Overseas Development Assistance
Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Bates(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, at the risk of being tedious, we have not in any way expunged the Act. We have suspended it in line with the section that I cited in the previous answer.
Lord Bates (Con)
My Lords, for many years Her Majesty’s Government have taken great pride in regularly publishing reports on the impact of overseas aid in terms of the millions of lives saved, children educated and jobs created. Will my noble friend say whether any similar impact assessment of the likely effect of this reduction in our aid budget has been carried out by the Treasury or the FCDO using the same established methodology? If so, can it be shared to inform future debates and votes, and if not, why not?
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, as my noble friend will know, we are undergoing a rationalisation by moving DfID into the FCDO. The Foreign Secretary has agreed that he will focus all of government’s investment and expertise on issues where the UK can make the most difference and achieve the maximum strategic coherence. The FCDO is working through what this means for individual programmes, in line with the priorities identified. We will of course report in detail when those arrangements are concluded.
Covid-19: Economy Update
Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Bates(3 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Cabinet Office and the Treasury (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)
I thank the noble Lord and the noble Baroness for their comments. I shall try to deal quickly with the issues that they raised.
I completely accept that we are dealing with a fast-moving and difficult situation. The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, feels that we did not move quickly enough, and he made similar comments the last time we discussed this subject. However, we have moved quickly. We have acknowledged that, given the rolling lockdowns occurring across the country, we need to do more, which is why we are supporting more extensively businesses that have been forced to close as part of the lockdown. We are paying rate relief, which will include a portion of the rent of those businesses that are forced to close. Those that remain open but are affected by a fall-off in trade are receiving a great deal of extra support as well.
It might be worth summarising the extent of extra support announced since I was last here. The government contribution to payment of salaries has increased from 22% to 49%. The employer contribution has fallen from 22% to 4%, and the minimum-hours requirement has fallen from 33% to 20%. The noble Baroness asked about support for the self-employed. It has been a complicated group to support but we have essentially doubled the level of support with the recent announcements, taking the figure up from 20% to 40%. We will continue to monitor the situation.
The noble Lord asked about evictions. There are already provisions with lenders to ensure that they are handling those processes in a sensitive and reasonable manner, but, again, we will of course keep the situation under review.
It is extremely difficult to know how much longer this horror will continue. However, on the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, about a more strategic response to the crisis, it is worth reminding her and the House that we have put into the system an unprecedented level of support over the past nine months—some £158 billion of direct fiscal support. That includes £69 billion for employment support, and £51 billion for public service spending, funding for charities and support for vulnerable people.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, we now come to the 30 minutes allocated for Back-Bench questions. I ask that questions and answers be brief, so that I can call the maximum number of speakers.
Economy
Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Bates(3 years, 7 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Cabinet Office and the Treasury (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)
My Lords, in replying to the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, I gently remonstrate with him on us being “reactive”. We have tried to move as quickly as possible at all stages of this crisis but, as we can see from across the world, it is extremely difficult to be ahead of the curve. The announcements made by my right honourable friend the Chancellor last week demonstrate that a lot of hard thinking has gone on over the last two or three months, and the fact that the Statement might have been prompted by a Question shows that the work had been done.
I do not accept that it is too little, too late. The amount of support that we have provided for the economy over the last few months is almost without precedent, with £39 billion on the furlough scheme protecting at one point up to 9.5 million jobs—that figure has now reduced to some 3 million because many millions have come back to work—and £5.6 billion for almost 2.2 million self-employed people under the second grant self-employment income support scheme. I could go on.
The noble Lord asked about the intention of the job support scheme to keep part-time workers rather than to just go for a single full-time worker. The idea is to keep as many people in work as possible with their skills so that, when the economy recovers, the skills have not been lost. While on a hard, simple basis, it might be more viable to keep one person, in the longer term any employer would try to keep part-time people. I suggest that the noble Lord takes on board the job incentive scheme: £1,000 for those coming back into work between now and January.
The noble Lord asked about good-quality training. Earlier in the year we announced the kick-start scheme, a £2 billion scheme for young people which subsidised employment, as it was a concern that 800,000 young people left school and education over the summer.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, asked about the hospitality sector. We have extended the reduction in VAT for that sector. We also have in place the grants and rates support, again a very considerable sum of money. She asked about us formally leaving the European Union and customs. She will not like it, but that is a major employment opportunity for that sector. We have only 5,800 customs intermediaries. They all need to increase employment. We have provided grants for them to upscale. Another example of new training needed is police officers. Sectors of the economy will grow, and the Chancellor’s comments are to encourage people to move across to those over the next few years.
On the devolved authorities, we have made considerable grants to them under the Barnett formula. While the Budget has been postponed, we are working at pace on the comprehensive spending review which, I would suggest, is a more important long-term method of looking at how we are going to rewrite the economy after the crisis that we have faced over the past six months.
The noble Baroness also asked about the debt. The debt is very worrying. No one is going to pretend that it is not. It was last at 100% of GDP in the year I was born—1961—and, therefore, we are going to have to be very careful over the next few years about how we address that. We were fortunate that, having got the economy and the financial position into a relatively stable state over the past few years, we had the headroom to do what we have been able to do, which has all been about trying to reduce the impact on citizens over the past seven months.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, we now come to the 20 minutes allocated to Back-Bench questions. I ask that questions and answers be brief so that I can call the maximum number of speakers.
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, while there might not be individual schemes available for the group of people that the noble Lord talks about, we have made wider funding available through the uprating of universal credit and additional grants to local authorities. I am very aware that there are people in difficulty but we believe that the wider social security safety net is there to support them.
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, all those listed to ask questions on the Statement have now done so.