Finance Bill

Lord Holmes of Richmond 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 Holmes of Richmond (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Noakes, and I agree with all her comments. I also thank my noble friend the Minister for the clear way in which he introduced the Bills. I ask him to join me in paying tribute to all our front-line workers, many of them in the financial sector, who have done so much for so many over this crisis period. Does he agree with me that we owe them all an enduring debt of gratitude?

Basic economics will always remain the same: we can either increase income or take out costs. I believe we have some significant opportunities to do both these things without having economically illiterate taxation or cutting support to people who often need it the most. I agree with many of the comments of my noble friend Lord Blencathra, the noble Lord, Lord Empey, and particularly my noble friend Lord Lamont, who as an excellent Chancellor had his term cut well before it should have been.

I will ask my noble friend the Minister about three areas: payments, central bank digital currencies—CBDCs—and sovereign wealth funds. On payments, has he had a chance to look at the excellent paper from the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures on the need to transform cross-border payments? As in domestic settings, we pay too much and it takes too long. Does he agree that the Government, as one of the biggest payers, could save multiple billions if we had a true transformation of our payments infrastructure? For example, can he say how much the DWP pays in fees and to intermediaries in making the billions of payments it makes year on year?

Does my noble friend the Minister agree that the current consultation undertaken by the Bank of England in relation to CBDCs is an excellent piece of work and could have truly transformational benefits for the UK?

Similarly, will my noble friend comment on the work undertaken to look at the potential for a sovereign wealth fund in the UK? We have needed one for decades; I believe we need it now more than ever. Is he satisfied with the level of fintech involvement in all the current government programmes? Could the Government do more to introduce more small and medium-sized enterprises into assisting businesses and individuals who need it most? Does he agree that if we truly deploy all the elements of the fourth industrial revolution—robotics, AI, distributed ledger technology and quantum—we could truly transform the payments infrastructure, take cost out and get income in? That would benefit state and citizen alike.