Monetary Policy Committee

Lord Newby Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I will not fall into the trap of second-guessing the MPC. As I have said, the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England runs monetary policy on an independent basis. That was an establishment of the previous Government to which I pay tribute. I am certainly not going to do anything other than restate the critical importance of the independence of the Monetary Policy Committee. It is up to the committee to decide how to hit the inflation target, which it is doing with the full confidence of the Government.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, does the noble Lord agree that the principal reason for having an inflation target was to bear down on domestic demand inflation, particularly wage inflation? Would he further agree that at the moment such pressure does not exist—wages are flat—and therefore it would be a mistake to put interest rates up primarily in response to external factors?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend because, while again I will resist the temptation to second-guess the Bank of England, it has indeed attributed the recent rise in inflation, which has been significantly to the depreciation of sterling, to the increase in VAT which the last Government put in place and to the rise in energy prices. These are external factors.

Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

Lord Newby Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Eatwell]

My Lords, this is a rather heterogeneous group of amendments. In fact, the only common theme that I can see running through the amendments is that most of the ideas in them were proposed by the Opposition in Grand Committee. We are delighted that the Government have accepted many of the arguments made by this side concerning important failings in the Bill as originally introduced.

An essential difficulty with the structure of the OBR is that the OBR is to be both outside government and yet of government. The goal of the Bill is to make the OBR independent—a goal that we on this side fully support—yet, as the provider of the official forecast, the OBR is an essential part of policy-making and must be closely involved with the development and costing of government programmes. As the draft charter states,

“The Government will have full and timely access to information and assistance from the OBR”.

A very obvious manifestation of the resultant ambiguities is that the Treasury is planning to retain forecasting skills in order that Ministers may make informed judgments on the impact of various policies. As the noble Lord made clear in Committee, this may lead to the extraordinary situation in which the Treasury could reject the official forecast. Such paradoxes are the inevitable outcome of the peculiar, ambiguous status of the OBR.

Given this peculiar status, it has been the objective of this side of the House to reinforce the independence of the OBR wherever we might. After all, if there is not widespread confidence in that independence, the legislation will have failed. To that end, I am pleased that the Government have—in the form of Amendments 1, 2 and 4—accepted our argument that the non-executive members of the OBR should be given clear roles, including, most importantly, that of guardians of the independence of the OBR and, as we shall see in later amendments to be considered by the House, that of securing third-party monitoring of the OBR’s performance. We are pleased to support Amendments 1, 2 and 4.

There are two other important amendments in this heterogeneous group—I am sure that, listening to the Minister introducing the amendments, noble Lords might have been rather puzzled about why they are in a single group. Following suggestions made by this side and by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, Amendment 11 clarifies the previously obscurantist Clause 5(3). Will the Minister confirm that Clause 5(3) as amended will ensure that the evaluation of the relevant government policies will essentially be part and parcel of all the OBR’s work, including the work outlined and defined in the charter?

Amendment 12 is an acceptance of our argument that it is preposterous that the Treasury should, via the charter, be able to qualify the meaning of the requirement for the OBR to perform its duties “objectively, transparently and impartially”. I am delighted that the amendment will remove that nonsense. Will the Minister make it clear that the remaining requirement—which is, so to speak, all that is left—in Clause 6, which provides that the charter

“may include guidance to the Office about how it should perform its duty under section 4, including (in particular) guidance about … the time at which it is to prepare any forecast, assessment or analysis”,

can now refer only to the time at which the OBR should perform its duties under Clause 4? Do any wider, unspecified powers of direction remain? It would helpful if the Minister could clarify that, since Clause 6 will now have been changed to such an extent that it is not entirely clear what subsection (3) now refers to when it refers back to subsection (1).

Finally, in Amendment 13 the Government have responded to our criticism about the lack of adequate parliamentary scrutiny of the charter by requiring that a draft of any modification be published 28 days before the charter is laid before Parliament to be approved by resolution of the House of Commons. This is an important improvement on what went before, but even so—as the noble Lord, Lord Newby, said in Committee—the charter is subject only to vestigial parliamentary scrutiny. The important word in this context is “vestigial”.

That raises an important issue mentioned in the notes distributed with the amendments for the Report stage. Noble Lords will recall that several elements of the charter came in for stiff criticism in Grand Committee, yet the notes that accompany this stage declare that the revised charter will be published only after the Bill has received Royal Assent. That cannot be right. The failure to provide a revised charter deprives Members of another place of the opportunity to relate the charter in the Government’s preferred form to their substantive discussion of the Bill. In effect, this is the Government stifling debate on the charter. Will the Minister give me an assurance that this underhand way of going about things will be rescinded and that the revised charter will be published in good time for its consideration by another place?

[Lord Newby]

These government amendments are welcome because they recognise the discussions held in Committee. The Minister has a gone a long way towards responding to the concerns that were expressed.

I am particularly pleased with Amendment 11 because we spent a lot of time on this issue. Clearly, the original drafting was inadequate. Pride of authorship means that I am unhappy that the words that I suggested in Committee are not being used, but the wording in Amendment 11 will do exactly the same job, so I welcome that.

I also welcome Amendment 13 for the reasons suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell. I have some sympathy with his last point. I cannot see why the charter cannot be presented in its final form before the Bill goes through another place. I cannot believe that there will be much to change—the charter is not a very long document—so, for the reasons given by the noble Lord, that would be an improvement on what is currently proposed.

I want to make a final comment on what the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, said about the Treasury retaining its own forecasting ability and what would happen if there was a dispute with the OBR. We discussed at some length in Committee why it was essential that the Treasury should retain it own forecasting abilities While it would clearly be a major source of embarrassment if the Treasury disagreed with the OBR forecast, the one good thing about the new system is that, presumably, any such disagreement would be transparent because the Treasury would have to explain that it has disagreed with the OBR and give reasons why, and there would no doubt be a huge row about it. Although that might be uncomfortable for the Government, that will at least expose all the issues that are in dispute. In the interests of transparency, surely that is a good thing.

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords, I intervene briefly to express appreciation to my noble friend for the way in which he has kept us in touch during the period between Grand Committee and now with the way in which his thoughts have been developing. Certainly this is a non-controversial Bill, but the House is succeeding in improving it still further and that is a good thing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Myners]

My Lords, I support Amendment 6 to Amendment 5. I was not in the House for the beginning of Report, but I add my congratulations to those that I understand were expressed to the Minister on rejecting the advice that Ministers so often receive to resist and instead listening carefully to what was said by all sides in Committee, taking that into consideration and bringing forward a set of very constructive and welcome amendments. That shows the House performing its correct and proper function of revision, being professional and efficient, enhancing the quality of the Government’s intention and not unduly delaying the House in so doing.

I repeat my support for the concept of the Office for Budget Responsibility. I hope that, just as the Minister reminded us during Oral Questions that the previous Government established the Monetary Policy Committee which is now an important part of our financial and economic infrastructure, the OBR will be a similar testament to this Government’s contribution to building a sustainable and effective architecture. However, I support the amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Eatwell because it seems to me that the symmetry between the electoral cycle and five years is simply inappropriate for something which should be established to stand well apart from day-to-day politics and the electoral cycle.

It is particularly important that the work of the OBR should be subject to independent review in a shorter period than five years at commencement. It is new, and it is going to be establishing a lot of new ways of working and new formats for reporting that no doubt will evolve over time. It would be unfortunate if we did not have a chance to stand back and look at how it was performing and how its contribution could perhaps be further enhanced before five years had elapsed—before we got to 2016.

There is a strong reason for having these reviews in periods of not more than three years, rather than in periods of not more than five years, as proposed. However, the noble Lord, Lord Burns, is right to remind us, as I am sure the Minister will in his closing speech, that the current draft says that, as it should not be more than five years, it could well be that the committee, the membership of which has not yet been selected or identified, could choose to make the reports earlier. For the purpose of good order and good process and, frankly, to strengthen further the integrity of the OBR and the confidence that it will be able to sustain from the broader public, these reviews should take place more frequently than once every five years. Once every three years would be a better outcome. It is for that reason that I support Amendment 6.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I support the government amendments to introduce an external review. The debate in Committee and, to an extent, at Second Reading demonstrated why that was a good idea.

As for whether three years or five makes better sense, I have a lot of sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Burns, said about the benefits of five years. The amendment is very flexible. It does not say that the review will be commenced on 1 October five years hence. It says that at any point a review can be undertaken; as soon as the non-execs were appointed, they could cause a review to be undertaken if they were worried ab initio that the office was not performing well. If they then felt that it carried on causing them concern, they could have another review relatively quickly. The draft gives the non-execs a lot of flexibility.

What we are doing here is a belt-and-braces job. On the assumption that the office is doing a reasonable job, and bearing in mind that it will be subject to a huge amount of external scrutiny—this body is not operating in the closet with no one looking at what it is doing; every time it produces a report, 50 economists mark it—to do that roughly once a Parliament sounds about right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Eatwell]

On Amendments 8 and 10, the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, will have to suffer the possibility of inconsistent forecasts because that is, in a way, embodied in the independence and separation of the Bank of England. The whole point of an independent Bank of England, and the way the Labour Government set up the independent status of the Monetary Policy Committee and the Bank of England, is that it should be allowed to take an independent view. That independent view will be informed by its own research. This can lead not just to forecasting inconsistency but to policy inconsistency, but that is the price we are going to pay if we think this is an appropriate policy mix. The very distinguished late economist Sir James Meade pointed out many times that this separation could lead to serious policy inconsistency, and he was entirely opposed to its, none the less, that is the way we have constructed policy-making in this country, and that separation will bring with it the possibility—indeed, the probability—of some forecast inconsistency. However, we should note that recently the Governor of the Bank of England has been making many statements about fiscal policy, which is not his territory. That is very unfortunate. He seems to have encouraged the Prime Minister to make comments on interest rates, which are not his territory either. If this separation is deemed to be a good thing by our Parliament and policy-makers, I hope that the governor and the Prime Minister will respect it.

The problem I have with Amendment 10, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, is that I do not think the output gap is a precise notion which can be believed if you say it is 2.5 per cent or something like that. In the Budget debate and in the debate on the comprehensive spending review, I argued that it is a statistical construct. It has embedded within it a series of statistical assumptions. It was quite striking that in the first OBR report, the definition of the structural deficit was changed, to the benefit, I might add, of the Government’s arguments. Therefore, I do not want too much credibility to be put on what is a useful indicative statistic. The weight put on it can be taken too far.

I strongly support the Government’s amendments both on transparency of assumptions and consideration of the risks to which the economy might be exposed. The latter issue, with the OBR now being required to talk about the risks to which the economy is exposed, is very important. For example, let us suppose that we had had an OBR of 2006 vintage. That OBR could have expressed concerns about the fiscal risk the economy was subject to by being dependent on such a high proportion of tax revenues coming from just one sector of the economy, that of financial services. It would have had the opportunity to say, in facing that risk, that some diversification of revenue sources might be desirable. Similarly, in defining the sustainability of the public accounts, the OBR should take into account the risk to sustainability generated by the foreign balance and by the savings and spending behaviour of the private sector, and their interactions with the public balances. Providing these insights into the risks of public sector financial management would extend the debate about the public finances in a very useful way and would ensure that the debate is far better informed than it has been in the past. So I would like particularly to add the support of this side for government Amendment 9.

[Lord Newby]

I would like to echo the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, in two respects; first, in his comments on Amendment 9, which I will not repeat, and secondly, in his comments on Amendment 10. I am dubious about the value of giving enhanced status to an assessment of the output gap or when the economic cycle is likely to end for reasons largely already given by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell. The output gap is not an absolutely firm context and figure that is easily grasped and measured. As we saw with the previous Government, a lot of weight was put on the economic cycle because the golden rule about government expenditure and borrowing depended on it. The problem was that whenever a difficulty arose, lo and behold, the definition of the cycle changed to push the difficulty back. It proved to be a far more elastic concept than we thought, and the old Ricardian economic cycle that depended on grain crops just does not obtain in quite the same way today. So while I am sure that the Office for Budget Responsibility may well wish to opine on these matters, and it will be quite interesting to know what it thinks, it is of secondary importance in setting government policy. Indeed, because of its somewhat nebulous nature, I would not want us to put too much weight on it again.

[Lord Sassoon]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, for his support for government Amendment 9, but let me say a few things in respect of Amendments 8 and 10 because my noble friend Lord Higgins has raised important issues. I agree with the spirit of the amendments in both cases, and I shall try to do justice to the points he has raised by explaining how I think the matters are or should be dealt with.

Amendment 8 concerns the question of economic and fiscal forecasts. On fiscal forecasts, a comparison is actually not possible because the Bank does not produce such a forecast. Rather, it incorporates the official fiscal forecast now produced by the OBR into its own economic forecasts, which reflects the expertise within the OBR and the information that the office as opposed to the Bank has access to. So that is dealt with because there is no comparison to be made.

Finance and Insurance Market: Underwriting Fees

Lord Newby Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I am happy to acknowledge that the noble Lord also has a distinguished history in this area. As well as being a fund manager, he wrote a report for the DTI in February 2005, so there are lots of poachers turned gamekeepers out there in the jungle. We should wait to see what the OFT recommends. It can recommend a range of actions, which could include matters coming back to government. I and my colleagues in government would then follow them up in the appropriate way.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the Ferrans report is yet another demonstration of the fact that if bankers are left to their own devices they behave in an uncompetitive way? While certain aspects of the report are being considered and are relevant to the OFT, it makes a number of suggestions about how some EU financial services directives could be strengthened to improve the sector and its competitiveness. Will the Minister give an undertaking that before the OFT reports, and in its ongoing discussions in Brussels, it will take forward the proposals in the Ferrans report to ensure that transparency and competition are promoted?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, as I have already said, it is expected that the Office of Fair Trading will report later this month, so we do not have long to wait. We should consider what the appropriate action is to take after my ministerial colleagues have had a chance to consider the recommendations of the OFT report. However, I hear what my noble friend says.

Air Passenger Duty

Lord Newby Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, the Government have not proposed anything yet. The coalition agreement talks about a change from APD to a per plane basis. Clearly, different constructions of the duty have different effects on usage of aircraft and on the environment. However, as I say, the Government have not proposed anything yet. We are in listening mode. The effect on the airlines, environmental effects and competitiveness are all issues that must be considered.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that the APD is seen to be particularly unfair on the Caribbean? Will he ensure that as part of the review which the Government are undertaking, particular attention is given to the effect of the APD on the Caribbean, not just on the tourist industry there, which is increasingly important as a proportion of its economic activity, but on the Caribbean diaspora who live in the UK?

[Lord Sassoon]

I am grateful to my noble friend for drawing attention to the Caribbean. The Caribbean Tourism Organisation has produced a very helpful report as a contribution to the debate. I have met the Heads of Government of the dependent territories in the Caribbean, so I have heard first hand their strength of feeling in respect of this issue. However, under the Chicago Convention we have to have an objective basis for distinguishing between one country and another.

EU: Budget

Lord Newby Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

When was the last year that DWP got a clean audit opinion?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I cannot tell the House that but I am very happy to write with the information. I think that it involves different auditing standards and a different structure but I shall be very happy to confirm that.

Loans to Ireland Bill

Lord Newby Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

I thank the Minister for his very clear introduction to the debate. I was slightly concerned, however, that he did not refer the House with the degree of attention that it may deserve to paragraph 21 of the Explanatory Notes, which deals with the compatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights. I was tempted to ask him whether the law officers had been consulted before the Chancellor of the Exchequer made the statement that,

“pursuant to section 19 of the Human Rights Act 1998 … the Bill is compatible with the Convention rights”.

As this is the first time that we have debated the Bill, the Minister has not had the chance to give any undertaking to speak to the law officers, and it would be invidious to ask him to do so. However, one hopes that that will not be necessary.

Was there any alternative to the loan and the Bill? As the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has explained, there was not. If the EU had not intervened in the dramatic way in which it did, it is almost certain that Ireland would have had to default and leave the euro. That would have been bad not only for the eurozone but for the UK. It would have been bad for the UK for trade reasons—I shall come back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, a bit later in my speech—as we have a large volume of exports to Ireland. Indeed, 40 per cent of Northern Ireland’s exports go to the Republic. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Bew, will expand on that point.

The prospect of Northern Ireland, as a depressed region of the United Kingdom, suffering significantly as the result of a major crisis in the Republic would have had not just a severe impact on Northern Ireland but, obviously, a severe knock-on effect here, including to the public finances. We would have had, in effect, to have filled in some of the hole that would have been knocked in the Northern Ireland economy. Such a crisis would also have been bad for the UK because of the exposure of UK banks. Again, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, pointed out, the Bank of England has set out starkly the scale of that issue. A default would have led to instability in sovereign debt markets more generally and could have increased the costs of UK government borrowing.

That does not necessarily mean that we agree with absolutely everything that is being done to restructure the Irish banking system. The arguments for establishing the National Asset Management Agency can be made either way. Effectively nationalising all the risks taken by all the Irish banks raises moral-hazard issues, which we have sought to avoid to a considerable extent in the United Kingdom.

Another issue is whether, even with all this activity, we will have been successful in stabilising the Irish economy. To pose the question that Martin Wolf posed in the Financial Times recently, the question is not whether the Irish banking sector is too big to fail but whether it is too big to save. Hopefully, the answer is that the Irish banking sector can be saved as—heaven knows—it is not lacking resources. The amount that has gone in both from the Irish Government and, via them, from the EU is now considerable.

It would have been irresponsible for the UK not to participate in the Irish bailout, but the Irish problem is not the only issue facing the eurozone. There are broader issues that relate to Greece, Portugal and now Spain and Italy. Given that we are outside the eurozone, it is a logical if inglorious position for us not to commit to taking part in any further bailouts of other member states.

When contemplating this debate, I cast my mind back to the debates that we had a decade ago on whether Britain should join the euro subsequent to, as many noble Lords will remember, the famous five tests. I am pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Morris, in his place. Uniquely in my hearing, he was able to make a joke—which at least I laughed at at the time—about whether we should join the euro. At a TUC summer reception, he said that, having been asked by the then Chancellor, Gordon Brown, what he thought about the five tests, he had replied, “Well, we’ve won one, we’ve lost one, we’ve drawn one, but I think we might win the series in Sydney”. A decade on, a lot has changed both in cricket and in our perceptions of the euro.

At that time, many of us on these Benches supported Britain’s attempts to join the euro. One of the joys of doing a considerable amount of work with Charles Kennedy, as I was doing then, was that we were summoned from time to time to see the Prime Minister for an uplifting talk on matters of common interest and concern, of which the euro was one. At that point, Charles Kennedy was keen to press the case for British membership of the euro on a Prime Minister who was keen but extremely nervous about that prospect. Indeed, he said at the time that he would like to join the euro but he thought that it was impossible to beat both public opinion and the popular press—he could beat one, he thought, but not both—so he did not attempt it. As a result, we are now in a situation in which nobody seriously thinks that we should join the euro in the foreseeable future. Although it is inconceivable—for the reasons given by Tony Blair among many other reasons—that we should join the euro at this point, some of us at least are not absolutely convinced that we took the right decision a decade ago.

However, if I were to dilate on that argument and those tests, I would no doubt keep your Lordships here all evening. I know how much Members—particularly those opposite—hate overlong speeches. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is clearly already extremely impatient with me, and I can understand why that might be the case.

Even though we are agreed that we should not join the euro, two interlinked questions need to be considered—we cannot amend the Bill, and it would be foolish to attempt to do so—in this discussion on the Bill, which gives us an opportunity to range slightly wider. Realistically, what should our role be in terms of ensuring financial stability within Europe? And what should the eurozone do now? As I say, the two issues are inextricably linked, but the first principle should surely be to support eurozone members in doing whatever they agree is prudent to strengthen the working of the eurozone. For example, it would surely be perverse and ridiculous if the Government committed themselves to having a referendum on changes to the EU treaties that eurozone members decided were necessary to allow eurozone members to support each other more effectively. Can the Minister assure us that, as a non-eurozone member, we will wave through any proposed changes to the EU treaties without requiring a referendum in the United Kingdom?

As the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has pointed out, the Chancellor is more generally in an extremely odd position when considering the development of the eurozone. The eurozone’s success or failure is obviously of crucial importance to the future of the British economy, as has been exemplified by the situation in Ireland. However, as the noble Lord pointed out, there are three reasons why the success or failure of the euro and the eurozone is important to us. The first of those reasons, to which he referred—and on which he was challenged by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch—relates to trade. It seems to me bizarre and sad that we export more to Ireland than to the BRICs combined. However, that may be a slightly misleading figure, as I suspect that the figure includes all the re-exports of goods that come from the rest of the world to Ireland via the UK. For example, I suspect that goods that are shipped from France to Ireland by road through the UK count as UK exports to Ireland. I may be wrong on that, but that may slightly inflate the figure. Even if that is not the case, the figure is still very high.

However, if one wants suddenly to change gear completely and export significantly greater amounts to the BRICs, the problem is that, frankly, that is easier said than done. It is not easy for a small business suddenly to decide to sell its products in China or Brazil, given the problems of language and distance. Therefore, even with the best will in the world, it would take a while before we could re-orientate our trade significantly away from the eurozone, particularly given that our strength rests in exports of services, many of which are easier to export to the eurozone than to the BRICs. That is particularly the case in countries where there are institutional barriers to exports of services. It is not simply that a lawyer or accountant seeking to open an office in India has their work cut out for them but that they cannot do it. Therefore, it would be an extremely difficult challenge for the UK simply to do a handbrake turn and suddenly start newly exporting huge quantities of goods to the BRICs. Therefore, we need the eurozone to do well, because that is where many of our exporters already have links and where, as we grow, they could develop those links significantly more.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, of course I admit that our trade with the eurozone is important, but is the noble Lord aware that our trade with the rest of the world—both inwards and outwards—is in fact increasing very much faster than that with the eurozone? Surely that points the way to the future rather than to the past.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, the fact that such trade may be increasing more quickly is not surprising for two reasons. First, it is increasing from a smaller base, so it is easier to achieve a higher percentage increase. Secondly, most of those economies are growing more quickly than the eurozone, so you are feeding into a more buoyant economy. I completely accept that, but my point was slightly different. Incidentally, another problem about exporting to some of those other countries is that the newly passed Bribery Act is making many companies, not least small-to-medium-sized companies, very wary about their ability to export to China or India, for example, because they fear—sometimes rightly and sometimes, no doubt, incorrectly—that they may be faced with business practices there which they need to follow in order to gain access to a market but which they would not have to follow in the eurozone. In the medium term, I am extremely optimistic about the prospects for exports to the BRICs, but in the short term, given that we are starting from a relatively low base, it is a forlorn hope to think that the BRICs can solve our export problems.

[Lord McAvoy]

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me, but I will be extremely brief. In the interests of transparency, would the noble Lord care to share with your Lordships’ House the contents of the note that he has received from his Chief Whip?

[Lord Newby]

I may be mistaken—I do not know the noble Lord desperately well—but I think that, in a former incarnation, he was a Whip. It is not normal, when asked a question, to pose a question back, but I would be inclined to ask the noble Lord, if the House so allowed me, whether, when he was a Whip, he thought it a good idea that everyone who received a note from him in another place be required to divulge the contents of that note. My guess—I may be wrong—is that he would not necessarily have been desperately happy at that.

[Lord McAvoy]

I did not have to send notes. I just looked encouraging.

[Lord Newby]

Well, as I am sure the noble Lord is learning, we do things differently in your Lordships' House. I realise that I must make progress.

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

Even in your Lordships' House, I believe that I am right in saying that the Companion suggests that Second Reading speeches should be curtailed to some 15 minutes. We are now in the 17th minute of the noble Lord's peroration.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord for making that point. He will be aware that I have been interrupted on a number of occasions. However, I am well aware of the conventions of the House and will happily draw my speech to a conclusion by saying, as I said at the beginning, that we support the Bill.

Banking: Liability.

Lord Newby Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I cannot comment on the pension arrangements. I believe they took place before the previous election, and I am no position to comment on the pension arrangements for former directors of RBS. As regards the other matters, if there are any complaints about any regulated firm, I am sure the FSA will be, as it always is, open to looking into any complaints that are made.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, does the Minister agree with the FSA and the report that RBS under Sir Fred Goodwin was properly governed? If he does, will he explain what he thinks a failure of corporate governance might look like?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I have not conducted an investigation into RBS. The FSA has, and it published a summary note on 2 December. It is clearly regrettable that we do not see the full report, but I should point out that the really important consequences of this are the change in the regulatory landscape that was brought to our attention by the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, and the fact that the Independent Commission on Banking is looking at the structure of banking in this country, so there are important ongoing inquiries that the RBS saga bears on.

Savings Accounts and Health in Pregnancy Grant Bill

Lord Newby Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his clear introduction to this debate. I would have more sympathy with the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, if the Labour Party had been able to explain how it was going to save so much as £1 of the £44 billion that it legally committed itself to cutting under the legislation to halve the budget deficit, which it passed in the previous Parliament. Every time a measure that involves a cut of any sort to public expenditure comes before your Lordships’ House, the Labour Party opposes it. Today has been no different. The noble Baroness accuses those of us on these Benches of many heinous crimes—of being heartless and uncaring. I reject those allegations, which are completely unfair on her part and simply untrue.

As regards the child trust fund, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, accused the coalition Benches of broken promises. This is a Liberal Democrat promise that the coalition has kept. She says she has never heard any arguments in favour of that stance. She has been spared the many speeches that I have made on the subject in your Lordships’ House. We opposed the introduction of the child trust fund, we have opposed it consistently ever since and we do not now mourn its passing. There are several reasons for that; I will give just two.

First, it is hopelessly untargeted. Only 73 per cent of parents take up the offer of doing something with the voucher that they get when they are allocated their child trust fund. Incidentally, this figure has remained absolutely static since the child trust fund was introduced in 2002. Around that figure, in the constituencies that are predominantly middle-class—Buckinghamshire, for example—the percentage goes up to 84 per cent. In the constituencies that are poor—Belfast West, for example —it goes down to 48 per cent. The people who take up their options under the child trust fund to insert additional savings for their children are predominantly those who need no extra incentive from the state to do so. That is our first major criticism of it.

Secondly, one of the purposes of the child trust fund was to instil the saving habit in young people. The saving habit involves forgoing expenditure now to gain greater benefit later. That is what thrift is all about; that is what the saving habit is all about. This measure does nothing to encourage thrift among young people. It is simply a windfall gain at the age of 18. That is, again, an argument that I have made many times in your Lordships’ House. Looking to the future, for many parents, the ISA—particularly a child ISA—is a tax-efficient way of saving for their children. That is the way in which we should look for parents to gain a benefit in saving for their children. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, shakes her head but I believe it to be the truth, however hard she shakes it.

Looked-after children are clearly in a different situation from everybody else because they do not have parents. Like the noble Baroness, I hope the Government can do something for them. However, doing something for looked-after children is very different from doing something for every child. Looked-after children are a very small proportion of the population. Doing something for them in a whole raft of ways is hugely important. We do quite a lot for looked-after children and no doubt much more can be done. It would be a very positive move if Mark Hoban and his colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, could enable something to happen in this specific area for looked-after children. However, that is very different from saying that every child, however affluent, should benefit from this scheme. Therefore, I do not change my view that, on balance, abolishing this scheme is a more sensible way of saving public money.

It was difficult to oppose the principle of the saving gateway and we did not. However, we had major questions about it. One was that unlike middle-class tax incentives for saving which apply, for example, to pensions all the way through, the saving gateway applied only to two years of savings. Thereby, the amount by which you could benefit was relatively small. The saving habit for people—having got them into it and having given them the incentive—was removed after two years. You could not get another one, whatever happened to you. So if the scheme would kick-start a saving habit within two years, great; but if not, I am afraid that it was unlikely to have been successful.

The other question that I would very much have liked to have been answered was: what proportion of the potential beneficiaries of the saving gateway would actually have taken it up? One of the obvious problems about poor people is that they do not have a surplus. Therefore, while we would ideally wish them, like everyone else, to save, in reality that is crying for the moon for many of those individuals and families. They require every penny that they have to make ends meet.

The Minister also mentioned that virtually no financial institution was prepared to touch the saving gateway because it was not worth their while. Not even the Post Office, which one would have hoped would administer this scheme, was prepared to do so because it could not make it pay. One wonders whether, in reality, once the measure had been introduced, RBS and Lloyds would have continued with it. As we have seen with basic bank accounts, it is very difficult to get the banks enthusiastically to support things that they do not make any money from. Given our approach to the largely nationalised banks, which unfortunately is almost totally hands-off, I would not put any faith in them implementing the saving gateway.

It would be like being in favour of sin to say that the saving gateway was a terrible idea, but it was badly flawed and, frankly, if we are going to make any cuts, this seems to be a reasonably high-priority and low-cost—in social terms—way of doing it.

The health in pregnancy grant is another untargeted grant. In times of stress and financial stringency one should look at targeting the public money we have available for this kind of thing, rather than making a blanket payment. I note that the grant was introduced in April 2009, and important though it may be, it was not exactly the top priority for a Labour Government, who at that point had been in office for 12 years.

Again, in an ideal world, would it not be nice if we kept this grant? We are not in an ideal world. Under Labour, we were not going to be in an ideal world. The Labour Party was committed to making cuts worth tens of billions of pounds; it still has not identified where they should be made. If you have to make cuts, these are sensible. Reluctantly, on that basis, I support the Bill.

Budget Responsibility and National Audit Bill [HL]

Lord Newby Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Grand Committee

I am being fair and honest in my observation that I believe that his predecessor but one may well have been inclined to give a similarly high-level summary of the content of the OBR report, but I suggest that if the OBR was in a position to say that it did not believe that the way in which its conclusion was presented to Parliament represented a fair, balanced and complete presentation, that would be a significant endorsement of the independence of the OBR and would protect it from the danger that my noble friend Lord Barnett cited earlier—namely, that the committee of the OBR, in its naivety, may be used by politicians to project a different set of conclusions from those which the committee had in mind. I beg to move.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I am sure that all noble Lords wish that Chancellors were models of balance and completeness in the way in which they present figures, but the noble Lord, Lord Myners, is placing an unrealistic burden on the OBR if he expects it to undertake this task. For example, he uses the word “balance”; balance is not an objective fact but, to a considerable extent, is a subjective view. That goes equally for “completeness”—at what point does the failure to refer to the paragraphs on page 73 in the OBR report render the Chancellor’s statement incomplete? When the Chancellor has made a political speech on the economy, to expect the chair of the OBR to audit it, to coin a phrase, in some way as the noble Lord suggests is, frankly, impossible. While I agree with the sentiments behind the amendment, I do not think that it is workable.

[Lord Burns]

My Lords, I support the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Newby. The noble Lord, Lord Myners, knows that what he is asking for is impossible; we also know that he can be very good at creating a little bit of mischief every now and again and we have to see this amendment in that light.

The OBR can be responsible only for its own documents; it cannot possibly hold the Chancellor to account. That is a job for Parliament, including the Treasury Committee and the Economic Affairs Committee. I can think of nothing that would make the job of the OBR more impossible than to give it a task that began to resemble this. The key thing is that the OBR has to be kept out of the political debate but the noble Lord, Lord Myners, implies that he would like to plunge it directly into that debate. I am sure he has used the amendment as a vehicle to make quite sensible points about some of the practices that occur from time to time, but the OBR will not protect us from those.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 32, which is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Barnett. When I first saw subsection (3), I must say that I was appalled, in particular by the words “may not consider”. This body is supposed to be independent and, unless we are to get a new form of thought police brought in here, can presumably consider anything that it likes. That does not mean that it should be involved in a report on itself. However, to tell a group—at the moment, a group of three expert economists—that what it can think about is limited by an Act of Parliament is absolutely absurd. I draw the Committee’s attention to what “may not consider” means; that you cannot even think or talk about something and that it has nothing to do with you. This is incompatible with the group’s independence and professionalism. I wonder what serious, self-respecting economist would wish to work under those circumstances. I would not, under any circumstances, be willing to work and be told that. I can remember the sad old days in the Treasury when everybody was told that under no circumstances were we ever to discuss or use the word “devaluation”. It did not have any effect: we just did it privately or secretly, and so on. That was the worst example of this that I can remember.

I was appalled by this subsection and I thought that taking out “not” was the best way of dealing with it. However, the method proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, is better still: take out the whole subsection. It may well be that we could put in another clause of a more positive nature. It is perfectly obvious that the OBR’s job is to consider the whole issue in the context of government policy, because, as the Minister has emphasised—although I slightly disagree with his logic—the OBR is not a decision-making body, it is just a forecasting body. I do not entirely accept that distinction, as noble Lords are aware, but I can at least see the Minister’s position. I accept what my noble friend Lord Eatwell and others have said; that forecasting is the OBR’s main role. There should not be a clause in what will eventually be a statute telling the OBR what it may consider, unless the meaning of “consider” in the English language has changed. My general view is that the approach of the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, was much better than mine or that of the noble Lord, Lord Barnett. We should remove subsection (3).

[Lord Newby]

We had a long debate on this issue at our previous meeting and I am not going to rehearse all the arguments. I suggested, out of frustration, that we were spending too long on this form of words, which, in slightly more words, actually had the same purpose as Amendment 31. We did not spend any time looking at it, because we were considering the amendments in order. However, Amendment 31 is clear and achieves the purpose that we sought to achieve in our debate last time, which was that the OBR, in making its assessments, obviously should take account of government economic and other policies. Equally, in the context of the second part of the subsection, the OBR’s role should not be what the noble Lord, Lord Peston, thinks it would be. It should not be able to stray and look at anyone’s alternative policies—that way madness lies. The OBR must have a straightforward remit to look at what the Government are proposing and work on the assumptions that the Government are making in their policies.

[Lord Burns]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Newby. I had hoped that the purpose of the clause was to restrict the activities of the OBR to avoid it getting into political trouble. There are two clear cases where I could see this happening. One is where it is asked to continue a practice that has emerged in the past 20 or 30 years, whereby a Government ask the Treasury to cost the opposition manifesto as an election approaches. That practice has been divisive and has not suited anyone. I had hoped that this clause, by restricting the OBR to consideration of government policies, would prevent the Government or anyone else—for example, the Treasury Committee—asking it what the effect would be of implementing the Opposition’s manifesto.

The second thing that I had hoped would be avoided was getting into the sort of detailed arguments that took place in the summer about what the effects of particular packages of measures would be on economic activity, unemployment, the PSBR and so on. The remit given to the OBR by the Bill, as I read it, is to tell us what the effect would be on public finances of a whole set of government policies, taking into account the world environment and everything else, and whether or not the Government are on a sustainable path as a result of that collection of policies. That remains very challenging and is what the OBR’s job should be restricted to. It is set out early in the Bill. I had assumed that this clause was there to prevent encroachment, or a widening of the OBR’s remit to include a number of other things, all of which would lead us into a difficult area of political activity.

IMF and World Bank: Appointment Procedures

Lord Newby Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I said at the outset that the improvements to the processes for appointing the heads of these organisations must be part of wider reform packages for the entire governance of the IMF and the World Bank. Progress is being made on that in the quota shares, the voting arrangements and the governance arrangements. Equally, it is critical that, under the new arrangements, the four BRIC countries are in the top 10 voting and quota share countries, so we will have a much better balance in both voting and representation. It is equally important that the UK remains a top five member and that we retain our board seat.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that these top appointments are intensely political? Therefore, simply having a process that is called “open and transparent” will not guarantee that the best person gets the job. Would it not be sensible, as the noble Lord, Lord Stern, said, for the British Government to make it clear at this stage that they expect the next head of the IMF and the World Bank not to be a European or an American?

[Lord Sassoon]

I can only restate the position of the Government: these appointments should be made regardless of nationality or gender.