Economy: The Growth Plan 2022

Lord Dobbs Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, I add my own welcome to my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. She has vast experience and formidable tenacity. As a board director, she helped make Tesco hugely popular. We live in hope.

What to say at this time of night? I have recently been messed around with a condition called oscillopsia. It means that things appear to move to and fro; they keep shifting in front of my eyes. The other day I saw that sterling had crashed. I blinked, and, when I opened my eyes, I found that sterling had recovered. That made me rather happy. Then I saw that the top rate of income tax had been reduced from 45%, but, after I had blinked—well, it had not. That made me less happy. And I watched Angela Rayner give what she said was Labour’s response: everything would be reversed. Then I blinked, and Keir Starmer said no, it would not. I do not know whether that made me happy or unhappy, but, if I am honest, it did not come as much of a surprise.

There is a lesson there: violent disunity in a party usually leads to the dustbin of history. It might get pretty crowded in the near future.

There is so much I support in the Chancellor’s package, particularly the principle of letting people keep more of their money. Frankly, I would not even have begrudged Mick Lynch the extra couple of grand that he would have kept if the top tax rate were reduced. I read that his package is around £120,000. Is that outrageous? No, 120 grand is well worth it for being on the side of working people—except that he is not on the side of working people. He is doing everything he can to stop people working, alongside any number of Labour MPs. I am sure that he is a lovely man, but he has about as much in common with most workers as I have with cross-stitch embroidery.

It is not as easy as that though, is it? We are in a beggar’s muddle. The whole of Europe is in chaos. We cannot simply go on—

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

Does the noble Lord understand that Mick Lynch was elected by a free vote of the members of the union, who knew exactly what they were getting? This Government say that they are in favour of ballots—well, then they should respect the ballot of the RMT members.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that. I suggest that he goes and stands not on the picket line but outside stations when normal people are trying to get to work to do their job. I shall not take any more interventions on that front.

If we as a Government want people to understand and accept what we are about, we have to stop using the language of supply-side this and demand-side that and instead try to get into their homes, sit by their firesides and understand the reality of their lives—and accept that they are scared. There is a lot that is scary right now. It is about the economy, stupid, is it not? No, it is not really—it is about people. The people are the economy; they are the ones who provide the creativity, products, services and extraordinary inputs that go to make those game-changing outcomes. All our language and policies should have one ultimate objective—to enable them to dream their dreams once more. If we cannot, and if taxes come down but mortgages, rents, debts and prices everywhere go up, we will open our eyes and find that Mick Lynch and his men of many miseries will be running the show—and then we will see what economic chaos is truly about. I really wish my noble friend well.