Autumn Statement 2022

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, if I had not been cheerful before hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Desai, obviously I am in an excellent mood now. It is a dark prospect indeed. I offset it by welcoming the noble Baroness, Lady Lea of Lymm. I look forward to hearing her controversial speeches and, I suspect, some future jousting with the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, on economic models.

The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, led the charge, as it were, with support for the Government. He got quite a bit of support from the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, and warm words of support from the noble Lords, Lord Tugendhat, Lord Horam and Lord Livingston. I can accept that the pandemic and Putin’s war in Ukraine have hit our economy hard, but the damage that has driven the harshest Budget in memory—the Autumn Statement was really a Budget—has been the systemic mistakes of a Conservative Government I see as largely blinded by ideology. This was an Autumn Statement dominated by the need to calm the financial markets, and for that we are now all paying a high price.

The noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, may agree with those last few words, but he might have made a little slip in his speech. The previous recession was in 2008, when we had six quarters of negative growth, the most significant of which was in the first quarter of 2009, under a Labour Government. During the coalition years there was no recession.

Speakers today have raised many concerns that I share. I pay tribute to the extraordinary speeches of both the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, in really exposing the pain that so many vulnerable people are feeling. This is despite government help with inflation-rated increases in benefits and the state pension. They face a dire winter, and over time many will suffer additionally because of the delays in the migration of ESA to universal credit and in the PIP rollout.

I am really shocked to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, that in Northern Ireland even the energy money has not been paid out. My noble friend Lord Shipley spoke of the absence of housing anywhere in the Autumn Statement when it is so utterly critical to so many people’s well-being. The noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, added very much to that discussion of housing.

The squeezed middle, thanks to fiscal drag, which the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, talked about, face tax increases of over £2,000, increases in council tax—we have heard that the impact of council tax is so unevenly spread across the country—higher mortgages or rent and £500 more in energy bills. I have not even started to list the increased costs of food, shoes for the kids and the rest of daily living. Wages in the private sector, rising at an average of 6.2%, can take no more than the edge off the pain, and public sector wages, rising at only 2.2% on average, are leaving many public sector workers not only near despair but ready to quit the sector. The noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, very much raised this issue.

Many small businesses, the backbone of our economy, are struggling with costs in every direction. They need to know urgently what happens to energy support after April simply to be able to plan and price their products. The Government provided small businesses with a little relief from the uprating effect of business rates, but freezing the VAT threshold, keeping the lower NICs threshold for employees and cutting the R&D relief scheme will undo much of the benefit.

The loss of the R&D scheme, as we heard from so many today—the noble Lords, Lord Fox, Lord Bilimoria and Lord Londesborough, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blackwood—is having such an impact on small businesses. In the industry conversation I had last week, they said that nearly a quarter of small firms are considering either downsizing, restructuring or closing rather than investing in innovation, and that is driven by that change.

The economic forecasts in the Green Book require not just a soaring tax take but a virtual slash and burn of unprotected public services post 2025. The noble Lord, Lord Horam, talked about support for public sector investors; that is not in this Autumn Statement. The noble Lords, Lord Fox, Lord Hain and Lord Davies of Brixton, again focused on the impact on public services post the next election. All of us are in favour of efficiency in public services but we know that efficiency requires substantial investment in people, training, systems, physical plant and equipment. It is usually cost up front and savings later. Indeed, that same pattern of slash and burn after 2025 is repeated for infrastructure; I think the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, caught on to that issue.

When the Government used the phrase “a plan for growth”, most of us thought, “If only.” It is extraordinary to me that, as far as I could see, the detriment of the absence of growth drew together the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, with those of the noble Lords, Lord Skidelsky, Lord Sikka, Lord Bilimoria and Lord Londesborough—an extraordinary gathering who at least agree on what the detriment is. They might disagree on the causes and solutions but they are in the same place on the underlying problem.

Even the CBI, despite its usual caution, has said that there is no meaningful plan for growth. My party, the Liberal Democrats, focuses on growth and, importantly, sustainable growth. I say that to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, as I know that is her concern. We have done it in the past by working with businesses. Vince Cable’s industrial strategy, the creation of catapults and a huge focus on innovation made such a marked difference, as did Ed Davey’s use of contracts for difference to unleash private investment in renewable energy.

This matters because business investment is now the lowest in living memory. Changing Solvency II—everyone says, “We will do it with regulation”—to allow for more pension money to go into infrastructure and upscaling may help marginally but it does not fix the problem. My goodness, do we need to be careful that our pension funds do not embark on excessive risk as a result of new freedoms to invest in illiquid and risky assets. I note today that the City Minister has just indicated that he will weaken ring-fencing on the retail banks.

Net-zero business offers us a significant opportunity for growth—we heard so much on this from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman—but we have to be globally competitive and that means a far more effective and targeted collaboration between government and the private sector. It even means an industrial strategy. I refer to the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, who raised that issue; it is so absent from any government proposal.

We also have to fix the collapse in our trade. The OBR explains that our trading intensity has declined by 15%. Much-touted new trade deals barely shift the dial; to paraphrase George Eustice, the much-extolled Australian trade deal is a failure for British agriculture. The financial services industry in the UK has lost 6.6% of its services exports to the EU. The Lord Mayor of London said this week that

“businesses, intellectual property and people are leaving our shores.”

Worse is to come when euro clearing moves in 2025. I also understand this week from talking to manufacturing trade organisations that manufacturing has lost 30% of its volume of physical exports to Europe and UK firms have been essentially removed from European supply chains.

The Federation of Small Businesses tells us that most small businesses have now dropped out of exporting. At the very least, the Government should be using the trade and co-operation agreement with the EU to mitigate what they can of this damage, and they need to work out very swiftly—I refer to the noble Lords, Lord Bilimoria and Lord Razzall—how to get back to obstacle-free access to Europe.

Businesses large and small are exercised by workforce shortages. I am on the Economic Affairs Committee, which will come out with a report on this issue, but I wanted to pick up on a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackwood: it is people who are already retired who are falling sick; they are not falling sick and then retiring. That is a real conundrum for us and a very dangerous pattern. Getting inactive people over 50 back into the workforce is not going to happen. I know the committee has not come to its conclusions, so we will see where it goes, but the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, also pointed to the population demographics that are now working so strongly against us.

The Government control our immigration system, so why do they not use it to support our economy and tackle the labour shortage? The four-year visa system for skilled workers is cited constantly by Ministers, but many businesses cannot cope with the churn of workers who come for just four years; they want workers who stay long-term. We need a far more flexible system before we lose horticulture, undermine construction and shrink hospitality, just to name three sectors facing crisis.

The OECD forecasts that only Russia among the major economies will contract more than the UK next year. As so many have said, we are the only G7 country whose output has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. I echo the noble Lord, Lord Desai: the Government have constantly neglected the fundamentals of a modern economy. They have undermined our resilience and they offer us a plan for pain, not for growth.