National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th January 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Kramer]

At end insert “but that, while recognising the need to rebuild public services and finances, this House regrets that the Bill risks worsening pressures in the NHS and social care by placing costs on GPs and dentists, social care providers and hospices; increases burdens on small businesses, early years providers, universities and charities; and penalises part-time work, and puts jobs and economic growth at risk”.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, before I begin, I say to the House that on these Benches, we will make sure that the words of appreciation and expressions of friendship for Baroness Randerson will be passed back to her family. I am sure that they will mean a great deal to them. I suspect that on many Benches, as on our Benches, noble Lords are somewhat in shock. We have lost not just a colleague and highly respected politician but a very real friend. We give our thanks to this House for its shared respect and friendship.

We on these Benches recognise the difficult state of the public finances and the desperate need for investment in public services and infrastructure to drive growth and tackle climate change. We can see that the responsibility for the current condition rests with the Conservatives. However, in our general election manifesto we did not duck the issue of new funding. We took the approach that we must find the broadest shoulders to raise additional tax revenue—from the gambling industry to share buybacks, from big banks to big tech. We have tabled this amendment to the Motion today to make it very clear that we believe that the Government have taken the wrong approach in hiking employers’ national insurance contributions as their way to fill the funding gap, and we fear that the present plans will undermine national recovery. We ask the Government to think again.

Our amendment addresses a wide range of sectors that will be particularly badly injured by the NICs increases. Look at whom the changes impact: small businesses—bigger than micro, which get some protection, but small businesses still. These businesses, especially in hospitality, underpin the resilience of our communities. They need to be investing in growth and productivity, not struggling for survival. The changes impact many businesses that offer part-time work, which in turn is often the route out of disadvantage since much part-time work will now be subject to NICs for the first time. Almost every childcare provider will have to hike fees or cut places, forcing some parents to give up work. Universities, many already facing dire funding pressures, are struggling to cope and will face a much more difficult situation. The hikes impact charities of all kinds and housing associations, which should be focused on building new affordable and social homes.

In the course of today, colleagues will address many of these issues, as well as the impact on devolved authorities, town and parish councils and veterans. We will follow with amendments to the Bill in its next stages. However, our deepest concern, and where we will focus our efforts, is the impact on community care and social care, with significant consequences for the NHS. The Conservatives drove this sector into the ground. The Government are setting up the Casey commission, to report in 2026 and 2028, but this sector is in crisis now. We cannot understand how the Government cannot see the harm that NICs increases will do to this vital sector.

Our research has revealed that the NICs hike will cost GP surgeries some £125.5 million a year, which is equivalent to funding 2 million appointments. Hospices, which face a £30 million bill, have warned that they may have to withdraw beds. Research from the Nuffield Trust shows that the cost to adult social care alone will exceed £900 million next year. I point out to the Minister that this is more than the extra funds that the Government allocated to the sector in the last Budget. It in effect wipes it out, and then some. We risk losing many small care providers and seeing large ones cut capacity. Pharmacists and dentists will not receive compensation in full. Surely the Government must recognise that the knock-on effects will undermine their ambitions to revive the NHS; this in turn will undermine jobs and economic recovery. My colleagues will expand much further.

The last Government failed the economy, failed our public services—including the NHS and social care—and, I fully accept, pursued a scorched-earth policy with the public finances. However, this Bill is not the way forward. We ask that this House press the Government to step back and reconsider. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a very impressive Second Reading on a very important Bill. I hope that in Committee we can have a really constructive discourse in which we can hopefully find some common ground and make some progress. However, as I look at the Bill as it stands today, I am afraid that I continue to regret. Under those circumstances, I beg to test the opinion of the House.

National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

I just say, in relation to that and to the noble Lord’s arguments, that what he completely forgets is that manufacturing companies faced with this will simply move their production abroad. That is what he forgets.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

Maybe I can be helpful by using the Library note on this occasion and a quote that it has from the OBR. The paragraph is headed “Labour supply”:

“The OBR expects workers and firms, respectively, may reduce labour supply and demand in response to lower wages and higher employer costs.”


That is a reference to these changes, including the NICs.

“It anticipates the measures in the bill may reduce labour supply by around 0.2%, or a little over 50,000 on an average-hours equivalent … basis, by 2029/30”.


Perhaps that quote about the OBR is helpful in the context of the conversation going on at the moment.

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Moved by

[Baroness Kramer]

3: Clause 1, page 1, line 1, at end insert—
“(A1) The Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992 is amended as follows.(A2) In section 9(1A), after paragraph (aa) insert—“(ab) if section 9AA applies to the earnings, the part-time worker secondary percentage;”(A3) After section 9A insert— “9AA Part-time worker secondary percentage(1) Where a secondary Class 1 contribution is payable as mentioned in section 6(1)(b), this section applies to the earnings paid in the tax week, in respect of the employment in question, where the earner is a part-time worker.(2) For the purposes of section 9(1A)(ab), the part-time worker secondary percentage is 7.5%.(3) For the purposes of this section, a “part-time worker” has the meaning given in Regulation 2 of the Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment sets a new National Insurance Contributions rate for part-time workers.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, all the amendments in this group are in my name. They break, essentially, into two parts. Amendments 3 and 12 relate to national insurance contribution rates for part-time workers. They are not a request for an exemption from the change but would establish a new rate for part-time workers of 7.5%, so this is a far more aggressive pair of amendments than those we discussed in previous groupings. Amendments 58, 59 and 60 are all about reviews. If I may, I will discuss part-time work first and then look at the reviews, to try to provide some clarity.

Why have we taken a more aggressive position as we look at the situation of part-time workers? It is because we think that we now need to focus on the most disadvantaged, who are finding work difficult to obtain and finding it hardest to earn in a reasonable way to promote their standard of living. We think that part-time workers need to be viewed through a different lens. Traditionally, they have been an add-on side group, and I think that in some people’s minds there is still the idea that people who work part-time either work for pin money or are extremely well paid and need to work only a limited number of hours. That is not the character of part-time work as it is today, and we want this special category to be identified and recognised.

Under the changes to the thresholds in the Bill, in many cases part-time work will be brought into employer NICs for the first time. Currently, a person could typically work 14 hours a week without incurring employer NICs, but that will be reduced to approximately eight hours. It is a dramatic difference. Very few people will be working fewer than eight hours in any meaningful way.

The number of people who engage in part-time work has grown significantly. Today, there are about 8.5 million people. That set of people is overwhelmingly made up of those who carry with them some recognised disadvantage: people with health issues, be they mental or physical; people with caring responsibilities who are trying to improve the family income, as well as get out of the house to some degree; and people recovering from periods of unemployment and trying to rebuild their confidence and work credentials.

For many young people, part-time work is the entry point. Some of them are students who could not remain in education if they did not have part-time work to go along with it, but it is also increasingly becoming a route to the first job and to getting some sort of credentials that will give you the ability to go on and develop a career in full-time work. With this growing sector, we are changing as a society and using part-time work far more.

The Government will be very aware that, as they look at their growth agenda, one of their primary goals is to get older people who have become economically inactive—typically, those aged over 50—back to work. I suggest that part-time work is by far the most likely route for those individuals, so making that attractive, and making them attractive to employers, who may not have thought of employing somebody older who will therefore retire in a certain number of years, may well be a very important part of that strategy.

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[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I just want to say a quick word to the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson—in a sense, the voice of the Treasury. This notion of part-time workers as very wealthy people who work only a few hours a week is totally dated. The collegiate group of part-time workers, if you like, is now hugely more varied and much more heavily represented by people in disadvantaged positions. We might have known that had we had a more effective impact assessment.

I have to say that I have some sympathy with the Minister, because I have been complaining for years—this involves the previous Government as well—about the inadequacy of impact assessments. As a former banker, if I had been presented with that document as a piece of analysis by somebody on a project that I was working on, that would have been the end of them working. We need to move to a world where we get proper information in an impact assessment. I do not think it would be to the Government’s disadvantage; it would lead to far better discussion because we would all be on much more secure ground.

With all that said, I am very pleased with the degree of discussion that we have had on an issue that is often overlooked. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 3 withdrawn.

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Once again, I congratulate the Liberal Democrats on tabling these amendments. They are flawed, for the reasons I have indicated, but perfectly capable of amendment—to broaden the scope from universities, for example. The amendments point to real needs and real hardships that have been created by a Government who have not thought through the consequences of their policies in this and in other taxation.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I am standing in what would usually be a winding position, but I think Amendments 4 and 5 have been so thoroughly discussed and I am very much in support of most of the comments.

I say to the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, that I think it is very dangerous to always worship at the altar of simplification. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, if it was the precise phrase, you end up with so many hard cases as a consequence of that. The noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, talked about a specific charity that is delivering warm spaces—and on a day like today, when we have had to bring additional heaters into this Room, boy, something like that comes home. It is now facing additional costs that it could not possibly have planned for, without the time to put any kind of scheme in place that would give it the breathing space to be able to deal with that kind of challenge. I just find it extraordinary.

However, I wanted primarily to speak to Amendment 8, which has been less discussed today. I thank the National Association of Local Councils for a briefing. Like many others, I was very shocked when the Government confirmed that the upper tier of local authorities would qualify for financial support to offset the increased cost of employer NICs, but parish and town councils were to be excluded because they do not receive funding through the local government finance scheme. Parish and town councils raise their funding via precept. Therefore, these councils will undoubtedly have to increase local taxes in order to cover the additional costs. They have nowhere else to go.

I am sure that that was not in Labour’s manifesto and that this is something Labour did not intend, but there really is no other route they can go down other than to increase council tax. Its calculation is that the NICs increase will cost English parish and town councils approximately £10 million each year, requiring an increase of something between 1.5% and 3% to cover the additional cost—that is £10 million each year, and £50 million over the life of a Parliament. It really is a rounding error. I just cannot understand why town and parish councils were excluded from the provision for upper tier councils.

Part of the argument is around fairness, but there is also an argument around democracy. Many people can relate to their town and parish councils, as others have said, in a way that they do not relate to higher tiers. It is at the parish and town level that money goes to projects that are specifically designed around the needs of a local community. They really are very different in the services that they provide. I am concerned, on a broader scale, about the centralisation of local government that we have been seeing: in essence, we are looking at unitary authorities with something like half a million people in them as the decision-making, strategic and implementation element of local government.

I very much fear that the difficulties that parish and town councils will face will turn them much more into agencies of that upper tier, rather than something at the level of local government with the capacity to respond to local needs and to underpin the character and nature of each individual community. The amount of money is so trifling that, in putting these councils on an equal basis with upper tier ones, there must be some other agenda at work here. I do not know what it is; perhaps the Minister could enlighten us.

This amendment is in my name, as are Amendments 4 and 5. I very much hope that the Government are listening because these are issues of significance.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. I will be brief; I want specifically to speak in favour of Amendment 8, given that I raised this issue at Second Reading. I should declare my position as vice-president of the National Association of Local Councils.

I agree with everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said. I have just one point to add. As the noble Baroness was speaking, I was thinking about a recent visit to Shropshire. A whole lot of town and parish council leaders and councillors were gathered in a room and talking about all the projects that their councils were running. One of the things I thought about were the photos and slides that were being shown, and how much volunteer effort was involved in the projects being displayed. The money is spent by town and parish councils because they are close to, and there in, the community. Often, it is a community effort to install the bug hotel in the allotments or to put up swift boxes around towns—all sorts of things that many people get involved in on a voluntary level. In taking money away from that, the multiplier effect is much greater. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, said, we are talking about a tiny sum of money in central government terms but something that is hugely consequential in communities up and down the land.

I spoke at some length on charities earlier but there are two specific points that I want to make. I mentioned earlier—the Minister did not respond to me on this—the idea of having a one-year delay for charities so that they have time to work out both the budget and ways to deal with the rise in national insurance; this was something that both the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and the noble Lord, Lord Randall, raised. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister about that point regarding a delay specifically for charities.

I wish to pick up the point from the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, about complexity. An organisation either is or is not a charity. That would be a really simple way to see this, involving low paperwork. Complexity would be easy to introduce; for a small or medium-sized enterprise or something, it might be more complicated. I do not think, I am afraid, that anyone can compete with the Green Party on our views on simplification because we want to roll together income tax, national insurance and capital gains tax. If that were the case, the Green Minister would not be over there: we would be going through this in one day in the House—provided it was still constituted as it is now when we got to that stage.

National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 29th January 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I think that I had reached the conclusion of my remarks, which is that I support these amendments. I particularly support impact assessments.

Before I sit down, I just make the comment that it is somewhat strange to note that we were voting on something in the Chamber of the House relating to boxes in the Royal Albert Hall, but we are deprived of the opportunity to vote on the matter of national insurance rises for every company in the UK. That seems to me to be somewhat absurd.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I stand as a winding speaker but also as someone who attached their name to Amendment 22 from the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, which I think gets to the heart of the problem that we have with this Bill. To me, the most pernicious measure has been the dropping of the threshold, which has meant that trapped into employers’ national insurance contributions are the lowest paid and the part-timers. There is a disadvantageous impact on small businesses in hospitality and tourism, which are the backbone of so many communities and employ so many people for whom other work is very difficult to find. That makes it a really significant amendment, and I was very glad to attach my name.

I talked on an earlier set of amendments, essentially, about small businesses but also, more broadly, about tourism, hospitality and part-timers. I will not repeat that; the Committee has listened to me once on those issues and certainly does not need to hear me twice. I just make a small comment on why I am particularly concerned about the approach to small businesses, which is that it seems to me that the Government have put in some protections for what are genuinely micro-businesses but do not use “micro” and instead keep using “small”. The noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, identified the benchmark, which is about seven employees. Then you can start to do better under the changes that the Government have made. However, every time I read about the growth agenda, it requires the upscaling of our small businesses. This, in many ways, has been the British disease.

I was looking at reports from the ScaleUp Institute, which obviously does excellent surveys so you can get a granular feel of what is happening with many of these businesses. Most of them state that the first problem in scaling up is talent, but the second problem is access to finance. For a company that will now have to take on board additional costs—about £1,000 or more per employee—this will exaggerate that problem of access to finance. Many of them will now have to find finance in order to be able to cover the working capital that is engaged in paying higher employers’ national insurance. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, in his excellent and interesting Second Reading speech, covered some of the issues associated with that credit.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

It was not a Second Reading speech; I was addressing the issues in the amendment.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

We will have to beg to differ on that.

I think that the Minister will turn around and say that a great deal is being done for small businesses that want to upscale and that we should look at the British Business Bank. We are talking about an entity that is so small that it really cannot meet this need, so there is a very big problem here to be addressed. It seems to me that the way in which the national insurance contributions increase will work will knock back the effort that has to be made to help people get through what is often known as the credit valley of death, so that they can go from being small to the thriving, upscaled businesses that we need to drive the growth that we need.

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, I come in just to endorse what my noble friend Lady Noakes said about small businesses and indeed to support these amendments generally. I will speak on my own set of amendments later on with respect to impact assessments.

I founded a small business. Yes, it was a not-for profit-business—Politeia, which is a think tank—but, in 1995, we went through the phase described so well by my noble friend Lord Forsyth of wondering how we would meet employer payroll at the end of every month. From a comfortable position now looking back, we are still not exactly in a rosy situation because, every time policy changes or there are external shocks such as Covid, we face more costs. It is difficult to see how any small business needing to make a profit can do so and expand.

In my case, as someone involved in running a small business, I would say that we have a done a lot of good. It is a not-for-profit charitably funded think tank, but we train graduates and even young people coming straight from school who are finding their place in the job market. We have always paid slightly over the minimum wage once they get on to the payroll, and they go on to do great things: they join the Civil Service; they join the public sector; or they get training contracts and continue working with us, because it helps them to pay the fees for the next phase. We will have to think about that model, because they are going to cost a great deal more. Some of the senior staff earn much more decent salaries than perhaps even the people who founded the organisation do, and we will have to rethink the senior and experienced team because of the enormous hit that we are taking. That is not to mention all the other costs in the Budget.

From the perspective of a very micro-business, this will have serious consequences. I speak as somebody still involved in running it and raising the money. Noble Lords will know that people’s spare money that goes to think tanks such as mine will cease and those people will have to cut their own jobs—that is where the funding comes from. I urge the Government to think again about the proposal from my noble friend Lady Noakes and all the other excellent proposals in this group of amendments.

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[Lord Blackwell (Con)]

My Lords, I will not repeat the powerful arguments that have been made for this set of amendments, but I would like to put the argument in stark terms. What is exceptional about most charities is that they do not have the ability to raise revenue by selling more and putting up prices. Some do, but many are not commercial enterprises. In effect, since those charities can raise this money only through additional fundraising, the Government are saying to charities, “We want you to go out and solicit more contributions from philanthropists to pay for government services”. If the Government went out to the public and said, “This is what we’re going to do”, I wonder how many people would think that a sensible policy.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I will be very brief, because these Benches spoke extensively on charities in an earlier grouping, where the amendment would have overturned the change that the Government are introducing. I particularly want to pick up the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, because, like others, I am very conscious that, of the charities that I have talked to, a fundamental part of their problem is that they cannot turn around and respond quickly enough to a measure that is being introduced so quickly. I am not up on all the rules of the Charity Commission, but I suspect that it would frown greatly on a charity spending when there is no clear funding mechanism coming in to replenish its resources. I think that there is a requirement to have several months’ contingency on the books, so there is a real problem here for many charities in having to turn around very quickly.

One of the amendments deals with increases in the employment allowance. That runs into a problem that the Government could help us with. It is my understanding that an entity that sells 50% of its services to the public sector does not qualify for employment allowance, so there will be many charities that are excluded from any benefit that is offered under that amendment. I wonder if the Minister could help us to get a better grip on that, because I think we have all struggled with understanding the application of those rules.

My last point did not occur to me until I started reading the input from various charities. A number of charities that have been able to survive and are fairly confident about their funding will now find themselves in a position where they need to battle and compete for grants. Some of the very smallest charities are concerned that they may get excluded from the grant offering because charities with a bigger reach are now turning to those particular pots. I am not sure whether the Government considered that as they put together this picture.

[Lord Altrincham (Con)]

This is an interesting set of amendments, given that, in essence, through this policy the Government are looking to take £1 billion out of the charity sector to fund public services, when the charity sector obviously provides public services—so it is a uniquely baffling government initiative. We on these Benches absolutely support the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, on Amendment 11A and by my noble friend Lady Sater on Amendment 32.

I speak to Amendment 52, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. This amendment would increase the employment allowance for charities from £10,500 to £20,000 to assist with the burden being placed upon charities. It is a probing amendment, and I would like to understand the cost that this would have for the Treasury and the plans the Government have to support the sector with the increased costs and the rise.

The remarkable comments made by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, and its estimate that this will cost the sector £1.4 billion every year, has been referenced in this debate by my noble friend Lord Leigh and others. It would leave charities in a position where they are unable to absorb the costs and will, as a result, be forced to reduce the number of services they provide. In essence, as we talked about on day 1 in Committee, these services are public services. Charities in this country have become quasi-public service providers in the last 20 years, and it is most unlikely that, in pulling back services, those services would not have to be provided by the Government elsewhere. It is therefore most unlikely that the Government will not wear the costs of this change. It is naive to assume that charities provide some other service that is not a public service or a substitute for a public service.

The Government will be well aware of the severe issues that charities are facing, following the open letter from the NCVO to express concern that three out of four charities will have to withdraw from public service delivery or are considering doing so. This is an extraordinary way to treat a sector that would provide a public service. In fact, the Government have accepted the principle that the delivery of public services should not face this tax, following the exemption of both the Civil Service and the NHS. What justification does the Minister therefore have for the exemption of some providers of public services but not charities? Charities provide close to £17 billion in public services every single year, and the services they provide are invaluable to communities across the country, so a failure to protect them would be devastating.

I support my noble friend Lady Sater’s Amendment 32 and recognise the importance of the Government fully assessing the impact that this tax increase will have on the sector. The Government owe it to charities to fully consider the impact that this will have across the sector and, as such, I hope the Government will consider both Amendments 32 and 52 very carefully as we progress.

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[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

Is the Minister saying that there is a misunderstanding? Where charities are providing services to the public sector above 50% of their revenue, I think, they are ruled out of claiming employment allowance. I do not understand the intricacies of that, but there is something there.

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

That would be a misunderstanding, yes. I just repeat that all charities benefit from the employment allowance, which this Bill more than doubles from £5,000 to £10,500.

The Government also provide wider support for charities via the tax regime. This tax regime is among the most generous in the world, with tax reliefs for charities and their donors worth just over £6 billion for the tax year to April 2024. Providing further relief for the sector would have additional cost implications and would require either more borrowing, lower spending or alternative revenue-raising measures.

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[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

I just ask: what are the Government afraid of? This is a sensible suggestion about assessing what the effect might be of an enormous change to every business and charity organisation in the country. If it is such a good thing—we are told that it is—verify it.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I shall be extremely brief. It must be galling for the Minister to sit here and be lectured by the Conservative Benches because he and I so often tried to obtain information and were consistently denied it. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, asked why there was not a greater outcry. Everybody just got so used to being denied information.

I am sure that the Minister will also be able to cite many economic crises when information was not provided—I have to say, the silence on the Conservative Benches in not calling out for that information was very loud, if I can put it that way. I am sure that, if the Conservatives were back in government again, we would get the same absence of transparency and limitations on information. There are perhaps two honourable exceptions—the noble Baronesses, Lady Noakes and Lady Neville-Rolfe—who stood out against their party when every other voice was one that co-operated in that silence.

That silence was part of the reason why there was so much mistrust of the Conservative Government in the end; it was part of their undermining. As the Minister and his Government start to look at reform, which they are looking at more generally—particularly in dealing with the Civil Service—looking for opportunities for transparency would be a really positive move. With information, we stand on more secure ground. Will he consider that? I have asked him that before.

It is realistic to understand that we are unlikely to get impact assessments ahead of the actions that the Government contemplate doing in the next few weeks, or just in the next couple of months, but post reviews are at least a place to begin. They shed light, and they help both the Government and Parliament to understand where things have been effective and where they have not. If the Minister feels that he cannot accept these kinds of requests for immediate impact assessments, will he consider seriously the various requests made in other groupings for post-facto analysis and review?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I shall just say this briefly: we need more transparency on such a major policy change, but we are not getting it. There is a large negative impact on business and charities, which is—I agree with my noble friend Lady Noakes, a fellow-in-crime in asking for impact assessments—unprecedented. As my noble friend Lord Blackwell said, we are seeing a shift in jobs from the private sector to the public sector, which we fear is bad for jobs, productivity and growth. That is why we need to find a way of getting better assessment and having a process for review.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I rise briefly to offer the Green group’s support for all these amendments. Perhaps the right reverend Prelate’s amendment gives the Government a way forward that does not interfere with the general progress of the Bill but any of these would do.

I am going to make two quick points. First, I note the briefing I received from the chair of the Licensed Private Hire Car Association’s SEND group, setting out the points that have been made on how it is desperately concerned and the chaos that this national insurance rise has the potential to cause it.

Secondly, I point out that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is in the other place. There, the Government are trying to deal with, help and support children with special educational needs and disabilities, and their parents, through that Bill. Then we have this Bill, which is undoing, and creating further risks and damage. It is useful to set those two against each other. In your Lordships’ House, we often hear expert testimony about how difficult life is for children with special educational needs and disabilities and, of course, their families and parents. This is—I am going to use an informal term—such a no-brainer to sort out.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly. If I had spotted the amendment of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark in time, I would have signed it because it makes absolute sense. There is a pressure created, when one knows that a review is coming afterwards, to think through actions now. All in this Committee recognise that this Bill deals with the weakest of the weak. As there are two Bills, this one and one in the other place, either of which could be used to manage a remedy, I should have thought the Government might have been able to see a way through this.

I wanted to mention a procedural thing, just as a comment on the statement made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark. I hope that he realises that if he does not withdraw his amendment at this stage, he will not be able to bring it back on Report. Some people are not clear on that element of the procedure, so I mention it simply in case it guides what he might wish to do.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

His amendment is Amendment 67, so he is not going to be moving it until day four.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

He said, “I beg to move”.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

He cannot move it.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

Problem solved; I am back in my place. Those are the only comments that I wanted to make.