Budget Statement

Debate between Lord McNicol of West Kilbride and Lord Horam

Friday 12th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Horam (Con)]

I, too, warmly welcome our five new noble Lords. I was lucky enough to read economics at Cambridge in the late 1950s, when the influence of the late and great economist John Maynard Keynes and his followers was very high. I have always taken the view thereafter that the first rule of economics is, in all circumstances, to maximise real economic growth. As a politician, the second rule that I have always advocated—I think that Keynes would also have agreed with this—is to make the distribution of the rewards of growth as fair as practically possible. I therefore support the Budget because it has made some real progress in both these areas.

In particular, it began to deliver on the levelling-up agenda. The brutal truth is that several regions of the United Kingdom have now been overtaken in GDP per head by countries such as Slovenia, Poland and Lithuania, which spent decades under the rule of communism. Some people worry about the huge debt that we have piled up to achieve these ends; I do not. Currently, the public debt is about 100% of our annual GDP. If you look over the long history of the UK, that is not far from the average. Nor is there a big problem with financing it while we have an independent Bank of England, which can, in the end, just print the money. The only factor to keep a beady eye on, as the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, pointed out, is inflation. That is certainly a threat.

My only doubt about the Budget is over the proposed rise in corporation tax, which is also a reservation on the part of the Office for Budget Responsibility. I appreciate that the Chancellor is giving a super-deduction of 130% for those who invest, but this will last only two years. He might have been better to leave the rate at 19%, which compares favourably with our major rivals. Alternatively, he might consider extending the super-deduction for the full Parliament. We have a steep hill to climb as a result of Covid and Brexit—a double whammy—but the Chancellor has had a good shot at getting to first base.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

I call again the noble Lord, Lord Mair.