Spring Forecast Statement

Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

My Lords, the Economist magazine got it right about the Chancellor’s speech on the spring forecast. It said that the Chancellor

“did not announce a single major policy decision that will help Britain break out of its malaise”.

The malaise is the OBR’s bleak forecasts for economic growth over the coming years— and that is before the current war in the Middle East. It is no surprise, therefore, that the right honourable Wes Streeting said in one of his WhatsApp messages that the Government had no growth strategy at all. I therefore want to focus my brief remarks today on one subject—the lack of economic growth—and I really want to make just one point.

The ultimate driver of economic growth in an economy comes from people who work in business, industry and commerce. That, I think, was the main point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pitt-Watson, earlier on. Yet all those people and those companies—this is where I disagree with the noble Lord—and all those people in business and commerce have been hit by the Government’s stream of anti-business policies.

We have had the jobs tax: the increase in employers’ national insurance contributions. We have had the burdens placed on business by the new employment regulations. We have had the tax on private pensions and the tax on private farms. And now—about to hit the self-employed—we have new and complex regulations which mean they have to submit four tax returns every year instead of one. Therefore, the question I ask is: are there enough people in government who have any idea of how to run a business?

I grew up in the north of England, and my father ran a small manufacturing company, so I was brought up, like millions of people in this country, in a business culture. I learned about the risks you take when you invest money—and it is not just your own money, because the chances are you are having to invest borrowed money. You have no guaranteed revenue and no guaranteed salary. You hope to make a profit, but your margins are tight and you watch your costs like a hawk because you cannot afford to go into loss. You hope at some point to build up some capital, and you do not want to be penalised for success.

In this House, we have a number of Ministers who have business experience—the noble Lords, Lord Stockwood and Lord Timpson, are two examples. I am sure they understand all of this very well, but—dare I say it—we could do with more MPs who have direct business experience. On the day of the spring forecast, there was published in the Times a very interesting article about how the profile of the House of Commons has changed and how different it was in the 20th century. There were many more people on both sides of the House—the Labour Benches and the Conservative Benches—who had direct experience of industry, and the article listed the names of some of those MPs. They included MPs who had been labourers, who had worked on the shop floor, who had been stokers, and who had been railwaymen. Some had risen to become trade union leaders. There were business leaders who had set up businesses in construction, engineering and manufacturing. We do not have enough such people in the House of Commons today. We should certainly welcome, therefore, the addition of a plumber who was recently elected in the by-election—I think she will be an addition to the House’s expertise.

I conclude by suggesting that it would really help business if there were more people in government who had the outside business experience to shape policy, and who understood the impact of those policies on business and companies. That would stimulate business activity, and that—I say to the Minister—would be a real strategy for growth.

Autumn Budget 2024

Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

My Lords, Ministers, in trying to defend the Budget, keep saying in a rather pained way that they have had to take some very difficult decisions; the Minister said that today. Of course, that is what government is all about, and they should not be surprised by that.

However, I do accept that the Chancellor had a particular challenge which all Chancellors face when presenting their Budgets: the voracious demand of the public for ever more public spending. Yet every Government know that these expectations are unrealistic. So why is it? How does this happen? The reason is that Governments, of all parties, hide from the public basic information. The 362 pages of this Budget do not contain the information the public need to have; it is deliberately hidden. That is the problem Chancellors have to face.

Let us take taxation. Nobody has the faintest idea how much VAT they pay. People know the cost of their BBC licence fee because they pay it directly; it is visible. They know the price of their council tax bill. The things they pay for directly, they know. However, they do not know that, when they go to John Lewis and buy a washing machine for £350, £60 of that goes to the taxman. They do not know that, when they get a £25 takeaway, £4 of that goes to the taxman. Every time those prices go up, the Government are taking more—a bigger amount of tax. Of course, the Chancellor does not go to the House of Commons to say that taxes are going up, but they are.

And how the Treasury loves it. It likes nothing more than stealth taxes, which make it much easier to raise tax without protest. How much more honest it would be if, as in the United States, all goods and services showed their net price and, separately and just as clearly, the tax being levied on them. When people go to the States, they are often amazed that they have to pay tax on the goods there, while they do not have to pay it here—they think. How wrong they are. When you do see the VAT—when, for example, you are having building work done and your builder is in the VAT system and charges you £1,000—you then realise that you are paying a whopping £200 on top. What an eye-opener that is.

Let us take income tax. Freezing tax thresholds will, as people earn more, push them unwittingly into a higher tax bracket and paying more tax than they should. If you are on PAYE, the only figure you really see is your take-home pay. Why are gross pay, net pay and tax not shown deliberately and separately—all equally clear? Again, the Treasury would hate that, because its job is so much easier if people do not know how much they are paying.

The same is true about public services. Soon after I came into the House, I heard a speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Desai, who was then speaking from the Labour Benches. He said that it would be a good idea if, when people went for medical treatment, they were shown how much that would cost—not to charge them, but simply to inform them. I remember seeing on television some years ago a young man who thought he was having a heart attack. The NHS treated him brilliantly with an ECG and other tests. He was okay, and he asked the consultant afterwards how much that would have cost. The consultant said £25,000 and he was amazed. I just think that if people were aware of how much such things cost, they would be aware not to expect too much from endless public services. The Government may say, “It is very difficult to provide this information”, but surely, if an organisation is well run, and if the NHS is well run, that information should be available.

If Governments are not more honest and open with the public about the cost of public services and the total amount of tax the public are really paying, I am afraid that the public will go on making unrealistic demands on the public purse. That will go on being a problem for all Chancellors, and it will be a problem partly of their own making.

Working From Home: Public Sector Productivity

Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

No, there would not. One of the benefits of working from home is a much more efficient use of office space. It has a beneficial impact on capital in terms of releasing office space for more productive use, and that is currently what is under way.

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

My Lords, how does the Minister measure productivity in the public sector?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

There are a variety of measures, as I understand it. The ONS has a fairly standard measure. However, the noble Lord is absolutely right that it is much harder to measure productivity in the public sector than it is in the private sector. Measures that the Government are undertaking, such as increasing the number of GP appointments or reducing waiting lists, increase public sector output and therefore productivity.