Budget: Taxes and Borrowing
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(3 weeks ago)
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Lord Livermore (Lab)
On inheritance tax, currently the largest estates pay a lower effective tax rate than the smaller estates. I do not think that that can be right. Agricultural property relief is given on top of the normal inheritance tax thresholds. Individuals can pass up to £500,000 to a direct descendant, and then agricultural property relief would provide a further £1 million tax-free allowance. This means a couple can pass on up to £3 million tax free. Above that, there is a 50% discount on inheritance tax, so a rate of only 20% applies, and any liability can be paid in 10 yearly instalments. This seems to me to be pretty fair in the context of the decisions we have taken and in the context of what everyone else in society gets.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
This Budget provided only a limited increase in defence spending, under circumstances in which the Ukraine war is depleting British stocks and our Armed Forces are under very considerable strain. If the Government were to consider that they needed to increase defence spending further, and to raise tax for that, would they be confident that the Conservative Party would support that, or do they think they would oppose it?
Working From Home: Public Sector Productivity
Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Lord Livermore (Lab)
The noble Lord makes an interesting point. The Government inherited a situation where public service productivity remained 6.4 % below pre-pandemic levels, and the ballooning size of the Civil Service—as he described it—under the previous Government may have contributed to that. I do not know the answer to that, but the Chancellor has been very clear that the Government will establish a programme of public sector reform to drive much greater productivity, improving the quality of public services and the value for money that we receive.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, the Government have inherited a rather shrunken Whitehall estate from their Conservative predecessors, where hot-desking had become the norm in a number of departments. Are the Government confident that, if all civil servants turned up five days a week, there would be enough desks for them to sit at?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
No, there would not. One of the benefits of working from home is a much more efficient use of office space. It has a beneficial impact on capital in terms of releasing office space for more productive use, and that is currently what is under way.