National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill

Debate between Baroness Noakes and Lord Leigh of Hurley

Committee stage
Wednesday 29th January 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I want to comment briefly on whether we should have impact assessments, which has been a theme running through a number of amendments.

I know that the Minister has his set formula, which he will repeat again now. When he responded to the earlier amendments, he talked about finding precedents for not having impact assessments. I will go back and look at the details of those in Hansard, but, from memory, none of those changes produced the outcry that these sets of changes have produced. Businesses, charities and hospices are all telling us that this is a major disaster. So I believe that his precedents are not on all fours in this particular case; we ought not to be fobbed off by the fact that the Treasury has, over time, found it inconvenient to produce impact assessments. I cannot think of anything quite as damaging in the past to large sectors of the employed population and their employers, so we should not regard the Minister’s set formulation as an end to the story on impact assessments.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

I just ask: what are the Government afraid of? This is a sensible suggestion about assessing what the effect might be of an enormous change to every business and charity organisation in the country. If it is such a good thing—we are told that it is—verify it.