Autumn Budget 2024

Lord Altrincham Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Altrincham (Con)]

I thank the Minister for hosting this debate, for listening so carefully to so many speakers one by one, and for his good grace. I also thank the Treasury officials who have pulled together this Budget in extremely difficult circumstances, and the many other officials who contributed, including at the OBR. They managed to produce, yet again, an extremely good report, written in that almost unknown language of plain English and the related dialect of plain maths that we can all understand.

The OBR—to which the Government tied themselves very tightly, as we know, in their very first Bill of this Parliament—has been somewhat unhelpful to the Government. The Chancellor’s Statement was well received by the markets in the opening minutes, until the OBR report landed, when there was a sell-off in the 10-year rates almost immediately because its statements were quite strong. Maybe the Minister can comment on whether the Government will review the overall financial framework in which they are operating, some of which was set up long ago in different times. The Bank of England was made independent when tax to GDP was fully 10 points lower than it is today, and the OBR was set up in 2012, when debt to GDP was around 70%. In fact, debt to GDP has been moving up 2% a year since our Office for Budget Responsibility was set up, so, as we have discussed before, it is a rather unaffordable kind of budget responsibility.

The overarching framework is not that ideal, and other agencies, such as the financial agencies, are also somewhat autonomous of the Treasury. The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, referenced bank investment, but of course, that is under the PRA and the FCA, and is again at one remove from the Government. Can the Minister comment on the overarching framework in which the Government are currently operating as they pull this Budget together?

The extraordinarily sensitive number in the Budget is the 38% of tax to GDP. The noble Lord, Lord Desai, believes that it could go to 44%. Just for a moment, let us hope that it gets to 38%, as it is extraordinarily important that we can fund the state on the basis of these forecasts. Getting to 38% is sort of unknowable; that is one year sooner than the previous forecast. The reason it is unknowable—to challenge what the noble Lord, Lord Desai, said—goes back to a comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont: the tax system in this country is remarkably concentrated. We are resting our tax system on around 3 million people, and they are doing half of all income tax and a good deal of the rest of the tax raised by HMRC. This tax concentration has come about because our economy has changed so much, and we are now an economy of services. Britain was the world’s first industrial nation, and we are becoming the world’s first services nation. That concentration into high-value services is creating quite a bit of difficulty with our public finances. We need those services and employees in this country to keep going to support the kind of state we have—which has not been ideal even recently, as we have heard during the debate.

There is a good deal of evidence that those jobs are moving. For example, thousands of jobs have gone from the London Insurance Market, which were high-paid jobs in the economy. The commonplace observation that the graduate entry of big accounting firms has been restricted means that it is limiting high-paid jobs in 10 or 15 years’ time in accounting services. They are jobs that will not happen in this country; they may be in Atlanta or somewhere else.

The Government are quite rightly focusing on life sciences, which I will pause on for a moment. AstraZeneca has four worldwide research bases; it has only one in the UK. GSK has five worldwide research bases; it has one in the UK. Both companies employ fewer than 20,000 people in the UK; AstraZeneca employs below 10,000. The noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, referenced obesity. There has been an enormous miss in obesity wonder drugs in life sciences, which are accruing tremendous value creation in the US, Denmark and elsewhere, but not in the UK.

Then, there is the issue of tax migration. We hope that tax migration is not going on. It is very hard to measure, because sometimes the person moves and sometimes the person does not. The US is seeing tremendous internal tax migration, and that could easily come to us. One of the reasons why the US matters so much is that we have so many citizens already in the US, making it easy for people to travel. Maybe we should take a look at that.

I will turn briefly to one other point. We should thank Jessica Pulay at the Debt Management Office, who has done such a superb job in raising debt for the Government so consistently in all markets—but the DMO could also do with a little help. Pension funds have been buying gilts because they have been de-risking, and, as noble Lords know, foreign investors buy 30% of the market. Maybe this Government should look at incentivising domestic savers to hold gilts. Can the Minister comment on that too?

School Fees: VAT

Lord Altrincham Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

The answer to the noble Baroness’s first question is no and the answer to her second question is that that is a matter for the spending review. I disagree fundamentally with her characterisation of this policy. I want to see excellence in education for children in places like where I grew up, whose parents will never be able to afford to pay for their education. They are every bit as ambitious for their children as any other parent.

[Lord Altrincham (Con)]

Will the Minister confirm that any gains from this policy will accrue to the education budget and that any shortfall will be met by the education budget? Will he commit to sharing with this House the OBR’s impact assessment of the number of pupils moving from the private sector to the state sector and the number where the overall policy would be at a fiscal cost to the Exchequer?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

There were several questions there. Yes, this money will go to the state sector; I do not accept that there will be any loss from this policy; and yes, the OBR will publish the impact assessment alongside the Budget.

Budget Responsibility Bill

Lord Altrincham Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading
Monday 9th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Altrincham (Con)]

My Lords, we thank the Minister for bringing forward this important Bill. Perhaps we should also thank the OBR for its very good work over these past 14 years. We in Parliament have been concerned about the supervision of financial regulators, and we did a lot of work last year on strengthening the supervision of other financial regulators in the Financial Services and Markets Act. Separately this afternoon, the Industry and Regulators Committee has been looking at a whole range of independent agency regulators with a very mixed performance.

It is worth pausing for a moment on the Office for Budget Responsibility itself, which is widely admired across government, in Parliament and, as the Minister says, by the current Government. It is to its credit that it managed to find a way to work closely with government, but independently and transparently. We should mark this with respect, given how stressed the government finances are.

A core objective of the OBR is, of course, the sustainability of the public finances. Perhaps we should look at how that has been since it was set up, following the 2011 Act. In 2012, public sector debt to GDP was 74%. One way or another—by spending the fiscal headroom across various Governments, and following the different issues that arose—we are now at 98%, which is a rise of around 2% per year in debt to GDP. This kind of budget responsibility is becoming almost unaffordable to the public exchequer, and things will have to change.

They will have to change because the scale of public spending—to the tune of £1 trillion a year—requires very good forecasting, and some of the forecasting that underpins this tight nexus between the Treasury, the OBR and their own reviews has been challenged. The OBR substantially missed the inflation change; lots of other agencies missed it—less in the private sector than in the public sector—and that is a problem because it hints at a closeness between the OBR and the Treasury because it was agencies of government that all missed the inflationary change. The OBR reviews its own forecasting very carefully, so when it reviews that error, it will tend to look at supply shocks in Ukraine and downplay quantitative easing and rates. That is one area of weakness, but there are others that will affect this concept of the fiscal announcement.

The OBR has struggled with basic numbers around population. It tended to underestimate population and is now scrambling to increase population in its model, which currently has a population of 57 million adults in the UK in 2029. This number is extraordinarily sensitive, obviously, for estimates of average wages and welfare spending. The OBR says that modelling those kinds of assumptions is very difficult because they are modelled off much lower levels of immigration than we are currently seeing, and these are the kind of numbers that would trigger enormously different fiscal outcomes in the Treasury/OBR model. There are other numbers in the forecast which are very sensitive, and the OBR itself mentioned this, but it is important that we reflect on this as we think about how this kind of fiscal brake might work. The OBR is modelling the expected tax take out of the economy to reach 37% of GDP in 2029. It is essential, of course, that it does reach that kind of level, but it is unknowable whether the economy can really sustain that level of taxation. It is a modelled outcome—we must all collectively hope it can work, but it might not, and therefore inherent in the actual forecasts are very significant fiscal risks.

One other area to mention in the OBR numbers that will underpin the Budget in October is the huge variable of accounting for the economics between the Treasury and the Bank of England. This is an extraordinarily enigmatic subject, not particularly well explained by the OBR itself, whereby the Bank can, at its discretion, impose costs on the Treasury which themselves could become very significant in these fiscal numbers. My question to the Minister is: what should we expect the costs of the asset purchase scheme to be between the Treasury and the Bank of England for this year? Will that be an area in which the Treasury can balance the numbers that it believes are a black hole? The kind of scale of adjustment is easily that big—for example, the Bank of England could easily stop issuing gilts for the coming months, seemingly at its discretion—so maybe the Minister could clarify that.

I end with the Chekhov question. Chekhov used to say that when you see a revolver on the mantelpiece in the first act, it will always be fired before the final curtain. I ask the Minister whether we can expect the fiscal announcement, beautifully described in Clause 1 as the “section 4(3) report”, to take place in this Parliament.

King’s Speech

Lord Altrincham Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Altrincham (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a director of the Co-operative Bank in Manchester. I will make some comments on infrastructure investing and financial regulation.

The gracious Speech emphasised the importance of making long-term decisions, reducing debt and investing in energy. It went on to refer to the importance of investing and attracting private sector investment into renewables. In opening the debate today, the Minister reminded us of the importance of private sector investment to make that possible. The noble Lord, Lord Livermore, made the same comment for the Opposition, in particular referencing investment in the gigafactory project and a sovereign wealth fund investment project, which would attract up to three times the amount of public capital from the private sector. Both sides of the House support attracting private sector investment. That will become extraordinarily important given what has happened to government finances.

Unfortunately, renewable energy needs a lot of help. It is not just that the recent wind farm licence round did not work out—perhaps that was a one-off and the Government made some mistakes—but that the two largest wind farm operators in the world, Ørsted and Siemens, are in quite a bit of financial difficulty. In fact, they were running into financial difficulty at the same time as the gracious Speech.

Ørsted, by the way, runs 12 huge wind farms around the UK—one is out in the Thames estuary, in the Riddle of the Sands area. It said that its problem is not wind but interest rates. The problem we are running into is that these investments are very capital heavy and the decisions to make them were taken at a time when capital was very cheap. This is an enormous change for the Government, because renewable infrastructure inevitably rests on rates that are close to zero. As capital has repriced, many of those projects are no longer possible without a good deal of government help.

The other side of the equation is making more capital available from the private sector. The clue to that is in the financial services Bill that we have just passed. If it is successful, it may free up bank, private sector and asset manager equity to invest in the UK. We are all familiar with the possibility that legislation may be passed but that it may be ineffective, not be actionable and ignored or go out of date very fast. However, the Financial Services and Markets Act achieves accountability to Parliament for the regulators. This is a very important step which means that, in bringing back rules from Brussels, the regulators are not uniquely in a position to decide how to regulate. As your Lordships know, regulation has been somewhat cautious and there has been a gold-standard approach.

There will be accountability to Parliament and there will be two parliamentary committees—I will come on to that—which roughly replicates the kind of regulatory supervision that exists in Brussels; the ECON committee in Brussels supervises financial regulation quite effectively. Unluckily, the House of Lords made a recent approach to have a Joint Committee with the House of Commons, but we were rebuffed. It may be that we should not have asked, but the House of Commons’ committee will go ahead and ours needs to get going quickly. It needs to get going quickly because there needs to be a change in private sector investment in the UK and it is becoming rather urgent. A lot of the promises that the Government are making, our own expectations and often those expressed in this House rest on unleashing private sector investment.

That change would be a rebalancing away from looking at financial services regulations just through the lens of prudential regulation in favour of an underlying sense of growth, competition and promoting the wider good of the economy. It would be like the regulatory environment in Singapore, which allows for the growth of Singapore but also refers to and understands that without economic growth there are other risks to the economy and to the Government. We are perhaps running into those risks at the moment.

In supporting what is in the gracious Speech and the Government’s plans—and perhaps the next Government’s plans—we should get on with our own committee to look at financial regulation as quickly as possible. I wish the committee godspeed.

Financial Services and Markets Bill

Lord Altrincham Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 10th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Altrincham (Con)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow my noble friend Lord Ashcombe, to welcome him to this House and to reflect that it really is a blessing for this Bill that there are three maiden speeches. My noble friend has spent his whole career in insurance. We nearly met around the age of 30, when he was working at Lloyd’s of London but he has always otherwise been at Marsh. He brings expertise to us in financial services that is often, as he said, a little overlooked.

In addition to insurance experience, it is worth adding that my noble friend brings us experience in energy. His whole career has been around energy, which we quite often talk about in this House. Energy and energy infrastructure are important, as is understanding how that infrastructure in this country is laid out. My noble friend brings us expertise in that area. Finally, I would mention that three noble Lords have already asked him for insurance advice. At this time of year, we all have to work out endorsements and exclusions in policies, with the small print and all the rest of it. We may have only one Peer—certainly one Peer in the Chamber today—who really understands this stuff. He would be welcoming of any inquiries as well. He is very welcome and I look forward to working with him for many years ahead, and indeed on the Bill.

Turning to the Bill, I declare my interests as a director of South Molton Street Capital, Financial Services Capital and, in Manchester, the Co-Operative Bank. In the Autumn Statement, the Chancellor reminded us of the importance of growth. He specifically referenced energy, broadband, road and rail. The shadow Chancellor has made some very similar comments, so it is particularly important that we reflect on how the Bill, among the other financial Bills that we have seen, can help to support that growth, in particular with reference to infrastructure. We see Bills come through the Chamber and imagine that they will be financed by somebody, but there is going to be a limit to how much the Government can really support infrastructure investment. The OBR has already said that the Government will need to reduce infrastructure spending in two years’ time.

This means that spending on infrastructure will rest on the private sector and unlocking that private sector capital really rests on the Bill, so it is very welcome that Chapter 3 makes reference to growth. As we know and have heard from many Peers, the regulators have been somewhat cautious and prudent, for the reasons well expressed. At this point, we need to find ways to unlock capital to support infrastructure and for the wider economy. We might look carefully at Chapter 3 and reflect on how to address the growth opportunity, but also some of the concerns expressed about adding risk, or the prudential issues, which have been well covered.

The regulatory environment needs to be a little refreshed. Nearly immediately after this Bill was started in the House of Commons, on 7 September, we ran into the extraordinary pension LDI debacle. This was around the time when the Bill was going into Committee. It is worth reflecting on how we got to this extraordinary situation, which in some ways arises from an abundance of caution; that is to say, it goes in several steps.

Step 1 was to require companies to reflect actuarial changes in the valuations of their pension funds in their annual accounts. These are modelled changes of future liabilities and, because rates were very low, those liabilities felt very high at the time. It was a prudent thing to do; at the same time, it was not commercial and did not reflect a broader commercial understanding.

Step 2 was, remarkably, to de-risk these funds—that is to say, de-risk them from the point of view of the company and not, incidentally, necessarily that of the beneficiaries—by moving them into gilts. There not being sufficient long-dated gilts, they were moved into derivatives of gilts. These funds were suddenly hugely invested in derivatives for the purpose of de-risking. Again, this de-risking looked somewhat prudent. It is not, as we know, but it looked somewhat prudent then. At the same time, these enormous funds, which are effectively closed—they are in run-off and are barely supervised, while their beneficiaries have little control of them—were invested in an enormous amount of financial derivatives.

Had this growth chapter been in place, some of this error might have been caught. We had an extraordinary situation whereby very large captive funds were not invested in long-dated investments in this country or in infrastructure; we also had the savings of Canadian public schoolteachers making long-dated investments in UK infrastructure, while the savings of our own teachers were put into financial derivatives. This extraordinary debacle is an illustration of how prudent, cautious, step-by-step regulation can lead you into enormous risks.

I commend and support the Bill, which is extremely well thought through and, as the Minister explained, has been broadly consulted on. But regarding Chapter 3 and growth, I hope we will discuss in Committee the opportunities to invest in infrastructure and perhaps to meet the green agenda, which has been mentioned—again, that is often infrastructure. In Chapter 3 lies an opportunity to direct financial regulation for the benefit of the economy and of this country, and to meet the needs of this Government and indeed the next Government.