National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill

Debate between Lord Livermore and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I apologise for speaking after the Tory Front Bench, but I thought the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, was continuing after the voting break.

I will speak briefly in favour of Amendments 58 and 59. In doing that, perhaps I should declare an interest. I was on the board of the Fawcett Society in 2010 when it brought a judicial review against the emergency Budget of that year for its failure to honour its legal duty under the Equality Act to do with gender impact assessment. In that case, although Fawcett lost the overall case on legal grounds, it was said that the gender impact assessment requirements applied to the Budget and should have been carried out on a couple of aspects of that Budget.

With that in mind, I draw attention to the final page of the policy paper of 13 November, which I think we are regarding as an impact assessment. Under the heading “Equalities Impacts”, in this five-page document that my sub-editor’s eye tells me is in 16-point, it states:

“Secondary Class 1 NICs are levied on employers rather than individuals. There are therefore no direct equalities impacts”.


I would like to question the Minister on how it can be claimed that there are no equalities impacts. Some figures have already been raised, but I point out that 74% of part-time workers are female, 57% of involuntary part-time workers are female, 6 million women are working part time and 10 million women are working full time. According to the Resolution Foundation’s analysis of ONS data, 63% of UK workers under the £9,100 threshold are female. We are seeing national insurance charges increasing the cost of employment by nearly £700 a year for someone working 15 hours a week on the minimum wage. An additional 600,000 women workers are being brought within scope of national insurance. As others have said, on the minimum wage you need to work fewer than eight hours a week to stay below the new threshold.

Analysis of this has suggested that women workers are particularly affected by this change. Some of them may want to raise their hours, so this might turn out positive. Some of them may have caring responsibilities that mean that they cannot lift their hours and may then have to leave employment because they are being offered more or nothing. It is also worth pointing out that the Women’s Budget Group has highlighted how the overall impacts of the national insurance changes are likely significantly to increase childcare costs. That is of immediate relevance to working women with direct childcare responsibilities, but, as the Women’s Budget Group pointed out, there are also issues around grandparents, very likely grandmothers, who may find themselves being pushed, and feeling obligated, to leave employment so that they can take up childcare responsibilities. I do not think that that equalities impact can be justified and would appreciate the Minister’s comments.

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. I will address the amendments and the new clause proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and the noble Lords, Lord Bruce of Bennachie and Lord Londesborough. These seek to set a reduced rate of employer national insurance for part-time workers at 7.5%. As I have said before, the difficult decisions in the Bill were necessary to repair the public finances, protect working people and invest in Britain’s future. This amendment would reduce the revenue raised from the Bill and therefore prevent the Government achieving those objectives. In policy terms, reducing the rate of employer national insurance for part-time workers would create additional complexity in the tax system and distortions in the labour market.

The Government have taken action to support those on lower pay by increasing the national minimum wage, which I was interested to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, describe as a blow. I think that will be interesting to those on lower pay. We have also introduced important protections for workers as part of the plan to make work pay.

Employers will also continue to benefit from employer national insurance reliefs, including for hiring under-21 and under-25 apprentices, where eligible.

The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, also spoke about umbrella companies and mini umbrella companies. I will just note that the Government are committed to closing the tax gap and have announced, as part of the closing the tax gap package in the Budget, that we will bring forward measures to tackle non-compliance in the umbrella company market, including mini umbrella company fraud.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, spoke specifically about equalities impacts. I can say that they were fully considered and we are confident that they are set out in the tax information impact note that she referred to.

UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue

Debate between Lord Livermore and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for raising those important trade issues. I can assure him that, having just acceded to the CPTPP trading relationship, we are absolutely committed to continuing that relationship and to building trade relationships in that manner. On Taiwan specifically, we consider the Taiwan issue one that should be settled peacefully by people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait through dialogue, not through any unilateral attempts to change the status quo.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in responding to the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, just now, the Minister said that their austerity—referring to the Tory Government’s austerity—has left us worse off. Can the Minister assure me that we will not see further damaging austerity of the kind that has already left us with a terrible level of public health, teetering Civil Service departments that cannot keep up with their responsibilities and local government in crisis? Can he say that we are not going to see more of that from this Government?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question. I cannot remember what the Green Party’s position is on the national insurance increases that we have put in place. I certainly hope that she is not opposing those increases but supporting the extra investment that we are putting into the National Health Service as a result, because that would not be terribly coherent. We are committed to investing in our public services. The Budget we just had, in October, announced £100 billion more of capital investment. I certainly would not describe that as austerity.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Since the Minister came directly at me, I very much invite him to look at the Green Party manifesto from the recent election. It remains our position to raise money from a range of sources to put vastly more investment into the NHS and many other government programmes, particularly through a wealth tax. I invite the Minister to look at it.

Since I am on my feet, the question that I was originally going to ask relates to the position of Jimmy Lai, as raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. Does the Minister agree that the situation of British citizen Jimmy Lai reflects the fact that there is no rule of law in China? In encouraging British businesses to further invest and become involved in China, is there not a significant risk to both their capital and staff where there is no rule of law? I am concerned that the Statement speaks with praise of HSBC and Standard Chartered. I do not know whether the Minister is aware of the situation where those companies have refused to hand over to Hong Kongers—BNO passport-holders who have come to the UK—their own money in pension funds.

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her follow-up question. I am sure that the Green Party manifesto is a cracking read and I will endeavour to read it, if I have time. I note that she did not say that she was in favour of the national insurance increase, so I take it that she is supporting the investment without supporting the means to raise that investment.

The noble Baroness asked specifically about British national Jimmy Lai. His case is a priority for the UK Government. The Chancellor raised this Government’s concerns about the case during her visit to China. The UK has called for the national security law to be repealed and for an end to the prosecution of all individuals charged under it, including Jimmy Lai. We continue to call on the Hong Kong authorities to end their politically motivated prosecution and immediately release Jimmy Lai.