Budget Statement

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. I can tell him that I have lived in Cumbria for 30 years, and I welcome the Budget. I suspect that most of my former constituents would have welcomed it as well.

I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, not only on her work as a coalition Minister but because today is her birthday. Even if I could remember her age as printed in the Times, I would not dare say it—I do not want to suffer like Sir Tim Hunt and be driven out of the club for some inappropriate sexist remark—but I congratulate the noble Baroness.

I want to concentrate on the minimum wage. Fifteen years ago, I opposed the minimum wage and thought it would damage job creation and was an unnecessary interference with business. I was wrong and so were my Conservative colleagues, and we acknowledge that. The minimum wage was the best thing Tony Blair ever did, and since its introduction I thought the minimum wage was working quite well and I did not pay much attention to it.

However, two years ago I was appalled to discover that some of our largest and most profitable companies were paying the minimum wage to their employees, and that the taxpayer was having to top up those wages with housing benefit and tax credits. Okay, I know that most of your Lordships knew that long before I caught up with what was happening in the workplace. I found it obscene—and I find it obscene—that low-paid workers who are paying their taxes are subsidising many highly profitable companies who are earning their profits on cheap wages.

I became an immediate convert to the living wage and I am delighted that the Chancellor has set out a programme to implement it by 2020. I know that some critics will rightly say that it is still not enough to live on—that it is not a real living wage—but at least we are heading in the right direction, and in politics if you have the direction right and the concept right, that is not a bad start.

All my political life, the CBI has been a whinging organisation, never satisfied with any Government. As a teenager, I remember CBI spokespeople slamming the Callaghan Government in 1976, 1977 and 1979, and then a few months later, after Margaret Thatcher was elected, they were slamming her equally hard, too. What did they have to say on the living wage plans in the Budget? They said:

“To increase the minimum wage on average by 6 per cent a year in this parliament is quite a gamble for businesses, which will struggle to leverage the productivity to pay for it”.

But what did Simon Walker, the director-general of the Institute of Directors say? He said:

“There will be a bit of gulping but I think it’s right and I think our members can actually manage it”.

Quite so, and once again we see in the CBI the unacceptable face of capitalism—willing to take another cut in corporation tax but not wanting to reward the lowest-paid workers who have made the profits.

Indeed, I urge the Chancellor to go further and faster with the living wage. I know my noble friend the Minister cannot dare to comment on this in his wind-up or he will be drummed out of the club, but I suggest that all companies with profits over £500 million or with executives earning more than £5 million or handing out dividends of more than 4% per annum should be made to reach the £9 per hour by 2018. Examples of companies paying more than 4% in dividends are: GlaxoSmithKline, Shell, Wm Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, BP, Anglo American, Centrica and a dozen other large companies. It is interesting, looking at the website for London, that the companies paying the living wage in London are mainly small and medium-sized enterprises. Last year, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Tesco had combined profits of £3.8 billion—okay, they were down from the £3.9 billion that they made in 2013 and the £4.1 billion in 2012—yet pay only the minimum wage.

The salaries of CEOs and executives in the FTSE 100 rose by 15% in 2014 and the gap between the highest-paid executives and their lowest-paid employees has never been wider. In 1998, chief executive salaries were 57 times larger than the average worker’s; now, they are 178 times larger. And there is no correlation whatsoever between huge salary increases for executives and company worth, company growth or company profits. So I say to Mr Cridland of the CBI, who has just retired: if you think your companies will struggle to pay their lowest-paid workers a 6% per annum increase, they seem to have had no difficulty paying their directors 15%. Not to be left out, of course, last year BBC staff got a 2% pay rise, but their so-called stars got 22%. So even that lovely left-wing organisation treats its workers no better than the capitalists do.

Before my noble friends think I am making a bid to be Mr Jeremy Corbyn’s policy guru, I must state that I do not believe in capping top pay, but I do believe in everyone in a company sharing in its success. That is proper capitalism, and we see it practised by John Lewis and Waitrose, which already pay above the minimum wage. As has already been said, yesterday IKEA announced that it would pay more than the minimum wage. The founding boss of Iceland Foods said last weekend as he slammed big retailers who pay only the minimum:

“Of course this is going to be painful but we’ll do it with a smile on our face. I’m all in favour of this living wage and if everyone has to pay it then it’s better all round”.

He went on to describe the claims of some supermarkets that staff discounts made up for low pay as “brainless”, and said that they had a moral duty to pay higher wages.

I turn briefly to apprenticeships. I agreed with every single word that the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, said on the apprenticeship levy. I say to my noble friend the Minister that if we can appoint the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—whom I think the Secretary of State for Transport appointed to a committee on HS2— I hope we can consult the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, or find a role for him in advising on how the levy could work. I applaud the levy for apprenticeships provided that it does not lead to the recreation of all those bureaucratic industry training boards we had in the 1970s. The CBI again criticised it, saying:

“A volunteer army is always better than conscription”.

That is not true, as we discovered in the Second World War. It would be foolish for the Chancellor to intervene if all the businesses were coming forward and training the workers we need but they are not, and it is not fair that some companies do no training and poach workers from others. So since the volunteer army of willing employers has not materialised, it is time to try conscription—but keep it simple.

When we introduce the Bill on Sunday trading, leaving aside other arguments about Sunday trading, if the big shops are to get a chance to open for longer on Sundays, I hope the Chancellor will say, “If you open for longer on Sunday and make extra profits, then you pay the full minimum wage for your Sunday workers”.

In conclusion, capitalism is the only system that works. Socialism has been tried in many countries over the past 90 years or so and has always brought poverty, famine and devastation. Free trade, private enterprise and responsible capitalism improve the living standards of everyone and make the world a safer place, but periodically it needs a harsh reminder of what responsibility is. If I may use a less vulgar anatomical word, I rather liked the comment of the unnamed Cabinet Minister who said that the Budget,

“was designed to give British industry a kick up their lazy”,

backsides. I look forward to the day—I think the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham hinted at this—when a person working a 40-hour week gets a wage from an employer that the person can actually live on without taxpayer support. I know we are still a very long way away from reaching that goal, but this Budget has started the journey and I commend it.

Medical Innovation Bill [HL]

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Friday 27th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I declare a deep and personal interest which I have had for the past 16 years since I was first diagnosed with MS. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Saatchi on the way he has introduced his Bill, on the content of the Bill and on the way he has conducted himself over the past three years. It is a lesson to us all. I thank my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern, who has reassured us that there are adequate safeguards in the Bill and that we should not have concerns about any additional risk of doctors being sued for inappropriate or overinnovative behaviour.

The objection to the Bill from the medical profession is, in the main, that innovation happens already and the Bill is not necessary. I do not see that as in any way taking away the need for the Bill. If the Bill is not causing any slowdown in innovation, it is reasonably safe to let it through.

The objection from many in the legal profession seems to be that it will limit the chances of people being able to sue their doctors for negligence. If that is the case, that is a jolly good thing because I worry that in this country we are heading towards the American model where doctors seem to be afraid to prescribe an aspirin in case they get sued.

With all due respect to noble—and noble and learned—Lords on either side and to the medical profession, we have not heard much from the patient’s perspective this morning, and if your Lordships will forgive me, I will selfishly and arrogantly speak from the patient’s perspective.

I am lucky. I have slow-progressive MS. Those who get motor neurone disease or Parkinson’s disease are in a much worse position. Every time I see my consultant, I do not take my lawyer in tow behind me, waiting to sue him if he has given me wrong advice. Our discussion is always: what are the Americans up to? What is the breakthrough? Is it time for beta interferon? Should I change from injections of copaxone to something else? It is always about searching for that hope that there is something that will fix it one day.

I believe that we are getting close to a fix on multiple sclerosis. Certainly for relapsing and remitting, we are getting close. I think that if you were to do a study, if hypothetically the Department of Health were to say, “We have got a new drug. Could we have volunteers to try it?”, overnight you would find 10,000 people with multiple sclerosis saying, “Yes, we’ll give it a go in proper trials”. Worldwide, you might find 1 million willing to give it a go.

A breakthrough was announced in the United States in October last year by the Scripps Research Institute. It discovered that a drug called benztropine, which is currently on the market, has been on the market for many years and has been approved to deal with the side-effects of Parkinson’s, completely restored the myelin sheath in mice and rats. The institute is going on eventually to conduct some clinical trials. This drug is approved for use in this country, again for Parkinson’s patients. I think it has been approved for many years, and we know the side effects. But American GPs have greater rights to prescribe off-label than British GPs.

I believe the General Medical Council was consulted a couple of years ago about giving British doctors the right to prescribe off-label. That was strongly opposed by the pharmaceutical industry—I think we can all understand why—and the GMC dropped the proposal. American doctors can prescribe any licensed drug off-label if they feel it is in their patient’s best interest. British GPs do not have that right. So although there may be many people in this country being prescribed benztropine legally because they have Parkinson’s, the tens of thousands of us with multiple sclerosis, for whom it has been discovered the drug may work, cannot legally or properly get it. I hope that this Bill will be able to change that scenario. Ideally, the GMC should look again at its guidelines. Ideally, it should allow British doctors the same right to prescribe off-label if they think it is in their patient’s interest.

I was greatly heartened by the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, on participant-led research. I discovered a few years ago that the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London was about to conduct some clinical trials on the use of botulinum toxin. I persuaded, forced and blagged my way on to that study; I was patient number 51. We conducted the study and I signed every waiver under the sun. I was not interested in suing if something went wrong, but I wanted the hope that it would change and improve things. It did. That drug was life-changing in dealing with some of the side-effects of multiple sclerosis, and NICE has now approved it.

I assure your Lordships that in any study you undertake, in any research you do, you will find that there are tens of thousands of us, particularly those suffering the worst diseases such as motor neurone disease and Parkinson’s, who will volunteer to participate in clinical trials. We do not want to wait five years while another pile of mice and rats are experimented on. This rat is willing to become a guinea pig at very short notice.

I cannot see any medical harm from my noble friend’s Bill. I can see that there may be a loss of income for some in the legal profession, but my concern is to get medical treatment when I go to see my consultant or doctor—not to give a lawyer an excuse to sue my doctor if he gets it wrong. The medical profession is being held back, slightly, because of the fear of litigation. If my noble friend’s Bill allows more of us to participate in a rapidly organised clinical trial, or even to test out drugs that have been approved for one use and may be beneficial for another, we should be allowed to do so.

I have never sat in this Chamber or the other place and demanded rights for this or that, but those of us with some of these illnesses can make a contribution as we head to our eventual end game. It is not just trying any quackery or weird invention in desperation. There will be properly conducted trials along the lines of my noble friend’s Bill, with all the safeguards which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, suggested. I therefore support my noble friend’s Bill.