Economic Downturn

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My noble friend is right that the UK remains a great place to start a business and we will always want to make sure that our tax regime is incentivising businesses to start here. I am sure that he would agree that measures such as the super-deduction are a great initiative to help support that.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Minister tell the House what she has discerned, having watched the interviews with the candidates to be Prime Minister, about their long-term thinking? None of them has talked about climate change. Is it not time, particularly on a day like this, that we started thinking about the need to travel less, to use less water in due course and to eat less? There is a whole range of areas where we need to do less, not more. When will we start that kind of debate and thinking?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I was doing some other things this weekend, such as celebrating my daughter’s first birthday, and I will not comment on the leadership race. The noble Lord raised the need to have greater hybrid working, for example, and to look for other opportunities for efficiency in our economy and I absolutely agree with him on that.