Road Pricing

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

It is concerning to see such large rises in insurance. Officials are monitoring it. The Treasury is unlikely to intervene in what is a private market. However, I will write to my noble friend, because there are various helplines and advisers who can sometimes help people to find cheaper car insurance.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister is impressive in her attempts to explain away the huge fiscal holes that this Government are digging for themselves and for future Governments. Can she comment on the rather strange leaflet that many residents of London have received, apparently from the Conservative mayoral candidate, purporting to be a penalty notice for a road pricing scheme that does not exist and is not planned by the current Mayor of London? Given that the Government are so opposed to this, does the Conservative mayoral candidate in London not know what Conservative policy is, or is it that she has enormous faith in the ability of the London government to deliver something that the Minister has said is incredibly complicated?

HMRC: Tax Returns

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The noble Baroness may be aware that the HMRC made a very targeted intervention on overpayments over the summer, to enable a backlog that had arisen to be repaid. That is now cleared, and the self-assessment helpline prioritises queries relating to returns, repayments and other complex matters.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, after Making Tax Digital, the HMRC expects small businesses and self-employed people to file returns and so on using approved accounting software. What consideration has HMRC given to the Horizon accounting software scandal? What steps are being taken to ensure that such software does not contain unexpected flaws?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

There is actually a very competitive market in software that is able to speak to the HMRC system. No flaws have yet been found, but of course one is always aware of that.

Alcohol Duty Bands

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

Through making higher-strength drinks subject to higher duty, we are making alcohol more expensive in that way.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, surely it is about the proportion of the cost. I am not clear that the noble Baroness has answered the Question. She has repeatedly said that this is to allow businesses time to adjust. I remember the days when the most eagerly awaited bit of any Budget Statement was the announcement of duties on alcohol. As I understand it, it was always then rushed through the House of Commons that day so that the increases could come in overnight. What is this period for businesses to adjust all about?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, in addition to the annual level of the duties paid by businesses, we are introducing the biggest reform to alcohol duties in 140 years—for example, as I have said, by reducing the number of bands operating by linking very clearly the level of duty to the level of alcohol in a product. That is a significant reform, and one that businesses need time to adjust to. That is why we have aligned the introduction of the new duty rates with the new system.

Taxation: Avoidance

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 9th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, our convention suggests, as stated in the Companion, that noble Lords must be here in this Chamber to hear the Statement being repeated if they wish to ask a question of the Minister repeating that Statement. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, was not in the Chamber to hear my noble friend repeat the Statement.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Green, as everyone has said, is a man of great integrity. Can the Minister tell us whether the noble Lord was aware of the wrongdoing of the bank of which he was chairman? If he was aware, was the Prime Minister aware of that when he appointed him as a Trade Minister? If he was not aware, what judgment did the Prime Minister make about how effective he was as chairman of HSBC?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I have no idea what was in the head of the noble Lord, Lord Green, but I am aware that when he was appointed he was held in extremely high esteem by everybody who had ever had any dealings with him.

Money Laundering: UK Parliamentarians

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deighton]

My Lords, the key here is in the approach of the banks in doing their due diligence appropriately. The main feature of these arrangements is that domestic PEPs should be assessed in terms of their level of risk, and in the main UK parliamentarians should be assessed as low risk and, frankly, treated in precisely the same way as any other customer. The problem is when banks do not apply the right kind of risk-based assessment and instead revert to inappropriate box-ticking approaches.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, perhaps the Minister will explain that to the clearing banks in this country. Perhaps he could explain why my daughter, who was then aged 12, was required to appear with her driving licence and a utility bill in her name in order to be allowed to have a savings account with no more than 40 quid in it.

[Lord Deighton]

I absolutely accept the criticisms that are made where banks behave disproportionately. It happens too often and we should work with them to fix that. I will certainly undertake to look at the revised guidance that will be coming out as part of these arrangements to ensure that the banks take a proper, risk-based approach which is sensitive to the real risks involved in these transactions. I would encourage Members to follow up with their banks when there is a problem. It is appropriate to complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which is a facility that we have in place. I took the liberty of looking at the number of complaints about PEPs received by the financial ombudsman. I think that there were around 50 in 2013 and 30 this year out of a total of half a million complaints. However, I encourage Members to pursue their interests.

Finance: Fiscal Devolution

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made in considering the proposals for fiscal devolution set out in the London Finance Commission’s report Raising the Capital.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, the Government have recently devolved a range of responsibilities and funding through the Localism Act 2011 and they have decentralised local government finance through the Local Government Finance Act 2012. Any further fiscal devolution to sub-national authorities in England would represent a significant change to the existing tax landscape, with potentially significant legal, economic and constitutional implications.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will no doubt have read the report issued this morning by the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee, which says that it supports the principle of fiscal devolution and found no evidence opposed to it. He will also be aware that the major cities of this country apart from London—Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and all the other core cities—all agree that they need to see bolder fiscal devolution if they are to invest for their longer-term growth. Is it not time for the Treasury to undertake an economic analysis of how the full suite of property taxes could be devolved to England’s great cities in line with the recommendations of the CLG report and the London Finance Commission report and the devolution being delivered in Scotland and Wales?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, the first point that the noble Lord makes is summed up very well in the introduction to the report to which his Question refers, in which Tony Travers, who chaired it, says:

“Devolution and localism face little opposition apart from national politicians’ cautious approach to constitutional change in Britain”.

That sums up the position very well, and I think that there has been considerable movement under this Government. I will take back the noble Lord’s second point to my colleagues in the Treasury.

Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Flight]

My Lords, all Members of this House are what is known as PEPs for the purposes of anti-money-laundering. This means that any bank has to pay extra-special attention to any of our transactions. It is perfectly justified. The thought crossed my mind—and I have great sympathy with the noble Lord’s aspirations—that money laundering for corrupt purposes, for armaments, for terrorism and the rest of it, does not particularly come from an ordinary British family living in a suburb. It comes very much from parts of the world where such things are more prevalent. There is a case for requiring a more judicious anti-money-laundering regime for any form of transfer that comes from such parts of the world in an analogous fashion to a PEP if we really want to get to grips with the horrific money-laundering that can come from some parts of the world, causing misery to citizens there. As arrangements presently stand, there is no difference between an evil regime somewhere and an ordinary British citizen living in Birmingham.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

As I understand it, the money-laundering regulations specifically exclude British citizens, including parliamentarians, from their scope. What has happened is that the banks, as a matter of policy, following what they expect to be European directives on this subject, treat British parliamentarians as though they are politically exposed persons. The actual regulations do not.

[Lord Flight]

I think the noble Lord may be right, but in practice, we are thus treated as a more dangerous category. I was merely using that as an example of how the more obvious areas of money-laundering offences might be more carefully policed.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Yes, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, makes the point that a large percentage went to pensioners, but I do not hear from the opposition Front Bench a cry that we should cut the benefits to pensioners to avoid this position. The very fact that she says that from a sedentary position indicates that she accepts that.

Whatever the merits of how the money was distributed, it went up by 60%. One pound in every £4 which this Government are spending—by the way, that is money which we have not got because we are having to borrow £150 billion every year to make that expenditure—is going to welfare. To argue that it is not necessary to constrain welfare expenditure in those circumstances is, frankly, totally irresponsible. It is the worst kind of politics.

The noble Lord seeks to present people on this side of the House as uncaring and unconcerned about the poor whereas, actually, if you are concerned about people who are hard up, you want to make sure that the costs of living for them and the stoppages in their pay packet are reduced to as low a level as possible. If we follow those prescriptions of continuing to spend money we have not got, of continuing to pay more in welfare than people are gaining in increased incomes in the private sector, that is the road to Carey Street and to undermining our whole welfare system of support.

The truth is that while Labour was in office, it was paying tax credits to people on up to £50,000 a year. It was a policy deliberately designed to create a client state, and it was a policy funded on the back of a bubble created by holding down interest rates. It was irresponsible economics and it was irresponsible public expenditure. A responsible Government, faced with the windfall tax revenues that they had, would have put some aside for a rainy day. Now we find ourselves with a huge, exploded welfare budget and difficult decisions that need to be taken.

I hope that the House will reject the amendment which, while we all appreciate the sentiment, would actually do down those who are hardest up in our society and having the most difficulty. The noble Baroness shakes her head. It is the consequence of spending money which we did not have.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

My Lords, I hesitate to give the noble Lord a lesson in economics, but the problem that the Government currently face is a complete absence of growth. Further cuts in welfare benefits will make that worse. One thing that you can say for certain is that the people on the lowest incomes will spend that money and that that money will then feed into the economy, therefore doing something about the growth problem that the Government have exacerbated by what they have done in the past few years.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I do not think that was a lesson in economics but a lesson in magic. If that is the case, why do we not just double welfare benefits? People will spend even more, the economy will grow and everything will be fine. The noble Lord nods his head in agreement. As an individual or as a household, you cannot continue to spend more than you earn without getting into the kind of problems that we have seen among people who have taken out payday loans.

This is the payday loan approach to government. You have a big debt, so you take out another one. You pay a higher rate of interest on it but you hope that somehow you will be able to pay it back. In the end you are able to pay only the interest. At the moment the Government are printing money to fund their expenditure requirements. That is quantitative easing. In 1997 the Bank of England held no government bonds. Now it holds 27% of the entire bonds in issue. When interest rates rise, those bonds will fall in value. How will the difference in value be made up? That will be a cost for the taxpayer. Our level of borrowing now, which will have gone up by 50% by the end of this Parliament, will have to be financed and that will come out of the future welfare budget.

The noble Lord is describing a way of robbing our children of their living standards and creating a bigger problem for the next generation to meet the needs of those who are most vulnerable. This is a way of making it more expensive to create the safety net that we all support. This is not a lesson in economics but in the kind of fantasy approach to politics that got us into this position in the first place. That is why the Government are right to persevere with this legislation. Indeed, they have been very reasonable in their approach. They have tried to protect the most vulnerable and have agreed to increase welfare payments by 1%. This is extraordinary, given that we have an economy that is not growing at all.

[Lord Harris of Haringey]

Exactly.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

The noble Lord seems to think that the reason why the economy is not growing is that the state is not large enough. How big does he want to the state to be? It is already taking nearly 50% of everything created by the Government and spending it, and that is not enough because they have to borrow on top of that.

If levels of taxation are high, which they are, and levels of regulation are high, we will not get the growth that is required. We need to constrain public expenditure to make room for the private sector to create wealth. Once we have a bigger cake, everyone can have a bigger slice, but if we try to proceed in this way we will end up with a smaller cake and those dependent on welfare benefits will be cruelly cheated. They will find their living standards destroyed by inflation, higher costs and the inability of the Government to finance the kind of programmes that Members opposite are prepared to say now that they would support, although they are not prepared to say so at a general election.