Autumn Statement 2023

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I also welcome the Minister to the Treasury bit of the Front Bench, having dealt with her extensively in her previous job as Aviation Minister.

I look at the Autumn Statement and I think it is fair enough, but there is no inspiration in it. Next year we are going to be going to the country and asking people to vote for our party to continue in government. A random selection of my friends yielded no one who was particularly happy with this Statement; they think it is a Statement for other people. Within this House we are always hearing about the poor, but we never hear about the people who make the money that keeps this country going. They are people who go to work every morning, have qualifications and work hard. In a democracy there is no such thing as gratitude; people look to Governments to improve their standard of living. That has not happened recently and, indeed, there is a feeling abroad that the British state has been captured by the Civil Service and the woke brigade. The biggest example of that is the National Health Service. It has never had more money or more staff, and it has never had more problems, which it appears incapable of solving. All we get are calls for more and more money when, quite clearly, the system itself is not working.

I will give the Minister three things that I would like her to take back to the department and look at. First is the reform of death duties—inheritance tax. No one will believe you if you put it into the next manifesto. They will say that George Osborne promised this in 2007 and it was never delivered. Do we, on this side of the House, honestly believe that an incoming Labour Government will reform inheritance tax? I think it will be well down their list of priorities. But many people in Britain, particularly in the middle classes who keep this country running, hope to inherit part of a house, and about 30% of them believe that they will end up paying inheritance tax. The Minister has not only to reform it but to get it into law before the election. If it is in the manifesto, no one will believe we will carry it out because we have not done so in the past.

Secondly, I will mention the freeze on tax thresholds. Every year, the Britons who are just managing may get an increase in their income, and then they are pulled into higher-rate taxation. There is virtually no incentive to do anything. To say it is frozen until 2028 because of various government things is marvellous for the Government, but that is not going to incentivise anyone to vote for the Government. No one is going to get up and say, “Oh goody, by the time this Government come to an end, they may or may not have delivered on some promises that they have made and, frankly, do not have much of a record in carrying out”.

The third thing is child benefit. Its withdrawal rate has been frozen at £50,000 for 10 years, which means that more and more families are losing out. If the Minister thinks that a family with two children and an income of £50,000 a year is a rich family, she needs to think again. They are not; they are struggling. Even paying nursery fees is difficult. I ask the Government to look at this, please—look at increasing the threshold, changing the taper or doing something to help the hard-working middle class, which is losing its benefits all the time. I declare an interest here, because this affects two of my three children. My third child does not have any children, so this affects both of those who do.

My daughter was a convinced Conservative long before I was. At nine years old, she stood as the Conservative candidate in her school election in 1997. Note that it was 1997, and she was a Conservative candidate. She actually came second and was beaten by the Green—you can tell it was a private school. She said to me on the weekend, “Dad, what are they actually offering families like ours at the end of the Statement?” The Minister will have to go back to the Treasury team meetings—I know it is not within her gift to change these things—to ram home that we need changes in these areas for the hard-working, middle-income, middle class.

My final point might please the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, although he is not in his place. We somehow need to find a way to tax the billionaires who jet in from Monte Carlo and keep their savings in the British Virgin Islands and all over the place. We seem to put no effort into taxing them. This is not just for Britain—it needs an international move—but there is no sign of anything happening. Can we please get together? If people thought that the Government were trying to get some money out of these tax dodgers, they might feel warm towards them. At the moment, the feeling—and this applies equally to the Labour Party—is that they are not bothered. Could the Minister please remember that you have to win an election, as well as have a nice and very sound economic statement? We need to win an election, please.