Finance Bill

Lord Balfe Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 17th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con) [V]]

We are meeting, as has been said, in very different circumstances from when the Budget was delivered, but I would say that we are meeting against a background of obedience, fatigue and confusion. People are getting mixed messages: our buses are going around with seats roped off, our stations tell us not to travel, but our Prime Minister tells us to go back to work. We have message confusion and numbers confusion. Most people do not have the faintest idea what £1 billion is—or a billion of anything else—but the Government keep on saying, “A billion here and a billion there”. The image created is that there is an unlimited amount of money, and I do not think that that is a good start.

There has recently been a report about 120,000 new deaths. If that figure is to be taken seriously, do we expect people to go back to work or to restaurants, et cetera? No, it is actually encouraging people to do the exact opposite. Do the Government have a financial strategy for another spike? They need a strategy.

I turn to taxes. The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, who like me is from the LSE but is more distinguished, mentioned the need for a crisis levy. This is probably the only practical tax solution that we can come forward with. There has to be a levy that affects everybody, with everybody contributing according to their ability, but one that is severely time-limited. We all remember the temporary nature of income tax, so any levy needs to be time-limited. I also endorse the idea of a delivery charge for online orders. This could get around some of the problems of a tax. A delivery charge on online orders would be environmentally sensible; it would also even up, to an extent, the fact that out-of-town shopping opportunities such as Amazon pay virtually nothing for their premises. This would put some more tax revenue into the Exchequer.

The third thing I suggest is that we even up the tax between unearned income and PAYE income. It is ridiculous that, at the moment, you can have unearned income taxed more lightly than your earned income. I hope that the Government will look at ways in which they can raise taxes—fairly—and also have something in reserve in case there is another spike.