Economy: Monetary and Fiscal Policy

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, is not here, because we have not had anything from his quote book for quite a time. I offer the noble Lord, Lord Myners, this from another place on 23 November 1978, when the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, was asking for cross-party support on inflation. He said:

“I had hoped to have the support of the Opposition instead of the carping criticism that we receive constantly … We intend to make our counter-inflation policy work”.—[Official Report, Commons, 23/11/78; col. 1468.]

Well, as it was in 1978, it is now. We should let the Bank of England get on with it.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that opinion polls show that a vast majority of voters believe that the deficit is the same as the debt? Can I suggest to him that, in order to get across the difficulties which the Government are facing because of the size of the debt, which is still growing, he should consider putting on the Treasury building a large screen that shows how the deficit is going up every day?

[Lord Sassoon]

The debt is going up. Far be it from me to criticise my noble friend, who quite rightly makes this point. If the deficit was running at the level that we inherited from the previous Government, of 11.1 per cent a year—the highest deficit level in our history—it would not take very many years before our debt got up to the level of the Italian and the Greek debt. That is why we will continue to keep our deficit policy on track and keep our interest rates low. I entirely agree with my noble friend that we must be reminded about the level of debt as well.

Economy: Capital Expenditure

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Tuesday 4th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

I very much agree with the noble Lord. That is why in the spending review last autumn we increased the amount of capital spend every year, up to £2.3 billion extra in the final year of the period. That is why we are spending £30 billion on transport—one of the most economically enhancing areas of spend and more than was spent in the previous four years. In the private sector, we are ruthlessly attacking the planning system that is so costly and so time-consuming when people want to put infrastructure in. That is why we are making sure that all the market structures, such as in energy, are conducive to the new infrastructure spend we need. That is why we are looking at the whole area of regulation around infrastructure, because I completely agree with him—70 per cent of the economic infrastructure is going to come from the private sector and we are working to make sure that that money flows.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, would my noble friend like to think about terminology? Given that the deficit and the debt are two different things, should we not be talking more about the debt and less about the deficit? The deficit is simply the rate at which the debt is growing and I believe many people in the country think when we talk about cutting the deficit that we are reducing the country’s indebtedness, whereas all we are doing is reducing the rate at which it is growing. If people understood that, perhaps we would have fewer people arguing for additional public expenditure when we simply cannot afford the commitments we already have.

[Lord Sassoon]

I am grateful to my noble friend because the second of our two fiscal targets—namely, to put public sector net debt on a falling trajectory by 2015-16—is extremely important. He is quite right that we have to look at the total stock of debt and its trajectory as well as the deficit.

Independent Commission on Banking

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I regret that I may fail to satisfy my noble friend Lord Higgins in my answers. On his first point about the design of the ring-fence, and whether there are loopholes, the commission has been quite clear in relation to one or two major structural elements of the ring-fence. It has recommended that discretion should be allowed to the banks as to whether the lending business to large industrial companies should be on one side of it or the other. That will be the first of a number of detailed issues that need to be looked at in the design work. I would not wish to pre-empt that work, other than noting that my noble friend’s question of loopholes and how they might come about will be, I am sure, very much in the minds of those doing the detailed work.

On the speed of implementation, I do think it is important—as it was with the Basel III work, and the European directive that flows with it—that the banking industry, taxpayers and all those who deal with the banks have a clear understanding of what the end position will be. There is a separate question as to what the appropriate implementation timetable will be. I am sure that the commissioners thought very carefully about this when they put forward the date of 2019. I repeat that—as my noble friend will know—it is the same date as the Basel implementation. I am sure they thought about that very hard.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, I draw the House’s attention to my entry on the register as a director of MBNK, which is seeking to establish a new bank.

I congratulate my noble friend and the Chancellor on the way in which they have gripped this difficult subject, by appointing the Vickers commission, which has done an outstanding job. Some of us may not agree with all of the report, but it is a careful and sensible analysis. Some people have argued that this will damage the competitiveness of the City of London, but does my noble friend not agree that the City of London will benefit from having certainty? The fact that the Chancellor has the courage to take this on will help with the process and help our competitiveness.

I suggest that if my noble friend is thinking of giving a Christmas present to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, he might buy him a copy of the right honourable Alistair Darling’s memoirs, in which he will find why it is not a good idea to look to the previous Government’s behaviour in this area. May I remind the House that it was the previous Government who gave Sir Fred Goodwin his knighthood for services to banking?

[Lord Sassoon]

I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Forsyth for welcoming this report. It is a fine piece of work that has been done under a lot of time pressure. The commissioners have developed the analysis very considerably from their interim report, and I share my noble friend’s conclusion that by coming out now with these reforms to strengthen our banking system, we will place our banks and the City of London in an even better position to compete globally, as the Government want them to be able to do.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Myners]

My Lords, the Minister has treated us to a rich helping of palilalian piffle when it comes to the performance of the economy. His speech would be a comedy if the underlying story were not a tragedy. At least we know that the Minister is not guilty of being involved in disguised remuneration because, as we well know, he is not being remunerated at all.

Let us remind ourselves of the economic facts. In the period 1997 to 2007—for 10 years—the UK recorded the highest GDP per capita growth in the G7 countries. This was achieved against a background of low inflation and the period described by the governor of the Bank of England as the NICE decade—non-inflationary consistent expansion. Public sector net debt had fallen from 42.5 per cent of GDP in 1997 to 36.5 per cent in 2007—the second lowest level in the G7. The Conservative Opposition had committed to match Labour’s expenditure plans.

In 2007 the world was hit by a global financial crisis. The Labour party has expressed its regret that financial sector regulation was not as effective as it should have been and that that was a contributory factor to the crisis. Alistair Darling took the right decisions as a consequence of the crisis and he implemented them successfully. The financial system was stabilised under the Chancellor’s direction. Appropriate stimulus action was taken. Unemployment was lower than would otherwise have been the case, as were business failures and repossessions. The Chancellor introduced a strong framework for fiscal stabilisation going forward. I pay great tribute to Alistair Darling whom I think history will judge to be one of the great Chancellors, given the extraordinarily difficult global circumstances with which he had to deal. Last spring, after a very tough time for the economy we were turning the corner. The economy was growing. Over the second and third quarters of 2010, growth was 1.8 per cent—ahead of the USA and ahead of the EU average. Inflation remained low and unemployment was steadily coming down.

What has happened since the election? The economy has stopped growing. The Minister refers to growth but the facts are that since the Government came to power the UK’s growth record is 21st out of the 24 countries in the EU. The OBR has had to revise down its growth forecast on four separate occasions since it was established. We are the only major economy in the world that is not growing. On 26 July the Office for National Statistics will produce its initial estimates for second quarter GDP. I believe that these may well show that we are back into a recession. Inflation continues to be running at well over double the targeted level. The Minister last week completely failed to answer a question from my noble friend Lord Eatwell to explain why, if inflation was due to global circumstances, the UK was experiencing such a poor inflation record compared with other EU nations and the United States. The OBR is now forecasting that the combined effect of very low growth—if any growth at all—and inflation running well above target is that borrowing will be £46 billion above the level that the OBR expected at the time of last autumn’s spending review. I am confident that that figure will increase further when we see the second and third quarter GDP figures for 2011.

This is the context in which this House looks at the Finance Bill, described by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget speech as the “march of the makers”. The march of the myth makers, I would suggest. It is the myth around expansionary fiscal contraction, taking demand out of the economy when the economy is already suffering from underused capacity, particularly in the labour market. In the first quarter of 2011, UK GDP was much the same as it had been in the third quarter of 2010, but worse, it was still 4 per cent below the level before the global financial crisis and 11 per cent below the level that it would have been, had we extrapolated economic performance in 2007 through and beyond the financial crisis.

The Government’s response to that horrendous decline in achieved economic output is to announce a succession of policy initiatives that will have the effect of taking demand out of the economy. The Budget had nothing to offer. Growth has been hit and we are now teetering on the verge of recession. We already are in recession in terms of domestic demand. Household income is falling. Indeed, it is falling to the lowest levels in relative terms for 20 years. Real incomes fell last year for the first time since 1981. This is the background of economic achievement for which the Minister invites us to express our appreciation. Consumer confidence has slumped—I will revert to the critical issue of confidence in a moment. Business investment and confidence have also collapsed. Insolvencies are increasing. Banks are not lending. The Merlin agreement, which the Minister trumpeted, is a worthless piece of paper, as the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, described it. Merlin has no teeth. It does not even require the individual banks that have signed it to commit to individual lending figures. It is an aggregate figure—not an individual bank-by-bank figure. The ICB, so worthily established by this Government, has nothing to say about promoting greater competition in an oligopolistic domestic banking market.

Why is confidence so important? Notwithstanding the Government’s remonstrations about a debt-fuelled economy, the OBR assumes that household debt will increase further. At the moment, household debt is 165 per cent of GDP. The OBR assumes that it will rise to 175 per cent by 2015. That compares with 114 per cent 10 years ago. But that will not happen, and Ministers must know that that is the case. Households will not borrow more unless they are compelled by dire financial circumstances to do so involuntarily. We must remember that interest rates have yet to normalise. It is not surprising that the Bank of England warns of the consequences of rising interest rates and points to a very delicate situation for some banks if their customers are obliged to pay the sort of interest rates that would be more consistent with a rate of inflation of 4.2 per cent. Nor will the corporate sector financial surplus reduce, which is another key assumption of the Government and the OBR because why would companies run down their corporate financial surplus when the economy is experiencing such an abundance of unused capacity and declining demand?

Expansionary fiscal contraction assumes that a tight fiscal policy can lead to looser monetary policy and stimulate private investment and consumption. It is a form of the Ricardian equivalence in which almost no one believes. There can be no crowding out of private sector demand by the Government if demand is too low. The Government’s Budget strategy is simply not working. The economy is clearly not springing to life on a wave of confidence on the back of the picture painted by the Government. Monetary policy is already too loose and will have to be tightened fairly soon. The economy is stagnating but the Government propose a reduction in real government consumption, at constant market prices, of 10 per cent between now and 2015. This is a dangerous nonsense.

It was for many a forgettable Budget, an exercise in sleight of hand, but it was not forgettable if you are on a low income because you are going to be hit proportionately more than those on higher incomes. It was not a forgettable Budget if you are young and unemployed—a cohort of the economy and society that is increasing dramatically. It was not a forgettable Budget if you are female, experiencing the highest rates of female unemployment for 15 years. It was not a forgettable Budget if you are trying to buy a house or even keep your existing one. It was not a forgettable Budget if you are eking out an income from your savings when they are being reduced in real value by loose monetary policy. It was not a forgettable Budget if you are a small company seeking support from the banks. It was not a forgettable Budget if you care about the environment, because everything that was said about a green government policy was reversed in this Budget. It was not a forgettable Budget if you are a charity because of the reduced incentives to which you are now entitled as a result of tax adjustments.

The consequence of this is that we are facing the weakest economic recovery from a recession since the 1920s—the weakest economic recovery from a recession for 90 years. We are the only major economy in the world not experiencing economic growth. Regrettably, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has talked himself into a corner with irresponsible speeches about national bankruptcy and misleading references to “maxing out”—a horrible phrase which I am sure an Old Pauline should not use—the nation’s credit card. The Chancellor has talked us into this recession. As John Maynard Keynes wrote in the Times in May 1933, in words that are as apposite now as they were then:

“Unfortunately the more pessimistic the chancellor’s policy, the more likely it is that pessimistic anticipations will be realised”.

What should be done? First, Labour should acknowledge that its management of the economy during the middle part of the first decade of this millennium was not as good as it should have been. In particular, we ran a deficit while the economy was already running at full capacity and we failed to acknowledge the narrowing of the fiscal base. I have said this before and I will continue to say it because I believe it is important that we admit, with the benefit of hindsight, that mistakes were made. The economy is now in need of acute help. There should be a temporary cut in VAT. We should bring forward capital investment. Now is the right time, when there is excess capacity, to spend on government capital projects, including, in particular, social housing. We should take action to get credit flowing. I notice that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, has joined the board of Royal Bank of Scotland. When I sat where the Minister is sitting, I was regularly chastised by the noble Lord, Lord Noakes, who I see in his place, and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. I am sorry, I meant the noble Lord, Lord Newby. I made this mistake when I was a Minister and I have now done it again. I apologise to both the noble Lord and the noble Baroness. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, both used to chide me about my inability to get the banks to lend. I ask the Minister the same question: what are you doing, Minister, because bank lending to SMEs is declining? Bank lending for housing and domestic mortgages is at a 10-year low. The Minister shakes his head, but I encourage him to become the master of his brief, be on top of the facts and realise that lending to UK SME companies is continuing to decline.

As I said, the Chancellor has left himself with no options. There would be no place to which he could turn in terms of a policy adjustment without damage to his reputation and the need to admit that Alistair Darling was correct in his fiscal judgment. The price the nation pays for the Chancellor’s and the Minister’s pride is that we are pushed back towards recession.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords—

[Lord Myners]

I had almost finished, but I am very happy to give way.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Before the noble Lord sits down, there have been many glowing references to Alistair Darling and how wonderful he was as Chancellor, but no references at all to Gordon Brown. Was that a coincidence?

[Lord Myners]

We are time limited in this debate. In closing, I say how much I look forward to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Magan of Castletown, who will no doubt enrich the House with his knowledge of banking both in the United Kingdom and in Ireland, where the noble Lord had a number of important banking roles. I also look forward to the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market. I congratulate his committee on its extremely good work. Finally, I express my appreciation to the Minister for his apology to my noble friend Lord Barnett.

Monetary Policy Committee

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I absolutely did not refer to the reduction in anyone’s living standards. Absolutely at the heart of the Government’s response to the situation that we inherited is the need to get growth back into the economy, and we need fairness as we do it. That is why the Government are taking steps to take almost 900,000 people out of the tax net this April; that is why, under the coalition Government’s plans, 23 million taxpayers will be up to £170 better off next year than they would otherwise be; that is why we are reducing corporation tax from 28 to 24 per cent with other measures to make sure that we get the economy growing again.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, can the Minister confirm that the Government are nevertheless concerned about inflation? Does he recall the very wise words of the former Prime Minister the late Lord Callaghan, who reminded us in the 1970s that inflation is the father and mother of unemployment?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I absolutely agree with my noble friend that the Government are concerned about inflation. It eats into the savings of people who did all the right and prudent things through the last decade. We are concerned and are taking actions to make sure that the hard working and lower-income families in this country are protected in the current difficult economic circumstances.

Finance: Fiscal and Monetary Policy

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, first, since the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, draws attention to the fact that we did have a strong third quarter of growth at 0.8 per cent, we should celebrate the fact that we have had a third consecutive quarter of growth. The recovery will no doubt be choppy, and I am sure that at certain points what happens will suddenly become our responsibility, not theirs. That aside, the responsibility of the Treasury official who attends the Monetary Policy Committee is essentially to bring to the attention of committee members matters of which they ought to be aware in coming to their independent conclusions on monetary policy judgments. That includes briefing them, for example, on the judgments that have been made in the Treasury’s Budget so that they can factor them into account in their deliberations.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, has my noble friend seen the reports today on the mid-term elections in America, which state that President Obama's deficit reduction council is set to recommend that the best way to reduce the deficit is to cut the burden of taxation on the private sector in order to create wealth?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, in the judgments that my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer made about how to achieve the huge and very necessary consolidation of the fiscal position here, by the end of the consolidation period, 77 per cent of the burden will have been taken by expenditure cuts and only 23 per cent by taxation, because it is precisely by not raising taxes and choking off growth that we will get the economy growing again in a balanced way. I am grateful to my noble friend for bringing our attention to that matter.

Taxation: Deficit Reduction

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, as compared with the Labour Government’s plans, an awful lot of things have changed. The first is that we have a credible deficit reduction plan. We have yet to hear the Opposition’s plans on that. There will be a reduction in public spending of £81 billion by 2014-15, but, critically, we need growth, and so 77 per cent of the deficit reduction plan will come out of a reduction in spending. We absolutely want to keep the pain of increased taxation to a minimum. That is why it is absolutely critical and right that our taxation plans aim for lower revenue than do the Opposition, because that is what is required to get growth in the economy going.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, will my noble friend confirm—as I think the noble Lord, Lord Myners, did before the election—that the actual revenue from increasing the top marginal rate of tax to 50 per cent is very much less than was anticipated? Is that the case? Will he also confirm that the lesson of the 1980s, and of the experience of other countries around the world, is that if you want the rich to pay more in taxes, you do that by cutting rates, not increasing them?

[Lord Sassoon]

I am very grateful to my noble friend. I completely agree with his sentiments. This is not a Government who believe in medium and long-term high marginal rates of taxation. We have to incentivise the private sector to go out and generate wealth in order to deal, among other things, with the rebalancing of the economy which is now so necessary.

Public Expenditure: Value for Money

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, on the subject of value for money, can the Minister tell us what his or the Treasury’s estimate is of the difference in value for money obtained when an individual spends a pound according to their own judgment and when that pound is spent by Government when it has been taken from them in taxation?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, the assessment cannot be done exactly in that way—but when it comes to procuring large public projects and it costs more to cancel the project than it does to complete it, that is not the sort of behaviour that most people would indulge in when spending their own money. I absolutely take my noble friend’s point that there is far too much waste in procurement in government expenditure, inherited from the previous Government, and that is not the sort of thing that any of us would do when managing our own budgets.

Housing: Shared Ownership

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

Well, my Lords, the FSA, and what my noble friend has reported it as saying, must stand for themselves. I cannot directly answer for the FSA. However, my clear understanding is that the source book offers guidance on the way that the FSA undertakes its regulation and does not consist of formal rules. Indeed, for those societies with advanced risk management systems, there is not even an indicative limit on the level of shared ownership in which they can engage. As I understand it, building societies can lend within their statutory limits. They can undertake any lending up to their statutory limits provided they have appropriate controls in place.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, given that the sub-prime crisis in the United States was caused in the first place by government interference requiring lenders to lend money in an unsafe way, should we not be very wary about interfering in the lending decisions of building societies or others, however important the social issues are?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, the Government want to have a sustainable mortgage market in this country, and that requires a balance in maintaining a flow of mortgages so that people can get on to the housing ladder. In that regard, the actions which the Government have taken to ensure that market interest rates are kept low are paramount. On the other hand, we want to ensure that mortgage providers lend responsibly. That is why the Financial Services Authority is conducting a mortgage market review and why in July it issued a responsible lending paper for consultation.

Taxation: Avoidance

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, it may be helpful if I make it clear that the £900 million of additional money that HMRC will have to use is principally to tackle tax evasion. We are talking about avoidance this afternoon, but the £7 billion will principally be from money that is not avoided but evaded.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, would my noble friend not agree that how we use language is important? There is a big difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance. After all, everyone with an ISA is involved in tax avoidance. It is extremely important that we make clear the distinction between that which is legal and that which is illegal.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend, who has made the position absolutely clear. Minimising tax payments is perfectly reasonable. Where it gets into the avoidance on which HMRC needs to focus is where people have minimised their tax payments in a way that HMRC believes to be contrary to the way in which Parliament intended the tax laws to operate.