Autumn Budget 2024
Lord Sahota Excerpts(1 week, 6 days ago)
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Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, I will focus my comments about the Budget on local government funding. I served as a unitary councillor on Telford and Wrekin Council for 22 years, holding many positions in that time, including leader of the council. So I know very well how important local government service is to our citizens. In fact, at times, I felt that council services were even more important to people than central government, because they provided them with day-to-day needs such as housing, emptying bins, road repairs, adult social care, safeguarding vulnerable children, mental health provision and so on. All these services are the hallmark of our civilised society.
Councils can provide all these services only if they are properly funded. I am saddened to say that, when the previous Government were in charge from 2010 until now, we had nothing but cuts to our budget. This all started with George Osborne’s Budget of 2010. He did not value local government and the services it provided. Sadly, his legacy continued right up until the last election. This is typical of Conservative political ideology—not listening or caring for people’s everyday needs.
From 2010 to 2021, according to the National Audit Office, the average real-term spending power of every council has been reduced by over 27%. Spending power from central government funding in the same period went down by over 50%. Some services were cut by 70%, with cultural services cut by 43%, roads and transport by 40%, housing by 35% and trading standards by 50%. All these cuts are in real terms. Councils up and the down the country struggled and some even went bankrupt, unable to provide proper social care for vulnerable adults and children, fix potholes, provide homes for families or help rough sleepers.
I know how bad it was because I lived through it as a council leader and I still have the scars on my back from that time. That is why I wholeheartedly welcome the Chancellor’s Budget. I fully welcome the extra funding from our new Labour Government—a real-term increase of 3.2%, with £1.3 billion new grant funding, including over £600 million for social care. Earlier in this debate, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, who is not in his place now, suggested that the Budget did not include anything for special needs services. The Budget includes an extra £1 billion for children with special educational needs. It includes £233 million for families in temporary accommodation and to prevent homelessness; more to improve local bus services and to fix potholes; extra kinship allowance; and so on and so forth.
This is a typical Labour Government Budget: caring, sharing and listening to the people who really matter. It is, as the chair of the Local Government Association, Councillor Louise Gittins, said,
“a step in the right direction”.
I wholeheartedly agree with her. However, the damage that the previous Government has done to local government funding and its infrastructure will take a long time to rectify. I congratulate the new Chancellor on listening to the Local Government Association and acting upon its advice, but the black hole that the Conservative Government have left will take many years to fill.
HMRC: Tax Returns
Lord Sahota Excerpts(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Sahota
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the HMRC services to the public in processing tax returns.
The Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)
My Lords, HMRC is responsible for collecting income tax, value added tax and a range of other taxes and duties. Tax returns are required to ensure the timely payment of the right amount of tax. The vast majority of returns are now submitted online, with information and guidance also available, plus a web-chat function. The satisfaction rate for digital services for the year to October is 83.6% and is higher than the rate for telephone services.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
I thank the Minister for her Answer. My Question is about the running of the HMRC. As we all know, December and January are the busiest time of the year for people and their agents to return their tax files. As from 11 December up to 31 January, HMRC says that the self-assessment helpline will deal only with the most complex and priority cases. My first question is how the HMRC will know whether it is a complex and priority case if it does not answer the phone. The decision has been criticised by accountants and tax advisers as being very poor. Some callers say that they have been cut off without anyone answering the phone. What happens if they do not have computers or are not skilful in using them? Secondly, for the past 13 years the taxes have gone up, but the number of HMRC staff has come down in the past five years from 25,500 to 19,500. How do the Government justify HMRC’s poor services to the public?
Local Authorities: Budgets
Lord Sahota Excerpts(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, the Government are supporting councils. This is not about what is happening after the next election. In this spending review period, councils will receive £4.8 billion of new grant funding—the largest annual increase in core funding in over a decade—and that was further topped up at the Autumn Statement last year, recognising the pressures that councils face. Councils are doing an excellent job up and down the country, and we support them.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that one of the reasons so many local authorities are in such financial trouble these days is because there is a lack of external scrutiny and transparency since the scrapping of the Audit Commission in 2015?
Baroness Penn (Con)
No, I do not agree. In recent years, a small number of local authorities took on excessive debt through their commercial strategies and investments. The Government have taken action both to bring this practice to an end and to revise the framework by which local authorities can borrow and invest. The levelling-up Bill expands statutory powers to directly tackle excessive risk within the local government capital system.
UK Economy: Growth, Inflation and Productivity
Lord Sahota Excerpts(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my friend the noble Lord, Lord Desai. Earlier, the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, listed the interest rates for the past 50 years. I may stand corrected, but I think he missed out the one for Black Wednesday.
I thank my noble friend Lord Eatwell for bringing this debate on economy, inflation and productivity to our Chamber. One thing, if anything, that unites all the countries of the world is the economy. Every Government want their citizens to be happy and prosperous and to enjoy the fruits of their labour. Before the Brexit vote, our economy was chugging along reasonably. Growth wise, we were up there with Germany and the US. Our pound had been steady against the dollar for many years. Our exports to the EU were well over 40%. EU migration kept our agriculture and other industries going. EU nurses, care workers and doctors kept our hospitals going. We were never short of a labour force for our economy. Inflation was reasonably under control, and the housing market was doing well on a low interest rate.
Then we had the bombshell of Brexit in 2016. Look at where we are now. Our pound was devalued by 15% from day one of Brexit, and it has never recovered. Our economy is performing well below those of the US and Germany. Our migration and inflation policies are out of control, like some spacecraft out of control in space. Our interest rate is going through the roof, and it will not be long before some house owners start to hand their keys back to their lenders, as they did in the 1980s.
The IMF forecasts that, of the leading G7 economies, ours is the only one that has shrunk. Business investment in the UK is 31% below the pre-referendum trend. The red tape has increased, as has bureaucracy. The UK economy is 5.5% poorer now than it would have been had we stayed in the EU, and our tax revenue would have been £40 billion higher, so do not tell me that all those slogans on the sides of buses were correct.
What is worse is that we sat at the top table of the world’s biggest economic club, and other countries were always trying to catch our eyes to do them a favour. Now, we are the ones trying to catch their eyes, so that we can do a trade deal with them. Our status in the world is not what it used to be, however hard we pretend it is.
However, we are where we are, even though some politicians during the EU referendum were less than honest with our people. I hope people will remember them for their lack of honesty and integrity. As I said, we are where we are, and we have to make the best of Brexit and make sure that it works for the best of our country.
A recent poll shows that people would prefer some sort of closer economic ties with the EU. I hope people will remember that. Next year, I hope there will be a new dawn of a Labour Government, with vigour and energy, to deal with our new challenges, make the best of Brexit and once more restore our status in the world to where it should be: at the top table.