Finance Bill

Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth 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 Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my good friend the noble Lord, Lord German. I thank my noble friend the Minister for setting out the scenario at the start of this debate. As others have done, I commend my right honourable friend the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak. He has shown great ingenuity and nimbleness. I urge him to continue to demonstrate the remarkable and appropriate lack of dogma. These are extraordinary times and they demand extraordinary solutions. I also urge my right honourable friend to consider the needs of the young, particularly those who will have lost out on crucial education and apprentices whose jobs may well have been prejudiced, and I urge him to look at job creation and job retention schemes to help these people.

I turn to some of the technical aspects of the Bill which have an impact on the current scenario. As others including the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, and my noble friend Lady Noakes have urged, the return of Crown preference, even in a diluted form, is unwelcome, particularly in the present scenario. It will have the effect of prejudicing businesses as creditors at a very difficult time, effectively enabling those businesses to be queue-jumped, as it were, by the Crown. This is not appropriate.

I welcome other aspects of the Bill, as others have, such as the digital services tax, long-heralded and now being delivered from April 2020. This is the right move. Can my noble friend outline what progress we have had internationally, as I know that the success of this measure depends on international action? I also welcome the plastic packaging tax due to be introduced in April 2022, after consultation on some more detailed aspects on plastic of which less than 30% is recycled. I think that is appropriate; it helps us, it helps our position as a leader in this field and it helps in the climate change scenario.

I also welcome what the Bill does in relation to Windrush compensation payments, effectively exempting them from income and capital gains tax. This is absolutely appropriate. Can my noble friend outline what success we have had in speedier payment of the compensation, which obviously remains a key consideration and key problem?

The action of the Chancellor in particular in the Government is very much to be welcomed and encouraged. I certainly support this Finance Bill.