Spring Statement

Lord Vaux of Harrowden Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

My noble friend very well draws attention to two key problems with the party opposite: the first is its record and the second is its future plans. Its record on growth is an absolute catastrophe. We saw austerity, followed by Brexit, followed by the Liz Trust mini-Budget. Growth was one of the biggest failures among a whole litany of failures of the previous Government. Looking forward, it has absolutely no plan for growth. All it can do is oppose. It has no plan of its own. It has no alternative policies. It opposes our measures to get stability, to get investment into the economy and to reform our economy. All it wants to do is criticise and talk down the economy. If the party opposite is going to criticise, it must come up with an alternative plan.

[Lord Vaux of Harrowden (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister has mentioned several times this £1 billion re-investment, which is not included in the OBR forecast. Can he confirm that the impacts of the Employment Rights Bill, which we are soon to discuss, are also not included in the OBR forecast, including the £5 billion cost to business that it will create? The OBR says that:

“Employment regulation policies that affect the flexibility of businesses and labour markets or the quantity and quality of work will likely have material, and probably net negative, economic impacts on employment, prices, and productivity”.


Does he agree with that?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. I hate to correct him, but I did not say that the £1 billion is not included in the OBR’s forecast. I said that it is not included in the OBR’s impact assessment; that is something different. The £1 billion is included in its forecast, and he is right to say that the Employment Rights Bill is not. The OBR gives a commentary on it, which he quotes from, but the Employment Rights Bill is not included in the forecast because it is still working its way through Parliament—it has its Second Reading today. We are confident that the Bill will result in ordinary working people having more money in their pockets and the security to spend that money by not having to worry, from week to week, whether they will be in work or how many hours they will get.