Autumn Budget 2025

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, like the financial markets, I am reasonably comfortable overall with the Budget, with its focus on endeavouring to reduce the cost of living and improve the circumstances and prospects of children and on investment in and protection of essential public services. Many of those were neglected by the previous Administration. Brexit, which was not Labour Party policy, means that we have lost 6% in the value of our way of life. Austerity was lauded as a virtue, but it had its damaging effects on public infrastructure, yet we have had low productivity and growth under the previous Governments.

We did have some growth in a particular area: we had growth in our waistlines and in obesity. The previous Government aided this. Duties on alcohol were frozen consistently over many years. I welcome the Government’s restoration of the indexing duties with RPI.

I also welcome the initiatives on gambling. The previous Government saw a great growth in gambling but took little action on it. In particular, I congratulate my friend the Financial Secretary on the interest he has taken in sugar. I am sure that members of the recent Select Committee on Food, Diet and Obesity will be similarly pleased to see so much movement taking place on tackling the problems with sugar. Announcements made last week on changes in this area will benefit our health and in particular, I hope, that of our children.

I welcome the encouragement from my noble friend Lord Wood for the Government to continue looking for other areas to raise funds for public investment. No matter who is in power, if we are to develop and grow, we need investment and money going in. That means revenue has to be found from as many sources as possible. It may not all be through income tax: there are other sources which I believe we do not explore.

We should be looking at the new, unaddressed addiction of compulsive digital use: scrolling, mobile phone dependency and so on. This is now having a wide-scale effect on health in a variety of different ways. We do not really have a public framework for digital addiction, nor any related fiscal approach to how the fastest-growing addiction in the UK should be tackled. It has measurable economic costs. We could tax digital features: those that are intentionally engineered to maximise compulsion. We could consider levies on the infinite scrolling in which so many people are now engaging. We could look at the autoplay video and bottomless “For you” feeds. There is a whole range of changes taking place where there are opportunities to raise funds. What work is being done in the Treasury in these areas?

I am personally very much in favour of AI, but it has its damaging effects and we must address them. If the Government continues to focus on it, I believe that AI will find a way to generate great growth in our economy. For those noble Lords who question the wisdom of AI, I suggest getting an app and having a look to see what it suggests on taxation and the ways that funding for public investment can be found.