Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Lord Bach and Lord Newby

Monday 25th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, that is an extremely good point. It demonstrates that there is no simplistic relationship between tax rates and the amount of tax collected. In some cases there is and in some there is not. The trick of government is to understand the difference between the two. Frankly, I do not believe that the Opposition have reached that point.

The noble Lord also talked about tax avoidance and conflated wealthy people avoiding tax and the situation relating to Starbucks. On the question of Starbucks and profit shifting, the Government, along with the French and Germans, have started a process with the OECD—something that the previous Government never did—to change the basic global accounting rules so that we can get to the bottom of corporations that are shifting their profits to low-tax jurisdictions. This holds the prospect of being successful in the medium term, but whatever it does it will have no impact on the effectiveness of the Government’s treatment of individuals. As we have debated many times in recent months at Question Time, the new focus that HMRC is putting on going after people who are avoiding and evading tax is generating many billions of pounds more in income. While the previous Government cut the number of HMRC people working on compliance by 10,000, this Government have already increased it by 2,500 and will increase it further.

I was very taken by the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, on extended families. In the past year, employment has increased by more than 500,000 and I am unaware of any differential effect on the minority ethnic communities such that small firms in those communities have been shedding jobs disproportionately. Perhaps they have, but I have not seen any evidence. One of the more welcome developments of the past year, which has surprised a lot of commentators, is that hundreds of thousands more people are in work, and this increase in employment has taken place disproportionately in regions other than London and the south-east. There has been a slight rebalancing of employment prospects, and regions such as Yorkshire and the Humber, which I know, have done remarkably well in difficult economic times. I completely support the noble Baroness’s view about the moral economy of kin, but I question whether what has happened in recent months has undermined it to the extent that she suggested.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, implied—very gently; I know that he did not really mean it—that the Government might have influenced what amendments were considered to be in scope of the Bill. He knows, as we all know, that the Government have no power to determine what is in scope of the Bill.

[Lord Bach]

Of course I did not imply that for a moment—and I think that the Minister knows that. However, when there is some doubt about whether an amendment is in scope, there would be nothing wrong in the authorities asking both the Government and the person who might be tabling the amendment for their thinking on the issue. The decision is of course for the authorities and nobody else, but there would be nothing wrong in inviting the views of, for example, an experienced Bill team, as I am sure the Minister has backing him. I was not suggesting for a moment that the Government could use their influence, as the Minister put it, to decide for the authorities, which will make the decision themselves, as always. My point was that if the amendment had been allowed in, I suspect that the Government might have been in trouble in a vote at a later stage Bill. That was all that I was saying.

[Lord Newby]

I am extremely sorry if I misunderstood the noble Lord.

In conclusion, I repeat that the amendments in this group would mean that the Bill would not deliver on its purpose of enabling the Government to set out clear and certain plans to control welfare spending and help secure the economic recovery. That is why they should be resisted.