National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill

Baroness Sater Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th February 2025 Grand Committee

I served on Gordon Brown’s committee to commemorate the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, and launched the Diana nurses, paediatric palliative care nurses who went out into the community. I visited them all, accompanied them on visits and saw the profound difference that this makes. Family service teams are a vital part of palliative care. Surely, His Majesty’s Government could show an element of humanity on this issue and allow an exemption. Amendment 29 is important because the increased cost of this policy to hospices, which, as I have outlined, are already struggling, would be catastrophic. I beg to move.

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

I rise in support of my noble friend, who made an excellent and passionate speech about hospices and the dire need for support they will have if the NICs changes go through. They will affect, as we have heard already, redundancies and the level of staffing. The burden that will be put on hospices will be extraordinary and the figures are unbelievable if we consider how much they will have to raise if they have to find that money in the future. As I have said previously, it is imperative that we have an impact assessment whereby we can understand these individual sectors and the absolute devastation that will happen if we do not know what will happen, going forward. So I plead with and urge the Minister to reconsider and support my noble friend on this important sector. It is important that we know a little more about what will happen if these insurance rises take place.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Monckton of Dallington Forest in much the same way. If all goes to plan, I will speak on Thursday in respect of social care homes, particularly adult social care homes, where many of the same issues arise. I cannot imagine the response if a Conservative Government had decided to put national insurance rises on such institutions; can noble Lords begin to see the headlines that would be against us?

This House is a revising Chamber; it allows the Government the opportunity to pause, rethink and consider, and if ever there was a case to do so, this is it. Before the Government have the acute embarrassment of urging Peers to go through the Division Lobby to penalise care homes and hospices in such a way, I very much hope that they will take advantage of the gap between Committee and Report to reflect on the arguments.