Finance Bill

Lord Howard of Rising Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, I shall comment briefly on just one aspect of the Finance Bill. Before doing so, I must say that it must have been a relief to the Chancellor not to have had to negotiate with the Liberal Democrats.

It is fundamental in this country that all are equal under the law; “all” includes the Government, in whatever guise—the Government, the state, the Administration. No one should be above the law. Schedule 8 to the Bill, briefly referred to by my noble friend Lord Flight, allows HMRC to take money directly from a person’s bank account without first seeking approval from a court of law. Yes, there are safeguards, but the principle behind Schedule 8 is wrong and it should not have been put forward. I imagine that is why the same idea was withdrawn after it was proposed in 2007. There is also some doubt about the security of the safeguards, as Clause 47(2) allows the Treasury to use secondary legislation to amend or alter at will.

It is right that HMRC should be able to collect taxes, but not that it should be above the law. It must be subject to the law in the same way as everybody else. One of the justifications given for enforcement by direct deduction from bank accounts is that more revenue will be raised than would be if HMRC first had to apply to the courts. This raises the question of whether some direct deductions might not have been approved in a court of law. If that were not the case, how could more money be collected?

If Schedule 8 is enacted, there are instances in the Bill where a decision is left to the discretion of HMRC, even if only by default, because of the lack of a time limit for a response or action by HMRC. This could create unreasonable delays, effectively freezing bank accounts. In particular, there is a time limit of 30 days for a response by HMRC in paragraph 11(1) of Schedule 8. Can the Minister clarify that the same time limit applies to paragraph 11(3)? It would appear that it does but that may not be the case.

The Explanatory Notes emphasise that there will be face-to-face interviews with taxpayers before these powers are used. It is too late for this to be in the Bill. We are all familiar with the need to make economies, forcing reductions in public services, but I would argue that ensuring every debtor receives a face-to-face meeting with HMRC officers is not something that should be put at risk when HMRC is looking at ways to reduce costs. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify that face-to-face meetings will not be abandoned. After all it was a major selling point of getting Schedule 8 to the Bill through the House of Commons.

Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Lord Howard of Rising Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)]

My Lords, I advise the Committee that if this amendment is agreed to it pre-empts Amendments 91A and 91AZA.

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 91D in this group. Its purpose is to remove uncertainty and so give smaller breweries a stable background in which to run their businesses. Helping small business is after all the purpose of the Bill. For these smaller breweries—indeed, for any pub company—to be successful in a declining market, it is essential that they make significant investment in their pubs. This necessary investment is not practical if they do not know under what rules they are operating. My noble friend mentioned changing the figure of 500 by affirmative resolution, but while change by regulation or order goes some way towards parliamentary examination it is, for practical purposes, a rubber stamp. Between 1950 and 2014, only 11 resolutions were rejected in the other place and only five in your Lordships’ House.

For that reason, if the Secretary of State can change the 500-pub definition to a different number by regulation, that will create uncertainty and severely restrict, if not halt, the investment necessary for the survival of the smaller breweries—which, by the way, generally speaking, have been increasers rather than closers of pubs. If noble Lords think that it is overpessimistic to say that investment will dry up, I remind them that under the last change in the rules governing the ownership of pubs many famous names, as my noble friend Lord Hodgson alluded to earlier, such as Whitbread, Bass, Scottish & Newcastle, Courage and Watneys have been absorbed by multinationals. It would be against the spirit of what we are trying to achieve today if a consequence was to contribute to the demise of small breweries.

Any change to the number of 500 should be subject to primary legislation. I urge the Minister to consider the amendment seriously so that those smaller breweries can continue to invest and create the prosperity necessary to maintain that part of the pub sector and help stem the decline of pubs.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I have three amendments in this group which go in exactly the opposite direction of the noble Baroness’s amendments.

We could keep the question of definition to talks between now and Report. I do not want to go over the arguments that we had earlier, but to define the owners, the pubcos, to which this applies in reference solely to tied pubs runs the danger of those pubcos altering their tenancy arrangements so that they fall below the threshold. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Howard, that this provision is not intended to hit the family and small regional brewers. We know that the large companies have a range of arrangements with their tenancies and are defined by the totality of their portfolio. It is relatively easy, given the turnover of tenants, for the companies to switch from one form of tenancy to another. They would have a motivation to do so, in order to fall below a tenancy threshold related to tied accommodation alone.

This is one of the issues on which we should have further talks. It is possible that we would have a different tied-specific definition, but that would require other obligations being put on the pubcos so that they would not change the designation of their portfolio to get around this threshold. I suppose that it would be difficult to draft such clauses, but there is a real danger of them gaming this situation. We know that some companies are already contemplating breaking their structure up.

We need more talk about what the definition covers. In a sense, this is the wrong way to go about it, but I would hope that the noble Baroness would not press the amendment and would rather make it subject to the talks to which she has committed for the coming period.

Medical Innovation Bill [HL]

Lord Howard of Rising Excerpts

Friday 27th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Saatchi on introducing this important Bill. The Bill is about innovation, but one of its benefits would be to enable dying patients to obtain potentially life-saving treatment even if that treatment had not been fully investigated. I have been lobbied by those against the Bill with arguments varying from lengthy legal discourses to comments such as, “The medical treatment may not have the support of a responsible body of medical opinion”. My reaction to much of this has been much the same as that of the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner.

Of course it is desirable and important to have thorough investigation of innovative medical treatment, but if someone is dying they are not interested in whether a possible life-saving treatment has the support of responsible medical opinion. The patient is interested in survival; after all, the alternative is terminal. Many impressive and technical arguments have been put forward today, but where the simple point is “Experiment or die”, there is really only one option.

It is possible, as has been claimed, to innovate under the law as it exists today but, as has been pointed out, we live in a litigious society. Ambulance-chasing lawyers are lurking around every corner, searching for new opportunities. The law as it stands does not do enough for a doctor who wishes to administer an innovative treatment that may give the last chance of a cure to a dying patient; indeed, there is a bias towards no action. The Bill will help to remove doubt about a doctor’s ability to act in what he and his patient believe to be the patient’s best interest. It would be far better for a doctor’s energy and concerns to be focused on the patient’s health rather than worrying about their own position if he or she were to take innovative steps to save a patient’s life. There should not be a bias against the ability to give a potentially life-saving treatment to save a dying patient.