EU: Non-financial Services
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made on a trade deal between the United Kingdom and the European Union in respect of non-financial services.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)
My Lords, we have discussed non-financial services in all seven negotiating rounds to date and have identified large areas of common ground. However, in some areas the EU has been unable to match our ambition. In the interests of compromise, we have agreed to use the EU’s services proposal as the starting point for a text-based negotiation, although the Commission’s insistence on parallel progress in other areas is currently impeding our efforts to agree a consolidated text.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, a no deal for services would be disastrous for a sector already under immense strain from Covid. Does the Minister agree that, out of the range of concerns voiced by industries, including IT and creative services, it is essential that a suitable mobility framework is in place by the end of the year? For the music industry, will the Government negotiate a two-year, multi-entry visa, or ensure that the commitments in mode 4 are extended to include touring under the free-trade agreement? An appropriate solution for all services would be beneficial to both the EU and the UK.
Lord True (Con)
My Lords, I fully agree with the noble Earl on the importance of the creative industries, particularly music, for which he is such a doughty champion. Some of the points he raises today have been raised with my colleagues in DCMS, and there are difficulties. Monsieur Barnier has labelled some of our proposals, which I referred to in my Answer, as “freedom of movement for service suppliers”—which I hope shows that we are trying our level best to do the best. We are seeking to lock in, on a reciprocal basis, only arrangements that the UK already has with third countries.
Parliamentary Constituencies Bill
Earl of Clancarty ExcerptsMonday 27th July 2020
(3 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020 View all Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 14 July 2020 - (14 Jul 2020)
The Earl of Clancarty (CB) [V]
My Lords, the problem with a first past the post system is that there is no such thing as a fair constituency, let alone a fair constituency boundary. I am not a historian in these matters but, looking at the Second Reading of the Bill in the Commons and the mutual suspicion that arose during debate of what should surely be purely technical concerns, I can imagine that this mutual suspicion goes back through the ages.
I do not blame the Government that there is apprehension over the ruling party influencing the system; that is the nature of the system. PR would of course not just be hugely fairer but would mean less political interest in the problem of coherent constituencies, since it is the number of representatives for each polling district that is crucial, not the size of the electorate or the shape of the constituency. The tussle between 5%, 7.5% or 10% quota tolerances feels like another unnecessary battle, and under the present circumstances, this would be less so if all eligible voters were registered.
In Germany, everyone has to register—including, perhaps amazingly, if you are homeless—and that is the basis both of the electoral register and the calculation of the quota. In Britain, according to Electoral Commission research, 9.4 million people are missing from the electoral register—a whopping 17% of eligible voters, including the young, those who rent and those on low incomes. There is a lot of talk at the moment about how best to ensure that black and ethnic minorities are treated equally. I point out to the Minister that surely the best way to help those who are systemically disadvantaged is systemically, and that therefore we urgently need automatic voter registration.
I agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, about 16 year-olds. However, up to that point, boundaries should be based on census data to improve representation in areas with lower registration. In any case, MPs represent everyone in their constituency, whoever they are. What we do not require is forcing voters to provide photographic ID at polling stations, when voter fraud was committed by 0.000063% of the population, and 3.5 million people do not have photo ID.
On parliamentary oversight, I agree with the Constitution Unit when it says that allowing politicians any role in ratifying or blocking proposals runs counter to any democratic principle and that, irrespective of the voting system we currently have for general elections, we clearly need the boundaries reviewed and based on up-to-date data. However, it also says that
“automatic implementation is clearly appropriate only if the review process itself is genuinely independent of any improper interference.”
So there is yet another question of trust: how confident can we be that that will be the case? Again, that would be less of a problem with PR because the review process would be more straightforward, with less at stake politically, and, as a matter of course, no doubt, all sides would encourage frequent consultation with communities, and at an early stage in that process.
EU Exit: End of Transition Period
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord True
My Lords, I have noticed some of the correlations to which my noble friend referred, but I will take the more important point he raised. I have indeed seen the Centre for Social Justice report he refers to. This is a profound evil and a profound scandal and, as I think I said in my opening remarks, the Government’s hope and intention is that having control of our borders will enable us to deal with these brutal criminal gangs more effectively.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB) [V]
My Lords, is the Minister mindful that the stricter the conditions imposed on those entering the UK, the harder it will be, reciprocally, for UK workers to operate in our all-important service industries in trading with Europe, our closest neighbour? Whether Canada-style or the Australia model, it will be a disaster for our services trade with Europe if the restrictive commitments of Mode 4 are applied without an appropriate mobility framework. What steps are the Government taking to effect such a deal?
Covid-19: Economy
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Smith, has done, I want to talk about the creative economy, which, because of Covid, is now in the kind of financial trouble that the Government and the public do not yet fully grasp. The National Theatre, the Old Vic, the Young Vic, Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Opera House, Sadler’s Wells and the Southbank Centre are among those under threat, and some of them could enter administration before the end of the year unless financial help is at hand. Nuffield Southampton Theatres already has, and other regional theatres and many other arts organisations, both large and small, may well follow.
We urgently need emergency funding on the scale that Germany provided for its arts and creative industries over two months ago. That package was worth €50 billion, in a country where the state bears a significantly greater burden of the funding. It is good that the Arts Council is providing some emergency funds, although they will not in any conceivable way cover the scale of the problem, and it is a diversion of funding that was intended for new projects.
One of the lessons that we should learn from this is that the greatest vulnerability lies in the commercial component. In the case of theatres, museums and live music, the loss of ticket revenue is disastrous, and many private museums are also under threat of closure—and we have to add to this the fact that our theatres and music venues are going to be among the last out of the lockdown.
I applaud the setting up of a cultural renewal task force, but that should not be a substitute for new emergency funding or an excuse for delaying such help. The task force needs to be a vehicle for the targeting of such funding. In that sense, music, the book trade and local government are among those that also need representation.
From our great theatres and dance companies to individual performers, including authors, musicians and comedians, in the last few months we have enjoyed on YouTube, radio and TikTok wonderful performances entirely for free from those who are currently earning nothing. It is time that we gave back in a big way.
Beyond Brexit (European Union Committee Report)
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(3 years, 12 months ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, if a week is a long time in politics, then 14 months must be an aeon. From today’s vantage point, this report feels almost optimistic. Between then and now, others have, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, memorably phrased it in March, captured the castle. If it is ironic that the best way to win friends and influence people is to have stayed in the EU, there is a double irony that even early last year it felt that we had a desire to maintain real contact with Europe. Sadly, much of the whole point of Brexit for Brexiteers is to sever many of those ties of communication and co-operation.
We had another taste of what may come on Sunday evening, when the Prime Minister talked—inappropriately, I felt—of developing a world-beating system for Covid testing, when Covid is a prime example of how we need to co-operate as a continent and, indeed, as a world in discovering the best ways to beat the virus. The irony of that, of course, is that the UK’s ability to be a major part of Covid research will be threatened if we lose access to Horizon Europe, the successor to Horizon 2020.
This excellent report correctly identifies EU and other European agencies as means of exerting influence, although the benefit of co-operation—friendship, if you will—is the key in scientific research, in education and culturally. Those of us who believe in such continuing co-operation need to keep pressing the Government on these matters, so I ask the Government whether they are still actively seeking for the UK to remain a meaningful—that is, participating—member of the Horizon programme and Erasmus. It will be a tragedy if it is left only up to individuals and individual institutions to maintain such contacts as they can without the recourse to any of the facilitating structures that other European countries will continue to have.
Income Equality and Sustainability
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(4 years ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, Covid has revealed further the underlying poverty in this country, as well as exacerbating the problem. There is no more obvious symptom of that poverty than food banks, demand for which was the greatest in 2019, before the health crisis started, so it is clear that when we look at current demand, it is considerably higher than it would have been without that base level.
Food banks are one of the biggest black marks against this country. It is self-evidently a social problem that a significant number of people cannot afford to put food on the table, because poverty itself is a social ill. It continues to surprise me how little food banks are raised as an urgent matter, perhaps because they have become too much an accepted part of the social landscape. Nevertheless, Philip Alston noted last year, as others have done, that they should not be a safety net. It is the Government’s job to provide at least that.
It is difficult to question the Government on this, since what we tend to hear about in reply is the public’s generosity and, since the health crisis, the departmental and charitable support for food banks—anything other than the current necessity for their existence. Can the Minister say whether the Government intend to take steps to make food banks unnecessary? I plead for a focused reply.
If you pull at food banks, inevitably you pull at so much else. Social problems are largely treated separately and compartmentalised, even as the evidence of a link between poverty and social problems such as mental health and domestic violence builds up. Yet that remains largely unaddressed by the Government.
In 2016, a Joseph Rowntree report on poverty estimated costs to the public purse of £78 billion per year, including healthcare, social care, schools, policing and children’s services. This is money that for social and financial reasons should be spent at the very beginning of the process, either through welfare or, better still, through a universal basic income, to provide the decent standards of living that all citizens have a right to and to avoid many of the social problems to which poverty leads.
Economy: Update
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
I thank my noble friend for his question and I will certainly take it back to the Treasury. It is worth remembering that the combination of the EIS, SEIS and VC schemes are pretty generous for investors, with the tax reliefs that they get. I suspect that, as an experienced investor, my noble friend Lord Flight will know that valuations will fall pretty dramatically for businesses looking for funding if they are early stage. Therefore, there will be a lot of opportunities for the entrepreneurial investor over the next few months. None the less, I will certainly take my noble friend’s suggestions back for further consideration.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development says that the lack of support for limited companies in the self-employed income support schemes is
“not just a crack: it is a gaping hole in the package.”
It is accepted practice for freelancers to pay themselves through dividends, contrary to what the Minister says. This applies to a wide range of workers, from musicians to builders to cleaners, whose work is particularly important at present. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, I ask the Government to take another look at this.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
I thank the noble Earl for his point; we discussed this in a Question last week. I know that in the Chancellor’s response yesterday, he said that he had been in touch with some of the groups that the noble Earl mentioned—I think he mentioned the Musicians’ Union, and so on. I am not saying that to take income by dividend is wrong; as I said last week, a dividend is defined as a surplus of profit of a business after all its operating costs have been paid, and the tax is paid and retained profits kept for reinvestment. That is my point. But what has happened in the week between our conversation and today is that bounce-back loans are now available, and that is probably the route for those people whom the noble Earl is particularly worried about.
Covid-19: Self-employed
Earl of Clancarty Excerpts(4 years ago)
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The Earl of Clancarty
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that their support for the self-employed during the COVID-19 pandemic is sufficient.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office and the Treasury (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)
My Lords, the Government have taken a number of steps to support the self-employed at this difficult time. On 26 March, the Chancellor announced the self-employed income support scheme, which will provide eligible individuals with a grant worth 80% of their normal profits for three months. The Chancellor has also announced several other policies that might benefit the self-employed. These include the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme, mortgage holidays and an income tax deferral.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, this is necessary support but there remain concerns about fairness and people falling through the cracks. Will the Government look again at the £50,000 cap—a distinct unfairness compared with the JRS? Will they review the income threshold, which at 50% excludes many for whom a mixed portfolio is the norm? Can graduates and those who have been on maternity or sick leave have unrepresentative years discounted? Does the Minister agree that, from construction workers to music teachers, those paid through dividends should not be penalised for adopting a standard accounting system actively encouraged by Conservative Governments?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, delivering a scheme for the self-employed is a difficult operational challenge, particularly in the rapid timescale required. The Government’s priority is to get support to those who need it as quickly as possible, in the fairest way. The design of the scheme, including the £50,000 threshold, means that it is targeted at those who need it most, and who are most reliant on their self-employment income. Some 95% of those who are mostly self-employed will benefit; those who do not meet the eligibility criteria for the SEISS may have access to a range of other support, including the more generous universal credit and deferral of tax schemes. I hope to address the dividend points in answer to a separate question.