Lord Harper
Main Page: Lord Harper (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Harper's debates with the HM Treasury
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Lord Livermore (Lab)
The noble Baroness talks about stability and chaos; let us talk about 14 years of chaos. First, there was austerity, which took demand out of the economy at exactly the wrong moment, cutting investment and undermining the economy’s ability to grow. Then we saw a disastrous and tragically misjudged Brexit deal, which imposed new trade barriers equivalent to a 13% increase in tariffs for manufacturing and a 20% increase in tariffs for services, reducing total trade intensity by 15% and permanently reducing GDP by 4 percentage points. Finally, the Liz Truss mini-Budget crashed the economy and sent mortgages soaring by £300 a month. We on this side will take no lessons from the party opposite on how to manage the economy.
Lord Harper (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Fox, simply asked whether the Minister could rule out doing harm in the Budget—he did not ask about lots of specific measures—so let me ask him again: can he just rule out the Budget doing harm to British business?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
As I have said already, I am not going to comment on individual measures ahead of the Budget.