Budget Statement

Lord Dykes Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dykes]

My Lords, like others I am sure, on these occasions one puts one’s name down for a debate and then perhaps regrets it, thinking it probably will be a mistake or gloomy. I was expecting a gloomy debate because of the background to the Budget—although not the individual Budget measures announced yesterday, many of which are very good. I hope that I will not annoy our colleagues in the larger coalition if I say that, self-evidently, the two best single measures are the abolition of taxation under £10,000 for the lowest income tax payers and non income tax payers if they have a really low level of income, and Vince Cable’s suggestion for an expansion of the housebuilding sector being agreed at just a little above the original figures that were promulgated.

I speak as someone who, in the early 1960s, studied economics at the greatest single Keynesian school in the whole world in those days—the University of Cambridge—just by chance and good luck. I was heartened today because we have had two outstanding Keynesian speeches. Unfortunately, they came from the other Benches and I wish that it had been from these Benches. We heard the first from the noble Lord, Lord Kestenbaum, who is no longer in his place, and then the second more recently from the noble Lord, Lord Haskel. Both gave an alternative message about what now needs to be done in this country on long-term capital and investment accounts and on the long-term realism that this economy needs, and I agree with them.

On the individual measures, it is very difficult to quarrel with the Chancellor. One newspaper writer rather unkindly said that the unique thing about George Osborne was that he was even more unpopular than the austerity measures that he keeps promulgating, which was an interesting description. There will be a reduction in national insurance and the abolition of national insurance at the relevant level. There is the modest start of the housebuilding programme for the future and the reduction in corporation tax. There are many other examples, too, which are all very good and one commends each one individually.

However, the total picture is a huge problem for this Chancellor because, as we all know, this country is locked into the utterances of the past. One of the mistakes of the coalition Government was the spokesmen from the bigger of the two parties repeatedly recalling the mess left by Labour. I suppose each incoming Government always say that about a previous one. But the previous Labour Government were mostly dealing with the international worldwide financial crisis of 2007-08 and its aftermath. Gordon Brown had to handle it very speedily. The amount of taxpayers’ money was colossal in doing that task, which reduced the funds so much so that the outgoing Chief Secretary said that there was no more money left, which was a realistic description.

There was also the excessive harping on and the hysteria in this country about the eurozone’s problems, saying that they are intractable and insolvable. Indeed, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, will not mind my saying that it was not the Germans or the whole Council of Ministers who insisted on the capital levy for the Cypriots. That was their own part of the transactions when the council said that Cyprus had to respond with an enormous amount of money to reflect the vast amount of money that they were getting in the bailout. Germany did not impose a particular suggestion on Cyprus. The Cypriots decided that themselves. As we know, they have now changed their mind and are doing other things. We are waiting to see the details of that as a result of the non-vote in Parliament.

[Lord Marlesford]

If I may very rapidly read from the Minister’s statement, it was the eurozone finance Ministers who announced the package which included that. The eurozone finance Ministers, therefore, approved that part of the package.

[Lord Dykes]

Yes, of course, because the Cypriot Government then submitted those suggestions to them, which were accepted. That was the sovereign decision of the sovereign country of Cyprus, which made its own suggestions in response to the request from the Council of Ministers and the German Government, and quite rightly.

The difficulty now is what we do from now on and where we go. The reality still confronts us in this economy that, to quote another source from many years ago, one has to enlarge long-term public spending on public assets with a high multiplier effect. Government spokesmen in recent years have kept on saying that public sector is bad and wicked, and private sector is good, and that we should rely on the private sector to respond to the inaction of the Government, but that never works. We all know that, and the evidence is there. Huge global corporations will make their decisions irrespective of what national Governments do. Facebook would not be particularly responsive to particular individual national Governments in the world, for obvious reasons, and neither would Microsoft, although the national subsidiaries in different countries respond to some national government decisions, as we know. Equally, sometimes very high-tech innovative companies in different countries themselves make their own decisions and have particularly good fortune such as very strong bank support and other access to capital, which enables them to be free-floating and not respond to government. However, in the vast majority of businesses, whatever their size, and in particular small companies, the reality is that you wait until the Government are expanding the economy. That is not a criticism of the way companies run businesses; if I was running one now as I used to in the old days I would do the same thing.

The noble Lord, Lord Kestenbaum, who is not in his place now, earlier mentioned economies where public sector and private sector activity is mixed up together in a constructive whole. Bavaria, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, is a very good example of that, where a centre-right moderate Government, over many years, never said no to public spending as long as it was on long-term investment assets. It was nothing to do with short-term current account. The British Treasury is still far too short-term obsessed. Therefore, until we change, we will be stuck in that ominous way that was so ably described by the very able business editor of the Evening Standard yesterday, when he referred again to the Chancellor. He wrote that a wiser man, earlier on,

“would have been less aggressive, less dogmatic about the rightness of his policies, so that he would have had room to manoeuvre when they seemed not to be working. But Osborne has closed down all those options so today’s Budget is the work of a man who is in a hole but continues to pretend that the only way forward is to keep digging. The public finances remain in a dire state, and even a bit of sleight of hand with the numbers can’t conceal the fact that we have made absolutely no progress over the last 12 months”.

The terror of the slightest increase in our interest rates in this country will stop further action until there is a big change of heart.