Self-employment: A1 Forms

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 12th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I absolutely agree with the noble Lord that the UK has one of the finest music industries in the world, which of course includes rock music but also classical music and opera. It is the second-largest recorded music market in the world and contributes £6.7 billion to the UK economy. Brexit has meant that there have been changes to certain arrangements. However, the A1 form process has remained relatively stable for many years.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, as Brexit has been mentioned, I point out that many Members of the House still here will, like me, well remember the early days of the Beatles. They will remember that the Beatles managed perfectly well in Hamburg for many months, if not years, without any great difficulty. That was before the EU was even thought of. Can the Minister consider ways in which we can learn from this by contacting Paul and Ringo to see how they managed that?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The Beatles split up the year I was born so I do not have as long a memory as the noble Lord. However, the Government are very focused on developing our emerging artists and ensuring that they can get to new international markets, whether that be in the EU or beyond. The music export growth scheme has been tripled and will now spend £3.2 million over the next two years to support these emerging artists. When it comes to music, we are talking about not just the EU but the entire world.

King’s Speech

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I should apologise in advance for what inevitably will be rather gloomy remarks, the first half of which will be something of a howl of frustration at the cancellation of the Manchester leg of HS2. The second will be a litany of my failure to get any sensible answers from the Government as to what is being done by way of compensation.

On the frustration: what is it about this country and major infrastructure projects? I remind the House that the first London to Birmingham railway was mooted in 1830, rejected by the Lords in 1832 but started in 1833 and finished in 1838. How did they do it, with picks and shovels? We are 14 years since the first iteration of HS2 and we will be lucky if the truncated railway is finished in 25 years in total.

What is it about this country in comparison with so many other major economies across the world? These are the countries that have dedicated high-speed lines either in existence at the moment or in the course of construction: in Europe, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland; outside Europe, China, India, Japan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and the USA. I am sure the list is longer than that. What do we know that they do not know? They all have successful high-speed lines.

Being someone who tries to look on the bright side, I have made some attempt to find out something about what the Government intend to do by way of compensation for this blow that they have landed on the Midlands and the north of the United Kingdom. I asked the Government about costs. I was told that £36 billion would be saved by the cancellation of this link, but I wanted to know how much money has so far been wasted, so I made the mistake of asking a Parliamentary Question, which simply asked

“how much money has been spent to date on the Manchester leg of HS2”.

I got this reply from the Minister:

“Spending up to and including February 2023 was reported in the Department’s last HS2 report to Parliament in June 2023. Updated figures will be provided in the Department’s next six-monthly report”.


In other words, “Look it up for yourself, mate”.

I did get something—a little, largely negative—from the Government’s document Network North, which is supposed to spell out the various compensatory rail schemes that might now go ahead with the money that has been “saved” from HS2. It is a very misleading document. It is entitled Network North, and at one point it explains that a new station will be built at Tavistock. Geography was never my best subject at school, but how that fits into a document entitled Network North I do not know. But I read the document, which said that

“every pound that we save from not proceeding with further phases of the scheme will instead be reinvested in hundreds of transport projects … far more quickly”.

So I made the mistake of asking another Parliamentary Question. It had this reply, which must go down for the next episode of “Yes Minister”. It says about further schemes:

“Officials are in the early stages of planning, including delivery timelines and estimated costs, for these schemes and are working closely with Network Rail”


and others to develop them. It continues:

“All schemes will be subject to the development and approval of business cases and will undergo all formal governance, in line with relevant fiscal and legal duties”.


In other words, if you are looking for a railway to be built, do not expect anything quickly from the Government. This was to be delivered “more quickly”—those are Rishi Sunak’s own words in Network North.

I try to be of a sunny disposition, so I will give the Government the chance to put these things right by asking them about a couple of the schemes listed that I know about; I invite every Member of the House to ask about ones they know about. Paragraph 63 of Network North says that we will reopen the Leicester to Burton line—that has been a possibility for a long time—and Stoke to Leek. What is the estimated cost of reinstating these two railways? What is the timeline for delivering them, bearing in mind the Government’s clear promise in Network North that these schemes will be delivered more speedily than the cancelled Manchester leg? On that attempt at being optimistic, but not with much hope, I close my remarks.

Spending Review and Autumn Statement

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Neill of Gatley]

Again, I had a slight problem hearing the specific words of the question. However, if I understand the broad gist of it, I point out that, given the new revenue-raising powers that all our local authorities will have available to them, their ability to have control over their plans will, of course, be considerably greater than is implied by the numbers that I think the noble Lord was referring to. That is particularly true of the big urban areas that have undertaken devolved responsibilities. In terms of where that destiny will be, as will be seen more clearly in the detailed documents to be released later, if not already, Greater Manchester, the first place that had devolved responsibility, has now had its third negotiated settlement. There will be more for others, as I have personally been very eager to discuss as part of our initial agreements with many of them.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Can the Minister confirm that when this House made its decision on tax credits, and the Prime Minister and the Chancellor went into meltdown about the outrageous nature of the House’s behaviour and its affront to the constitution, as well as making several other extreme statements, they had a very simple solution to hand to reassert—if that was needed—the authority of the Commons, which was to introduce a small, timetabled, money Bill, which the House of Commons could have passed in no time? The Chancellor could have achieved his original objective. The fact that he chose not to—and we are very delighted to see that he will not go ahead with these cuts—means that he thought again at the request of the House of Lords, and the House of Lords was fulfilling its historic and important constitutional function of telling Governments to think again.

[Lord O'Neill of Gatley]

My Lords, at the risk of repeating aspects of what I said, I think I made it clear that the arguments advanced had legitimacy and were, as with any other arguments, capable of influencing the Chancellor—which, I might add, has been observable on a number of other economic policies. What was not legitimate was the fatal Motion carried in this House.

Budget: Household Impact

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Neill of Gatley]

My Lords, I cannot recollect the exact numbers but those suggested by my noble friend sound broadly accurate. It is right to refer to such parameters. Indeed, the approach towards the now preferred way of presenting the distributional analysis is predicated on taking account of the consequences of the amount of public debt and, implicitly with that, the appropriate desire of the Government to reduce that level of debt.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I thought the Minister said that the biggest losers were those with the highest incomes. Does he have any information for the House on how they are coping?

[Lord O’Neill of Gatley]

My Lords, I have not had time, given a very busy schedule since returning from Recess, to conduct a personal survey but if the noble Lord would like to join me in such an activity, perhaps we should undertake it together.

Economy: Public Finances

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

I completely agree with the noble Lord.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

In the interests of clarity, when the Minister refers to the Budget, is he referring to the George Osborne Budget or the Danny Alexander Budget?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I was referring to the Government’s Budget.

Entrepreneurs’ Relief

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, we have had a trade deficit for a very considerable time. One of the reasons we have such a large deficit now is that the amount of net income from UK investments abroad has fallen dramatically, not least because a lot of foreign companies have been investing here. However, the Government have set an ambitious target for increasing exports. By common consent, UKTI is far more focused in what it is doing than it has ever been. We are seeing an increasing number of British companies exporting to an increasing number of countries.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Did I hear the Minister refer to the Government’s “long-term economic plan”? I knew that, in the other place, Conservative Members of Parliament were obliged to say that in all their speeches on every conceivable occasion but I had not realised that the implant was operating in the brains of Liberal Democrats as well. Can he confirm whether that is the case?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I am always happy to educate the noble Lord.

Greater Manchester

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I absolutely agree that clear accountability is vital. That is why the Government and councils have agreed that there will be a democratically elected mayor to oversee the new powers and funding. Indeed, beyond 2016-17 these new powers will be conditional on the elected mayor being in place.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Does the Minister not recall that—rather alarmingly, I thought—at the beginning of this Parliament there seemed to be complete agreement between the leadership of the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party that the people of the big cities in England would relish the prospect of establishing a system of directly elected mayors? Rather unwisely, from their perspective, they put that proposal to 10 cities in Britain in the form of rather expensive referendums, and the people of these great cities—very wisely, in my view—decided that they did not want this expensive innovation, which had not worked nearly so well in London as some people were suggesting. At the very least, can the Minister assure us that the views of the people in these cities will in future be respected, and that should there be any change in the structure of local government in the direction of directly elected mayors it would be put to the people in a referendum?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, some cities—notably Bristol—have decided to have an elected mayor, and the elected mayor in London, of whatever colour, has proved an effective spokesperson and advocate for London. There are no plans for a referendum for a directly elected mayor for Greater Manchester.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, this really is a huge, wide-ranging debate—far too wide-ranging in my view. I do not know how on earth the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, will sum it all up, but I am sure all his skills will come into play. There is one thing, at least in my mind, that is very simple about today: there is one issue that is far more important than any of the others that have been discussed, and the issue we will shortly address, which is the future unity of our country.

Having said that, I suppose I should apologise in advance: that is not where I will focus my own few minutes, not least because of one of the contributions in particular, that from my noble friend Lord Reid—although there have been other very good ones as well. My noble friend has made many splendid speeches that I have listened to, but that one took some beating. It was on the weaknesses of the separatist case. It would certainly bear reading or re-reading, I should suggest to anyone who is thinking of doing so.

I am always amused when I hear my good friend Lord Reid speak, and I dare say I will feel similar when my noble friends Lady Liddell and Lord McFall speak. I assume they will address this issue. It is palpably ridiculous to suggest that any of those three and their predecessors, who have presumably been living under the yoke of the union, have somehow become any less Scottish or that their national identity is in any way diminished through all those years of oppression. Presumably I am one of the oppressors; I had not been aware of that, but maybe that is the case. How you can make my noble friend Lord Reid any more of a Scot than he already is is beyond me. Maybe some of the separatists could address those arguments in the period that lies ahead.

I want to use a text on other constitutional issues. My text is from the Queen’s Speech:

“My Government will continue its programme of political reform”.

What political reform? The grandiose schemes for political reform, as outlined by the Deputy Prime Minister shortly after the coalition agreement was signed, were,

“the most significant programme of empowerment by a British government since the great enfranchisement of the 19th Century. The biggest shake up of our democracy since … the Great Reform Act”.

I think that might have been a mild overstatement, but I am happy to say that his attempts at constitutional reform have been largely unsuccessful. I think, for example, of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act. Some people worked pretty hard not to get that on to the statute book. We would have saved a lot of money had people listened to us. I do not have a problem with equalising constituency sizes—that is a perfectly laudable, principled thing to do—but I do have a problem with telling the British people that at the next general election they will have only 600 and not 650 MPs. That would diminish democracy by increasing constituency sizes. I am glad at least that that has been postponed, I hope for good.

I am glad that in the end we had a referendum on the alternative-vote system. It cost £75 million, which we could have spent on other things, but at least the result was terrific and showed British support for the first past the post system. That is something we could certainly adopt for the European elections. Last month we saw the wonderful new PR system that was going to encourage people to flock to the polls as it would give them the chance to express their vote. However, yet again we saw a low turnout for a European vote. Maybe one little bit of constitutional reform that we could have would be to revert to first past the post, and perhaps then we would even get the turnout up to the 36.5% that was achieved the last time the vote was held on the first past the post basis. That would help to reconnect Europe with the people of Britain.

The other great constitutional objective was Lords reform. My word, we gave enough warnings on that, but still the Government ploughed ahead for two years, wasting a lot of money. I checked that in a ministerial Question. The amount was £620,000. Five to 12 civil servants worked on it flat out, all to no avail, and they could not even find an answer to the question, “What would a ‘democratically’ elected second Chamber do to relations between the two Houses?”. All the brains in the top ranks of the Civil Service and all the Ministers could not answer that fundamental question satisfactorily. That is why that reform fell and deserved to fall, and I was very pleased about that.

Given that constitutional reform did not happen at a national level, I am glad that at a local level the mayoral referendums flopped as well. They were an attempt to import some American system of government into this country. There were 10 referendums, which cost us a lot of money as well—£2.1 million. I am happy to say that in nine of those referendums the people, including the good people of Birmingham, sensibly said, “No thanks very much. We don’t want that”.

We have mentioned police and crime commissioners, but I will end on the one reform that is still, for my book, unfinished business: the fixed-term Parliaments legislation. What a disaster that has been. Here we are plodding along. If only the Prime Minister—he is not my Prime Minister, obviously—had the power to say, “Look, we’ve had enough of this. Let’s see what the people think”. However, as we did for the last six months of the previous Session, we have to plod on.

I think that the lesson on constitutional reform has been that all these grandiose schemes really were not worth the paper they were, rather expensively, written on. I am glad that there is nothing like them in the current Queen’s Speech, but I hope that future Governments learn that lesson.

Economy: Inflation

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

Indeed, my Lords. Whatever the forward guidance of the Bank of England, it does not detract from its basic purpose, which is to keep inflation at or around 2%. That is the position we are now in and we believe that it will be the position going forward.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope I will not alarm the Minister too much if I say that I have been listening carefully to what he has been saying and, if I had come from outside, I would find it impossible to answer the question as to whether the Minister was a member of the Liberal Democrat party or the Conservative Party. Bearing that in mind, does he agree that, come the next general election, if people want a Conservative Government, the best thing to do is to vote Conservative; if they want a Labour Government, the best thing to do to vote Labour; and if they are thinking of voting Liberal, that is probably a waste of time?

[Lord Newby]

The noble Lord knows that I speak from the Dispatch Box for the Government. I am sure that he will not be surprised to know that I am extremely proud of this Government’s record on the economy.

Public Sector: Debt

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Lord is an assiduous reader of publications by the IMF and will have seen that, within recent days, the IMF has upgraded its forecasts for growth to 2.4% next year and 2.2% the next year, which is higher than for France and Germany.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister recall that during the time when the economy was clearly not growing at all but flatlining, the Government repeatedly said that it was due to the eurozone or the weather but nothing to do with the Government? Can the Minister please confirm that it is his view from the Front Bench that, if there is any upturn in the economy at all at the moment, it will be nothing to do with the Government?

[Lord Newby]

It is not a question of whether there is any upturn in the economy; there is a very significant upturn. Government policy ensured that, when we were facing very strenuous headwinds, the economy did better than it would otherwise have done, and it will do better in the upturn now as a result of a whole raft of policies that this Government are pursuing.