Spending Review and Autumn Statement

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord O'Neill of Gatley

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

Debate between Lord Grocott and Lord O'Neill of Gatley

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.