Budget Statement

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Friday 12th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, there are eight free ports in the Budget and nine regions of England, so we now know the effectiveness of the West Midlands Mayor, Andy Street. The report on free ports from UK in a Changing Europe concluded that the main impact was

“likely to be to relocate rather than create economic activity and jobs.”

So with no free port in the West Midlands, jobs will leave the West Midlands—thanks, Andy.

We are 10 days from the Budget and still unaware of the technical details and methodology of spending the £4.8 billion levelling-up fund on priority towns. The Financial Times’ analysis states that these priority areas for levelling up

“are not simply the most deprived.”

There is a deprivation rank system within government, which I used in the past when Regeneration Minister at ODPM. The Financial Times charts show no connection or correlation with this ranking. It is crystal clear that we are seeing a failure in the accepted standards of conduct of public administration. The Civil Service is being bullied by dodgy Ministers operating pork-barrel politics. The reasoning is vague, the bias is blatant and the retrofitting to justify rankings is nothing short of corrupt.

As someone who played a small role in indexing tax thresholds in 1977, I support the plan to freeze them. It can and should be tweaked for the very low paid—those who are not paying tax at the moment—in a way that does not cause a ripple to the higher rates. That can be done.

The key missing policy is that national insurance should be paid by all ages on income, however the income is created. I was on a salary until I was 72 years old, so I did not pay national insurance for seven years, yet I was still using services and I potentially required services that I was not using but which needed to be there for others. This would help to pay for social care reform.