Lords
Oral Questions
18 September 2025
11 contributions
Road Pricing
That short reply will allow lots of time for questions. Three years ago, the Transport Select Committee in another place produced a unanimous report on road pricing. The committee’s chair said:
“It’s time for an honest conversation on motoring taxes”,
and the committee called on the Government to …
My Lords, when I worked at No. 10, I led a team, which had Treasury representation, that looked at road-user charging alongside other transport issues. Does the Minister accept that a flexible system of road-user charging could bring many benefits, such as an allocation of free mileage for the less …
+9 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
17 September 2025
3 contributions
Financial Services (Overseas Recognition Regime Designations) Regulations 2025
My Lords, the regulations before the Committee today will help ensure the effective operation of overseas recognition regimes. Specifically, they provide the Treasury with the powers needed to ensure that designations of individual jurisdictions are assessed and implemented in a manner that is compa…
My Lords, I fully understand that this statutory instrument updates the basis on which the UK grants equivalence to the financial law and market practice of overseas jurisdictions. The Treasury obviously needs the powers to designate, limit or revoke equivalence. I am rather bemused that the Treasur…
+1 more contribution in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
17 September 2025
10 contributions
Making Tax Digital
I thank my noble friend the Minister for the helpful Answer. Given that Making Tax Digital has significantly increased the cost of compliance for small businesses through mandatory software and subscriptions, what steps are the Government taking to mitigate those burdens? Might this rollout be the r…
My Lords, Making Tax Digital is not targeted at upskilling self-employed people and landlords; it is about cutting costs at HMRC. The requirements have led to a surge in calls to HMRC for guidance, but over half a million calls went unhandled in January, and the same in February, the last months for…
+8 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
16 September 2025
10 contributions
Economic Growth
Indeed it is, but the ONS said that there is zero growth in GDP. Of course, that means that GDP per capita will be negative, partly because productive people are leaving and less productive people are arriving. The markets have made their view of our economy clear, as our borrowing rates are higher …
My Lords, 50% of the economy is small and medium-sized businesses. In its commentary on today’s rise in unemployment and fall in vacancies, the British Chambers of Commerce highlighted employment costs; in particular, it singled out the hike in employers’ national insurance. Earlier today, those nob…
+8 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
9 September 2025
7 contributions
Pension Funds: Use of UK-listed Investment Companies
I thank the Minister for that Answer. As he says, UK-listed investment companies are a world-leading, well-established route to investing in illiquid assets such as infrastructure, real estate, energy and life sciences—the very investments that the Government are seeking defined contribution pension…
I express my support for my noble friend on the points made by the noble Baroness. There is an issue here that needs to be resolved. There is also a broader issue that I ask my noble friend to respond on: the use of private equity funds in pension schemes. To put it mildly, private equity has a mixe…
+5 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
2 September 2025
11 contributions
Gilt Yields
The noble Lord is generally dismissive of criticism of economic policy, but the bond markets do not lie and their current verdict is crushing, with borrowing rates at a 27-year high. Sterling also slid this morning. Will the Government even now change course, adopt measures that really support growt…
My Lords, the Financial Secretary is right to point out that yields on German bunds have risen almost as much as yields on gilts in the UK over the last month, but does he recognise the importance of ensuring that the UK’s economic policy does not stand out from other medium-sized countries in Europ…
+9 more contributions in this session
Lords
Proceedings
23 July 2025
8 contributions
Financial Services Reform
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lady Kramer, for their questions and comments. I will do my best to address all the points they raised.
The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, spoke about the economy in general. She will be aware that we have had to take…
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her contribution. There was a lot there. There was a crumb of truth in the things she said, but I certainly do not accept the characterisation of any of the three points she made. She started by talking about risk-taking. Do we want informed consumers to be ab…
+6 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
17 July 2025
8 contributions
Tackling Unsustainable Debt
My Lords, the UK High Court has ordered South Sudan, one of the world’s poorest countries, to pay $657 million in debt servicing to a for-profit bank. That is half its annual income. Surely we have the power and moral responsibility to prevent this happening. The previous Government passed Andrew Gw…
My Lords, does the Minister recognise that the concerns he just expressed about the legislation referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, are exactly the sorts of concerns that were issued in advance of Andrew Gwynne’s Act in 2010 and that were found, on review, to be without merit? Does he rec…
+6 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
15 July 2025
12 contributions
Taxes
I thank the Minister for his Answer, which is much as I expected. The Government recently had their first anniversary, which was marked by a series of U-turns. Will the noble Lord use his persuasive powers to ask his Treasury colleagues to get rid of the jobs tax, making one further U-turn?
My Lords, when the Treasury is considering how it is going to increase its revenue, will it give careful consideration to the fact that UK graduates repaying student loans are already disadvantaged, in that they are paying 9% additional tax above just over £20,000 to pay off their loans? Here is an …
+10 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
14 July 2025
11 contributions
Tourism Levy
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that encouraging reply. Will he ensure that powers which might be required to enable local authorities to develop such a tourist tax will be included in legislation extending devolutionary powers, so that local authorities can work with businesses and other civic i…
My Lords, I am sure that the Minister’s words will be greatly reassuring to the hospitality industry. However, in light of the important contribution that is made by the visitor economy to both wealth creation and jobs, can the Minister give the House an assurance that if any proposal were to be bro…
+9 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
14 July 2025
13 contributions
Tax on Imports under £135
My Lords, I am glad the Government are reviewing it; as the Minister is aware, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, RAVAS, the British Retail Consortium and many others have been campaigning on this issue for many years. Now that President Trump is reducing the exemption tariff for goods into the US, there w…
My Lords, I will row in behind the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, on this issue. Could we get a slightly more satisfactory answer on why it is taking so long to find a solution so that the UK can collect the VAT that is due on small items? Will the Minister remember not just that we need the money for tax …
+11 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
10 July 2025
11 contributions
Tax Increases
I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer. It is very clear, following recent events, that this Government are not going to make any meaningful reform of the welfare system and save any money, despite saying that the system is broken. They have said they are not going to touch their existing spe…
My Lords, in all our discussions of tax and spend, we very rarely address the third pillar—the state of the gilts market. Was the Minister as taken aback as I was to read in the OBR report that, at the end of June, the UK tenure bond yield had the third-highest borrowing cost of any advanced economy…
+9 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
10 July 2025
8 contributions
Primary Stock Exchange Listings
Since tabling this Question, AstraZeneca, the biggest company on the London Stock Exchange, has discussed shifting its stock market listing to the US. This would be a real blow to our stock market of £160 billion. It is also increasingly feared that AstraZeneca could be redomiciled to the US, riskin…
My noble friend raises an important issue, and I am grateful for his reply. The noble Baroness raised the large companies, but surely the real problem is the rebalancing over several years of the London Stock Exchange away from the funding of small start-ups which are proving their worth and need to…
+6 more contributions in this session
Lords
Proceedings
8 July 2025
10 contributions
Government Performance against Fiscal Rules
The noble Baroness mentions many things. She mentions debt. Of course, the last Government doubled the national debt. There is one reason why we are where we are. It is because of the last Government losing control of the economy—something that this Government will not do. We will meet our fiscal ru…
I normally try to agree with the noble Baroness, but that is one of the most extraordinary questions I have heard in these debates. She says that we should protect the NHS and then says that we should not have the main measure that is funding the NHS. If she wants the investment in the NHS, she has …
+8 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
7 July 2025
10 contributions
Unpaid Tax
I thank the Minister for his Answer. He will be aware that in May the National Audit Office reported on collecting the right tax from wealthy individuals. It noted that
“underlying levels of non-compliance among the wealthy … could be much greater”
than anticipated and that, based on the most rece…
My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s response—heaven knows, after last week the Government will have to raise a hell of a lot of tax to compensate for the extra expense they are incurring. On offshore tax avoidance, he will be aware that 3 million parcels a week arrive in the UK from offshore supplier…
+8 more contributions in this session
Lords
Committee Stage
7 July 2025
4 contributions
Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Regulated Activities etc.) (Amendment) Order 2025
My Lords, I begin by extending my thanks to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for the detailed and thoughtful consideration of this draft order in its report published last month; I will respond fully to the points raised by the committee. I also take this opportunity to welcome the suppo…
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this order and for his thorough summary. It is an important measure, and the Committee is surprisingly thin today.
Borrowing with a defined repayment period is a long-standing practice, with many well-established advantages that most of us have benefit…
+2 more contributions in this session
Lords
Proceedings
24 June 2025
12 contributions
UK Infrastructure: 10-year Strategy
I am very grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lady Kramer, for their comments and questions, and for their broad support and welcome for this strategy.
The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, began in her non-partisan mode, which I will try to replicate if I can. She talked fir…
I completely agree with what the noble Lord said about the importance of that sector. He mentioned the example of the energy sector and, as I said, we have, in the industrial strategy, made an investment into engineering skills, which are particularly important in that sector. I hear what he is sayi…
+10 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
23 June 2025
10 contributions
Business Rates Reform
I thank my noble friend the Minister for that reply. Business improvement districts—BIDs—are vital to local economies and high street regeneration, and rely heavily on the business rates system. Will my noble friend commit to consulting them directly through bodies such as Association of Town & …
My Lords, what assessment have the Government made of the impact of changing business rates here in London on the West End? High Streets UK has labelled the Bill a bit of a disaster and said it will be bad for growth, bad for investment and bad for jobs, and puts too much burden on Britain’s flagshi…
+8 more contributions in this session
Lords
Proceedings
12 June 2025
23 contributions
Spending Review 2025
I am very grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lady Kramer, for their comments and questions on yesterday’s spending review Statement.
It would have been perfectly credible for the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, to say she cannot support any of this investment because she d…
I am grateful to my noble friend for her kind words and her good wishes. I absolutely agree with her. One of the central themes of this spending review is making sure that growth is both created in all parts of the country and felt in all parts of the country. For too long, we have been reliant on j…
+21 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
12 June 2025
9 contributions
Winter Fuel Payment
My Lords, since tabling this Question, we have had 40 minutes of exchanges on Tuesday. In fairness to the Minister, he addressed most of the questions, albeit at times provocatively. However, he did not answer the question from my noble friend Lord Hailsham, who asked why, when the Government needed…
My Lords, the noble Lord asks whether there is a plan. Can the Minister confirm that there is a plan, and whether, if it does not work, they will again have another plan? Things change so much. Is there a reserve plan for when this plan does not work?
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
11 June 2025
9 contributions
Economic Growth
I thank the Minister for his reply. On GDP growth, I doubt the 0.7% increase in the first quarter will be replicated later in the year. There is an old expression: one swallow does not make a summer. I suspect that that will be the case. Moody’s rating agency recently said that the Chancellor’s £25 …
My Lords, is the Minister aware that earlier this afternoon I had the great pleasure of being in the Peers’ Gallery to hear a brilliant speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which was followed by an awful diatribe from Mr Stride, or “Baby Steps” as he is now called? Does the Minister agree that…
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Proceedings
10 June 2025
20 contributions
Winter Fuel Payment
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, and the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, for their questions and comments. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for welcoming this change of policy, and I thank both speakers for the consensus that now exists across the Ho…
Well, I think it is true.
The noble Baroness asked specifically about the tax system. No additional pensioner will be brought into the tax system because of this change; we can give that assurance to the House today.
The noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, asked about recouping payments from d…
+18 more contributions in this session
Lords
Oral Questions
9 June 2025
9 contributions
Social Care and Special Education Charities: Employer National Insurance Contributions
The Government’s national insurance increase to 15%, plus lowering the threshold to £5,000, will cost charities an additional £1.4 billion annually. One in four employers are implementing redundancies as a result. This will drastically cut charitable services, which is akin to kicking in the teeth t…
My Lords, does the Minister agree that the Government have already published several comprehensive spending review announcements over the past week? Does he further accept that social care funding is inextricably linked to the NHS’s recovery? Will he therefore use this opportunity to reassure the Ho…
+7 more contributions in this session
Lords
Proceedings
5 June 2025
14 contributions
Regional Growth
I am very grateful to both noble Baronesses, Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lady Pidgeon, for their questions, and I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, to her place and look forward to speaking with her in many more of these debates.
The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, asked a number of question…
It will include buses too, of course.
+12 more contributions in this session