Road Pricing

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to replacing excise duty on fuel with road pricing.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury (Baroness Vere of Norbiton) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have no plans to consider road pricing. As set out in the letter to the Transport Select Committee in January 2023, the Government are focusing on delivering their core priorities.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, road pricing clearly touches a raw nerve in the body politic. The OBR has recently said of the Government’s policy on electric vehicles that it is

“rapidly eroding the £39 billion”

a year

“revenues from petrol and diesel”

taxes. That will leave a large hole in the Budget. The Transport Select Committee in the other place, with a government majority, said that work on road pricing should start straightaway. When I was Transport Secretary 30 years ago, I floated the idea, which is now much more feasible because of technological progress. If taxes made through the fuel duty are not replaced with something else, public transport will become much more expensive, undermining a sustainable transport policy. Should the Treasury be quite so hostile?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The Treasury sees that there are many options going forward for the fuel duty and many broader motoring taxes—and indeed for all taxes. As we transition to net zero, the Government will need to ensure that the tax system encourages more EV uptake and that revenue from motoring taxes keeps pace while remaining affordable.

Spring Budget 2024

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome two announcements in the Budget, one of which was touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister.

Last month, along with other noble Lords, I called for an extension of the household support fund, which was otherwise due to expire at the end of this month. This is money from the DWP to local authorities to help households struggling with food and energy costs. Some £2.5 billion has been invested in this scheme since October 2022. It is the largest investment in the capacity of local authorities to deliver crisis support following the abolition of the Social Fund. Local authorities, the budgets of which are under pressure, would not have been able to find the £900 million to carry on with the scheme, so top marks to the Chancellor for listening to those requests and for extending it.

However, it is now due to expire at the end of September, just before a general election and during the Labour Party conference. I am surprised that none of the spads in the Treasury spotted this elephant trap. I hope that, between now and then, the Government will either bring the support into line with other local government funding and run it through to the end of the year or work up some alternative scheme to replace it, such as what was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister; otherwise, it will become a very hot political issue.

I welcome the introduction of a British ISA, which has not been mentioned so far in our debate, and notwithstanding some of the negative comments in the press. The Times said:

“Why backing British comes at a cost”.


The Sunday Times money section said:

“Jeremy Hunt’s new Isa is a nonsense”.


That appeared a few pages after the business news the very same day had a share tip that said:

“Clean up with this firm”,


backing a UK firm making cleaning products.

There is a good pedigree for this initiative—the business expansion scheme, the enterprise investment scheme and venture capital trusts. All these are aimed at encouraging investment in UK companies. The British ISA extends the principle to smaller investors and UK-quoted companies. I take the point about definition, on which the Government are consulting, but can my noble friend tell the House whether the scheme will be up and running before the general election?

I want to raise a point about stamp duty and the abolition of multiple dwellings relief, on which I have written to the Minister. I take the point about abuse, which was mentioned in the Budget debate, but there is an unforeseen consequence. In our housing debate last Thursday, I made the point that we need to get long-term institutional finance into the private rented sector to replace the private landlord who is now exiting. Such institutions often buy large numbers of properties before converting them into purpose-built flats. Those hoping to invest in student accommodation could be affected. Can my noble friend have a look at this and see whether the collateral damage might be avoided?

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson, that it was right to cut national insurance, although when he, a former civil servant, described a Government’s decision as “courageous”, it took me back to several episodes of “Yes Minister”. On the ambition to abolish national insurance, I think a more achievable goal would be to merge it with income tax. The two are now sufficiently similar that merging is a plausible option, bringing increased transparency and reduced administrative and compliance costs—though there are some potential obstacles, such as the contributory principle.

My concern about the Budget is about not this year but the future. Real per capita day-to-day spending for unprotected departments is set to fall by 13% over the next five years—nearly as much as in the so-called years of austerity. Those are justice, with the problems with the prisons and courts; local government, with growing pressure on adult services and many local authorities at risk of going bankrupt; and pressure on the Home Office and policing. I ask myself whether those reductions are really achievable, and how the public might react were they to happen.

Finally, over the weekend I was rereading the Ministerial Code and came across paragraph 9.1:

“When Parliament is in session, the most important announcements of Government policy should be made in the first instance, in Parliament”.


No one doubts that the Budget Statement is such a policy, so is the country not fortunate to have such perceptive economic correspondents in all our newspapers and media that, independently, they all came to the same conclusion that the only logical thing for the Chancellor to do was to cut national insurance by 2%, and that they then persuaded their editors to back their hunch with a splash and a lead story? I leave the alternative explanation hanging in the air.

Financial Stability: Private Equity Firms

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I do not agree with the noble Lord. As he will have seen in the Autumn Statement, the Chancellor set out significant tax cuts to encourage growth. That is where we are focusing our firepower at the moment.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, further to the original Question about high interest rates, at the last general election the Green Party was committed to borrowing an extra £95 billion to pay for its commitments. What would this have done to interest rates?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I would not wish to speculate; however, I am not sure it would have been good things.

Cross-Government Cost Cutting

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

No, I would not agree with the noble Lord at all. Efficiency savings are something that Governments of all colours have striven to deliver, including in previous comprehensive spending reviews under the Labour Government. It is absolutely right that, when we look at departmental spending, we build in an assumption of improved efficiency and value for money, but also that, at this time of increased inflationary pressures, we put even more work into looking at where we can achieve efficiencies and release savings to be reinvested into those budgets.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My noble friend said that the Government were ambitious in their search for cost-cutting savings. May I suggest that ambition be extended to the number of Ministers in the Government? In 1979 there were two Ministers in the Department of Transport; there are now five. In 1979 there were five Ministers in the DHSS. That department has since been split into two and there are six Ministers in each. Is this not an area worthy of some exploration?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I take my noble friend’s point. The scope of government and what it is attempting to deliver has changed somewhat over that time, but whether the growth in Ministers has matched that scale of delivery is another question.

Financial Inclusion in England

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

The Government are conscious of the poverty premium. We have used the Financial Inclusion Policy Forum as somewhere that we can bring together different actors on this. I will give some examples of action that we have taken in this area. The FCA, the regulator, has taken action on motor and home insurance to stop customers who are renewing being charged more than new customers. We have also seen the age agreement put in place for older customers to be able to access travel and motor insurance, and some work has been done with the Association of British Insurers looking at the poverty premium, specifically in the rented sector, and it has provided some recommendations to the Government that we are considering how best to take forward.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I applaud my noble friend Lord Holmes’s campaign to ensure that physical currency is available and valid, but what are the Government doing to ensure that the currency is fit for purpose? Many noble Lords may recall the farthing. The farthing was withdrawn in 1960 because it was redundant. The 1960 farthing is worth 2.8p today, but the halfpenny was withdrawn in 1984 for the same reason. So what is the life expectancy for the 1p coin languishing in saucers up and down the country?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I am afraid to say to my noble friend that I do not recall the farthing myself. The Government had a consultation on cash and digital payments in 2018 and the responses strongly supported not changing the denominational mix of coinage at that time. However, as with all areas of policy, we keep this under review.

Financial Markets: Stability

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome this timely debate, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey. While the economy has been centre stage for the last two months, we have not debated it since the summer—apart from the 40-minute Statement on 19 October. I join others in welcoming my noble friend Lady Penn back to the Front Bench, this time as a fully-fledged member of the Treasury team.

I want to focus on the final element identified in the noble Lord’s Motion—the rental market and, in particular, the private rented sector. I suspect the noble Lord, Lord Best, will also do this. There is a vicious circle operating here. Rising interest rates with earnings lagging inflation are making home ownership less affordable. This adds to demand for private renting, pushing rents up. This is reinforced by cost pressures on landlords, as buy-to-let mortgage rates increase, with less advantageous tax arrangements and higher environmental standards. This in turn leads to landlords leaving the market, leading to a further imbalance between supply and demand and yet higher rents. Too many renters already pay more than 50% of their income in rent, making home ownership less attainable. The ONS notes:

“Given the excess of demand over supply, rental prices are expected to rise further.”


In September this year, Rightmove reported annual growth in rents of 12.3%.

One in five households now lives in private rented accommodation—a doubling in two decades—and nearly all are on six-month assured tenancies. The theme of the noble Lord’s debate is stability. I believe we need a fundamental review of the private rental market to put it on a more stable and sustainable basis. In a nutshell, we need to move from a market dominated by the small private landlord, buffeted by tax changes and interest rate movements, where tenants have limited security of tenure and where it is not their tenure of choice, to a market more like that of France, Germany or Switzerland. There, a higher proportion of the population see private renting as the “normal” tenure choice and financial institutions invest in the sector for the long term, ensuring that properties are professionally managed and in good condition and, crucially, have long leases to provide stability for the tenant.

This is not to say there is no role for the private landlord, but the sector as a whole needs to be put on a more stable long-term basis. There are signs that this transition is taking place here. Institutions such as Legal & General have started building thousands of flats for rent, targeted at students, professionals living in cities, and those who need mobility for their career. But we need to accelerate the transition and broaden its base. Build to rent is only 5% of the rented market. This would be a good investment for pension funds. Historically, they have invested in equities, gilts, commercial property and fixed interest loans, but they have had little direct exposure to the residential property market. This is perverse, as it has consistently outperformed equities.

To make the transition happen smoothly, we need to understand the motives of private landlords. They invested in buy to let for two main reasons: capital appreciation and a buoyant income. In many cases, they preferred this over a pension. But the disadvantage is that their capital is illiquid and owning property brings with it management problems and the prospect of a tougher regulatory regime.

To facilitate this transition, what is needed is a quoted housing investment trust to whom landlords could sell their property not for cash but for shares in the trust. So the investor would retain his investment in residential bricks and mortar—the trust’s only asset—with an income stream linked to rental values and capital values rising over the long term, but without the hassle of management and with easy access to capital. The property could be sold to the trust without giving notice to the tenant as it would be held as an investment.

The process could start with blocks and properties in a specified area, with management undertaken by registered social landlords such as housing associations, giving further reassurance to tenants. There would be a role for the Treasury to play in helping the transition to get off the ground. Normally, when a private landlord sells, capital gains tax is payable, and this could be a deterrent. However, under the scenario I have outlined, if capital gains tax was deferred until the shares were sold, that would act as an incentive.

I put this proposition forward to provide stability to a sector that is the least stable form of tenure in the housing market. I do not ask for immediate adoption today, but it would be good if the Minister could give it a nudge by encouraging the Department for Levelling Up, with its new Secretary of State, to explore further the potential of the idea I have just floated.