National Insurance: GDP

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

Given the ever-increasing demands for more and more public expenditure which we listen to every day of the week in this House, will the Minister consider presenting a form of debate for the House whereby we can look to try to extend the area in which tax might be raised to meet those public expenditure demands? Could he also look at the possibility that we may increase national insurance contribution returns by extending national insurance contributions beyond the state retirement age, as we now have 1.5 million people working beyond that age?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

The question of which debates the House has is not a matter for me—I think that is somewhat above my pay grade—but my noble friend is absolutely correct to say that we hear consistent demands from the party opposite for more and more spending, but they never seem to be willing to tell us exactly where the funds for that will come from. Of course, that is exactly why we ended up with a £22 billion black hole in the public finances: because they never took the difficult decisions to pay for any of their promises.

Economic Productivity

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

Well, I hope that the recent international investment summit, which saw £64 billion of investment come into the UK, suggests otherwise. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the Bank of England and the OECD have all upgraded their forecasts for the growth of the UK economy over the next three years; that is a very encouraging sign.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that one way of increasing productivity is by reducing headcount and costs? Could we in this Chamber perhaps give a lead to the country by looking at what we are doing and seeing whether, in six months, we could reduce our headcount by getting rid of those people who come along and claim their expenses but do no work?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

My noble friend makes a very interesting point.

Financial Services: Mansion House Speech

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question. When I first became a shadow Treasury Minister, the noble Baroness was taking through the Act that introduced the secondary objective, and we were very supportive of it at the time—I remember those debates well.

On her first question, I may have to write to her as I do not have that answer to hand. On the fraud question, the Chancellor, Home Secretary and Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology have written to leading tech and telecom companies, calling on them to go further and faster with clear, demonstrable action to reduce the level of fraudulent activity that exploits their platforms and networks. This comes ahead of the legal content duties under the Online Safety Act coming into force next year. The Act requires user-to-user and search services in scope to take measures to respectively prevent and minimise illegal fraudulent content on their service, or face the prospect of significant fines.

Building on existing measures to tackle scam calls, telecom companies have also recently agreed to a second fraud charter, to help prevent the misuse of telephone networks by criminals. We will monitor this closely in the months ahead, as the Government prepare the expanded fraud strategy.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I wonder whether the Minister recalls the conversations we had, before he was in government, about the possibility of having a fresh look at PPPs—public/private partnerships—to see whether we could update them and perhaps use them in a better way than in the past. One of my concerns is that the private equity funds that we see growing on such a scale are leading to a diminution of the number of individual personal investors in stocks and shares, of the type who were encouraged in the 1980s and 1990s.

I see that we are now going to call for evidence to examine the common bond on credit unions, and I wonder whether that could have been extended to having a review of the structure on public/private partnerships. We ought to be seeing whether we could encourage a change that would allow the public to invest directly in public/private partnerships, and whether the concept should not simply operate on a national level, as originally introduced, but be moved down to local-level activities and used particularly in expanding the growth opportunities in green energy.

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for the question. I do remember the conversations we had in the past and I am, of course, happy to continue to discuss these issues with my noble friend. He talks about partnership; it is a key part of our investment plans. Partnership between public and private investment is key to our national wealth fund, with our public sector investment leveraging greater amounts of private sector investment into exactly the kind of green technologies that my noble friend references. I understand and sympathise with the spirit behind his question, and I am very happy to continue discussions with him on that point.

United Kingdom Declining Birth Rate

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I 100% agree with what the noble Baroness says. The ONS has said that the two biggest barriers to people having children currently are a lack of affordable housing and a lack of affordable childcare. The Government are prioritising making childcare more affordable. We will provide an additional £1.8 billion next year to continue the expansion of government-funded childcare, bringing the total spending on childcare to over £8 billion. This will support working families and help parents, particularly mothers, stay in work and return to work.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that we missed a trick, as we saw the internet develop and never found any ways in which we could start to use it as a tax base? To pick up the question of AI, can we ensure that the Treasury is doing some forward-thinking on this, not just in UK terms but about the way that we need to develop international relationships in regard to tax on a worldwide basis?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

My noble friend makes some very interesting points. I assure him that the Treasury is working closely with the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology to advance the things that he mentions.