Medical Innovation Bill [HL]

Lord Ryder of Wensum Excerpts

Friday 12th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Saatchi]

That is an important point and many have made it. The discussion that has to be had is whether this can be achieved by regulation, as I think my noble friend the Minister believes, or by GMC guidance. It is possible that there are other ways to achieve what is in effect compulsion without putting it in the statute.

[Lord Ryder of Wensum (Con)]

Will my noble friend accept that there are precedents in other Private Members’ Bills going back several years for such registers being set up?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for taking part in this short but interesting debate. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Saatchi, about the conference that his noble friends suggest, that it is all well and good to have a conference after a Bill has been enacted, but in my judgment that is too late in relation to his Bill. He needs to engage with the professional medical bodies before the Bill goes to the other House; otherwise, he risks enacting a Bill, if he is able to do so, that will start with a huge defect—all the main medical bodies are opposed to it. I urge him to try to reach consensus with those bodies as the Bill goes through.

On the question of registration, all noble Lords agree that for any treatment that took place under the provisions of the Bill there should be a register—for patient safety concerns, research concerns and audit concerns. The question is how to ensure that that happens. I am disappointed by the Government’s response. This was meant to be a constructive amendment, which I think meets the needs. The Minister is not in favour of compulsion. She said at one stage that she thought that, even if you enacted a provision, there is no guarantee that doctors would use it, but she said later that she wanted a position where doctors would not dream of not registering with a scheme. That seems inconsistent.

On the question of the technical scope of the Bill, the noble Lord has already pointed to other Private Members’ Bills, which is a relevant point. But my amendment relates to the circumstances under this Bill. It says:

“Page 1, line 24, at end insert—”,

so I am very clear that the circumstances of a register relate only to interventions that take place under the auspices of the noble Lord’s Bill. I am not seeking to create a wide-ranging register for other aspects of legislation; I am seeking to give statutory underpinning to a register that one hopes the General Medical Council or a similar body would undertake.

I hear that the Government will consider this again. I will bring this back at Third Reading and I will press it unless we get an absolute assurance that there will be a compulsory register. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Economy: Deficit Reduction

Lord Ryder of Wensum Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Myners]

My Lords—

[Lord Ryder of Wensum]

My Lords, can my noble friend please tell the House about the last time that the IMF forecasts for the British economy were accurate?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I am not going to give a commentary on the IMF’s forecasts, or anybody else’s. We should wait until 5 December to see what the Office for Budget Responsibility has to say in its renewed forecasts.

Economy: Deficit Reduction

Lord Ryder of Wensum Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I think that the Governor of the Bank of England is, as always, being very realistic and clear about the nature of the dangers that we continue to face particularly because of the eurozone crisis. This is precisely why we will stick to the fiscal course that we have charted; why it is supported by the IMF, the OECD and business organisations here; and why it is that we have 10-year interests at 1.7 per cent. We will do nothing to jeopardise that position in the face of the very real dangers that the governor points out.

[Lord Ryder of Wensum]

My Lords, leaving aside the welcome reductions in corporation tax, will my noble friend please remind your Lordships of the three main supply-side measures promoted by the Treasury to encourage growth?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, the first thing that we need to do to support growth is to continue to have companies and individuals confident that we will stick to a responsible course and keep interest rates low. It is from this that all else flows. As well as tight fiscal discipline, it is important that we have a loose monetary discipline. That is the right policy prescription. We will target our other efforts into making sure that education, infrastructure and each of the key drivers of medium-term sustainable growth are supported in all that we do as a Government.

European Union Membership (Economic Implications) Bill [HL]

Lord Ryder of Wensum Excerpts

Friday 25th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ryder of Wensum]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, on producing the Bill and, while quibbling with many of the details, I applaud the principle. For years, the noble Lord has displayed consistency over Europe, always coupled with courtesy and patience in your Lordships’ House.

We require an audit of the costs and benefits of our place in the European Union. Europe is in economic chaos, chiefly of its own creation, as my noble friend Lady Noakes underlined in her forensic speech a few minutes ago. Almost 20 years ago, the Maastricht treaty was supposed to restrain public spending in member states. However, in no time Greece joined the eurozone under entirely false pretences as every member state ignored the Maastricht conditions. Before long even the Germans fractured the so-called stability pact. What was good for this core cat became better still for the peripheral PIGS. The European project may have appeared desirable, if not essential, at the outset, but it was always Utopian, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, has just reminded us. I have always shared Macaulay’s view on Utopia. He said that he would prefer to own “an acre in Middlesex” than “a principality in Utopia”.

In passing, I observe a slight Utopian resemblance between the European project and Marxism. When the failure of their creed is pointed out to Marxists, they invariably respond by claiming that it has never been tried in its correct form. The same excuse is offered by proponents of the European project. Day after day, as the project dithers to a halt, we hear that the absence of fiscal and even political union caused the eurozone breakdown. Now I read that even our Prime Minister and Chancellor are in favour of fiscal union. I wonder whether they know what it entails. Fiscal union requires a centralised treasury, shared tax and spending, common sovereign debt, huge transfers of cash from north to south and, of course, the ECB to act as lender of the last resort. I expect the Prime Minister and Chancellor are confusing fiscal union with what the Commission and Mrs Merkel call a stability union, whereby stronger discipline and convergence will be imposed in the European Union. They say that member states would be obliged to submit draft budgets to Brussels before they are introduced to sovereign Parliaments. This is part one of the plan to prolong the life of the eurozone. However it will not survive, if ever it exists, because the debt markets will behave like the currency market did over the narrow band exchange rate mechanism 19 years ago.

Other proponents of the euro, or the project, expect the IMF to act as the cavalry. They overlook the fact that IMF action is always locked into budget deficit reductions, monetary policy and interest rates. However, Greece cannot respond like a sovereign nation because it lacks powers over monetary policy and interest rates. Nor can Greece devalue its currency. Greece and Italy, as well as other countries, belong to the wrong currency. For them, austerity is insufficient. Devaluation is a necessity. Their currencies are misaligned by as much as 40 per cent. Nor can the structural imbalance be rectified by debt deflation, even if the Germans chose to reflate themselves. The Greeks and Italians should secede from the euro in a managed manner. The short-term shock to Europe will be better than the inevitable longer-term disaster.

Parents of the euro promised greater economic stability. How could this possibly be achieved when each economy, as has been underlined in the course of our debate, advances at a different rate and in a disparate direction? The euro has generated uncertainty and volatility, producing new and perilous—yes, perilous—divisions across the continent. There is no credible historical example of a currency union without political union and no precedent for a currency lacking a lender of last resort. The eurozone experiment resulted from political leaders failing to grasp the essence of economics. Now the greatest danger to the continent comes from quack potions designed to keep the euro alive. Better an orderly break-up now than a disorderly one later. No wonder the chairman of the China Investment Corporation refuses to offer assistance to the EU as long as it persists with the currency as well as outdated labour markets and welfare systems. It is against this background that the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, is entitled to demand answers to the question posed in his Bill. I go back, if I may, to Macaulay, who declared:

“A single breaker may recede; but the tide is coming in”.

In time it will wash away the Utopian euro referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, and myself earlier in my speech.

Economy: Inflation and Unemployment

Lord Ryder of Wensum Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, the first clear objective of the Government is to stick to the fiscal reduction plan that we have set to make sure that the UK’s interest rates remain low, so that we are not in the position in which countries like Italy find themselves today. It is absolutely fundamental to growth that we keep interest rates low and stick to our fiscal discipline. Secondly, we must have monetary activism and credit easing, a combination of measures that the Bank of England has taken by extending the asset purchase scheme by £75 billion. The Chancellor has said that we will come forward with further credit easing measures in the autumn Statement. The third issue, which will further be addressed in the November Statement, is, critically, to press on with supply-side reforms that will underpin medium-term balanced growth. Those are the three clear strands of the Government’s policy to which we will stick.

[Lord Ryder of Wensum]

My Lords, if my noble friend is in favour of keeping an inflation target, why does the Governor of the Bank of England fail to match it year after year? If my noble friend is in favour of keeping that target—which there is no purpose in having if it is never matched—what are the advantages of inflation?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, the critical point is that, as my noble friend knows, the target for the Bank of England is a medium-term target. The Bank of England is wholly transparent about the situation in its quarterly inflation reports. In the latest reports, it has set out what the pressures have been on inflation in recent quarters and where they will be in the immediate future. Some of those pressures naturally come out of the figures over the next six months. It is quite right that the Governor and the MPC have and are committed to that target. It is important to realise that it is a medium-term target, and their judgment is that it is more likely that inflation will undershoot rather than exceed 2 per cent in the medium term. Indeed, that judgment is supported by the great majority of independent forecasts that I have seen.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Lord Ryder of Wensum Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ryder of Wensum]

My Lords, I applaud the general direction of the Chancellor’s attack on public spending, yet I nurse concerns about the Government’s economic coherence. The Government’s growth strategy is deficient. Growth requires stronger supply-side measures, starting with deregulation. I tabled a Written Question when the Government had been in office for almost a year, inviting Ministers to set out the number of regulations revoked since the general election. The answer was none. It appears that despite languishing in Opposition for 13 years, the Conservatives were unprepared for Government, otherwise action would have been taken by now.

Is not the Chancellor at least willing to remove reams of onerous employment laws, bearing in mind that expensive regulations to meet environmental targets lurk in the pipeline? The ligature of red tape stays tight around our businesses and their growth is further hampered by high tax rates. The Institute of Directors has just gauged that taking all taxes into account, the overall tax burden for a medium-sized firm is no less than 43 per cent.

The Chancellor has asked HMRC to examine likely tax revenues from different rates of personal taxation. I had half hoped that Mr Osborne’s apparent belief in the enterprise culture would have informed his opinions without this digression. The noble Lord, Lord Myners, quoted John Maynard Keynes in 1933. I am sure that he knows even better than I do that this was the year in which Keynes advised the then Government to cut taxes. Now, even the IMF has urged our Government to slice tax rates. So there is no deregulation, no lower taxes, except corporation tax, and to compound these defects the Government also harm our economic recovery and competitiveness and fuel inflation at the same time with so-called green measures. Last year, the Government raised £40 billion from green taxes with householders paying an extra £200 in hidden charges on gas and electricity bills. The Global Warming Policy Foundation has shown that one-fifth of our soaring energy bills are accounted for by the hidden subsidies and other costs to decarbonise our electricity industry. This injures our recovery. The cost of the low-carbon economy will be £13 billion a year, soon rising to £18 billion. China, India, and to a lesser extent the USA, have rejected constraints on carbon-based energy. Investment and jobs will be forced overseas by the Government’s actions. The director-general of the CBI has wryly observed that green taxes on cement, steel and lubricants will mean that even windmills will soon be too expensive to manufacture in this country.

We cannot afford such follies. Last year our trade deficit was £50 billion, despite the 25 per cent devaluation. The benefits of devaluation in terms of exports have been so marginal that I query whether they are worth the manifest inflationary costs condoned by the Monetary Policy Committee.

[Lord Spicer]

My noble friend is making a very important speech, and I am particularly struck by what he is saying about inflation. Will he accept that the problem with inflation is that it can get out of control so that it becomes cumulative? I wonder whether he had in mind any figure of inflation at which that might occur. My own view is that it is between 5 and 7 per cent, but I wonder what his view is.

[Lord Ryder of Wensum]

My noble friend has consistently warned about the dangers of inflation over the past 30 to 40 years. As I recall, in his maiden speech last year he highlighted this threat. I agreed with him then, and I agree with him now, because inflation, as he knows, has been above target for more than four of the past five years. We can feel very thankful that the MPC members are not paid performance bonuses. The Business Secretary gently chided me for complaining about inflation in a debate a year ago, implying that it had little to do with the Treasury. Up to a point, Lord Copper, only up to a point. I confess to acting as a foot soldier, like my noble friend Lord Spicer, in the battles against inflation during the 1970s and 1980, sharing Milton Friedman’s belief that,

“inflation is one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation”.

I wager that inflation is built into every economic calculation made by the Treasury. The suppression of inflation may not be the Treasury’s responsibility but it is, I say to the Minister, its lasting burden.

A week after the general election, the Prime Minister, eager to encourage economic growth, implored the Foreign Office to play a livelier role in helping our export drive, though it later took him seven months to put a trade Minister in post. How can the Prime Minister’s wishes be achieved when the Foreign Office budget has been slashed with severity? DfID’s budget will soon exceed that of the Foreign Office by a factor of five. We donate in this country twice as much as Japan and nearly twice as much as Germany. Our Government raise the equivalent of £300 per household for overseas aid. Surely a segment of that figure would be better deployed in the Foreign Office to promote British exports?

The late Lord Bauer, who I know worked closely over many years with the noble Lord, Lord Desai, at the London School of Economics, argued about overseas aid transfers cash from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. Indeed, the DfID Permanent Secretary admitted earlier this month that the department had no idea how much British aid is being lost to fraud and corruption, thus underlining a recent World Bank investigation unearthing massive corruption in the aid field. Rumours still persist about the Karzai clan’s links with new blocks of flats in Dubai, partly through the collapsed Kabul Bank. Yet we continue to pour aid into Afghanistan. Parents of dead soldiers must rue the extravagance of the aid budget when compared with the lack of military equipment given to their sons and daughters. I would prefer my donations to be voluntary. In other words, I opt, even if the Prime Minister does not, for the free-will offerings of the big society over the compulsion of big government.

I am pleased that the Prime Minister went to Africa to preach the gospel of free trade. I hope that on his journey he found time to read Dambisa Moyo’s book, Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa, in which the leading Zambian economist argues that aid fosters poor government, dependency, corruption and poverty. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, economic success is not a matter of chance but of choice. Let chance be the road not taken and choice of the economic road taken, with belief and without fear.

Banking: Bonuses

Lord Ryder of Wensum Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I am sorry if I will become tediously repetitive, but if the questions cover points that I thought I had made clearly, I will have to make them again. We are taking far more practical and effective action than the previous Government did. We have extended very considerably the scope and form of the disclosures on bonuses that must be made. As to the quantum, I repeat to the noble Lord, Lord Clinton-Davis, that discussions led by my right honourable friend the Chancellor are ongoing, with the intention of making sure that bonuses are lower than otherwise they would have been and that lending to British businesses is materially and verifiably higher than it would have been. That is what we want in the context also of a vibrant and healthy banking system, which is good not only for this country but for the UK's global competitiveness.

[Lord Ryder of Wensum]

My Lords, will my noble friend tell us whether bankers in New York and Frankfurt are being offered the same type of bonuses as bankers in London? Will he further tell us whether the American and German Governments take the same attitude to bonuses as this one?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Ryder for enabling me to remind noble Lords that other Governments are increasingly following the lead of the UK and introducing variations on the measures that we have introduced for the taxation of banks. Since the announcement of our bank levy, Germany, France and other countries have followed with similar constructs. It is critical that we make sure that, while the UK regime is the toughest interpretation among global financial centres of what has been agreed internationally, we seek to work within the framework laid down by the Financial Stability Board and endorsed by G20 Ministers. Whether it is in relation to the US, other European countries or global financial centres, we will continue to work energetically with our partners to secure, as far as is possible, common standards in this area.

Autumn Forecast

Lord Ryder of Wensum Excerpts

Monday 29th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

I am very grateful to my noble friend. I absolutely share his view both on the depressing scenarios that the Opposition choose to paint and on the overall scenario for solid growth which the OBR confirms.

As to the judgment of the financial markets, I have looked at this morning’s numbers, and the UK spread over the German 10-year Bund has gone down from 96 basis points at the date of the general election to 60 basis points today, which is a very significant measure of confidence by the international markets in our consolidation plan.

[Lord Ryder of Wensum]

My Lords, in welcoming the Statement, I declare an interest as the chairman of the Institute of Cancer Research. Is my noble friend aware that, in exports, the pharmaceutical sector is by far the most successful sector in this country? It contributes between £3 billion and £4 billion a year in surplus to our balance of trade. If, as seems likely, the Government’s new immigration policy prevents the pharmaceutical industry and research organisations such as my own from attracting the brightest and the best to this country under tier 1 and tier 2, will the Minister give me a clear undertaking, in the interests of the economic growth to which he referred, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will have a quiet word with the Home Secretary to persuade her to change her policy as it stands at present?

[Lord Sassoon]

I am grateful to my noble friend for pointing out the huge success of the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industry in this country. That is why it is so welcome to have the news today that GlaxoSmithKline is putting further facilities into this country that will only enhance the position of the United Kingdom in that critically growing sector of the economy. I am sure that the pharmaceutical companies fully recognise that, in the announcement made last week by my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, intra-company transfers of employees were taken out of the immigration cap. That means that skilled employees of multinational companies can be brought freely into this country, and for those earning more than £40,000 there will be no time limit on the length of time they remain in this country. My right honourable friend is very aware of, and has recognised, the importance of skilled industrialists and others being able to get employment in our growing industries.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Lord Ryder of Wensum Excerpts

Monday 22nd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ryder of Wensum]

My Lords, I make no apology for treating the Second Reading of the Finance (No. 2) Bill in the same way as the Second Reading of other finance Bills. Exactly a year ago today, during the debate on the Queen’s Speech, I devoted my speech solely to the dangers of inflation. Nothing that has transpired since then has eased the scale of my concerns.

First, let me put my views into context, for fear of misrepresentation. After the crash, I supported quantitative easing as devised by Ben Bernanke. We were very lucky to benefit from his scholarly knowledge of the great depression. As a disciple of Milton Friedman, Bernanke adopted this policy, put to him by Friedman, at his 90th birthday party, shortly before his death. However, I doubt whether Friedman would have approved of quantitative easing mark 2 in the USA—and, above all, here—on the ground of it risking further inflation. Reasons for that have been given with great clarity by Alan Greenspan, the OECD and countless others.

Some of us, opposition veterans in the wars against inflation in the 1970s and Treasury Ministers later, will recognise only too well neo-Keynesian phrases such as “competitive sterling” and “stable inflationary expectations” as no more than euphemisms for creeping inflation. Indeed, Lord Kahn, the neo-Keynesian guru from the 1970s era, preached that,

“the right aim of monetary policy is not to secure a stable price level”.

Kahn’s disciples still prowl in the anterooms of influence, and their drugs of preference remain excessive demand and gradual reflation. These diehards are under the delusion that their drugs are stimulants. They are not. They are sedatives, because inflation retards growth and saps commercial will. Ludwig Erhard wrote:

“Inflation is not the result of a curse or a tragic fate but of a frivolous … policy”.

Can the Bank of England and its Monetary Policy Committee be relied on to reach the right judgments on inflation? After all, for about three and a half out of the past four years the Bank has overshot its inflation target. The governor’s letters of explanation to the Chancellors would fill a Treasury filing cabinet, but sometimes I question whether they were worth the postage. Our inflation rate is consistently double that of the eurozone and the United States. Whereas the Bank blames its errors on “price shocks”, I prefer to ascribe them to blind eyes turned to the glaringly obvious. So it seems, on the surface, does the Bank’s chief economist, Spencer Dale, who has counselled against an increase in money creation through the purchase of government bonds and warned about the perils of injecting further liquidity for fear of it worsening inflation, whereas the governor has often given the impression that inflation, though genetic in our case, is the result of a temporary surge.

It is not hard to account for some reasons why our inflation is double that of the eurozone and the United States. Sterling has fallen by 20 per cent against the euro and 30 per cent against the dollar over the past three years. The GDP deflator has risen by about 5 per cent at an annualised rate that is twice as much as usual. Spare capacity has not borne down on inflation, and the asset price index has burgeoned over the past two years. However, extra tribulations are flooding the pipeline—including the rise in VAT, the increase in gas and electricity charges by 8 per cent from next month, ascending food price inflation, already calculated at 4.4 per cent by the British Retail Consortium, as well as escalating petrol prices. Car insurance has leapt up by 38 per cent and rail fares will exceed inflation for years ahead. It is no wonder that a fortnight ago PIMCO, the world’s leading bond manager, urged caution, saying that over the next three to five years it sees multiple drivers of inflation and that,

“the balance of risk is certainly shifting from disinflation to inflation”.

Of course PIMCO is right. Quantitative easing mark 2 in the United States could be the thin end of another inflation wedge, just as it would be here where the United Kingdom is genetically prone to the disease of inflation. I share the opinion of the German Finance Minister that this undermines the credibility of US economic policy. “Clueless”, he called it. I also sympathise with the Chinese and the Brazilians for castigating the Obama Government for pursuing dollar devaluation as a means of dodging more prudent and effective policies.

Meanwhile the gold price seldom lies, and even silver is at a 30-year high. Cotton and sugar prices have surged by nearly 70 per cent since August. No wonder commodity brokers in the Chicago pits are in full cry. As for the notion that grain prices may have peaked, this may be correct. But before long they will rocket again due to higher demand in Asia and the Middle East. Reflation produces an illusionary joy ride. It is the so-called acceptable level of inflation founded on expediency. The visible effect may seem all right in the short term, except for those living on fixed earnings. The invisible effect—the inevitable medium-term consequence—is that when inflation accelerates, goods are priced out of markets and it becomes harder to create private sector jobs.

I have always believed that the prime economic duty of a Government is to maintain the value of their currency. That is why, as a member of the MPC, I would now join Andrew Sentance in seeking a small increase, if only as a necessary signal, to interest rates. I do not believe that this would disrupt business or consumer confidence. Alas, the credibility of the Bank is at stake—the same Bank whose complacency led in large part to a huge UK private-sector debt and the biggest house-price bubble in British history. They had better not get it wrong again—otherwise the wisdom of Ludwig Erhard will once more prove accurate. Inflation is the result not of a curse or a tragic fate but of a frivolous policy pursued by softheads allowing expedience to triumph over experience.

EU: Economic Governance

Lord Ryder of Wensum Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ryder of Wensum]

My Lords, what precisely are the sanctions for non-compliance referred to by my noble friend?

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, the critical point is that the sanctions that apply apply only to the eurozone members. They do not apply to the UK, which has a specific carve-out and will continue to have a carve-out, as now reconfirmed. There are no sanctions that apply to the UK.