Autumn Statement 2023

Lord Lee of Trafford Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lee of Trafford (LD)]

My Lords, I want to focus my remarks this evening on the 39% stake that the Government still have in the NatWest bank. In the Autumn Statement, the Chancellor indicated that the Government were considering disposing of their holding over a period, suggesting also that they might go down the “Tell Sid” route of early privatisations.

I want to suggest something very radical. I think it is accepted that, in this country, there is near zero financial education in our state schools. I suggest that the Government gift, say, £5,000 worth of the NatWest shares that they own to the 4,400 state secondary schools, to be held for the long term. That would cost the Government only something like £22 million. That £5,000 worth of shares would annually produce a dividend income of about £350. My suggestion is that the pupils themselves could decide, by voting, how that £350 is spent. Maybe it could be on an item for the school or to subsidise a school trip, something along those lines, or maybe even go to a local charity, but the pupils would decide. Similarly, they could participate digitally in the NatWest AGM.

In my judgment, this suggestion would raise awareness of how banks and the stock market operate. I am very pleased to say that, when I put this idea to the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, who drove the programme of introducing computers into secondary schools when he was IT Minister, he was very supportive. I was also very pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Howell, talk about wider share ownership a little earlier.

The Government also could and should provide a little money to enable approved speakers to go into schools to talk about financial education. Parallel to all this, I hope we can encourage PLCs, particularly those in the regions, to gift shares in their companies to the state secondary schools in their area, from which they draw recruitment or will in years to come. I put this idea yesterday to a public company chief executive and FD of a company that I am invested in; they immediately said that, yes, they would sign up and thought it was an excellent idea.

I realise that the Minister will not be able to give a reaction immediately, and I would not expect her to, but I hope that she will take this idea to the Treasury with her and that they will give it serious consideration. I hope that the Labour Front Bench will also perhaps consider this, because the opportunity may well come to them in a few months’ time.

Moving on, I was hoping that the Autumn Statement would reverse two early mistakes that I believe were made by this Government. First is the mistake that George Osborne made when he disallowed mortgage interest for landlords on their borrowings, which has had a massively negative effect on the private rented market. As we know, landlords are leaving the market and selling up, and I was hoping that would be reversed. Secondly, there is the decision that I believe the present Prime Minister made when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer to disallow overseas visitors from reclaiming VAT. There has been a massive campaign, as the Minister and the House will know, by our hoteliers and virtually all our leading retailers and restaurateurs to try and reverse the present situation and give us back a level playing field.

Finally, if the Government and the Treasury are looking to save money, I suggest that they look at the 60,000 civilians employed by the Ministry of Defence. It is an extraordinarily high figure—we have only about 70,000 in our Army—and has hardly changed over the last five years. In fact, if anything, it has slightly increased, despite the fact that our forces have been reduced. Almost every large employer in the country will have reduced their headcount over the last few years. We have had developments in automation, video conferencing and similar, yet the civilians employed by the MoD stay stubbornly at this figure of 60,000. I suggest that the Government and the Treasury look at this and see if they cannot reduce that headcount and move the money saved from the blunt end, as it were, to the sharper end of our Armed Forces and equipment for our Armed Forces.