Financial Stability: Private Equity Firms

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

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

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

If private equity is so keen on employing people in this country, how come it is not so keen on paying the pensions? The private equity owners of Boots have just got rid of the pension responsibilities.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The noble Lord mentions a situation I am not aware of, but I will say that all owners of UK companies must abide by the Companies Act and their obligations therein.

Bank of England: Interest Rate Policy

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

The noble Lord does not reflect on the action that has been taken by this Government that has supported those who struggle most to meet the rising cost of living, with more than £90 billion of support last year and this year focused on those who need it the most, including the energy price guarantee, direct support with energy bills and cost of living payments worth hundreds of pounds to millions of families across the country.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware that the Select Committee has received abundant evidence that central bankers talk too much?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I am not aware of all the evidence that the Select Committee that the noble Lord refers to has received, but I am sure that once the Select Committee produces its report the Government will read it with interest.

Wagner Group: Sanctions Regime

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I absolutely agree with my noble friend on the need for co-ordination across government. Obviously different regimes, such as the sanction regime and the proscription regime, have different legal frameworks. I am sure that across government we are working to look at all the tools we have available to ensure that groups supporting the atrocities we see in Ukraine are stopped and that we use the powers we have to intervene on their actions.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

What was the specific rank of the civil servants who took this decision?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I do not have that information and I would not comment on that. It is important to understand that this decision was clearly taken within the legal framework for sanctions that we have, which has been approved by this Parliament.

Autumn Statement 2022

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I also welcome the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Lea. Although I was not in the Chamber, I was listening, and I very much welcome how the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, welcomed her. Also, following the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, gives me the opportunity to apologise to her for a comment that I made on a speech of hers some 12 months ago, in which I questioned her sincerity. It is a bit late in the day, but my apology is sincerely meant.

I intend to concentrate exclusively on the recent report from Barnardo’s, At What Cost? The Impact of the Cost-of-living Crisis on Children and Young People. Children are our future—that is what this financial Budget should be all about. But I will kick off with the Ben Jennings cartoon in the Guardian last Friday. A father and son are at a kitchen table; the son is eating and the dad has a cup of tea. The son says to the father:

“Dad—when will I be grown up enough not to need dinner any more, like you?”


Table 1.4b in the DWP’s households below average income statistics tells us that 3.9 million children in the UK are living in relative poverty after housing costs. That is more than one in four children in the UK, and 75% of them are in a family where at least one person is working. A YouGov poll for Barnardo’s found that 54% of parents have been forced to cut back on food spending for their family in the past 12 months, 20% struggled to provide food, 26% said that their children’s mental health had worsened, the same number had sold possessions and 16% had left their pets at rescue centres. Time does not permit me to record the statistics from Barnardo’s practitioners, but around two-thirds are supporting a child experiencing poverty, providing access to food banks or giving or signposting access to clothing.

The report notes that

“Persistent poverty can affect a child’s brain development in ways that are harmful to their physical and mental health”,


citing the LSE Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion. Poverty creates anxiety, and the challenges created by Covid are likely to continue as rising living costs create more anxiety. I picked up such anxiety in two recent Zoom sessions with schools in different parts of the country in the Learn with the Lords programme.

The Barnardo’s report is easy to obtain and read. There are 120 citations and five recommendations, which I will summarise. The first is:

“We recommend the extension of free school meals to all primary school pupils in England”.


Kids must get at least one hot, healthy meal a day, which would overcome the stigma and red tape in present system. Only 22% of children—1.9 million—are eligible for free school meals, but it is estimated that a further 1 million in poverty remain ineligible. Participation is needed for all on universal credit, most of whom are in work.

Barnardo’s second recommendation is:

“Develop and implement a ‘full participation plan’ to ensure vulnerable children can engage … in school life, no matter their home circumstances”.


The recommendation also mentions:

“school trips, and wraparound care through an 8am-6pm extended schools offer which includes access to breakfast clubs and after school clubs”.

On welcome care, the first adult some children see in a day is a teacher, mum or dad having gone early to a cleaning job. Some kids see their younger siblings off to their schools. Uniform grants should also be included for England, as in Wales and Scotland. My view is that we should ban posh, up-market requirements for uniforms —the rules are designed to exclude some children from those schools in the first place.

The third recommendation from Barnardo’s is to:

“Strengthen social security to provide a lifeline to families on a low income.”


Yes, it needs more than the inflation uprating, but I do not want to be churlish and welcome the Government uprating by inflation. It requires targeted support to get us through this winter. Barnardo’s thinks that the Government should reintroduce the £20 universal credit uplift. It says that we are entering a period comparable to that during Covid, and that the Government should also:

“Reverse the two-child limit, which is now the largest single driver of UK child poverty.”


The fourth recommendation from Barnardo’s is:

“Improve mental health interventions and support to combat isolation for vulnerable children and young people.”


The research for the report identified young people saying they felt

“as though they were living in an extended lockdown as rising … costs”

limit their access to activities in education and training. As I said earlier, I raised this point myself in recent Zoom sessions. Although neither the children nor the staff put it in exactly that way, that was the message that I picked up.

Finally, the fifth recommendation is:

“Extend family hubs to every community.”


The report says:

“Family hubs provide a ‘local nerve centre’ for … family support within a community, from stay and play groups, to breastfeeding support to help with issues such as finding a job or applying for benefits. In the 2021 report ‘It Takes a Village’ Barnardo’s calculated that for every £1 invested in its Isle of Wight family hub service, £2.60 of savings were generated.”


Access to work is not the complete answer, otherwise we would not have the majority of universal credit claimants at work. The taxpayer is subsidising low-paying employers on a grand scale; the Government appear happy to continue with this. It is costing billions of pounds to subsidise those employers. I suspect that the forthcoming report from the Economic Affairs Committee regarding the missing 600,000 workers will refer to those who cannot now work due to a lack of access to, or the level of, childcare costs. In fact, the willingness and capacity of people to work is our greatest asset—it is the greatest asset of any country—yet we make it so difficult for many people to start work or get back into work. Low incomes are connected to low birth weights, leading to poor physical health and chronic conditions, according to the Office for National Statistics. Infants in the top 10% of most deprived areas are twice as likely to die in infancy as in the top 10% of least deprived areas, which is also according to the ONS. If they had the same mortality risk, this would amount to over 700 fewer children dying per year in the UK. So what is the answer to the son in the Jennings cartoon? It is certainly not the present policies, as the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said. The Tory Government have done too much damage to the UK for them to remain; it is time for them to go.

Stock Markets

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I think my noble friend has reminded the House on my behalf of those figures. I take the opportunity to say that we are not complacent about London’s position, and we are doing a lot of work beyond the Financial Services and Markets Bill to ensure that it remains competitive—the listings review from the noble Lord, Lord Hill, the second capital raising review and the wholesale markets review, among other pieces of work. The FCA has already delivered a number of rule changes based on the listings review to ensure that we remain competitive.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

Is not London the money laundering capital of the world?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

The noble Lord will know that risks come alongside being a premier financial centre. The important thing is that we take action to address those risks. That is what the Government have been doing and will continue to do. We had part one of the economic crime Bill in the previous Session and part two will be forthcoming.

Budget Statement

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, before I start, I will say that I agree with everything the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, said in her speech about housing, particularly about the threat of planning. I have said before that we should get planning out of DCLG and into BIS, as part of changing the culture of planning.

We should have a little history lesson before we close down for the election. I realise that the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, and my noble friends Lord Layard and Lady Smith have mentioned the past, but I want to do that in a little more detail. Do any of your Lordships remember 40 straight quarters of economic growth under Tony Blair—there, I have mentioned his name? There were 40 straight quarters of growth under Tony Blair. The UK entered economic recession in the second quarter of 2008 and—wait for it—left it in the fourth quarter of 2009. We then had three quarters of economic growth under Alistair Darling. Then we had the coalition.

A bit more history—if you google, “How did the economic crisis start?” or “What caused the economic crisis?”, you do not get the answer, “Labour”. It was born in the United States of America, and the answers you do get from various websites, whether the Economist or Accuracy in Media, are the reminder that we all need. The crisis had multiple causes, but the most obvious is the financiers themselves, and central bankers and regulators also bear the blame. We are reminded when we look at these sites of the terms “subprime mortgages” and “collateralised debt obligations”—CDOs. We are also reminded that it started in the USA, where a house price slump began in 2006. By 2008 in the United States, 6% of all mortgages were in default, which was three times the rate of the historical record. Risky loans were made under pressure—and, by heaven, they were risky, with no deposits and no verification of incomes.

Remember Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were backed by the US Government? They were ordered to buy up these risky loans. The writing was on the wall. In the United States, attempt after attempt that was made to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was blocked by the Democrats. The Clinton Justice Department threatened banks with fines if they did not make the dodgy loans. This is all on the record. Clinton reduced Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s reserve requirements, leaving them, backed by the taxpayer, even more vulnerable when those dodgy loans started defaulting. This is all on the record.

The trust was lost the year before the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. The first casualty of the American-led collapse in the UK was Northern Rock, which was saved by the Government—I fully accept that people might have lost jobs but nobody lost any savings, as it was part of the bailing out of the banks. Looking at these sites, we are reminded that, in the US and UK, regulators were asleep at the wheel. There was severe criticism of them for letting Lehman Brothers go when they did, as it simply multiplied the panic. In the US and the UK, the banks thought they had found a way to banish risk and, under pressure from shareholders, operated with minimum equity, leaving them vulnerable.

I do not see why my senior colleagues have allowed history to be rewritten. That is the reality, and that is my criticism of the shadow Cabinet, because it has been rewritten. The record of the last Labour Government on economic growth—getting us out of the recession before the coalition—is there for everyone to see, as is the new Labour record in respect of: the minimum wage; literacy and numeracy hours; NHS Direct; more than 2,000 Sure Starts; full-time workers getting 24 paid days holiday for the first time; 1 million pensioners out of poverty; 600,000 children out of poverty; 1 million social houses brought up to standard; free TV licences for the over-75s; free off-peak travel nationally for the first time for pensioners; free eye tests for the over-60s; free nursery for three and four year-olds; the doubling of pupil funding in England; the cutting of long-term youth unemployment by 75%; the cleanest rivers, beaches and drinking water since before the Industrial Revolution; and the New Deal getting 1.8 million back to work.

I could go on and on and on about the record of that Government, but the point is the Labour leadership should be going on and on about it. I fully accept that new Labour has moved on, but there is no reason not to tell the good story of what was achieved and to stop the rewriting of history. Of course there were mistakes—I was in government most of the time and know some of the internal mistakes that were made. The big, key one of course was the appalling lack of honesty and planning over the Iraq invasion. But come on, election victories came on the back of that record and can do so again—but only if we are prepared to remind people of the facts. That is the reality, but there is a self-denying ordinance: do not talk about new Labour, because of the Iraq war. Therefore, you do not talk about the leadership and the positive things that came from that Government. Then you allow history to be rewritten so that we get the blame for the recession. That is the reality, but we have time to turn it around, if they get their backsides off their seats. That is my view.

Now we have rising levels of inequality, for which I will give just one example. I am not pleased about the inequality but I am pleased that I chose this example before I heard that the Prime Minister had been booed by pensioners on the issue earlier this week. In the field of social care, there has been very unequal treatment. A report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation last week, The Cost of the Cuts: The Impact on Local Government and Poorer Communities, showed that social care spending in the most deprived communities has fallen, in real terms, by 14%, but in the least deprived communities it has risen by 8%. The reality is that in the most deprived it has fallen by £65 a head—14%—and in the least deprived it has risen by 8%, which is £28 a head. The independent analysis by CIPFA shows that in the least deprived 40% of local authorities, funding for social care has risen, and in the most deprived 60% of local authorities funding for social care has fallen. People are seeing this as a blatant unfairness—no wonder the Prime Minister was surprised when he got booed by pensioners. He was boasting about the NHS and they said, “But you have cut social care”, because the two are interlinked and that is where the cut is now being felt, particularly with the substantial impact on poorer households. That is not the kind of society we should be creating.

I regret that I missed the beginning of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, but his final point was—which is true and has been said before but has been denied by Ministers—that the attempt is to depress and close down the size of the state. That is what it is about—making a smaller state. The consequences of that are horrendous with the inequalities we already have. I think we should reverse that and we can do it on 7 May.

Pension Schemes Bill

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

It is not the point at which money goes from ISAs into pensions that is a deprivation of assets. Deprivation of assets may occur if and when money is taken out of one or both of those pots.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

I have listened with care to my noble friend, and although I have not participated in the debate, I understand the issue. Surely by moving an ISA into a pension pot, the individual then does not have access to buy, sell or add to the ISA. It is just not available; it is now hidden in the pension pot. Therefore, the individual deprives himself or herself of the choice they had when they had the ISA. It is fairly simple: is it or is it not something that could be penalised? People need to know this. If we are not careful, there will be chaos in this country later in the year as regards people with small pensions and small ISA pots.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I thought I had just said that if you move money from your ISA into your pension pot that does not qualify to be treated as a deprivation of assets. You are not taking that asset as income and you are not spending it; you are moving it from one pot to another.

National Infrastructure

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, I have agreed with almost every speech that I have heard today. I resented the petty, demeaning, partisan comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, but they were the exception.

I tore up my notes and will use as an aid the Chamber of Commerce note that we all had because I agree with all the points it raises. When I visited an infrastructure project recently—the oldest railway tunnel in the world in daily use, a couple of miles down the road—I thought: what would Brunel think about us today, with our lethargy on infrastructure?

The message I took from the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, was crucial: the need for sequential planning to ensure that you can smooth things out and do not have all the cranes at once and then nothing for months afterwards. I think that is really important.

Let’s face it: until this Government came along, the last person to order a nuclear power station in this country was the late Tony Benn. The previous Government missed the post—we know that—with the disastrous 2003 energy White Paper. Between the start of HS2 under the previous Government and it being fully supported by this one, there was a hiatus for about a year when there was a bit of backsliding within my own party, which we had to correct in this House by making it clear that we were fully in support and wanted to buy into it.

That brings me to the point. I do not know too much about the plan for the commission and building it all together, but what is clearly needed is a grand coalition on infrastructure that goes across Parliaments. We cannot go on saying that no Parliament can bind itself; by definition, it has to bind itself on infrastructure planning, otherwise we waste a fortune in money, crash hopes, destroy industry and end up not doing anything. So it requires more than what probably is planned. We need to tie ourselves down. The consensus we have here today shows that that can be done.

On motorways, years ago I was amazed when the noble Lord, Lord Mawhinney, as Transport Secretary, published a paper showing how small a proportion of the population actually regularly used a motorway—in other words, those who use them should pay for them or pay a contribution. I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, that it is not too late to do that. Energy storage was on the list as well. Our gas storage is woefully inadequate and I do not think we have done much about it in the past decade. We are heading for trouble.

The Government own enough land to build 1.5 million houses. Most of it is brownfield, as my noble friend Lord Rogers said. Why are we not using it as a master plan within the Government? I do not worship the green belt like everybody else—most of it is rubbish land. It is not areas of outstanding natural beauty and it is not the national parks—they are quite separate. It is the urban collar around the big cities where the infrastructure is already there to have houses added to. That is the key point: we do not have to go for big greenfield new towns any more. It is not necessary. We can use the land we have. As I say, the Government own enough land to build 1.5 million houses on, and basically they ought to get on with it.

I agree that infrastructure should stick with the Treasury. Whatever I might have said about the Treasury in the past, the long-term nature of the Treasury is crucial. The DWP is subcontracted to the Treasury. Every decision that it makes on pensions and benefits has a 30-year to 40-year consequential change, and it is crucial that the Treasury is four-square with that. With infrastructure, it is exactly the same. The Treasury does not have to take the detailed decisions, but rest assured that it has a bigger bite on it than it used to have.

Tax: Aggressive Tax Avoidance

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, the work in that area has been carried forward by the OECD, which produced a comprehensive 15-point action plan. Work on all those points is now under way. The first deliverables, on transport pricing, are due in September this year. At the EU level, noble Lords will have seen that the EU is currently investigating the tax position in Luxembourg, Ireland and the Netherlands, specifically with Amazon, Apple and Starbucks in mind.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

I do not wish to be misunderstood, but is it not the case, generally speaking—there is evidence to support this—that when tax rates are lowered, more revenue flows into the Treasury?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, there is very extensive academic literature about the so-called Laffer curve, and I suspect there are very different views on it in your Lordships’ House. It is undoubtedly the case at the extreme ends of the curve that if you tax very highly the rate falls of because people find ways of avoiding it, and if the tax rate is very low the rate falls off simply because the rate per taxable unit is so much less.

Living Standards

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2011 Lords Chamber

Tabled By

[Lord Rooker]

To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their response to the Resolution Foundation's Commission on Living Standards' report Missing Out, published on 27 July 2011.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, in the absence of my noble friend Lord Rooker, and at his request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.