Class 4 National Insurance Contributions

Lord McKenzie of Luton Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The settlement for the current year has been made and the additional funding that was announced in the Budget will stand, so all the commitments that have been made in the Budget will remain.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)]

My Lords, there is an air of inevitability about this decision today. We have seen it built on the folly of those manifesto commitments referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Higgins. There is another issue that has run through lots of Budgets, which is the internal process of government and the checks and balances that are applied to Budgets, which are much weaker than one would see in most legislation. Anyone producing a Bill in government has to go round every department getting input into it, and there is challenge. That process irons out some of the problems that we have seen emerge not only in this Budget but, to be fair, in previous Budgets and announcements as well. On the specific commitment today about no changes to class 4 contributions, does that apply to the basis of calculation of thresholds as well as the rates?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

That is a good question. The manifesto commitment was actually about the rates. So far as the thresholds are concerned, our policy has been to uprate them each year in line with CPI, I think. We have no plans to change that.