Autumn Statement

Debate between Lord Deighton and Lord Razzall

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Razzall (LD)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the Autumn Statement—little surprise, as this is a coalition government Statement in which the Liberal Democrats have clearly had considerable involvement. I thoroughly enjoyed the demolition of the Labour Party case by the Minister. I am surprised that he did not mention one obvious point, which comes on page 6 of the Autumn Statement. For the last couple of years we have listened to the Labour Party indicate that real wages have not increased. On page 6, the Statement indicates that the OBR now forecasts that wages will exceed inflation for the next five years. I would have thought that that rather shoots the fox.

I will ask one or two questions. First, the Chancellor deals with spending cuts on page 9 of the Autumn Statement. Even as a friend, I suspect he rather glosses over the impact that spending cuts are likely to have after 2015-16. I do not know whether the Minister can add anything on where these cuts will come from. As the Minister rightly indicates, infrastructure spending has been quite significant in these proposals, not only in the Autumn Statement, but in the road scheme announced on Monday and the infrastructure plan announced on Tuesday. Does he agree with the argument that the Liberal Democrats have been making that, when looking at spending cuts in the next Parliament, infrastructure spending should be ignored because of the long-term capital effect and capital advantage of such spending? On the proposal for postgraduate loans—a topic that is obviously very dear to my right honourable friend Vince Cable—does the Minister agree that this will have a significant impact on the possibility of research into science? Finally, on the desirable attempt to extract the tax on multinational companies, the proposal is that there should be a 25% tax on the profits of a multinational company earned in the United Kingdom. Is he able to expand on that? I understand that one of the arguments of companies such as Amazon and Starbucks is that they do not make any profits in the United Kingdom.

[Lord Deighton]

There were five questions there. First, I obviously accept the point that my noble friend makes about real wages, although wages exceeding inflation has been coming through only in the last year. He is absolutely right that the forecast from the OBR is that that will continue and that we will see earnings outstrip inflation, which would be a good thing.

Secondly, what is the story behind the spending cuts, which are quite significant? The simple story is that we plan to continue at the rate we have successfully implemented in this Parliament. We know that we can do it. In fact, we have managed to do it every year and still end up with an underspend. My right honourable friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office put out a paper this morning on how we will find another £10 billion of efficiency reforms on top of the nearly £15 billion that we have achieved in this Parliament. There will of course be a continuing review of welfare to ensure that we are focused on getting people back to work and that we are targeting those who really need to receive it. It represents a significant amount of our public expenditure, so that has to be part of the programme.

My noble friend asked whether we would effectively ring-fence the infrastructure investment. There is a commitment—effectively a fiscal rule—that we will retain public sector gross investment at a consistent level. If we stick to that, that is what will happen. Of course, the great success of all that we have accomplished is that so much of our infrastructure has been financed by the private sector, so it is not constrained by that measure anyway.

I think that postgraduate loans are a terrific initiative because not having money was becoming a constraint on people doing research. Therefore, that is a good thing on a number of grounds.

The multinational tax measure is looking at companies which put in place elaborate structures effectively to move their profits to offshore locations with a lower tax rate. The mechanism to capture that will dismantle those structures and look at the real profits, which we can then tax.

Money Laundering: UK Parliamentarians

Debate between Lord Deighton and Lord Razzall

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deighton]

I can confirm that that will be precisely the message in the final negotiations on the fourth money laundering directive.

[Lord Razzall]

My Lords, I am sure that the Minister will accept that his answers have not entirely reassured Members of this House who are treated as politically exposed persons. Perhaps he can explain to me and to many of my colleagues who are not members of the Government: what is it that we might do, or what might be done to us, that makes us politically exposed people?

[Lord Deighton]

The thing to remember is that although the intention behind this approach is to catch potentially corrupt public officials around the world, defining someone as a PEP is not an end in itself—it is merely a trigger point at which an assessment should be made of the individual’s business and whether it is high risk. It is that assessment of whether it is high risk that is not working well enough at the moment.

Autumn Statement

Debate between Lord Deighton and Lord Razzall

Thursday 5th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deighton]

I thank my noble friend for those incisive observations. He is absolutely right to say that the deficit was reduced in a measured fashion, which is part of the reason why the economy has been able to recover so quickly. He is also absolutely right that there is still a structural deficit, so we cannot simply allow for the natural recovery through the economic cycle to take care of our borrowing problem; we must continue to drive savings through the system. On the fall in consumer savings, again, my noble friend is absolutely right that it is a sign of a healthy economy to have a strong savings rate. On consumer behaviour, it is not surprising that, after a few years of belt-tightening, there has been a desire to begin spending again.

On the overall economy, as I mentioned, the recovery in business investment is the single most important change in the recovery of the economy over the next year. We anticipate that the recovery in consumer demand will give business the confidence it needs to increase its level of investment, which is what should sustain the recovery.

On infrastructure, my noble friend is correct. Essentially, there are two ways to finance it: directly from taxpayers or indirectly through the private sector and into the utilities, which then recover the investment through consumers paying. Of course, that is governed by independent regulators, who set the prices in those industries. It is absolutely part of our national infrastructure plan continually to assess the balance between the interests of the investing institutions and consumers’ affordability over the longer term.

[Lord Razzall (LD)]

My Lords, notwithstanding the verbal fisticuffs in another place, I am sure that no one in your Lordships’ House thinks that the Autumn Statement does not contain a lot of good news. Perhaps I could ask the Minister one or two, or three or four questions.

I assume that the Minister will agree that our two parties going into coalition government in 2010 was essential to restore the economy to the point where we could have the Autumn Statement today, and that, without that coalition being formed, that would not have happened. Touching on the coalition, I am well aware, as are all noble Lords, that coalitions mean trade-offs. One of them is the married tax allowance. It is obviously above the Minister’s pay grade to say whether it is time to change it, but if the object is to save marriages, would it not have been better to spend the money on organisations that help them, rather than to introduce that to satisfy the Tory right-wing?

Has there been any progress on the tax fairness proposals that David Cameron announced at the G8, with negotiations on international co-operation? The Minister touched on tax avoidance. How much have tax evasion and aggressive avoidance been affected? How much is currently raised annually from the Government’s measures? Does he agree that, although the plan announced yesterday indicates that only 1% of our GDP will be spent on infrastructure—much less than our colleagues—there is an opportunity to increase that as the economy recovers?

Finally, on a cheekier point to which I think I know the answer, bearing in mind that, as the Minister rightly says, more jobs have been created here in this country than before, have he or his colleagues had an apology from the Labour Party for saying that this would not work?

[Lord Deighton]

On the effectiveness of the coalition partnership, I launched the national infrastructure plan yesterday with my right honourable friend Danny Alexander, and I can say that the harmony in the Treasury could not be stronger. My noble friend is correct to say that the marriage tax allowance question is way beyond my pay grade. On the G8, I can confirm that the initiatives outlined by the Prime Minister, where we have taken global leadership to address issues of tax information exchange and publicising beneficial ownership, continued to be followed through very effectively, with us setting an example.

On the national infrastructure plan, it is clear to me that infrastructure is a very important driver of growth, and the bigger proportion of public spending we can devote to it, the healthier the long-term outcome. The measure, therefore, that my honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has put in place to keep the proportion of capital expenditure to national income at a constant level is absolutely to be welcomed as a protection in that respect.