National Insurance Contributions: Hospitality Sector

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. As I have said all along, there are consequences to responsibility, and we have always acknowledged that. But the consequences of irresponsibility—for the economy and working people—would have been far, far greater. We saw exactly that with the Liz Truss mini-Budget, which crashed the economy and saw typical mortgage payments increased by £300 a month.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, £9 billion was also the cost of giving public sector workers a huge pay rise, without specific related productivity requirements. Recent changes have shown that probably the only people in the country who do not believe that the Chancellor’s Budget has unnecessarily worsened the position of hospitality, charities, hospices and many other small businesses are the Chancellor herself and the noble Lord opposite. Will the noble Lord think again, because of the effect on growth and on these particular sectors?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I notice the noble Baroness did not mention today’s growth figures, which were obviously higher than expected, but, as we have said all along, they are simply not good enough. We are doing everything we can to bring stability back to the economy. The noble Baroness has opposed every single measure that we have taken to restore stability to the economy; she has opposed every single measure that we are putting in place to rebuild the supply side of this economy; she has opposed every single measure we put in place to rebuild the public finances. It is very interesting that she says she opposes the pay rises for public sector workers, and I am sure every public sector worker will be listening closely to what she says.