Coronavirus Bill

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, the proposals that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has put forward commend themselves to the House. Essentially, he proposes that the Danish system be introduced here. The Resolution Foundation published a paper this morning that applies considerable expertise and global knowledge to this issue and proposes something similar.

I slightly regretted that the noble Lord made party-political points towards the end, because I do not believe that there is any party-political difference on this at all. We are all looking to the Government—indeed, many Conservatives take the same view. I hope that we can address all these things as a House together and not make party points on them.

However, my concern about this amendment is exactly the same as on the previous one. What we are talking about here is one of the most important decisions that the Government will take in dealing with this crisis. The noble Viscount was completely right about the social impact; 5 million gig workers in the economy, all of whom are self-employed but have been dependent on income from services that have been reasonably predictable in their provision, face their livelihoods being decimated at the moment. Unless provisions of this kind are put in place, they will face serious hardship. Unless a Statement is made today by the Chancellor, Parliament will not have the slightest impact on what is proposed, because we will have no opportunity to question Ministers about it—neither the Chancellor in the other place or Ministers in this place—and we will not get to give any views on this issue again until, I understand, 21 April.

That is not satisfactory. These issues are costing billions of pounds to the taxpayer and will have a huge social impact, but Parliament will be entirely irrelevant to the discussion and the announcement of those proposals. I therefore hope that the noble Earl can give us some indication of how Parliament will be involved in both the announcement and the assessment of the package in respect of the self-employed when it is made. It is not satisfactory that we will play no part in this for another month.

[Lord O’Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, asked for a cross-party view so I will make a brief intervention. The economic and moral case for doing something for this group of people is unarguable. No one in this House or in the other place disagrees with that. Their needs are just as great as of those who have the good fortune to have employed jobs, and it is on all of us to make sure that we have a solution.

If it was possible to do what is in the amendment, it could have been done already. There are technical and potentially moral hazard issues why this specific amendment might not be right. I do not stand in judgment; I just know that there are technical issues, and I know that there is a great deal of sympathy for this kind of solution. However, I know that the Treasury has been looking at this and other solutions and that it has its concerns. However, the most important thing is not to agree today on the specific line-by-line items of a package. Exactly as noble Lords have said, this is about getting a sense from my noble friend about when this package of equal weight and power will happen.

There are economic and moral reasons for doing this but health reasons too. If you are young, financially insecure or both of those things, you are highly likely to be at the very wrong end of the economic consequences, but you are also likely to look at it and think, “I might not get this disease and I’m almost certainly not going to die of it, so I’ll take my chances. I need to pay the rent”—or whatever it is. We simply cannot all be in this together if we have created a system which creates perverse incentives for certain groups. My noble friend knows that I am saying this with support for him and for the Government, but it is incumbent on us all to solve this so that we can act in unison to make sure that we deal with this health crisis together.

[Lord Blunkett]

I add my support by saying that those words from the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, were very wise. On the people that we have addressed so far and who have been talked about publicly, I reinforce that it is quite right that we should seek, in whatever way we can, to provide the support that has just been described. However, there is a group that falls between those who have already been assisted in support to companies and the purely self-employed: the worker working for themselves in our economy.

There is a group of entrepreneurs, many of them with start-ups and some with continuing businesses, who cannot access what is on offer to those in slightly different circumstances because of this. If they are using serviced premises—I will give an example in this House in a second—and therefore do not pay business rates, they are not entitled to the help that is already been granted on business rates or the grants that have been put in place, all of which are extremely welcome. In addition to what we describe as the self-employed there is therefore a group of people with very small microbusinesses.

The hairdresser’s in the Palace of Westminster—I make no declaration other than that I use it—is not unique but is a good example of someone running a small business which employs people but which cannot draw down on the help currently available for the reasons I have just described. It does not pay business rates in this building, and those with serviced premises that they rent do not pay them either. I hope that the noble Earl will be able to take back to his colleagues that there is this little additional gap that we should not have to come back to and say, “We forgot about those.” I am sure that is not the case but I just want to reinforce it.