Finance Bill

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 17th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con) [V]]

My Lords, we are here to debate the Finance Bill, which is about fiscal policy. However, I would like to focus on the off-radar branch of fiscal policy that is not openly conducted by the Treasury, by which I mean monetary measures, supposedly operated independently by central banks.

So-called quantitative easing has had impacts that mimic tax changes but with rather perverse distributional and social side-effects. It has acted like a major tax cut for financial market operators, home owners and the wealthiest asset owners, while feeling like a tax increase that has reduced the disposable income of savers, first-time buyers and the young. It has also been an effective tax increase on pensions for companies sponsoring a defined benefit scheme and those trying to buy annuities.

Central banks around the globe have continued the massive monetary policy experiment that began after the 2008 financial debt crisis. It was meant to be an emergency measure to boost growth and stave off economic collapse. Economists insisted that this was not just money-printing with a fancy name, because it would be unwound as the stimulus imparted by forcing long rates lower stabilised economies and markets. However, despite growth, rising employment and record high stock and bond prices, quantitative easing has remained in place since 2009 and has entered a further round during the current crisis.

Monetary policy has now been used to fund helicopter money, which is effectively what the furlough scheme, restaurant vouchers and other government emergency measures are. However, the side-effects of this policy are that the wealthiest asset owners and financial institutions have done very well but the rest of the economy has not necessarily benefited, as much of the new money has leaked away. Therefore, I hope that my noble friend will consider taking seriously the need to boost growth more directly than through the use of QE, which is a very indirect route.

I support the establishment of the sovereign wealth fund, and perhaps would also welcome the establishment of an organisation such as the KfW, which was so effective in rebuilding Germany. There is a potential domestic source of funding for this without creating new money. Long-term assets to be used for infrastructure, social housing and other revenue-generating investments that can deliver much better returns than gilts could be used by pension funds to help repair deficits and reduce the ongoing cost of funding in the long run. I hope that my noble friend and his department will take seriously the potential of using our long-term pension assets to boost growth directly.