Budget Statement

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this debate. I am grateful for many of the measures in the Budget, particularly the Government’s very successful policies in terms of making opportunities for employment much more widely available.

I can remember many years observing Louise Casey as she sought to deal with the problem of rough sleeping. In her work, she emphasised above all things the need urgently to find purposeful activity for people who had been on the streets for some time. She also quite controversially pushed for the public not to provide money to those on the street because she felt that it was a pull factor for them. From my own experience of caring for a middle-aged man who is mentally ill and has been unable to work for quite some time, I can see the degenerative effect on him of feeling that he is not helpful to anybody else. Worklessness and dependency are corrosive to the soul, so I heartily commend the Government on their successful policy in terms of raising the level of employment, which has many benefits, including raising children out of poverty.

I also welcome what was said around the Budget Statement about relaxing property development restrictions; I declare my interest as a landowner who has recently had success in gaining planning permission for residential development. There are real concerns for local property owners, which should be respected of course, but I had the feeling from time to time that we were jumping through many hoops, and seemed to have done the right thing, and then suddenly we were told no. There was great uncertainty in that process. We need to respect the local community’s concerns, but at the same time there is a need to have more homes. That needs to be addressed, too.

The topic that I seek to address is principally to do with family homelessness; that is, expectant mothers, mothers with very young children, mothers or parents who are escaping violence and the temporary accommodation that they are put into. I want also to talk about the withdrawal of housing benefit from those aged under 21 and the very poorest families.

I want to make a couple of requests to the Minister. The first relates to productivity. Will he consider looking at the role of secure families in terms of the long-term achievement of better productivity? In principle, if a child in his or her earliest days has a strong attachment to their mother and then a secure upbringing, they should be far more resilient when they reach 18 or 19, so the inevitable knocks and difficulties will not strike them back so easily. They might well be more able to learn and therefore pick up the skills necessary for the developing job market.

It is striking for me that Italy does well in productivity—

[A noble Lord]

Oh!

[The Earl of Listowel]

Well, compared to us, I suppose. Perhaps I should not pursue that. Germany and France may be better examples in comparison with the United States. One would think that the United States, with its many advantages in many ways, would outstrip those two by far but, in terms of family households with an absent parent, Germany has a level of 15% and France has 17%, while the US has 26% or 27%. There may be some interesting inquiries to be made there.

The second request that I make of the Minister is to look at the long-term cost of family homelessness that I have just described. A recent, important report on the cost of failing to meet the perinatal mental health needs of mothers identified a long-term cost of £8 billion a year of failing to meet those needs. So it is possible to project such costs into the future. It would be helpful in future Budgets to think, for instance, about the treatment of homeless families and to ask what the long-term cost is of failing to address their needs. The Minister might work with the Department for Communities and Local Government and perhaps commission a charity such as the Centre for Social Justice to look at the issue of family homelessness and the long-term cost, and at what the policy options might be to mitigate any harm arising from homelessness.

There are many challenges to families who are homeless. I commend the Government on continuing the work of the troubled families initiative, so ably led by Louise Casey. However, even its model of forming relationships with such families through a family support worker must be challenged if there is such a high turnover of families moving, with it being hard to intervene effectively.

I want briefly to quote from what last week’s Economist said about homelessness and the housing crisis:

“Without roofs over their heads, certain households can appeal to be put up by their local authority. Families with children, expectant mothers and those escaping domestic violence all have a legal right to emergency accommodation … At the end of March, 64,610 households in England were living in council-provided temporary housing, a quarter more than in 2010”.

The article goes on to talk about the move to private accommodation:

“Private tenancies are precarious … The number of people made homeless following the termination of a rental contract in the private sector trebled between 2009 and 2014; termination of contract is now the main cause of homelessness … Despite relying more on private landlords, councils are leaving thousands of families out in the cold. Fewer than half of all applications for temporary accommodation are accepted. Even those households that meet the sufficient conditions—having young children, being pregnant, and so on—are frequently let down. In the first three months of this year, councils failed to find homes for 6,900 households that had a legal right to emergency shelter. That is 80% more than in 2010”.

The article goes on to say that this is a growing crisis.

I welcome much of what the Government have done in the past with the support of the Liberal Democrats and their proposals for the future, but I ask the Minister whether he might look particularly at these concerns around family homelessness and its long-term impact.

Economy: Public Finances

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I was referring to the Government’s Budget.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the public should also keep in mind the fact that nearly half of local government spending is on adult social care and the care of children, and that includes 14.63% on children? While local government has risen to the challenges to its funding over recent years, there is real concern that it cannot take much more.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, the way in which we ensure that local government and all other aspects of government are funded effectively and appropriately is by having a very strong, thriving, sustainable economy. The fact that our growth rate is the highest among the G7, unemployment is down and employment is up, is the biggest long-term guarantor of a sustainable funding basis for local government and, indeed, all other forms of government expenditure.

Childcare Payments Bill

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Tuesday 9th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, as treasurer of the parliamentary group for children I warmly welcome the Minister’s presentation of the Bill and, indeed, the contents of the Bill. The subsidy will be an improvement on the existing voucher scheme, and the extra support for parents is very welcome.

The Minister made the case for this change. I was reminded of it recently by listening to Professor Melhuish of Birkbeck College, University of London. He presented strong evidence that high-quality early years care improves the educational outcomes of young people. Even if a child has a poor primary school, if they have had high-quality early years education then they are still likely to be doing well at the age of 11, and there will still be a significant difference in educational outcomes to the age of 16. Such provision is therefore very important.

I also thank the Minister for the investment that the coalition Government have been making in this area. He described in detail what has been achieved. I was grateful to the coalition Government for reconsidering their proposals on the ratios of early years educators to children. The Minister at the time raised the important point that as we invest a great deal in early years care in this country, although it is more costly here than it is in many other nations, how can we ensure that we get best bang for the buck in terms of taxpayers’ money? I hope there will be an opportunity after the election of a thorough strategic review of early years provision to look at why we are where we are.

I welcome what the Minister said about stimulating the supply side, which is so important, and the measures that are being taken, but perhaps more could be done to stimulate it. In particular, it struck me how important nurseries attached to schools are. It is important that there is a lower turnover in staff in nurseries than there is in much other provision. In high-quality provision it is crucial to have staff who can build relationships with children and parents. Of course, the staff in such provision are generally more highly qualified than in other provision. We must address the low pay that dominates this area. It is very disappointing that we invest so much yet many of the people who do this really important work are so poorly paid.

I welcome the Bill. There are a couple of issues on which I would like help from the Minister. I shall try to be as brief as I can so I shall curtail what I might have said. The first issue is that the scheme will not address the additional childcare challenges and costs faced by families with disabled children. The Minister may have made a remark on that and I missed it. The recent independent parliamentary inquiry into childcare for disabled children found that parents with disabled children face significant extra challenges finding and paying for childcare. A survey of parents was undertaken to support the inquiry. More than 1,000 parents with a disabled child responded, and 38% reported paying £11 to £20 an hour for childcare, with a further 5% paying an astonishing £20 an hour. This is in stark contrast to the £3.50 to £4.50 paid by the parents of children who are not disabled. Three-quarters of the parents who responded to the inquiry also said that they had been forced to cut back or give up work entirely because they could not access affordable childcare which was appropriate and met the needs of their child.

Although the tax-free childcare scheme will provide some additional support, the inquiry highlighted the limitations of the scheme for families with disabled children. I understand that the Government are looking at ways in which they can better support parents with disabled children through the scheme by raising the maximum cap for such families above £10,000. This would be helpful for a small number of parents with very high costs, but most of the families affected would not be helped by this step because very few families can afford to spend that amount on childcare.

A better option is to raise the amount of the top-up from 20% for such parents. I am grateful to the Family and Childcare Trust for its briefing in my preparation for this Bill. It has estimated that increasing the top-up to 40% for children who receive disability living allowance would cost just £25 million each year. The Government will spend more than £750 million each year on the new scheme. Surely £25 million is an affordable figure in the light of the help that this step will provide for parents with disabled children. Does the Minister agree?

The inquiry also heard that out-of-school activities were a key means of social inclusion for disabled children and young people. As the tax-free childcare legislation covers costs only for childcare used to enable parents to work, it is regrettable that in its current guise it will not help many families pay for such childcare. In the long term we must create a level playing field in childcare for disabled children. There are a number of schemes run by local authorities that support childcare providers to offer places to children with additional needs through training, specialist support and adaptation, and subsidise the difference between the typical fee and the actual cost of care for a disabled child. It is heartening to hear about parents who have struggled and looked through many areas and finally found a place for their child. However, such cases are rare. Funding constraints mean that such schemes are rare. The most effective way in which the Government can support disabled children to access affordable childcare is to learn from the successful approaches developed by local authorities and scale up those schemes nationally.

The second area to which I would like the Minister to give his attention is the tax-free childcare scheme. This scheme must work alongside the childcare element of tax credits and, for a time, the employer-supported childcare voucher scheme that is being phased out. Families will not be able to claim childcare support under tax credits and tax-free childcare at the same time. Many families will find it difficult to identify which childcare support is best for them and will potentially miss out on much needed financial support. The Minister referred to the sort of support that these families can have in his opening remarks.

The Government estimate that at least one in 10 families claiming the childcare element of tax credits will be better off claiming support under the new scheme. As a result, it is very likely that there will be substantial movement between the two schemes. Many parents, particularly those with fluctuating incomes and uncertain working hours, such as those who are self-employed, work overtime or have a zero-hours contract, will find the sheer complexity of the schemes difficult to navigate, potentially leading to the loss of greatly needed financial support.

The Government need to make sure that families are transferred smoothly between each childcare scheme, with a full information campaign and an online childcare support calculator—which I think the Minister was describing—to help the parents affected make the right choice. From my own experience of joining health visitors in meeting with vulnerable mothers and parents I know just how important reliable and clear guidance can be to these families. I therefore hope that the Government will support professionals working in early years, children’s centres and family information services to play their part in guiding parents through the different options for childcare support, as they are ideally placed to offer advice to families from all walks of life.

Finally, I wonder if I could invite the Minister to join me on a visit to a children’s centre—a nursery in Newham with a very good reputation—that I will be making on the morning of Friday 9 January. I am sure that he would be very welcome to join me if he were able to make the time available. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Greater Manchester

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, we have to look at what has been happening to the Greater Manchester economy and the north-west more generally, where there has been a massive increase in the number of apprenticeships, for example, and a dramatic fall in unemployment. There is specific funding in terms of hundreds of millions of pounds of additional funding for rail developments and to innovative new world-leading developments in the Manchester area, such as the National Graphene Institute.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, in continuing this process of development in Greater Manchester, does the Minister not agree that it is the training and development of the people that are so important? In that regard, will he draw the attention of the leadership of Manchester to the report of my noble friend Lady Howarth on family learning, which was supported by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education? It highlights the effectiveness of family learning for developing skills in the workforce.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, one of the key things about the devolution of powers to Manchester is that it covers some of these areas. For example, services in terms of targeted employment support for vulnerable people have already been devolved to Manchester, and there are others. The “Working Well” pilot is also doing extremely well in that area and other plans on integrating health and social care have been devolved down to Manchester, so what the noble Earl is seeking is all part of that process.

Assisted Dying Bill [HL]

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Friday 7th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, a doctor very explicitly suggesting to somebody that they end their life is one thing. But for me a much greater concern, which has been debated quite a lot already, is about the gentle suggestion that people should consider ending their lives—the arm around the shoulder. I am sitting in your Lordships’ Chamber only because many hundreds of thousands of pounds of NHS money have been spent on putting me back together. I have had some amazing doctors with a dreadful bedside manner, and I have had some doctors with a great bedside manner who have performed procedures that I did not ask for. It was recently reported that a young man, Mik Scarlet, turned down a certain procedure several times. When he was on the operating table, the surgeon completely ignored his wishes and carried out the procedure anyway, and it had to be reversed. He is in a better position now than he was previously. It is a very long and complicated story, which is detailed on the Huffington Post.

For me, this is about the constant drip-drip of “You’re not worth it”. I am a very resilient person. If I got upset every time somebody said to me, “I wouldn’t want to be like you”, I would be depressed. Somebody said to me recently, “Well, I wouldn’t want to be incontinent. That’s my worst thing in life”. I am technically incontinent. If it was not for self-catheterisation, I would probably be dead, because I would have pressure sores; I would not exist. I was having a debate in Central Lobby with somebody who strongly supported my view on where we should go with the Bill. He looked at me and sort of waved at the wheelchair and said, “Well, you must have considered killing yourself hundreds of times”. No, I have not, actually, and I think that it was a bit of a surprise to him. It is that sort of tone, where “You’re brave. You’re marvellous”. People do not realise that they are being demeaning. I think that they genuinely think that they are being empathetic, sympathetic and kind, but, actually, you are constantly being knocked down and told that you have no value and no worth. That is what is of much greater concern to me.

The noble Lord, Lord McColl, mentioned Oregon. In 1994, the Oregon medical assistance programme cut funding to 167 out of 700 health services. Four years later, assisted suicide started being referred to as a “treatment”. On the back of that, funding was cut to 150 services for disabled people. They started limiting funded doses of powerful pain medication and put barriers in the way of funding for antidepressants. Thank goodness we do not have an insurance system like the one they have in the United States. I would be dead because my parents could not afford to keep me alive. For me, the big issue is not the doctor saying that your life is not worth living; it is the arm around the shoulder. It is that constantly being told, “You’d be better off dead”. That is what disabled people face every single day. Disability hate crime figures are the worst they have ever been in 10 years of reporting. It is constant. There is not a group of disabled people and a group of terminally ill people; there is a huge crossover.

I am sure that many people have noticed that my noble friend Lady Campbell of Surbiton is not here today. She has a chest infection. She is watching at home on her ventilator. We all know what a chest infection does for her prognosis. It immediately switches her from being okay to fitting in with the category of having less than six months to live. That is not a situation that I am very comfortable with.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness spoke about the young man who was operated on misguidedly by the surgeon. It reminds me that young people, 18 to 25 year-olds, might be particularly susceptible to this kind of suggestion over time. I am concerned that this particular group, who are not at the end of their lives but at the beginning and who represent a very small group within the group that we are discussing today, should be given plenty of thought, in particular because of issues around their maturity and the trauma that they may have experienced growing up.

We recognise that developmental delay can arise from trauma. We recognise that, while 18 is generally considered the age of maturity, we extend protections up to the age of 25 for young people who are leaving care. That is for a number of reasons, but in part because of the history of trauma that they have experienced. We recognise that it may take more time for them to develop. Where children or young people have not built up such large social networks, they are more dependent on those nearest to them and one should be very careful to avoid a situation in which they are drip-fed the notion that perhaps their life is not worth living and should be curtailed.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

I wonder whether the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, was referring to the first part as well as the second part of the amendment, although he spoke mainly about the second.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, I find this procedure extremely confusing. I realise that when a complex amendment is passed which subsumes other amendments it makes life complex, but for future reference, we would be very grateful as a Committee to have clear procedural guidance from the Whips as soon as possible. This has been a very confusing discussion on an extremely important issue.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I will speak to Clause 1, and in particular to the concern about young people aged from 18 to 25. As I stressed before, this is a very small group within the larger group we are discussing, and one has to be very concerned that they get the appropriate healthcare and health professional treatment so that they can make fully informed, proper decisions. It is notorious that the transition from children’s services to adult services often causes issues in the treatment of young people.

Many young people may have some difficulty in fully appreciating their own mortality. While it is easy for us to recognise, it may be more difficult for an 18 or 19 year-old to realise that ending one’s life is absolutely final. Therefore I would appreciate consideration being given to the welfare of that particular group, so that whatever progress is made on the Bill in the future, the welfare needs of 18 to 25 year-olds are taken into very careful consideration.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, my Amendment 10, which was superseded, accords with the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Cavendish. I just want to explain that all I wanted to do was to put the condition about informed consent into Clause 1, which contains the lists of qualifications. There is of course a reference to informed consent later on in the Bill. That was all I wanted to do, and it goes along with what is done by Amendment 4 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, which talks about informed wish. I therefore assume that that would be simply a technical matter of moving it.

Economy: Infrastructure

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deighton]

I share the noble Lord’s observation that the current performance of the banks in supporting small and medium-sized businesses needs support. That is why we introduced Funding for Lending and amended it to make it more effective in cheapening banks’ funding for those areas. It is also why we have the business bank in place. I agree that some of the schemes need time to bed in, and they need to be activated faster and more effectively, because this is a critical part of our plan to get the economy growing again.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, can the Minister say what part high-quality, affordable childcare will play in freeing up the workforce for small and medium-sized enterprises, particularly for women entering the workplace?

[Lord Deighton]

I thank the noble Earl for drawing attention to the importance of flexibility in the workforce, the way that it relates to our policies in the area of welfare and its reform and the support that we are giving to get valuable members of the workforce back into being productive members of this economy.

Children: Childcare Costs

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness. She will be aware that the Government have already focused funding on childcare and free childcare for the most vulnerable. That is why we will be increasing the number of two year-olds who get 15 hours’ free childcare from about 20,000—the number funded under the previous Labour Government—to about 260,000. This is one of the most tangible ways of focusing childcare support on people at the bottom end. Those getting that additional free childcare support in the first instance will be children on free school meals and looked-after children—that is, those from the poorest families.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, following the Government’s recent announcement, is the Minister aware of the widespread concern among practitioners about the increasing ratio—to above 3:1—of the very youngest infants to carers? The additional investment in training that the Government have offered to reassure these practitioners is welcome. However, can the Minister go further in reassuring them, given the utmost importance of the highest quality of care for children at this tender age in terms of their future welfare and indeed their future productivity, as well as the deep adverse consequences for them of early poor-quality care in terms of their future outcomes?

[Lord Newby]

Absolutely, my Lords. That is very much the thrust of the proposals that were announced at the beginning of this week. We have looked in particular across the EU, where childcare and nursery care is in some cases thought to be better than in the UK and two things have emerged: first, that we need to have better-qualified people involved and, secondly, that the ratios that the noble Earl spoke about are tighter in the UK than virtually anywhere else. However, the two go together, and that is why in our plans for early years teachers and educators we are putting a lot of emphasis on improving the qualifications of people working in childcare, while having more flexibility in the numbers.

Economy: Growth

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I also welcome the Minister to the Front Bench and thank the Government for this important debate. I declare my interest as a landowner, detailed in the register of interests. I am also vice-chair of the parliamentary group for children and young people in care and leaving care; treasurer of the parliamentary group for children; and a trustee of the Michael Sieff Foundation, a charity promoting child welfare.

I rise in part to take issue with the very interesting speech of the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson. In the detail of it, he rather dismissed the idea of social investment at the current time—I hope that I am being fair in conveying what he said. We must not underestimate the importance of investing in early intervention, even at these difficult times. If we want to have a skilled workforce and if we need to compete with China and other nations around the world, we need to invest early in our children, because what happens in the early days and years of a child’s life is the most important determinant of whether they will do well in education and employment.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to early intervention. The right honourable Iain Duncan Smith has championed for many years this notion of intervening early to get the best outcomes. I was cheered recently to hear Andrea Leadsom, a Conservative MP and vice-chair of the parliamentary group for children’s centres, really highlighting the difference that can be made if one gets in early with children and children’s lives, or indeed in terms of the pregnancy of a mother and at certain times in adolescence as well. There is a flexibility to the mind where the neural pathways are able to be rejigged in certain ways, which can help people to do far better in education, in work and elsewhere.

Of course, there have been some positive outcomes with respect to the 100,000 troubled families that the Government have been focusing on recently and the Government’s investment in health visitors, which is very welcome indeed. However, I repeat that what happens early in life is the determinant, to a large extent, of future employability. Too often business people think, “The education system has failed. We need to put in our skills now at the age of 16, 17 or 18”—but that really is too late. We know from the research on early years education that good-quality early years education gives a huge boost to the educational outcomes of children. Indeed, a good early years experience can protect children against bad later educational experience. For instance, children having good early years experiences going to poor or middle-quality primary schools will do as well as other children going to good primary schools because of that good early experience. China is investing hugely in early years provision because it recognises its importance to its future economy.

I am afraid that despite the welcome attention from the Government in early intervention, the global picture is worrying in terms of children and family services, and in particular in terms of child protection. The 28% cuts across the board to local authority spending, the cuts in the number of youth workers and the cuts in other services are really impacting on children and families. Local authorities are maintaining their statutory services, so they are ready to protect the most vulnerable children, those harmed the most. However, all those other services around children and families are gradually being picked off. Statutory services are moving on to the back foot. Year by year we see more and more children being taken into care. All those good services that could have intervened earlier on are not there. To use an analogy, it is as if this is a football match. Over time, one is seeing one’s forwards being sent off, then one’s mid-field players and then one’s backs. One is left with the goalie at the back—the child and family social worker—trying to step in and feeling overwhelmed.

I have an example to express better what I mean. I draw noble Lords’ attention to the National Grid Transco young offender programme which is closely associated with Sir John Parker, the former chairman of National Grid Transco. In 10 years it has provided the programme to 1,000 young people. It has seen recidivism rates drop from a norm of 70% to less than 4% for those young men and women. Sir John Parker always highlighted—he was a tremendous advocate in business for adopting this programme—the cost to the nation of keeping these adults in prison. The year before last that was about £38,000 each per annum.

Recently, I have been hearing stories about some of the young men who have come through this programme. I heard how well they were doing in their jobs in the utilities. We have an ageing workforce and they were meeting a real need for new men and women in these areas. They were rising up the ranks and taking on responsibility very effectively.

I also heard about a man who got a home for himself so that he could be a lone parent to his two sons. Another man had lost custody and contact with his children but made sure that he quickly got a home so that he could have shared contact with his sons. In my own experience of visiting presentation ceremonies for National Grid in the past, I have been touched to see fathers with their young children. These young children now have fathers. A chief indicator for offending is that one’s parent was an offender themselves. Instead, these infants and young people are now seeing their fathers in a decent job, able to provide income to the family and setting a good example to them.

I hope that that example shows what a difference good social investment can make to the economy. I hope that the Minister will give an ear to the concerns of the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and others about the risks of making cuts that are too deep. I am no economist, and cuts may be necessary in the current circumstances, but I am very concerned that we have seen this all before in the 1980s and 1990s. Youth services and children's services are cut and cut and we pay the cost in the long term. We will not get the educational outcomes we need for our population if we do not give families the strong support that they need.

The noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, emphasised that one of the strengths of the east Asian economy was the cohesion of its families. In terms of our society, the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, emphasises again and again the crisis in fatherhood with so many children growing up without fathers. We cannot overlook the need to support families as best we can, even in these difficult times, if we want the children and young people of the future to be productive citizens and not to end up on benefits or in the criminal justice system at great cost to the taxpayer.

Taxation: Avoidance

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

Is the Minister aware of the job that charities do for their donors by picking out case histories of how their donations can make a difference to particular families and children? Might not Her Majesty’s Customs and Revenue do more to inform taxpayers about the value for money that they get in paying for services? It could give a specific example of, say, a bright graduate, recruited into the teaching profession, making a difference to particular children in an inner city area? The graduate could then say, “I am so grateful for the money that trained me and for the difference that I have been able to make to these children”. There are many concrete examples of the difference that taxpayers’ money makes to individuals, children and families.

[Lord Sassoon]

I agree with the noble Earl that the voluntary and charitable sectors make an enormous contribution. Often they deliver more cost-effective and better quality services than public bodies and the tax regime around charities supports that. That is precisely why we are so keen to drive forward philanthropy and a tax system to support it. I share the noble Earl’s sentiments.

Budget: Cost of Changes

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

The message I am trying to give the House is that there were changes that we felt appropriate—on VAT on hot food, VAT on static caravans and the proposed cap on giving to charities—and that the total cost of the changes in those three areas was in the range of £120 million to £150 million a year. That is the only message that I am trying to give to the House.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, the CBI has suggested that a fund of £1 billion should be devoted to providing employment for young people. Have the Government had further time to consider this suggestion from the CBI? I hope that I have it correct.