National Insurance Contributions

Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Grade of Yarmouth

Monday 7th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, as I explained in my original Answer, the 6.1 million individuals earning less than the primary threshold will not pay the levy at all. In addition, in the analysis that I mentioned earlier, if you take the package together, both the levy and the spending that is ring-fenced for the health and social care system, lower-income households will be the largest net beneficiaries from this package, with the poorest households gaining the most.

[Lord Grade of Yarmouth (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree with me that those who call for a windfall on the oil companies would in fact be penalising the shareholders? And who are the shareholders? They are the pensioners of this country—they are the one who hold most of the shares in these oil companies.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, we have strayed more on to a windfall tax than I expected, but I say to my noble friend that he makes a good point. The issue of energy security is at the top of people’s minds at the moment. The Government see gas, for example, as part of our transition towards net zero. We want to allow people to invest in our North Sea oil and gas fields as part of that, so a windfall tax could also have a negative impact on that.

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Grade of Yarmouth

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Monday 7th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for this debate. I will turn first to the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Bethell. As noble Lords are aware, the Government introduced an amendment in Committee to enable adjustments to the date of commencement of the HFSS advertising restrictions, should emerging issues require it to be moved.

We will continue to work with regulators and businesses to ensure that guidance is produced promptly to support timely implementation; our intention remains to implement restrictions from 1 January 2023. We think that date balances ambition with the importance of sufficient time for business to prepare. However, limiting this flexibility to a period of only three months, as proposed by my noble friend’s amendment, would be counterproductive, as that timeframe may not allow us to respond adequately to any unforeseen challenges or ensure smooth delivery of this policy.

Turning to the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Moylan, I seek to reassure him that our current approach provides an overall assessment of the nutritional content of products, as it accounts for nutrients of concern as well as beneficial nutrients. As such, we consider it to be an effective mechanism for permitting healthier products to be advertised, while still restricting those which are less healthy overall. The detail of the products in scope will be underpinned by secondary legislation, which can provide the necessary detail and be adapted in response to future changes to products on the market. The Government will consult soon on this and other definitions included in the draft regulations, such as the small and medium enterprise exemption.

I turn now to the amendments on platform liability. The Government believe that the online advertising programme remains the best way to address such issues on an industry-wide basis, rather than in a piecemeal fashion. I am pleased to be able to confirm that the DCMS consultation, which should launch in the next fortnight, will examine the harms associated with paid-for advertising online and consider the measures that could apply to platforms and others in the supply chain in order to increase accountability and transparency.

It is our intention to legislate on those conclusions in this Parliament, as we share the view that it is the right time to put in place holistic measures to tackle platform liability. However, it is also right to bring forward powers in this Bill now, so that we can begin to tackle obesity via restrictions to TV, on-demand programme services and online, in line with current enforcement frameworks for advertising that are familiar to industry. Platforms are not able to pre-vet adverts in the same way that broadcasters can. We recognise that there is a need to address that issue, but to do so in the round.

Amending this Bill in relation to online platforms without wider consultation and at a late stage risks unintended consequences. Those could include undermining the clear responsibility of advertisers to adhere to the restrictions that we are debating; interfering with the competitive dynamics that apply across the online advertising supply chain; not addressing accountability and transparency issues that apply elsewhere in that ecosystem; the danger of the restrictions applying to a wide range of internet service providers beyond those intended, including intermediaries and publishers; and not providing regulators with the right tools, funding or structures to regulate effectively. Were this amendment to pass, the Government would need to consider very carefully whether implementation from 1 January 2023 remained possible. The risks posed by creating a more complicated regulatory framework are likely to result in a delay.

[Lord Grade of Yarmouth (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for giving way. Do the Government understand the difference between mass brand advertising on free-to-air linear television and the direct addressability to individuals online, where they have all the data—the address, postcode, email address and phone number—of the kids they are advertising to? The Government seem not to understand the pernicious nature of advertising online.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, in our 2020 consultation on advertising, we outlined our concerns about online targeting of adverts, so we did look at the approach suggested by my noble friend. There is no evidence to suggest that targeting online does not account for the use of shared devices and profiles between parents and children, the communal viewing of content or false reporting of children’s ages. This—combined with concerns around the accuracy of internet-based targeting and other behavioural data as a way of guessing a user’s age and a lack of transparency in reporting online—shows why the Government believe that we need to introduce these advertising restrictions online in the way that we have.

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Penn and Lord Grade of Yarmouth

Committee stage
Friday 4th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grade of Yarmouth (Con)]

Before my noble friend sits down, can she give the House some sense of what the Government would regard as success as a result of the advertising ban? Is there some target of reduction that they expect to see at the end of five years as a result of this ridiculous ban?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I believe that I said that the criteria for measuring the success of this policy have been set out in the impact assessment. I will happily send that to my noble friend. I do not think that it is a finalised list. We have discussed in this Committee the difficulty of assessing success, so we would not want to preclude new research or information that would help us to assess our approach better in future.

My noble friend was right in anticipating that I was about to conclude. This has been a substantial group of amendments—