Coronavirus Bill

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard - continued) & 2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 24th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I begin by referring to my interests in the register. I am involved in business and am chairman of the Cumbria local enterprise partnership and, as a result of that, a member of the NP11—the Northern Powerhouse 11. It is because of those two things that I have come down south to London to this debate. The Cumbria LEP is leading on business resilience, which is an integral part of the Cumbria local resilience forum. At regional level, the NP11 is doing much the same on a wider canvas.

Quite rightly, the Government are placing their prime focus on the country’s health, but the more health measures introduced, the greater the impact on business. That is not to say they should not do it, but it is a consequence. The impact on business, commercial life and jobs is therefore getting greater.

There are two fundamental and important implications. First, if people do not have any money, the consequences are self-evidently dire. Secondly, businesses provide work, and with it wages, to the parts of the supply chain and among producers of things that we need and want. They are the basis of commercial life. In future, if they do not have any money, they will cease to exist.

Cash is king. If cash stops, business stops. If business stops, cash stops. If business stops, jobs and goods stop. On top of that, the infrastructure of the future economy is strangled. I welcome that the Government recognise the need for cash and are putting measures in place to get it into the wider community. But is it enough, and is it being done quickly enough? What is needed from central government is speed, precision and user-friendliness in the economic and governance measures that it puts in place, to run in parallel with the health measures that are the predominant topic of this debate. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said, money is needed now—not at the end of the week, or the month, or the end of April, or this year, or next year or whenever. I echo the points made by the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, about the self-employed, and that the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, made about charities.

As I have intimated, I welcome the general direction of travel shown in the Answer repeated by the noble Earl, Lord Courtown, to an Urgent Question earlier this afternoon, but where is the beef? Individuals are running out of both time and money. Business owners, perplexed by the lack of clarity, will shut up shop, get out with what they can and cut their losses. The devil lies in the detail. Banks distributing interest-free loans are seeking collateral, I understand—and anyway a loan, interest-free or not, has to be paid back. People, especially smaller operators, are understandably asking themselves, “Is it worth it?” The self-employed are feeling exposed and discriminated against, as has been said.

What is needed is equivalence and even-handedness across the piece—big and small, rural and urban, employed and self-employed. The perspective of everyone’s personal and business financial affairs, looking both forwards and backwards from this coming year end, seems diametrically different, in my view. I think that no payments should be made as opposed to liabilities incurred until the end of the forthcoming financial year, in order that liquidity is preserved in society.

Twenty years ago, my own farming business was destroyed in the foot and mouth outbreak in Cumbria, when I was a Member of the European Parliament for that area. I have first-hand and close experience of some of these things. One thing that we must not overlook is the implications of isolation combined with worry. It is very unpleasant and damaging for people’s mental health. That point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice.

Finally, there is the long term, which I hope will start with the comprehensive spending review later this summer. As many Members of your Lordships’ House have said, we are looking at an unknown future, and we must revisit de novo, pragmatically, our future national economic, commercial and business policies so that they are based on hard-nosed, real-world economics, to get our economy up and running again. The first step on that road is a recognition that cash is king, because cash is the lubricant of the engine that is the economy.