Budget Statement

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Friday 12th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, climate change is the biggest threat to people’s security, so I welcome the Budget’s modest initiatives on this and wish them well. However, like the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, I think that much more is needed. I wish only that the Government would address the major driver behind climate change insecurity, which is of course the continuing world population growth. It is the elephant in the room—I know that it is sensitive, but it cannot continue to be dodged, as it is likely to be at the coming COP 26, where it is not seriously on the agenda.

There are rumours that His Holiness the Pope will visit the Glasgow summit and speak. If that is the case, I hope, and suggest to the Government, that discreet approaches should be made to His Holiness and that he should be encouraged to see how the circle can be squared between some of the policies of the Church and what needs to be done to save the Lord’s planet.

Secondly, I turn to the Budget and will say something about health and care. Can we have some new thinking on this, especially the costs that arise from issues such as obesity? This was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord McColl. It is such a major contributor to the deaths that we had and the costs that, annually and in future, the NHS has to meet—due not just to things such as diabetes but also to other health problems.

Why have the Government failed to extend the sugar tax, which has proven so effective? Why are the Government still freezing taxes on alcohol, when that is a silent contributor to obesity? We need an approach from the Treasury that starts to take health costs into account in all its approaches; it needs to give more incentives and disincentives to those who damage people’s health.