European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Forsyth of Drumlean

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 6th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, I do not wish to detain the House. I support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. I think she has spotted a loophole in the Bill. I am very surprised at my noble friend Lord Hailsham asking for responses from the Government. This is a private Bill, a piece of private legislation. Like a lot of private Bills, it is—

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am surprised that the noble Lord has expressed surprise. Private Members’ Bills go through this House frequently, and not only are the government Front Bench present but they actually respond, normally, to every amendment. I am sure he would agree that, while he disagrees with it, this is one of the most important pieces of legislation that this House has considered in the last year. For the Government to refuse to answer any questions or make any response is an abuse of this House.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I do not want to take us back into the territory that we were in earlier this week, so the noble Lord will forgive me if I do not respond on the abuse of this House, given that the Bill itself has arisen from an abuse of the procedures in the other place.

I am genuinely concerned that we should pass a Bill whose implications people do not realise. I have had no contact with the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and until I read the Bill and her amendment this morning, I had not realised that there was a real problem here. I was simply making the point that private Members’ legislation, without the benefit of the drafting and the backup of the government machine, is often defective. One of the things this House does is to point that out and to make those Bills sensible and possible to be carried forward.

I understand—and here perhaps I am agreeing with the noble Lord in his intervention—that where the Government have a particular interest in the Bill, it would be perfectly appropriate for Ministers to respond, but it is certainly not right to ask Ministers to comment on the drafting and nature of a Bill over which they have no responsibility.

Business of the House

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Forsyth of Drumlean

Thursday 4th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am happy to give way to my noble friend if he wishes to finish his point, but I think he made it pretty clearly. The noble Baroness suggests that this has all got to be done today. Why? We could sit tomorrow or we could continue on Monday. There is no reason at all why it should all be done today.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I really want to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

No, I am making an intervention. It is not for me to give way to the noble Lord, much though I am sure we will be happy to hear from him in due course. The point I want to make to the noble Lord is that this House has dealt with emergency legislation in one day. I refer him to the Human Reproductive Cloning Bill, which I took through this House on 26 November 2001, with a Second Reading and Committee in one day. It was to stop a scientist from another country who was coming to the UK to carry out human cloning, and legislation was needed urgently. We took it in one day. This legislation is needed urgently because we do not have a functioning Executive, we have the most critical situation this country has faced in decades and the Commons has had to do what it did. That is why it is urgent. Surely the noble Lord can see that.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am surprised that the noble Countess did not intervene, given the length of that intervention from the noble Lord. He will recall that the Bill that he referred to was agreed by the usual channels, which is the normal way in which we proceed. I realise that because I was in the House of Commons I may have got used to its procedures, but I have been used to Bills being presented with the name of the sponsor. There is no sponsor on this Bill. The noble Baroness said that it was being presented for its First Reading, but the Bill appears to be an orphan. Who is the sponsor for this Bill?

The Long-term Sustainability of the NHS and Adult Social Care

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Forsyth of Drumlean

Thursday 26th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I applaud the noble Lord, Lord Patel, and his committee for this excellent report. It is a huge wake-up call to all concerned about the state of the NHS and social care, which has been given added weight by this morning’s call by the noble Lords, Lord Darzi and Lord Prior, for substantial and long-term increases in funding.

The drivers of change—from demographic factors and changing disease patterns, to technological and medical advances and increasing healthcare costs—are intensifying at a relentless pace. The system, which was originally designed to treat short-term episodes of ill health, is now caring for a patient population with more long-term conditions, more co-morbidities and increasingly complex needs. With the share of the population aged 85 years and above set to increase from 2.4% now to 7.1% in 2066, this represents a formidable challenge for the NHS and social care. That is what makes funding so critical.

On average, spend on the NHS has risen by 3.7% in real terms since 1949-50. Yet at a time when pressures have never been so great, the Government and their coalition predecessor chose to cut adult social care and their spending on the NHS down to a miserable 0.2% per year average in real terms for the whole of the current decade. No wonder the NHS is reeling: targets have been abandoned; waiting times are growing; crude rationing is on the increase; doctors, nurses and other staff are demoralised; and there is huge unmet need in social care.

The Government’s response, to which the noble Lord, Lord Patel, referred, has been what I shall describe as underwhelming. What is remarkable is how many months it took the department to come up with its response. However, it has emerged that the Secretary of State is canvassing support for a long-term funding settlement, potentially embracing a ring-fenced hypothecated tax. This is something the Select Committee gave attention to. I particularly look forward to the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Layard, on this because he has done a lot of work in this area. I can see the attraction. It would enable the public to see a direct link between taxes paid and benefits received in the shape of the NHS.

National insurance is often favoured as the most straightforward way of doing that. English health expenditure in 2015-16, at £119 billion, is remarkably close to NI contributions for the same year, at £114 billion. However, to get to a baseline health and social care figure for England you would have to add another £15 billion for social care. You would then need to add in more to get the kind of settlement that the noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Prior, are arguing for, and that would cover only England because the devolved nations, in one way or another, would also have to be factored in. A rise of 1% in national insurance would raise about £5 billion, so to get a reasonable baseline figure national insurance would have to rise considerably. It would also be a huge figure for any Chancellor to effectively lose control of in all the schemes that are being proposed. I am not an expert on national insurance—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

Could the noble Lord indicate whether, when he talks about revenue from a rise in national insurance, he is talking about contributions from employees, or from employees and employers?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

It came from a paper from the Office for Budgetary Responsibility. I believe that it is to be a general rise of around 1% across the board, but I will check that out and place a copy of any letter that I send to the noble Lord in the Library.

The point is this: clearly considerations would need to be given if there were to be a rise in national insurance, such as to its impact on employees and employers. Would it be a tax on jobs? Would it be an increase in taxes on working people, when the main beneficiaries of the NHS are older people who do not pay national insurance? Although national insurance contributions are mostly progressive, they become much less so when you hit the upper earnings limit, where employee contributions decrease from 12% to 2% on incomes over £805 per week. I know some noble Lords believe passionately that this is the way forward, and it is an idea worth exploring, but we have to be realistic about some of the drawbacks.