National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill

Baroness Kramer Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Monday 31st March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I simply thank the Minister and, again, all who have been involved in the passage of this difficult Bill, especially those who have supported me and my noble friend Lord Altrincham. We have had seven days of debate in the House and nine successful votes, in collaboration with other Benches. That demonstrated the serious concerns about this Bill, right across the House.

There is a strong feeling, echoed externally in our hospices, in hospitality, on the high street and in many other places, that the Bill is not the best way to meet the challenges that the country faces, and that it will endanger the growth we need so badly. However, this is a House of scrutiny, and the other place has taken a different view. As a responsible Opposition, we will not seek to defeat this Bill, no matter how deeply we feel about it. His Majesty’s Government must be able to set their tax policy, and of course we respect that.

I should add that I am grateful to the Minister for his closing words, especially in relation to SEND transport, and for his undertaking to monitor—as I think he said—the impacts and effect of the Bill going forward. We will hold him to that. Moreover, he knows that I and one or two others will continue to encourage the Treasury to learn from all of this and experiment with fuller sectoral assessments in the future.

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, the amendments that underlie Motions A and B that came from the House of Lords were in the name of my colleague and noble friend Lord Scriven. On his behalf, and on behalf of my Benches, we recognise that we have come to end the of the road on this Bill and we will not press for any further amendments.

I will make a couple of comments. I have just come from a fairly extensive meeting with R3, the insolvency and restructuring professionals’ body. Those around the table were telling me of the cascade of small businesses that are already going into voluntary insolvency because of the increasing costs that they face this April. When the Minister says that he will look at evaluating the Bill and its impacts, I hope he will make sure that his view casts across that territory, because it is obviously fundamental to the agenda for growth. Within those discussions, of course, were many private social care providers. A number of the smaller ones—at least three of the practitioners around the table—were dealing with insolvencies triggered over the last few weeks.

From what the Minister said, I hope that he and his Government will recognise that they now need to use other means to step in and shore up the key sectors that are faced with costs they cannot sustain and are therefore closing services which we absolutely need. I hope very much that his commitment to ongoing evaluation will incorporate all of that and be granular—we were hopeful when we heard his words on SEND transport, because that is quite a granular issue—rather than the overarching kind that we have been dealing with in this House.

However, the Minister has always been gracious. I understand that this has been exceedingly difficult and that the Government face very difficult and strenuous times. We recognise that, at this point, we can take this Bill no farther. We thank everyone who has participated, from all Benches, and all the people in our back offices and Whips’ offices who have provided so much support.