Tax Credits (Income Thresholds and Determination of Rates) (Amendment) Regulations 2015

Lord Snape Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher]

I will attempt to answer that question.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

Before she does, may I just ask the noble Baroness a question arising from her amendment? Does she agree that if the Government had, as they should have done, tabled these proposals as part of the Finance Bill, they would have been amendable in the other place and we would not be having this discussion today? Does she agree that the reason the Government are indulging in this sharp practice is that they know full well that, for any reasonable person in either House, these proposals are unacceptable and they would have been defeated in the other place because quite a few Conservative Members of Parliament would have voted against them?

[Baroness Meacher]

I was talking to Jacob Rees-Mogg MP the other day and he said to me that the trouble is that the House of Commons deals with Statutory Instruments extremely badly. Our difficulty is that, that being the case, they depend on this House to do this very detailed work, on which your Lordships do an extremely good job. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, the point is that the cross-party debate on Thursday is not a legislative debate. It would have been right for these matters to have been incorporated in full in a piece of legislation, which would then have been open to proper debate and amendment in the normal way.

To go back to my point, if we approve the Regulations today we are actually undermining the democratic process. If, however, the elected House supports the Government, as I said before, I know that this House will abide by our conventions and vote these Regulations through whatever our personal views of them. I do not personally approve of them, but I would be in the Lobby with the Government. The duty of your Lordships’ House, as we know, is to enable Governments to think again if, in our professional judgment, they are making a grave mistake, and to allow the elected House to hold the Government to account. Noble Lords can imagine that I do not take this action lightly. I am acutely conscious of the threats made by the Government to destroy this House, one way or another, if we proceed. I do not enjoy that kind of pressure.

I will come back to the constitutional issue, but at this point I want to thank the IFS, the Children’s Society and others for their valuable help. Why are these Regulations so serious? The Leader of the House has already made the point that tax credits will be withdrawn from an income of £74 a week, £3 above the jobseeker’s allowance level, whereas in the past the withdrawal has occurred from a weekly income of £123 a week, which is very different. Also, of course, the taper rate—the percentage of every pound earned that will be withdrawn from tax credits— is going up from 41% to 48%. Very low-income working families—the lowest-income families, as I understand it—stand to lose more than £20 a week. For one of us, this can mean a meal in a restaurant. For a poor working family it can mean a pair of shoes for a child who comes home from school crying because their toes are hurting in shoes that are too small, or money to feed the meter to keep the family warm.

The Government plan a four-year freeze on the private rent level covered by housing benefit, so as rents soar—and we know that, day by day, they soar—working families will have to pay more of their rent from a shrinking income. Damian Hinds, Treasury Minister, told me in person that he hopes that families will work more hours to compensate for the cuts they are facing, but many people cannot work more hours. A lady who has cancer and who is working all the hours she can contacted me—the treatment and her exhaustion mean that she cannot do more. The parent of a disabled child, who probably actually needs to be at home all the time, is working as many hours as possible but can earn very little. Indeed, our angelic army of carers of elderly and disabled relatives across our land will be penalised. Some of them will lose more than £40 a week. People with long-term conditions or in constant pain will be devastated by the waves of cuts, of which these regulations are just one. Self-employed people who voted Conservative in May, hoping for protection, but who may earn little or nothing for weeks at a time, will be among the biggest losers. The StepChange Debt Charity says that its clients on average will lose £139 a week, a staggering sum.

All those people have been supported by what I regard as the one-nation Tories of the past. The Prime Minister said in his speech to the Conservative conference:

“The British people … want a government that supports the vulnerable”,

and, he said,

“we will deliver”.

This amendment provides an opportunity for the Prime Minister to honour that pledge. He went on to say that the Conservatives are the, “party of working people”. No wonder dozens of Conservative Back-Benchers—perhaps most of them, in fact—want the Government to think again. They do not want the Prime Minister to have misled the people of Britain. It is this House’s duty to provide that time for a rethink by this Government.

I turn to the idea that the amendment is unconstitutional—and I shall keep this brief. The Cunningham joint committee, as has already been mentioned, made very clear the responsibilities of this House and that we should have unfettered freedom to vote on any subordinate legislation submitted for its consideration. The Motion was carried without a vote and is recorded in the Companion. In 1999, the former Conservative Leader of your Lordships’ House referred to a convention that the Opposition should not vote against the Government’s secondary legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, added:

“I declare this convention dead”.

Finally, I quote our highly esteemed Clerk of the Parliaments, who wrote a clarifying guidance note for the Cross-Benchers at my request. He said: “Procedurally, the Meacher-put Motion is entirely in order under the rules of the House. It is not a fatal Motion because it does not require a new statutory instrument to be laid and taken through both Houses. However, it does delay the approval of the statutory instrument, unlike an amendment which simply expresses regret while allowing the statutory instrument to be approved”.

I hope that the noble Lord, the Chief Whip, will forgive me for quoting him here. He urged me to exchange my amendment for a regret Motion. I said, “Oh, come on—that will have no effect at all”. He said, “Well, yes”. My apologies to the Chief Whip.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Snape]

Does the noble and learned Lord think that a statutory instrument that cannot be amended is a suitable vehicle for passing legislation that will adversely affect hundreds of thousands of people?

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

That is the arrangement that was proposed in the Tax Credits Act, which was passed by the Labour Government in 2002. It was thought to be the right way to do this particular thing, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Government have followed that. It is not a necessary consequence that the Commons or the Government should use a different procedure in order to secure the financial privilege of the House of Commons. The procedure was laid down in the Tax Credits Act, which is the main statute on this matter. For the Government to do anything other than use that course would be offensive to the way in which the system was set up.

The Leader of the House mentioned the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s attitude to considering more detailed material when it becomes available. That is a considerable consolation to me in light of what the right reverend Prelate said. I believe the right reverend Prelate’s approach to be the safest way to secure what a number of your Lordships have asked for.