My Lords, the Chancellor gave his Spring Statement last week which showed that the economy remains robust, despite lingering uncertainty around Brexit. It has grown for nine consecutive years, creating 3.5 million new jobs since 2010, and is now delivering the fastest wage growth in over a decade.
The Office for Budget Responsibility expects growth to continue at a rate of 1.2% this year, 1.4% in 2020 and 1.6% for each of the following three years. It also expects to see 600,000 more new jobs and wage growth of 3% or higher—that is, above inflation—in every year of the forecast.
There was positive news on public finances as well. Borrowing this year will be just 1.1% of GDP, £3 billion lower than forecast at the Autumn Budget. This fall will continue, from £29.3 billion in 2019-20 to £13.5 billion in 2023-24, the lowest level in 22 years.
This means that we remain on track to meet our fiscal targets early, with the cyclically adjusted deficit at 1.3% next year, falling to just 0.5% by 2023-24, and with debt lower in every year than forecast at the Budget, falling to 82.2% of GDP next year, then 79%, 74.9%, 74% and, finally, 73% in 2023-24.
It increases headroom against our fiscal mandate in 2020-21 from £15.4 billion at the Autumn Budget to £26.6 billion today.
We have rebuilt the public finances since the shock of the financial crash and are now in a strong enough position to bring austerity to an end. Last year, the Prime Minister announced an additional £34 billion of funding per year for the NHS—the single largest cash commitment ever made by a peacetime British Government. In the most recent Budget, the Chancellor set out an indicative five-year path of 1.2% per annum real terms increases in day-to-day spending on our public services.
Later this year, the Chancellor will launch a three-year spending review before the Summer Recess to be concluded alongside the autumn Budget. It will set departmental budgets to reflect the public’s biggest priorities, such as schools, police and the environment, while maximising value for taxpayers’ money with discipline and a focus on high-quality outcomes. If we leave the EU with a deal, and secure an orderly transition to a future economic partnership, the Government will be able to reduce the level of fiscal headroom needed for no-deal planning, giving us real choices in the spending review.
Before then, however, some pressing challenges needed addressing. First, in response to head teachers’ rising concern that some girls are missing school due to an inability to afford sanitary products, the Chancellor announced the provision of free sanitary products in secondary schools and colleges in England to be rolled out during the next school year. Secondly, he announced a £100 million fund to tackle the recent surge in knife crime. It is a tragedy that, for too many, this money will arrive too late, but it will go some way towards meeting the challenges ahead.
My Lords, the Chancellor set out to make a Spring Statement that did not constitute a fiscal event. This is a slightly strange objective for a Chancellor of the Exchequer, but one which he achieved, with the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies commenting:
“We should not complain. One fiscal event a year is plenty”.
However, while the Chancellor may have cleared his own rather low bar, this Statement marks a missed opportunity. He did little to instil confidence in either the Government’s handling of Brexit or their claim that austerity has come to an end. As we have grown to expect, despite some limited additional funds and the launch of several consultations, he failed to tackle the big issues of the day. Like the Prime Minister, he kicked the can down the road.
Some may say that this is hardly a surprise, given that this Spring Statement was delivered against the backdrop of Brexit uncertainty. Indeed, with the House of Commons having convincingly rejected the Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement for a second time the previous day, Mr Hammond delivered his speech to an impatient Chamber, with MPs more interested in voting to oppose a no-deal outcome.
The Chancellor was clear that the outlook for the economy was premised on an orderly Brexit. He warned that performance will meet expectations only if MPs pause, reflect and fall into line by backing Mrs May’s deal at a third time of asking—whenever that may be. To bring the point home, he threatened that this summer’s spending review could be delayed in the event of Britain crashing out without a deal in place. This is a worrying state of affairs, given the many hours spent debating statutory instruments in the name of ensuring life goes on after a no-deal Brexit.
Businesses up and down the country will have tuned in, expecting answers to the big questions. But, as has become customary under this Government, they were left with less certainty about the future rather than more. It is no secret that business confidence is low, that investment is falling and that jobs have unnecessarily been put at risk. In his speech, Mr Hammond claimed that by backing the withdrawal agreement, a “deal dividend” would bring about a,
My Lords, I remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I thank the Government Chief Whip for enabling us to have this debate in the Chamber. Given the importance of Spring Statements it is the right place, even though on this occasion the economic outlook is so full of uncertainties.
In the autumn, the Chancellor declared the end of austerity, but he protected only the National Health Service, defence, and the international aid budget. A new forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility meant that he could, for example, have spent more to help low-income families this spring by ending the five-week waiting time for universal credit, which just reinforces the feeling among claimants that the state does not care, and ending the benefits freeze, which is causing greater poverty for many families a year early. The Resolution Foundation has shown how the bottom fifth of families will be £100 worse off this year when the top 20% will be £280 better off.
For just £1.4 billion, the Chancellor could have helped those who need a bit more money the most. Yet the Government seem unwilling to redress the balance of social and financial inequalities, so there is no significant new revenue funding for public services, which impacts hardest on those who depend on those public services. There is no confirmation of the spending envelope for the forthcoming spending review, nor a date for it to take place. And now we know that, in growth terms, we have one of the weakest of the advanced economies. Growth is forecast this year to be down to 1.2% from 1.6%.
The Chancellor was right to warn of the economic damage a no-deal Brexit would cause, but wrong to suggest that the Government’s deal is the only alternative. As the Treasury Select Committee has demonstrated, there is no “deal dividend” because the Office for Budget Responsibility has already factored one into its forecasts. Anyway, the best deal dividend would be to remain in the European Union—without that, private sector investment will fall.
My Lords, I begin by congratulating the Government, the Chancellor and the Minister on reducing the deficit from £153 billion at the end of the last decade to just £23 billion this year. Fiscal consolidation is notoriously difficult, and I recognise that there are differences of view about the pace and incidence of consolidation. For example, was the balance between the increases in taxes and spending reductions right? Were the Government sensible to spend so much on tax cuts? However, on the quantum of consolidation, I think the Government have it just about right. One thing is certain: you cannot run a deficit of 10% of national income for any length of time. The last Labour Government recognised this, which is why Alistair Darling initiated the consolidation programme in 2009. George Osborne and Danny Alexander chose to be more ambitious still, though in the end they delivered the quantum, if not the content, of the Darling plan. More recently, to the surprise of the pundits I think, the current Chancellor has seen consolidation through.
My noble friend Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield once put it to me that the lot of the Treasury official is to deal with disappointment. As he put it, consolidation and recovery in the post-war period has been “routinely punctuated by the greatest orgy”. There is something in that. Getting the economy back on track following a crisis is a Sisyphean task: you spend years of your life pushing a rock up a steep, inhospitable hill only to see it falling down again, sometimes in a matter of days, when the next crisis hits. So I congratulate my former colleagues on a job well done.
Turning to the Spring Statement itself, I shall make three small points. First, I have been impressed by the tax take over the last year or two. Generally, revenues tend to disappoint—that is because people generally do not like paying taxes—but because of the buoyancy of income tax revenues, revenue has been persistently surprising on the up side. The last time I remember this was in the late 1990s. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, will remember that for the whole of the early part of the consolidation of the 1990s, revenue kept disappointing on the down side, but then suddenly in 1997, somewhat unfortunately for the outgoing Government, the dam burst and revenues kept pouring in. I remember that between 1997 and 2000 the Treasury was just awash with cash, almost embarrassingly so. Of course, it did not last, so my advice to the present Government is to enjoy it but not to assume that it will last too long.
6:16 pm
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, it is a privilege and a challenge to follow such a brilliant speech from someone who knows his way around the subject. If you want to find good things to tax, I always say that you should start with sin: find a new sin and tax it. I rather agree that HS2 is a sin, not for adding capacity, which I am all in favour of, but in doing so in such an unnecessarily expensive way. For me, trains go quite fast enough already and it could have been done far more cheaply without factoring in the speeds in a small country. As I follow the noble Lord’s speech, I think of St Paul, who once began by saying, “I speak as a fool”. I do so too, a little, after that wonderful description of the financial landscape.
Amid the gloom of the general political situation at present, I welcome the Spring Statement and the optimism it contains. I say that in strictly non-political terms. Since I was ordained 40 years ago, I have been careful not to align myself with any political party or indeed to reveal how I have voted in any election in which I have been entitled to vote. My daughters in particular resent that deeply. En passant, that even applies to the EU referendum.
Of course, the Chancellor put the best gloss possible on what he said, but there must be a welcome for the escape from the shadow cast by the banking crisis that took everyone so unawares a dozen years ago. First the Labour Government, then the coalition Government and, more recently, Conservative Governments have wrestled with the aftermath. This has been extraordinarily difficult, but I find it encouraging to see the progress that has been made—although I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, that it has been made at a price. This is also despite Brexit and the gloomy predictions made in advance of the referendum were there to be a vote to leave.
It seems to me just plain common sense that, in terms of current spending, a country must try to live within its means. This applies to individuals and, in my own sphere, to dioceses and parishes. It is good to see that this country is now on a track to do this at the level of our national life, which is no small achievement.
That said, and meant, there are important questions with which I hope the Government will continue to wrestle. There is little doubt that the improvements in government finances have been made at tremendous cost, and in some cases a very difficult cost: police, social care, welfare, defence, schools up to a point—we will all have our own lists. I am pleased that overseas aid is an honourable and important exception.
I would add to the list university student fees. I have always supported a certain level of fees, but £9,250 a year is way out of line with any other European country; indeed, within the United Kingdom, it is out of line with Scotland and Wales. I hope that the forthcoming review will start to balance student fees and costs towards a more sensible level. Of course, much of the debt will never be repaid, but it must be a huge disincentive to those who have acquired a large debt burden as they seek to make their way in life. I speak as one of the older generation who did not face that challenge. When I went to university, all the fees were paid and I was given a maintenance grant. Those were the days.
My Lords, the right reverend Prelate should not underestimate his contribution over the years to our economic debates. I have heard him many times, and he always brings a great whift of common sense to our debates. We are very grateful for his contributions.
When I was thinking about what I was going to say today, I thought my noble friend Lord Young would be introducing the debate. I was going to tease him slightly—and as he is here, I will do it anyway. He and I entered the House of Commons 45 years ago. In the early days I was the junior Whip sitting on the bench saying nothing; he was the parliamentary Secretary of one department or another. There was one Member of Parliament sitting across the way who raised a subject on the adjournment of the House. Other noble Lords who have been in the House of Commons will know that this happens last thing at night. He did it with utter charm and good will, full of information and so on. It seemed to me that night after night he got the short straw to do it, and when he addresses the House now, as he does from time to time with great skill, he might remember those days 45 years ago when he started.
I confess I have not known my noble friend Lord Bates for 45 years, but I have known him a good many years. I greatly admire the way he has tackled his ministerial jobs and his capacity for making complex issues understandable—and he has lived up to those high standards tonight in his opening remarks.
The Spring Statement was much better than I had anticipated, and augurs well for the position of the country when we can get the uncertainty of Brexit behind us. I will touch on one or two matters that were not mentioned in the Chancellor’s Statement. The Government have taken quite a number of steps to deal with tax avoidance in the UK. They have made some sensible adjustments to their initial proposals about making taxation digital, which is a move in the right direction if they can get it right. But I am not absolutely convinced that they have done all that is necessary to make those changes. It is a massive change in the way in which we run our taxation, particularly for small businesses, and I am not convinced that they have done all that is necessary to get those changes right.
My Lords, compared with the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court, I am an innumerate amateur. But I am aware that economists work in a statistical minefield, in which they must take care to distinguish between provisional and revised figures, between raw and seasonally adjusted data, and between nominal and real values. The Chancellor’s Spring Statement really did take us from the real to the surreal.
In the real world, the UK economy grew at its slowest rate for six years in 2018, and growth is expected by the Bank of England, by the OECD and by the Office for Budget Responsibility to slow even further this year. Business investment has gone down and productivity improvements have dried up. The risk of recession has increased at the very time that the potency of monetary policy has diminished. Additionally, there are worries from a possible looming global debt crisis, global trade wars sparked in part by President Trump’s stand-off with China, and the Chinese slowdown.
But in the surreal world of the Chancellor’s fertile imagination the economy is “fundamentally strong” and “remarkably robust”. Twice in 2017, again in 2018, once more in February this year and again in the Spring Statement, the Chancellor peddled the same line: the economy is confounding his critics by continuing to grow. That remains his stance today. He wants to sound on top of his brief while saying nothing of substance and denying any need to give a sluggish economy a fiscal boost. As Bing Crosby sang:
“We’re busy doin’ nothin’,
Workin’ the whole day through,
Tryin’ to find lots of things not to do”.
Britain is vying with Italy and Japan at the foot of the G7 growth league. We are not alone in facing worsening prospects. Germany, France, Italy and China are all experiencing a growth slowdown. They are all responding by planning a fiscal stimulus but in Britain, the Chancellor has chosen to play a waiting game. Like a cricketing nightwatchman, he is intent only on staying at the crease by meeting every delivery with a dead bat. He is waiting for whatever dawn and the outcome of the Brexit votes might bring: perhaps a revival of business investment and consumer confidence as the fog of Brexit uncertainty lifts—if it ever lifts, given the Government’s latest Brexit shenanigans and the national crisis upon us. There is no sign of that fog lifting soon. The Spring Statement put off taking action until an Autumn Budget, assuming an orderly Brexit—some chance of that. The Chancellor’s fiscal stance simply echoed Scarlett O’Hara’s response to discouraging news: “Tomorrow is another day”.
My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. My humble contribution will focus on the impact of the Spring Statement on local government finances and the serious concerns over the short-term crisis and future sustainability.
The Chancellor certainly attempted to morph himself from Eeyore to Tigger and inject some optimism into his Statement. But there was little to lift the gloom in local government circles. For us, it was slim pickings. However, it is churlish not to recognise that in the 2018 Budget, the Government responded to local government’s call for investment to ease some of the pressures facing local services this year. But it was just that—another one-off payment to avert a crisis, stick a finger in the dam or create a headline.
What was noticeably missing was any comment on the dire position that local government finds itself in. There was nothing on the long-overdue Green Paper on social care, which takes up some 40% of councils’ spending; nothing for children’s services, which are already expected to be the next crisis area after adult social care; and nothing to provide much-needed social housing. Your Lordships will note that I say “social housing”, given that the Government seem wedded to the so-called affordable homes that are simply not affordable to many of those on our housing list.
Will the Minister accept the views of the LGA, the IFS and local government finance officers that the current model for funding local government is broken and unsustainable? Can we be assured that there will be some urgency injected into new processes as we approach 2020? The Government will be well aware of the substantial funding black hole facing local government. A conservative estimate from the LGA places the funding gap at £8 billion by 2025 if more money is not provided for those services that in particular are experiencing a marked growth in demand. The real-world impacts are being felt by adults and children in care, homeless families and children on the streets, and millions of users of damaged local roads. These are specific services stretched to breaking point; but one cannot keep papering over the cracks that a significant reduction of funding, year after year, has caused to local services across the board.
6:51 pm
20 of 57 shown
Ahead of the spending review, the Home Secretary will work with the police to consider how best to prioritise resources, including newly funded manpower to ensure a lasting solution. Alongside support for public services, the Government have made sure to invest in infrastructure, skills and technology—the fundamentals that boost productivity and living standards. To supplement the largest ever investment in England’s strategic roads, the biggest rail investment programme since Victorian times, and a strategy for delivering a nationwide full-fibre network by 2023, the Chancellor made a series of further pledges. These included an announcement of up to £260 million for the borderlands growth deal.
But raising our productivity is not just about investing in physical capital; it is about investing in people too. To help small businesses take on more apprentices, the Government are accelerating the reforms announced in the Budget of 2018, bringing forward a £700 million package this April. We want to drive productivity across the income distribution, with the ultimate objective of ending low pay in the UK. So we have asked Professor Arin Dube, a world-leading expert in the field, to undertake a review of the latest international evidence on minimum wages to inform future national living wage policy after 2020. This study will support our extensive discussions with employer organisations and trade unions over the coming months.
As we move forward, we are keeping the interests of businesses as a high priority, and that means giving them access to the best talent, including from overseas. From June, we will begin to abolish the need for paper landing cards at UK points of entry for citizens from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. They will be able to use e-gates at our airports and Eurostar terminals, alongside the EEA nationals who can already do so. From this autumn, we will completely exempt PhD-level roles from visa caps—a signal to the best and brightest across the world that we want them and welcome their expertise in the United Kingdom. Having the best people in Britain will help us remain at the forefront of the technology revolution that is transforming the global economy. To maintain our edge, the Chancellor announced a £79 million investment in a new super-computer to be hosted at Edinburgh University. We are also allocating £45 million of NPIF funding to the European Bioinformatics Institute and investing £81 million in a new extreme photonics centre in Oxfordshire.
Innovation requires careful handling by Governments, and a fair and forgiving regulatory environment. Nowhere is this more important than in the digital world, where we need to ensure a level playing field that fosters innovation, and where the giants pay their fair share. To this end, the Chancellor asked Professor Jason Furman, Barack Obama’s former chief economist, to review competition in the digital market. His report was published last week, and the Chancellor has already taken the first step in response, asking the Competition and Markets Authority to undertake a market study of the digital advertising market as soon as possible.
We must adapt to the challenges of a changing world, and that extends to the environment as much as the economy. Despite what some say, it is not the case that these are competing concerns. The UK’s 1,500 pollinator species, for example, deliver an estimated £680 million of annual value to the economy, making an obvious case for protecting the diversity of the natural world. Therefore, following consultation, the Government will use the forthcoming environment Bill to mandate biodiversity net gain for development in England, ensuring that the delivery of much-needed infrastructure is not at the expense of the birds and the bees, which help fill the air with song, and our plates with food.
Of course, climate change is our biggest environmental concern. The UK is already leading the world in this regard, reducing the carbon intensity of our economy faster than any other G20 country. Last week, the Chancellor set out plans that demonstrate a commitment to maintain this progress. First, we will publish a call for evidence on whether all passenger carriers should be required to offer genuinely additional carbon offsets, so that customers who want zero-carbon travel have that option. Secondly, we will help small businesses cut their carbon emissions and their energy bills, with a call for evidence on the business energy efficiency scheme. Thirdly, we will publish proposals to require an increased proportion of green gas in the grid, to advance decarbonisation of our mains gas supply. Finally, we will introduce a future homes standard, mandating the end of fossil-fuel heating systems in all new houses from 2025.
There will be many new houses. One of the Chancellor’s biggest motivations is to restore the dream of home ownership to millions of younger people. He has set out a five-year, £44 billion housing programme to raise annual housing supply to 300,000 by the mid-2020s. This Government have also abolished stamp duty for thousands of first-time buyers and introduced planning reform to release land in areas where the pressure is greatest. The Chancellor built on this further last week, announcing a new £3 billion affordable homes guarantee scheme to support delivery of around 30,000 affordable homes. In addition, he announced £717 million from the Housing Infrastructure Fund to unlock up to 37,000 new homes on sites in west London, Cheshire, Didcot and Cambridge, near some of the best jobs in the country.
It all means that we are stiffening the sinews of this economy. We are transforming our infrastructure, investing in innovation, and sharpening our skills. These are fundamentals of economic and personal growth, and it means that our grasp of the opportunities that lie ahead of us can be better met and reached. I commend this Statement to the House.
“recovery in business confidence and investment”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/3/19; col. 347.]
That is a clear acknowledgement of the problems the economy faces as a result of the Prime Minister’s botched negotiations.
Thanks to Mrs May’s red lines, however, and her Ministers’ failure to grip the detail of Brexit, much of the damage has already been done. Our manufacturing sector is struggling. Numerous employers, large and small, have announced job losses or relocations. Many food producers are in despair as they simply do not know whether they will be able to fill the shelves in a fortnight’s time. It is little wonder that the director-general of the Confederation of British Industry remarked that,
“this is no way to run a country”.
While the Chancellor tried his best to present the Office for Budget Responsibility’s economic outlook as a success story, the truth is that it is anything but. This Government have presided over the slowest economic recovery since the 1920s. The deficit has not been eliminated, despite the previous Chancellor promising to achieve that years ago. Real wages are still lower than they were 10 years ago and, according to the OBR:
“Average earnings growth remains below the rates typical before the financial crisis”.
Household debt is plugging the gap, with debt relative to income expected to increase over the forecast period. While the Prime Minister and Chancellor are living on borrowed time, too many households are relying on borrowed money.
Last week, the OBR revised GDP growth down to a level consistent with the European Commission’s winter forecast—the same one that suggests that the UK will languish at the very bottom of the European league table in future years, even in the event of a soft Brexit. Let us be clear: 1.2% annual growth is far below what our economy is capable of. If that is all that is realised, the Government will have failed in their duty to unlock the country’s potential.
Ministers are merely storing up problems for the future. Nowhere is this truer than in the Chancellor’s announcement of £100 million for police overtime to tackle knife crime. That amount covers just a fraction of the £2.7 billion of real-terms cuts in direct government funding to police forces since 2010.
Not enough is being done to future-proof our economy. Britain’s infrastructure ranks bottom in the G7 for quality, and the rate of public investment is among the lowest in the OECD. Despite this, planned public sector investment has been cut. What possible justification can there be for that? And, while the Chancellor may have mentioned the environment this time around—something he failed to do in his Autumn Budget—all we were promised are consultations and reviews, rather than action to deliver green jobs and growth.
The biggest disappointment is that, despite the warm words of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, austerity is not over. While limited pots of money have been made available for certain projects, any major spending commitment has been postponed until the spending review at the earliest. The can has been kicked again. Even if the Government come good on their promises to end austerity, it will have taken a full year for Ministers to have taken their first tentative steps. That pace is simply unacceptable. It is not what was promised to hard-working people across the country.
At the same time as the Government’s action on tax avoidance falls well short of expectations, benefit claimants have been told that the cruel benefit freeze will continue for a fourth year. Ten million families will have lost an average of £420 a year as a result, exacerbating existing issues with in-work poverty and high rents. Concerns about universal credit continue to be raised by claimants and charities alike, yet there is no mention of the scheme, or further measures to rectify it, in the Chancellor’s speech.
Something needs to change, and not just the Chancellor’s approach to these important Statements. The Government’s priorities are wrong. Their inability to address the imbalances in our economy is stifling too many people’s life chances. Real change is needed between now and the Autumn Budget to ensure that departments have the money they need to deal with the many pressing non-Brexit issues facing the country, to ensure that legitimate concerns are listened to and acted on, and to restore faith in our democratic system. This will mean listening to local councils, which are struggling to provide services to local communities, and to schools, where teachers are having to pay for supplies out of their own pockets, and it will mean taking action on the other pressing challenges we face, be it a shortage of affordable social care, problems in prisons and a failing probation service, or rising poverty and homelessness.
As my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition has observed on a number of occasions, Brexit seems to have brought the usual business of government to a halt. Our hopes for future fiscal events, therefore, are not very high. That is why we will continue to set out our alternative approach to managing the economy, as my noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham will do in his closing remarks. In the meantime, this debate provides an opportunity for the Government to begin the listening exercise I referred to. This House has a wealth of experience. The Chancellor and his Ministers would be well advised to listen to advice and act accordingly.
It is wrong in principle to let austerity continue for unprotected government departments, as the Chancellor has decided. Current spending plans will not repair the crumbling nature of our public services and waiting for the spending review later this year is not enough. Demand for local government services—which represent one-quarter of public spending—is going to rise faster than the income that councils can derive from council tax and business rates. The Government need to address this fundamental problem.
In addition, they must get the fair funding review right to ensure adequate redistribution from richer areas to poorer ones where people are more dependent on public services. They also need to think seriously about the future of business rates as a tax because they may no longer be fit for purpose, not least because of the difficulties experienced by the retail sector in the face of digital competition. Surely the time has come to examine more fully the case for land value taxation, which could overcome some of the current problems of business rates and enable more decisions on tax raising to be taken at a local level—for example, a tourist tax. A number of councils want to look at the potential of this, and should be empowered to do so.
It is the role of a Spring Statement to review the capacity of our taxation system to raise the money needed fairly and efficiently. I have concluded that we need a national debate on how public services should be funded, both locally and nationally. In my view—as I have said—local councils need more tax-raising powers. It has been estimated that there will be an overall funding gap of £3.1 billion next year, which could rise to £8 billion by 2024-25. The pressures are particularly acute in schools, policing, adult social care, children’s services, homelessness support and neighbourhood services. It is a lengthy list.
The Government must understand better than they appear to the impact of an ageing population, which will increase demand for adult care year by year without the resources increasing to match it. This year nearly all councils are raising council tax—three-quarters by more than 2.5%—and nearly all are increasing fees and charges. The Government have failed to explain why they are pushing extra tax raising to a local level on services such as adult social care away from national taxation, which historically has funded it. It is vital that the Government use the spending review to deliver truly sustainable funding for local government.
The Chancellor announced £100 million for the police to combat knife crime. Youth services generally have been cut heavily over recent years and now we find that the National Citizen Service is to have a £10 million rebranding. Yet just 12% of eligible teenagers take part in this scheme, which was only recently introduced. Would not the money be better spent on council-run youth services, which have seen a 52% reduction in funding since 2010?
On housing, the Chancellor claimed that the Government were on track to deliver their target of 300,000 new homes a year. However, the figures to date include many conversions and, as we now know, Help to Buy has pushed up house prices and given huge profits to some builders. The Chancellor said that the Government will build 30,000 new homes with a £3 billion affordable housing guarantee scheme for housing associations. This is one more announcement on housing but—given all the announcements over the last year on housing and other announcements in this Spring Statement, and given the absence of any detail of how the Government are delivering those commitments in practice—do all the announcements mean that the Government are well on target to delivering their commitment of building 300,000 new homes a year? Can the Minister say when the figure will be reached? Will the Government publish a detailed annual review of the milestones they achieve?
I draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that housing benefit now costs £22 billion a year. If we invested in new social homes, we could reduce this. In this respect, the recent report by Shelter on how this could be done is an important contribution to the thinking here, and I hope that the Government will think seriously about how to invest in building social housing, to save the revenue costs in housing benefit caused by high rents in the private rented sector.
It is not all criticism. I welcome the borderlands growth deal which will strengthen the deep ties across the border regions of England and Scotland, as the Chancellor said. I have concerns about the northern powerhouse—very little was said about that—and the Chancellor failed to mention the shared prosperity fund. The Government have repeatedly been pressed to explain how the EU structural funds will be replaced. They are worth £2.5 billion a year to the UK and are vital for the poorer parts of the country. Will final decisions be announced in the spending review on the shared prosperity fund, along with Transport for the North’s bid for improved public transport across the north? Both are urgently needed.
In the Written Ministerial Statement issued as part of the Spring Statement, there is a brief response to the recent consultation on planning reform. It says that the Government will:
“Introduce a package of reforms including allowing greater change of use between premises, and a new permitted development right to allow upwards extension of existing buildings to create new homes”.
I have serious concerns regarding the proposed expansion of permitted development rights in this way, and I look for the Minister’s confirmation that such proposals will be subject to full parliamentary scrutiny. The proposed expansion includes creating a new permitted development right for the demolition and redevelopment of commercial buildings for residential use, creating a new permitted development right to allow the upward extension of buildings for creating new homes or extending existing ones, and creating new permitted development rights to allow changes of use from what have been key town-centre uses.
There are huge dangers in these changes. They could undermine the planning process by denying local communities a proper voice on development. They will bypass important quality safeguards offered by the planning process, including the right to light. They will deny local planning authorities an important means of delivering planned and sustainable mixed-use environments. They will prevent local authorities from collecting planning fees and developer contributions through the planning process. This money is vital for delivering affordable local housing and infrastructure. The recent report of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee, High Streets and Town Centres in 2030, said:
“The Government should suspend any further extension of PDRs, pending an evaluation of their impact on the high street”.
I hope that the Minister will look very carefully at this, because I agree with that conclusion.
Finally, on the living wage review, I was pleased to see that the Chancellor wants the living wage to rise. It is a huge problem that two-thirds of the working-age poor are in work or live with someone who is in work. Low pay is partly responsible for this situation—the review he announced is urgent and he should be commended for initiating it. Despite some recent signs of wage growth, far too many people remain in low-paid, insecure employment. In conclusion, business confidence is low, investment is stalling, incomes are stretched and we have a divided country. It is vital that the spending review has addressing those problems as its central aim.
I worry about the sustainability of the tax base. As I have noted before, the tax and national insurance take is set to be 34.6% of national income this year and then to stay at that level through to 2023. Noble Lords should bear in mind that in only one year since 1950 has the tax take been that high. That leads me to think that HMRC has discovered the holy grail of tax collection—I suspect not—or national income is higher than currently assumed, which is a theme I shall return to, or the Government will fail to sustain that level of taxation. My worry is that much of the tax base is eroding. Fuel duties and tobacco duties are in secular decline; taxing capital in a world of huge capital mobility is all too difficult; the North Sea tax take is well past its best and will fall further with decommissioning; and, although local government is raising council tax a bit, over the last 20 years council tax has probably not risen enough. As my noble friend Lord Wakeham has pointed out, the current stamp duty regime discourages people from moving house: it does not surprise me that the OBR has revised its stamp duty estimates down yet again. Spending pressures are set to rise in the coming decade. The Government need to look at whether the tax system is equipped to deal with this. For my part, like the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, I recommend looking again at the taxation of land and property. The great thing about residential and commercial property is that it is fixed—it cannot move. I also think we will need to look again at a social care tax of some sort.
My second point relates to the next spending review. If ever there was a time to prioritise public investment, it is now. I was sorry to see in the OBR report that business investment has fallen for four consecutive quarters. Now is the time when the Government need to fill the gap, prioritising infrastructure and housing. To be fair, the Government are seeking to do this, but I would encourage them to be more ambitious still. Public investment needs to be focused on projects that yield the highest return. That probably means more expenditure on roads and, although I know I am in a minority of around three, that also suggests that we should cancel HS2.
Within current spending, I also hope that the Government will prioritise further education, skills and training. If Brexit achieves what its proponents suggest, we will no longer be able to rely on the Polish taxpayer to provide the economy with the skills it needs. Of course, such expenditure will need to be paid for. Here—again, I shall be unpopular—I would take a long, hard look at the so-called triple lock. I should declare an interest in that I am due to get my free bus pass in three months’ time. However, the fact is that the elderly have contributed very little to fiscal consolidation.
Finally, I shall say a few words about the macroeconomy. Yesterday’s labour market statistics were very encouraging. The level of job creation at this time of uncertainty is impressive. Earnings growth is accelerating. That is good news because it means that living standards are rising, which should provide further support for demand in the economy. Together with the revenue statistics, it also suggests to me that the ONS is underestimating the level of gross domestic product. We are at full employment and the supply of labour is likely to fall if the Government achieve their Brexit objectives. That means that the risk of inflation is increasing.
I can see why the Bank of England is reluctant to act while a no-deal Brexit remains a possibility, and that possibility has increased today, but it could have used this phoney Brexit period to reduce the impact of quantitative easing. The Bank continues to miss an obvious trick. Instead of reinvesting the proceeds in gilts when debt matures, it should take the opportunity to run down its gilt holdings and reduce quantitative easing. I can see that my noble friend Lord Gadhia agrees with me. As and when a deal is done on withdrawal, the Bank may well find that it has presided over monetary conditions that are too loose. That will mean that it will have to raise interest rates further than if it had prepared the ground now.
I end where I began. This is an encouraging Statement and the public finances are in a better state. The critical thing is to keep them that way.
Bringing in radical reform to the structure of welfare support through the introduction of universal credit in the midst of the austerity programme was always a recipe for great difficulty, and so it has proved. It has always seemed to me that, from the start, the whole exercise needed much greater bridging financing to be introduced effectively, without shining a light on the very unfortunate losers in the process.
No doubt many other areas could be spoken of, with the NHS looming largest. It is good to know that a sustained programme of real increases is planned. The key test will be whether the money is spent efficiently and effectively, given the size of the operation. The absentee from the Statement was social care. Essentially nothing was said about it. As the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said, it is hanging over us. The noble Lord asked: what are we going to do?
I should also like to add a word about the section of the Statement on housing. I welcome it as far as it goes, particularly as my own diocese will be included in the additional funding from the Housing Infrastructure Fund. I hope that the annual target of 300,000 new homes by 2025 can be met, but my question is whether market-based solutions alone will achieve this. They must have a major part to play, but is there not a case for more direct government action in partnership with local authorities to help address the chronic lack of low-cost and social housing in particular?
After the Second World War, council house construction was typically between 150,000 and 200,000 units a year until the mid-1950s. Indeed, I was brought up and lived for the first 20 years of my life in one of the houses built in the peak year. Given that real assets are created by house construction, is there not a case for more direct government action to complement the market-based solutions? Looking back over the last 20 or 30 years, it seems to me that the market has failed to deliver. How can we be so confident for the future?
House prices are a major issue in many areas of the country. Market forces have driven them to their current level, and presumably it will not suit the major players in the market to see house prices come down. It would hardly be popular in political terms either to have a large number of people losing nominal wealth or slipping into negative equity. In the past, inflation used to enable Governments to manage this because a static cash value could then be complemented by some drop in real value through inflation. That is just not happening in this extraordinary period of stable inflation. As I look at the housing issues, there seems to be something missing in the analysis to join it all up, putting the market-based solutions together with appropriate government initiatives. We will have to see where we go; if the market delivers 300,000 units by the mid-2020s, I shall eat my cassock.
My final example is spending on children’s and young people’s services. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, mentioned the figure of 52% in relation to cuts. The real-terms figure I had was more like 25%. One way or another, huge cuts have been made to support services for young people through the decade of austerity. I welcome the extra £100 million for the police specifically to tackle knife crime, but that is for only one year and addresses the problem in only one dimension. We surely need a much more joined-up, multiagency approach. That will require the restoration of some of the funding cut from budgets for children’s and, especially, youth services. It is not just the symptoms of knife crime but its sources that need to be addressed. The fact that so many boys growing up in our society have no male role models to learn from is a feature of our society in terms of family dynamics and breakdown. The state cannot substitute entirely—it is a job for all of us—but it has a role. The cuts to spending on youth services over the past 10 years have been quite myopic in that regard.
An “end to austerity” is linked in the Statement to higher wages, lower taxes and increases in public spending. The balance here in the future is crucial. After a decade of well-nigh unprecedented cuts in public spending, I hope the forthcoming spending review will focus upon what needs to be done to undergird and build a safe and civilised society. Public money must be spent wisely and effectively, but in our complex and pluralist society I suspect we will need even more government action in the future to address the problems that will inevitably emerge to complement the vitality of a market economy based on individual freedom.
I know at first hand, through my family, the example which the Scandinavian countries have set. Scotland, to where I will shortly retire, is currently putting its own toe in the water of somewhat higher taxes to fund even better public services. We will have to see what the outcomes look like in due course, but the principle of tax-funded excellence in public services seems to me a noble aim. While it is there to a degree in the Statement, I wish it were just a bit more prominent.
The Chancellor has also made some welcome initiatives in tackling some of the big international technological companies that are trading in the UK but are not paying their fair share of taxes. To be effective, tackling the tax avoidance of big international companies will require international solutions—but it is also a UK problem. UK companies paying their proper corporation tax have to compete with companies that in many cases are not paying their fair share of tax. So, while it is an international problem, it is often a UK problem as well. In my view, that unfair competition has to stop.
Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, stated recently that the amount of international tax avoidance was in the order of $600 billion a year. That is massive—it is something like a quarter of all the corporate taxes that are collected in the world. We are talking about big potatoes; it is big money. The IMF recently issued a discussion document making some suggestions as to how this problem might be tackled. There is no doubt that it will be difficult. At the heart of the problem is the transfer of trading profits from high-tax companies to low-tax companies by rather doubtful finance charges and massive charges for intellectual property rights, which gets the tax down in that country and puts the profits into low-tax areas.
As far as I understand it from reading the document, the IMF seems to be saying that in essence it believes that profits should be struck before finance charges and intellectual property rights. That would be part of the solution, but obviously it brings other problems as well. Will my noble friend make sure that the Chancellor understands the problem? Of course he understands the problem, but he ought to understand this as well. The British taxation system and the expertise of our people are highly regarded in many parts of the world. We ought to be making a big contribution to the world’s solutions to these problems. We cannot do it all ourselves, but we can at least make a contribution. I think that is very important.
My noble friend Lord Forsyth, who is chairman of your Lordships’ Select Committee on Economic Affairs—a position which I held at one time, God knows how many years ago now—has called into question the way that HMRC seeks to deal with the loan charge taxes that the Government seek to impose on those who, often with accounting and legal advice, entered into arrangements to receive loans that were unlikely to be called in and at the same time saved a lot of tax and national insurance.
I have a great deal of sympathy for people in that position, but the schemes came out, if I remember rightly, around the year 2000 when I was still active in companies. A number of companies that I advised came up with these fancy ideas and I persuaded every one of them that it was not the route that they ought wisely to take. So, while the Select Committee was right to say that the people who perpetuate these schemes and bring them forward have a great deal of responsibility, I cannot entirely rule out the people who have entered into them. If you are offered a scheme that means that by some fiddle-de-do you do not pay any tax at all, you ought to approach it with a great deal of caution—and I do not think that that has entirely been the case. But I think that HMRC has a case against the people who perpetuate these schemes.
I will conclude with a nice reference to stamp duty. I do not think I have ever made a speech in this House on economic matters without touching on stamp duty. I was a Treasury Minister 30 years ago and I had awful battles in the Treasury over stamp duty because it wanted me to sign a foreword to a discussion document about stamp duty and I had a frightful battle to tone down the words. The Treasury loves stamp duty because it is an easy tax to collect. It raises a lot of money and it is efficient and easy to collect. However, as my noble friend behind me said, it is an economically damaging tax. It stops downsizing in housing and is essentially a tax on change. My noble friend was right to say that the Chancellor had made some changes. However, I will go on mentioning this every time I speak, until he makes the sort of changes that I want. Good luck to him.
This is an Alice Through the Looking-Glass world, in which we were led to expect a Spring Statement with no new tax or spending measures but in which, days before the Chancellor’s Statement, the Prime Minister could announce an insulting seven-year, £1.6 billion investment fund, ostensibly to boost growth in Britain’s “left behind” towns, which have been ravaged by tens of billions of pounds of public spending cuts and never-ending austerity. It is a world in which in-work benefits remain frozen and public spending plans face further brutal cuts unless the Treasury eases its grip. It is a world in which the Chancellor’s claims that austerity is coming to an end are contradicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility’s reports confirming that the 10-year Tory budget squeeze remains in place—a squeeze that, by 2020, will have taken more than £150 billion of spending out of the economy in tax rises and public spending cuts. It is little comfort to know that under his predecessor’s plans, the squeeze on national spending would have been closer to £200 billion.
The Chancellor and some commentators have pointed to lower government borrowing over the past year as a portent of a brighter future. Sky’s Ed Conway recently noted that annual public borrowing is now lower than it was before the financial crisis, which is true. As a proportion of GDP, it is now about half what it was in 2007—but in 2007, GDP grew by 3%, more than twice as fast as in 2018, and business investment was increasing, not falling like last year. Faster growth makes higher public spending and higher borrowing more affordable.
There was a time when the leader of the Conservative Party embraced the idea of sharing the proceeds of growth between the public and private sectors to build a civilised society. Today’s Tories remain intent on starving public services of funds, sacrificing economic growth in the process. In the real world, the UK economy is crying out for a fiscal boost from the Chancellor to promote faster expansion and put an end to austerity once and for all. That boost should focus on infrastructure investment, social housing, skills and training, care for the elderly and low-carbon, greener growth. Decades of underinvestment in UK infrastructure, in our people and in fighting global warming need to be corrected. There is no time to lose.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester said, absolutely correctly, that there was no mention of social care in the Chancellor’s Statement. That should be a crying priority for any Government. The noble Lord, Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court, spoke of a social care tax. He is right: I do not think that the incredible crisis in elderly care can be solved by dumping it on families in a lottery of burden. Virtually every family in the country now faces this problem, which needs to be dealt with through extra taxation, possibly compiled with some sort of insurance as well.
The Chancellor says that he is holding £26 billion of fiscal headroom in reserve. If he has such a trump card, as he implies, keeping it up his sleeve is doing no one any good. Britain has already endured the slowest recovery from recession in the post-war period, all under this Government since 2010. Now the Chancellor is prolonging the pain of lacklustre growth. He talks a good game about ending austerity but cannot bring himself to take the decisions needed to match his words. His Spring Statement has been another missed opportunity, another squandered chance, to give the green light to the faster growth this country desperately needs.
We have an unprecedented situation where representatives of the police, head teachers, local government and hospital workers are all saying that, at the very least, they are stretched to a level that is impacting on services; at worst, they are at crisis point. Between 2010 and 2020 councils will have lost 60 pence out of every pound that the Government provide for public services. Compounding that funding gap is the now critical lack of clarity about where council funding will actually come from after this year. Many people in local government and beyond are rightly calling it a post-2020 cliff edge, and we are moving dangerously ever closer.
The proposed spending review will be setting overall departmental budgets for the coming years. That is good, but it has not even begun yet, so councils simply do not know broadly what their funding levels will be after 2020. How are they able to plan for the continued delivery of vital services? Added to that uncertainty, long-awaited reform of business rates retention and fair funding are still ongoing. Those are due to be implemented from April next year, which will leave councils with a matter of months to adapt. Some councils will inevitably be worse off, but they do not know which they are yet. Others will be eager to retain more of the business rates they collect so as to spend it locally, but are currently in the dark about whether they will be allowed to. Clarity is urgently needed. At the very least, the Government should commit to taking levels of deprivation into account when deciding what councils’ relative financial spending needs are.
In response to my recent Question on this matter, the noble lord, Lord Bourne, told me that I was wrong. If so, could he please make a statement to reassure councils that deprivation levels will be taken into account in the baseline funding when the new so-called fair funding formula is revealed? That would alleviate current concerns being felt in the sector, as this is certainly not the perceived position.
The Chancellor also mentioned a £10 billion reduction in business rates and plans for revaluation from 2021. There is also a massive backlog in appeals for revaluation on current business rate levels. Given that a significant part of a council’s resources will in the future depend on business rate levels and growth, those are both factors that inject further instability into the process. With the plans for an increase to 80% business rate retention and the implementation of the fair funding formula both progressing at a snail’s pace, it is little wonder that there is widespread concern.
It goes without saying that this continued financial uncertainty is not good for our communities. This is not about process; it is about people. Councils must be trusted to get on with the job of delivering valued services locally, creating the best solutions for their areas, which they know best. They want to help the Government meet national targets for things such as new homes, job creation and preventing ill health, but they are currently unable to do as much as they could do. Put simply, they are being handicapped by an acute lack of financial certainty, which must be urgently addressed. This in turn is hurting those who depend on the services provided by local councils, many of whom will be among the most vulnerable people in our society.
Finally, I agree with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson, about council tax. What is the difference between Brexit and raising council tax? With Brexit, you get only one referendum, so you cannot change your mind. But if you want to raise council tax, you can have a referendum year after year after year—so you can change your mind, depending on the circumstances. That is why council tax has not risen enough to cover needs over the last years. Local government has long asked for that to be revoked. It has not happened yet.