Autumn Statement 2023

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I will start where the Chancellor started, with his opening remarks. If I have to criticise those remarks, it is because he was far too modest. We have a growing economy. We are doing a lot better than he gave us credit for. The recent IMF figures show that average real GDP growth from 2010 to 2023—to take a period at random—was 1.53%. That is not great, you might say, but look at the lower figures for Germany, at 1.45%; France, at 1.18%; Spain, at 1%; and the Euro average, at 1.25%. Tick, I say.

Thankfully, my noble friend covered this in her opening remarks. She is a welcome addition to the Treasury team, and I give her a warm welcome. Congratulations as well to my noble friend Lord Harrington on producing his inward investment report, which was so well received.

Some would say “Well done the Tory team” on the growth to date, but I also congratulate the Chancellor on his first and opening pledge—not widely reported—to offer up to £7 million to the Holocaust Educational Trust and related organisations. For full disclosure, I am a donor to the HET. I believe it is so important to educate on and fight anti-Semitism, and I was proud to do so in Parliament Square this weekend.

This Budget struck me as perfect for the time: balanced and hopeful, with clear benefits for most as the economy recovers, and without any irresponsible giveaways. It promotes considered policies that make sense. For example, there were no changes to IHT, or even its abolition, as widely sought by some. Labour, on the other hand, seems to be flip-flopping on its previous announcements, which were to abolish business property relief for IHT. I do not know where they stand on it but, if they kept their word to abolish that, it would dramatically knock the AIM market which relies on it and almost every single private family company would be at risk of collapse when a shareholder passed away. I declare my interests, as in the register, but, even though it would probably help my business if business property relief were withdrawn, as everybody would have to sell, it would be a disaster for the country. Can my noble friend the Minister write and tell me how much inheritance tax is currently sheltered by business property relief, so that we can have a proper debate about it?

I welcome the announcements on research and development. However, as the chairman of the Finance Bill Sub-committee of the Economic Affairs Committee, I can confirm that we are producing a report on R& D tax credits in the near future, so I will not speak further on the detail of that today.

I am pleased to see a commitment to OECD Pillar 2. I know it is not popular with every member of my party, but the tax treatment of multinationals, in my opinion, needs urgent attention. If we do not get that right, I still want to see a digital sales tax, which I have consistently advocated.

I want to focus my remarks on just over three lines in the Green Book, in section 5.76. They were not even mentioned in the Chancellor’s speech and are on EIS and VCT. My noble friend will recall that, in the Conservative Party’s 2019 manifesto, a pledge on page 34 assures us that EIS and SEIS will continue—and there you go, it pops up in the Autumn Statement as a pledge to legislate to extend the sunset clause. I have to ask why we need to legislate. HM Treasury knows that this can easily be resolved by Treasury regulation. Perhaps I can help my noble friend by explaining the problem.

While we regard EIS as a tax relief or tax break, the EU regards it as state aid. As such, it is governed by the Windsor Framework, in as far as it includes companies which trade in goods—not services, just goods. Although at first sight this should apply only to those companies physically based in Northern Ireland, because Northern Ireland is still in the single market, I am afraid that the EU regards the regulations as applying to all of the UK, as it is possible for a company in, say England, to have a subsidiary company in Northern Ireland that might benefit from what it regards as state aid and we regard as tax breaks. To the extent that there is trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, the EU is concerned that this could give an unfair advantage to the Northern Irish company.

The Windsor Framework helps us by trying to offer a pragmatic route out of this. But it does not clarify whether we can say, with certainty, that we can abolish the sunset clause, or indeed make other changes that I would like to see in respect of EIS rules, which are currently too restrictive, without any EU permission. In the past, when we were a member of the EU, that permission would be granted by the EU if we could show—indeed, we had to prove—that there was an equity gap which meant that EIS was needed as state aid. It will be impossible to provide proof that there is an equity gap in Northern Ireland, mainly because the equity gap figures for Northern Ireland are simply not available. In theory, we could remove all companies engaged in goods from EIS—but what a disaster that would be.

So I think we are not looking at getting rid of the sunset clause that easily at all; at best, we might put it back a further 10 years. However, the financial services industry and the savings industry really need an urgent answer from the Treasury, if not today from the Dispatch Box then very soon afterwards, as to whether this proposal, which is in the Autumn Statement, has been squared with the EU. Do the Government have the permission of the EU to abolish the sunset clause, as is claimed? How depressing it would be to discover that we are still dependent on EU approvals for an otherwise excellent Autumn Statement.