Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Lord Watson of Invergowrie and Lord Sassoon

Monday 18th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

The noble Lord says “Don’t bother” so I will not. I do not know whether other noble Lords heard; as he tells me not to write, I will not, but I have made the offer.

As to the extraordinary speech from the noble Lord, Lord Myners, which continually came back to praise the former Chancellor, Mr Darling, I can only think that he read in the Sunday newspapers, as I did, that Mr Darling is coming close to finalising his memoirs. I assume that this was a late play to make sure that Mr Darling looks favourably on the noble Lord, Lord Myners, and his part in the previous Government, but we shall see. We then got away from the pessimists but came back to one or two a bit towards the end. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, joined in by talking about the Government transferring debt to the citizens. The trouble is that the government debt is the debt of the citizens and that attitude, I fear, underlay so much of what the previous Government did. They completely failed to recognise that it is the citizens who, at the end of the day, have to pick up the debt.

In terms of unrealistic ways to go about getting us out of the challenge we are in, I have to say to the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, that one way in which we will absolutely kill growth is if we raise further the top rate of income tax from a level which is not one that this Government wish to see in the medium term. We desperately need to encourage entrepreneurship and growth and the one thing we should not think of doing is further raising the top rate of tax. I am pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Myners, nodding in approval.

I do not recognise the picture which the pessimists paint. However, I recognise that there are a lot of serious challenges out there, which noble Lords pointed to throughout the debate. I cannot deal with them in detail but my noble friend Lord Newby was the first—and virtually the last—speaker to refer to the European dimension, which is very difficult, while my noble friend Lord Higgins again pointed out the real challenges that there are in analysing the monetary situation and taking lessons from it.

The noble Lord, Lord Desai, raised the question of the savings rate and I completely agree with the challenge that that poses. I am delighted that the noble Lord appears to have lost none of his vigour even though it appears that Delilah may have got at Samson. It was a great reassurance that he is still on fine form. My noble friend Lord Ryder of Wensum was also on fine form. He raised a lot of points but, yes, regulation and employment are very challenging. I would point out to my noble friend that we are in the process of putting 21,000 regulations on the Red Tape Challenge website. We will indeed eliminate significant quantities of regulation while on employment law, another key area, we have already made moves on unfair dismissal to right the balance between employers and employees. My right honourable friend the Chancellor has identified five other areas where we are looking at employment regulation at the moment.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, talked about the protection that is important to lower-paid public sector workers. The Government have indeed made the £250 payment for all those within central government and are encouraging all other public sector bodies to abide by that.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

On that point, the Minister mentions all other public bodies but I mentioned that local authorities have been allocated resources for this specific purpose, yet the Government appear to be allowing them to spend the money on whatever they see fit. Surely, that defeats the Government's purpose in regard to the £250 that the Minister mentioned.