National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill

Debate between Lord Macpherson of Earl's Court and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court (CB)]

My Lords, I will try to be extremely brief because no doubt I will be interrupted again. The point I was making was that if you cut tax in one area, you are going to have to raise it somewhere else. That is always problematic.

There are two other reasons why I have some reservations about this amendment. First, it is often thought—the Financial Secretary will remember this because we worked together on measures in the early 2000s—that part-time workers are poor. However, if you look at the poverty statistics, many part-time workers live in quite affluent households. My point is that as a measure to target people on low income, this is a very blunt instrument. It is far better to target them through tax credits, or universal credit as it is now called.

My final points relates to having worked on national insurance over three decades or more and is about the danger of creating steps in the system. I remember large numbers of workers bunching below the lower earnings limit, which was totally understandable as it was in their interest and their employer’s interest. By creating steps in the system, you discourage people from moving up the earnings ladder. In the short term, I could understand that cutting national insurance for the self-employed would genuinely incentivise the employment of part-time workers, but once in place, over time the existence of the step would trap many workers in this part-time zone because their employers would not want them to cross the step that resulted in higher national insurance. I warn against targeted measures such as this as they tend to cause difficulty and disappointment.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. I regret that the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, is not in his place and associate myself with the request for some information about Scotland.

The amendments address a matter of real importance, which is the impact of the measures on part-time and seasonal workers, SMEs, hospitality and tourism. The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, is right about the importance of part-time working in tourism, pubs, restaurants and events. That sector is sometimes neglected in public policy-making, but it is vital to growth.

Civil Service Impartiality

Debate between Lord Macpherson of Earl's Court and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

That is a completely different scenario. Ms Gray will work for the leader of the Opposition, which is a political post that she is moving straight into from the very top of Whitehall. That is why we have rules and guidance. I am surprised by the response from the party opposite: I would have thought that it would want to get on and explain what she talked about with the leader of the Opposition and what else she was doing at the same time. This seems to me to be quite different from some of the other cases that have been mentioned.

[Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court (CB)]

My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Butler, I remember a number of examples of people moving from the Civil Service to political positions, in particular my old friend, the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon. He was a very successful director-general at the Treasury, who moved to become Gordon Brown’s ambassador to the City; he then resigned and turned up the next day as an adviser to George Osborne. Surely the issue is about the ACOBA rules, which are all too often not observed by members of the Government. Does the Minister agree that, so long as Ms Gray follows the recommendations for an adequate cooling-off period, which I would assume would be somewhere between three and six months, she is pursuing the right and honourable course?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Ms Gray does indeed need to apply to ACOBA, which she has not yet done. Her post is a very senior post of a political kind, and I am sure that ACOBA will look extremely carefully at the move and lay down appropriate rules and guidance for her departure from the Civil Service.