government are encouraging employers to pay the living wage where they can. One of the key things about people in work on very low incomes is that a large proportion of them are working a small number of hours or a smaller number of hours than they would like. Economic growth will mean that more of those people are able to work longer hours, which will help deal with their household circumstances.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, not everyone is able to take paid work. Will the Minister explain what impact the raft of social security cuts, which will make the poor poorer, will have on inequality?
Lord Newby
My Lords, the prior question to that is: why are these changes being made? The answer is that we inherited a completely unsustainable economic circumstance which this Government are putting right.
Taxation: Personal Thresholds
Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Newby
My Lords, I do agree. The effect of what we have done is that by 2014-15 there will be a £705 cash benefit to low-income households, which even in real terms is well over £500. This has made a material difference to the income of people in those categories and is much to be welcomed.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, the Resolution Foundation has shown that in future the 3 million taxpayers on universal credit will receive only about one-third of what other taxpayers receive from an increase in tax thresholds, and the 5 million low-paid workers below the tax threshold of course receive nothing. Does the Minister agree that this is a singularly ill targeted policy for helping those on the lowest incomes, and will he consider alternative, more progressive policies instead?