Lord Fox
Main Page: Lord Fox (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Fox's debates with the Cabinet Office
(2 weeks, 5 days ago)
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Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
We will have the Liberal Democrat Front Bench next, please.
Lord Fox (LD)
My Lords, when the Minister answered the noble Lord’s original Question, some of it got missed—happily, that was what I was planning to ask. Most entrepreneurs start as small or medium businesses before they become big, powerful businesses. It is very clear that the rise in NIC has hit those businesses disproportionately. As a result, there is less money for them to invest for growth and innovation. When the Treasury was considering that rise, it must have traded off future growth for short-term tax revenue. Was that the view of the Treasury at the time and why was it the view of the Treasury at the time?
Lord Leong (Lab)
My Lords, as much as I would love to indulge the noble Lord with an answer, I had best leave all Treasury questions to my Treasury colleagues. As I said earlier, most small businesses will not be affected by the employers’ national insurance rise. At the end of the day, we need confidence and to attract investment to this country, and to allow small businesses to have access to funds. I mentioned the tax reliefs earlier. The EIS, SEIS and VCT are tax reliefs where investors can gain 30% to 50% tax relief immediately and pay no capital gains tax. Those are the tax reliefs that businesses want; and to scale up, there is access to funding from the alternative market and from crowd- sourcing funds, such as Republic Europe and Crowdcube.