Budget Statement

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, I owe the Committee an early apology. I resigned from the Front Bench after more than 10 years in that role, from the time that we formed the Opposition, way back in 2010. I had therefore expected to play the normal, critical Back-Bench role in this Committee meeting today and found myself suddenly precipitated into a Front-Bench role. I am not sure that I will be entirely secure in this position after 10 years of absence, but I know that my noble friends will back me up and fill in any gaps that I inadvertently leave.

The Chancellor was enormously upbeat when he presented his Budget a short while ago. The problem is that the realities that face many low-income and middle-income families are far from optimistic. As a nation, we are enjoined to be optimistic in circumstances where certain facts have to be grasped because, until they are adequately tackled, we have no basis on which to expect good results.

The Minister made no reference to the Resolution Foundation—Ministers do not and he therefore follows a good tradition—but the Resolution Foundation regards the position of public finances very differently from the Chancellor. We think that placing the highest burden on people who have the lowest income is gratuitously and outstandingly unfair. It is the Conservative Party being loyal to its principles, of course, but that does not make them any more attractive. How on earth people are expected to cope with the cuts to credit that are envisaged in the Budget I do not know. What I know is that, whereas the Chancellor talks of prosperity, certain categories of people are destined to pay a heavy price indeed.

That tends to be the case when we look across areas of government policy. I will take one area in which the Government have waxed lyrical recently—extra funding for schools. They did not preface it with any apology at all for the absolute devastation that has been forced on further education over a decade of Conservative rule; that is to be brushed under the carpet. Our side welcomes the sinner coming to repentance with the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill and development of lifelong learning, which have an important dimension of enhancement for people. But at this stage I warn the Chancellor, in case he has not recognised, as he has not for a number of other issues in his Budget, that this costs a great deal of money. We will be watching the Government and making sure that, during their time in power, they match those requirements.

With this buoyant optimism that exists all around, have the Government recognised their political optimism? “Well, we do not face the electorate for a number of years and there are certain areas where we can see the potential for favourable development.” That says nothing about the burdens on our population at present, in the high costs of food and fuel and the anxieties that people have about whether they will survive this winter, keeping warm, against the outstanding energy costs that they are obliged to meet. There was not much mention of that in the Chancellor’s speech or in the Minister’s speech this afternoon. He covered a fair amount of ground and I congratulate him on that, but he at no stage repaired the obvious damage of omission that could be seen in the Budget Statement and which the country has to live with, for the time being.

The Government pride themselves on certain increases in expenditure—certainly, schools are one. We welcome that. We also note that it only just brings schools’ expenditure per pupil up to the level in 2010, when the Government first came to power. We also recognise that schools are having to recover in a more dramatic way from the pandemic. They are going to find it very difficult, even with the limited increased resources supplied by the Government, to ensure that our students do not face irreparable loss of years of learning, which are difficult to make up.

This is a Budget which enabled the Minister to select and emphasise his favoured bits, but the country has to face the Budget as a whole. What is actually clear is how much this Budget bears heavily down on the less well off in our society, while we are seeing tax breaks for the particularly well off. It is a Conservative Budget all right, and none the better for that.

Standards in Public Life

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a real privilege to participate in this debate. In fact, it has been a real privilege to sit and listen to the contributions, which have in many respects identified issues that should be of great concern to the Government but which we all feel are being somewhat derided at present. I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, for emphasising the difficulties for senior civil servants in relation to Ministers under the present regime.

It seems very important that we get the key points from this debate across to government. We know that the Prime Minister himself probably pays little regard to principles, but there is a capacity for the generation of pressure in specific areas, which is what we should concentrate on, in order not just to improve the situation but to stave off what several speeches reflected, which is the growing sense of unease about critical aspects of our democracy being undermined. I remember when it was suggested during the middle months of the Trump regime that there were one or two defections from democratic participation—challenges that looked to smack of belief in other forms of running society. Then look what happened: it all exploded. Of course, we are not in that situation, but we must guard against such developments.

One of the things I miss most at present is that Covid has taken away school visits for a lot of us. I enjoy talking to young people—by “young” I mean 15 to 16 year-olds and sixth formers, who are certainly young in comparison to the vast majority of us—because two things crop up each time. The first is, “How do you become a politician?” That is interesting, because it seems to give the impression that it is a career in which you have to learn to make the progress of securing first base and then move on from there. I am afraid that I tend to destroy those illusions fairly fast. I have a good record of failure in politics, so they do believe me after a short while.

The second aspect, which is of great importance, is that they do believe that our society can be made better and that there can be improvements—and there are aspects of this debate that must be translated into those anticipations so that it is recognised that the body politic needs improving.

I look forward to the response to this debate of the noble Lord, Lord True. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Blunkett not just on initiating the debate but on the brilliant speech he made. I hope that the Minister will not let the intervening three hours pass in such a way that he will fail to respond to the crucial points put to him by my noble friend. I very much look forward to that speech.

Of course, we have to appreciate the limitations of this House when it comes to action to protect crucial aspects of democracy, because we are unelected and can easily be put down in those terms—but we still need to articulate those defences. The other House needs support on this, because Members there are expressing obvious anxieties, and those anxieties are real when power begins to believe that it can be utterly untrammelled and uncontrolled because of the legitimacy of the last election. Politics in this country have always meant a good deal more than that, and I think today’s debate in this House has helped to establish how important these crucial points are for the continuation and extension of our democratic tradition.

Brexit: Financial Assistance for Businesses

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, the negotiation is a dynamic process; we are at the beginning of what will be a very fractious negotiation over the next nine months. I tell those noble Lords with a gentle stomach that what we are seeing today are the opening remarks of the EU: it is going to get a lot hotter over the next nine months, and we will know more clearly probably by the middle of December.

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister to his new responsibilities. I remind him that government Finance Ministers do not last much more than a year in the role, so he will not have to put up with too much. I want to make it quite clear that he is reflecting uncertainty and doubt, because that can only be the position that we are all in prior to the negotiations. He must know that the negotiations might even fail to such an extent that no deal at all is struck. Are the Government not in fact just putting hope over practicality when it comes to these issues? Have government answers with regard to Northern Ireland not been quite inadequate on every occasion?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I thank the noble Lord for his kind and warm words but pessimistic outlook for my tenure in this post; I now have a challenge to be standing here in 13 months’ time. We are in a negotiation. I cannot speak for what will or will not happen over the next few months. We have given certainty to businesses. We have said that we will be trading with the rest of the world in the same way as with the EU from 1 January next year. The level of tariffs and frictionality will be revealed over the course of the negotiations.

Brexit: European Investment Bank (European Union Committee Report)

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, both on her conduct of an excellent committee and a splendid report and on the speech in which she presented the issues. All other contributions really just reinforced the main points she made, which covered an excellent report that presents to the Government a series of very acute challenges. The Minister is of course adept at dealing with such things, but we expect some fairly clear answers to several of the issues that have been established on all sides this evening.

It is not often that I agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, on economic issues, but I certainly agreed with him this evening when he indicated that we have to be careful about allowing the accountancy to dictate our whole strategy to meet the economic challenges we face. There have been many calls from all sides of the House that the Government really must not fall behind the old blocks of their defensive position on the problems of government debt, when significant levels of investment are obviously necessary. Of course, it is clear from the report that we have lost a very substantial part of our investment. For investment to drop by nearly 90% is a significant tragedy. This, after all, is one of the most significant investors in our infrastructure and it covers a wide range of areas. Noble Lords identified the environment, higher education and a range of other issues which will lose the investment that this bank provided. We all want to know what steps the Government are taking to repair the damage and provide the investment.

At the same time, the Minister has to address the fact that none of us in this House can understand how we reached an agreement in which we get the repayment of the capital that has not been utilised thus far but make no gains at all from our years of investing in the bank. Some government negotiation arrived at that judicious position. We all worry about the broader issues of negotiation with Europe, but this stands out as a pretty clear indication of how weak the Government’s position was at times.

We also recognise that infrastructure is a crucial aspect of the development of any economy, particularly an advanced economy such as ours. We have not had a good record in the past; the Government have to face up to the fact that their record is pretty dismal. The two areas on which they are making some progress were inherited from the previous Labour Government—HS2 and Crossrail, the latter of which is of course subject to fairly significant delays at present. Most of the other rail initiatives—the cross-Pennine route and the opening up of the London to Sheffield route—have been put into cold storage for the time being. It is not as if we have a surfeit of funds for infrastructure, yet we are discussing this evening how we have cut ourselves off from a crucial supplier.

We must also recognise how noticeable it is that regional issues are coming more to the fore. We all know why London has been pre-eminent for so long. We all know the significance of the City of London, but that does not mean that you do not have proper respect for regional development. There is absolutely nothing in the Government’s current position which gives us any encouragement on that, yet resources that we were getting from the investment fund from Europe offered some possibilities on that front. This is another crucial area which we lose.

My noble friend Lord Giddens asked us to consider a rather wider agenda: a future which related to the space industries, on which we have a past record of investment and in which we are well placed to play a leadership role. However, he identified that here, again, was a necessity for government action. Can any noble Lord recall, apart from my noble friend’s contribution today, the last time we had a debate on the space programme and the role that Britain might play in it? Of course, the anniversary of the moon landing was a pretty predictable date—there is bound to be colossal public interest at this time—yet I cannot recall the Government making any significant contribution on it.

Of course, the Government are not in a position to think about spending too much, because after a decade of running the economy they are still stuck with their hugely significant debt and the real problem of how they distribute it. It is true that a future Prime Minister can easily produce a massive tax cut for the very wealthy in our society, or certainly those earning over £80,000—but is that not the same individual whose bus suggested that enormous millions would accrue to the British economy from Brexit? Well, we are defining the reality of Brexit this evening, and we are not talking about hundreds of millions of pounds accruing to the British economy.

It is quite clear that the Minister must give some response to the gap which has opened up. After all, he knows that it is a product of the withdrawal agreement that we reached and the negotiation which took place at that time, and noble Lords have identified just what the cost is for us. Because the investment bank covers a wide range of British economic activities, the cost will be and is being borne across the board.

We on our side of the House enjoy a certain degree of criticism of the Government but we also have enormous respect for a disaffected electorate who want to see success from political leadership. That is why we are quite clear that, if we came to power, we would launch a national investment bank, address regional disparities, and set out to ensure that resources were directed towards improving our productivity as well as our wage levels, which have been so depressed over this last decade. We would also seek to ensure, through a rather more imaginative immigration policy than the Government pursue, that we have the necessary high-level skills to ensure that we get the levels that the financial services sector will demand. We should be wary of restrictive blocks on skilled people who are essential to our economy.

These are possible developments. They of course require a degree of commitment by the Government to a clear policy. But what the Government committed themselves to and are still largely saddled with is in fact clearing debt—not investment in the creative part of the economy at all, but seeking to ensure that their credit rating holds to a certain level. No one will decry that in its entirety, but one can overload that dimension of financial and economic life to the extent that the economy suffers constant low levels of growth and constant problems with our productivity.

There are solutions. I was grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, for mentioning the German bank and the role which it plays in the German economy. It is not as if we do not have a model of the way in which we can create productive resources which can be independent of government yet act as a reaction to any downturn in the economy. He made that point clearly. As I said, it is not often that the House is in total agreement, but if he and I can agree on a strategy this evening, we hope the Government can too.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises: Mistreatment

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, on securing this debate and on the forensic quality of her speech. We needed to add very little once she had completed the charge sheet, but nevertheless other noble Lords have contributed to the testimony of just what a scandal we are considering. Yet the result of the scandal, as identified in this debate, is that the Royal Bank of Scotland offered an apology. The Financial Conduct Authority, which supposedly had a clear role as a regulator, states that it has no powers to make clear what happened, and therefore expresses regret.

It is contended that the Treasury hopes for an extended role for the Financial Ombudsman Service in some aspects of disciplining malpractice in banks but we have seen no clear position yet. As the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, indicated, there do not seem to be any consequences from this scandal because of the continuation of a large number—30 out of 32—of the senior administrators with the bank.

There has been an explosion at the other end of the Palace of Westminster. Many Members of Parliament, having been made fully aware in their constituencies of the devastating effect on small companies, have demanded action. As they have made their contributions and carried out their analyses—particularly the chair of the Treasury Select Committee, who is in a privileged position to be able to do that and has done so brilliantly—they have exposed just what the scandal represented.

There have been apologies, shrugging of shoulders, an attitude of “can’t do anything about it” and no question of knowing how we are meant to see fair settlements made, but the Government have not yet produced an obvious response to this position. This cannot be. The other place is clearly advocating more trenchant reforms and everyone who has spoken in this debate has identified that the present system is incapable of coping with issues of this importance. A large number of SMEs, an important part of the economy, have been bulldozed out of existence by the crass operations carried out by the global restructuring group of the bank.

The Government need to take seriously some of the proposals now being put forward. There is the suggestion from the other end that a tribunal system be set up to deal with disputes between SMEs and the big banks. It is clear that individual small companies do not have the resources to engage with the major banks in legal and financial struggles and that they will be beaten into the ground, as they have been through this experience.

Most of all, it is clear that the concept of self-regulation is being rejected. It has failed on this occasion in a most lamentable way. We all know the Government’s reservations about additional regulation but they have to appreciate that the report of their regulator—the Financial Conduct Authority—has sunk like a stone and has caused dismay. I trust that the Minister will give additional information on the possible responses to this position in his wind-up speech.

I emphasise that from this development my party has learned the lesson—there have been others, which have also been greatly worrying—that we must have a regulatory architecture involving a business commission to replace the existing network of regulations, which have clearly failed. It is inconceivable that a person running a small company should be told that the regulator, unfortunately, does not have the powers to make any form of restitution.

We are also committed to a national investment bank, with a network of regional banks and a post bank focused on relationship lending, and we mean to keep RBS in public ownership. RBS owes a great deal to the community—for the bailout and the ultimate responsibility for this scandal—and it is important that it is kept under a high degree of public scrutiny. We intend to have banks that serve the public interest and guarantee that the banking industry will support infrastructure, the SMEs and the broader issues of public goals. We cannot afford another scandal like this one, and the Government cannot afford to ignore the necessity for drastic action.

Banks: Cash Withdrawals

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord is quite correct that LINK is directly commissioning ATMs in areas that do not have one but need one. If he has a particular area in mind that needs an ATM but does not have one, I am sure he will let LINK know. The company has tried to ensure the viability of free-to-use ATMs in deprived areas by increasing the transaction fee that the ATM owner gets to £2.75 per transaction, against the standard fee of 25.9p. LINK’s policy is that where it has to shrink the estate, it does so by removing ATMs that are close to another one—73% are within five minutes’ walk of another one—but maintaining free-to-use ATMs in remote or deprived areas.

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister will appreciate that the banks owe wider society a great deal after 2008. How is it, therefore, that somewhere like Hebden Bridge—and I do not always quote Yorkshire with enormous favour—has no bank and only six ATMs at present? Those six are being reduced to two, and the two are so busy that they run out of cash. How is this system, which the Minister has just commended, working?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I will certainly draw LINK’s attention to the problems the noble Lord has just outlined in Hebden Bridge. I hope that Hebden Bridge also has some post offices. We have invested £2 billion in post offices since 2010 in order that they can provide access to cash and other banking facilities. However, I will contact LINK to see whether we can ensure that those cash machines in Hebden Bridge are fully charged, in view of the pressing demands of the residents of that town for cash.

National Health Service: Pensions

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, in the interval between my noble friend tabling his Question and today, the Government made a significant announcement on 3 June aimed at addressing the very problem that he addresses in his Question, and no doubt he can claim some credit for that chain of events. On the point about the impact on patients, between 2018 and 2019 57% of GPs who retired took early retirement. Some consultants are unwilling to take on extra sessions because of the impact on their pensions, and that has an impact on the quality of service that we can provide. On his more detailed question, I understand the sense of injustice that he feels about the circumstances that he has described. I will see whether the consultation that begins at the end of the month can be stretched to include the broader review that he has just proposed.

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, are not the Government being more than a little tardy in response to this situation? After all, they introduced the pension arrangements in 2015 and it is clear that they made a right mess of them in some respects. In addition to the range of people whom the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, spoke about a moment ago, both ends of the medical profession—younger doctors and consultants—are greatly aggrieved at the provision of pensions under the 2015 legislation. I just wonder why the Minister can say with equanimity that we are getting round to a consultation.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

It is important that noble Lords understand the background to the changes. One of the most expensive tax reliefs is pension tax relief. It costs £50 billion per year—roughly half the budget of the NHS. Two-thirds of that goes to additional, or higher-rate, taxpayers. The reforms introduced over the last two Parliaments were aimed at targeting the relief more effectively and saving £6 billion that could be redirected towards other priorities. Less than 1% of taxpayers will be affected by the taper of £40,000 that was introduced, and more than 95% of those approaching pension age will not be affected by the lifetime allowance.

Spending Review: Intergenerational Fairness and Well-being

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Steps were taken last year to raise the threshold at which debt starts to be repaid. However, as I said in my original reply, one of the report’s recommendations is to take this issue into account in the spending review. However, we have seen a huge reduction in unemployment among young people, with the rate among 16 to 24 year-olds having halved since 2010, which is a good record.

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister is being somewhat complacent in his answers to the third Question of the day. He must be aware that a large number of young people feel outrage because the scales are tilted against them not just on university fees but on the kind of jobs that he has just identified, which are often in the gig economy, where young people are exploited rather than rewarded. Does he appreciate that a great deal of the anger in our communities is being generated by this Government having presided over an economy in which, in the past decade, ordinary wage earners have had absolutely minuscule increases while the bosses of the FTSE industries have been coining fortunes?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am not sure that that is an intergenerational issue; rather, it is about income levels between different groups in the population. Perhaps I may put this into context. This Government have legislated to raise the retirement age, which has begun to tilt the terms of trade between the older and younger generations. Over the past 10 years, interest rates have been at a record low, which has tended to disadvantage those who have retired and may have savings, while tending to help younger people with mortgages. That is not wholly reflected in the report before us. As regards exploiting young people, in December we introduced the Good Work Plan to protect agency workers and give more rights to people on short-term contracts. Moreover, I have just received some in-flight refuelling: university fees—30 years to pay off and a new threshold of £25,000.

Banks: Fraud Prevention

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The voluntary code that comes into effect next week will in fact extend to all banks the facility to which the noble Baroness just referred, which has been undertaken by the TSB. As from next week, as long as you have done everything that you should and it was not your fault, you will get your money back. Vulnerable victims will get their money back even if they have not exercised due care. I welcome this not just because it gives added protection to customers, but because it means that the banks will have to pick up the bill, which will add to their incentive to reduce, so far as possible, incidents of fraud.

The noble Baroness then referred to confirmation of payee. She is quite right: at the moment, an electronic payment is processed on the basis of the sort code and the account number. As from later this year, banks will have confirmation of payee—in other words, they will check the name. That means that it will be difficult for fraudsters to intercept funds designed, for example, for solicitors on conveyancing, and misdirect them.

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, the country is well aware of the extent to which scams and frauds have been successful in recent years, and it is an acute problem. I accept that the Government and the banks have made some progress with the voluntary code, but will the Minister undertake that, if that does not provide satisfactory protection for our people, the Government will legislate to ensure that victims get repaid?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

It is exactly because the Government were not satisfied with the progress being made that the former Home Secretary asked HMRC to inspect the police response to fraud. It responded on 2 April with 16 recommendations that the Government, together with banks and the police, are in the process of implementing. There is a range of recommendations, including a more co-ordinated national response and more support for the customer. Action Fraud is also introducing a more responsive service so that, if you report a fraud, you will get feedback from the banks; that was not necessarily the case before. I am not sure whether we need more legislation; we need to see how the initiatives I referred to work through.

Making Tax Digital for VAT (Economic Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Young. He has a somewhat challenging baptism in replying to this first debate in his new position. We all know his competence and that he always wins considerable support from the House for how he presents his arguments. However, I can scarcely recall another debate in which every contributor has identified issues that the Government have palpably failed to respond to. Nor are these minor pettifogging details; they are fundamental questions about how a government department should operate, and how a response to a committee report should be presented. The noble Lord has a great challenge before him.

I do not need to stress again the points made in this debate because we all have, strongly at the front of our minds, key issues on which we expect the Minister to make a response. The only figure I would like to bring to your Lordships’ attention—I do not know whether the Minister will bring this in as part of his defence—is that HMRC has 15,000 fewer civil servants than in 2010. Of course, we can all see ways in which government departments can work more efficiently and we all know the advantages of new technologies and so on, but a large part of that loss of people was a straight reflection of a determination to create a smaller state, with lower costs for the Government. These circumstances are part of the price that we are paying.

If there is one thing which stands out in this whole sorry saga, it is that HMRC persisted with conduct which was already causing enormous consternation not to people who were adept at tax evasion or those who employed professionals to look after their tax affairs, but to ordinary citizens applying for jobs. The report makes that clear. Their employers, or the agents working for those employers, took them on board and indicated a loan would be advantageous form of payment for their employment. That is why we have so many people who deserve the sympathy of every one of us in this House and all of us concerned with government. Ordinary people now find themselves facing charges which are not the kind of thing that might be easily disposed of by the better-off in society, but multiples of their actual earning power each year; these are now demanded as owed tax. This is a parlous position. What has been identified in this debate is just how dismissive the Government have been thus far on the issue.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Of course, the noble Lord is quite right about the substantial cuts in the resources available to HMRC. That has undoubtedly been a factor in its ability to deal with inquiries and to deal with people sensitively. However, it is not to blame for implementing the loan charge, which was passed by Parliament—by the House of Commons. Dealing with this requires a change in the law. Do the Opposition support that?

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

The answer is categorically yes. In fact, I was going to develop that argument briefly but I do not need to now: in his opening speech, the noble Lord made the main charge against the Government and their response to the report thus far quite clear. I utterly endorse that position. I am very grateful for the speech he made today and the way in which he obviously led the committee to produce these high-quality reports.

One of the things which stands out in the reports is that the Government found a whole series of the recommendations quite unacceptable. Of the recommendations in the digital taxation for VAT report, eight were accepted, seven were accepted in part and only six were rejected outright. However, the majority of the recommendations in the other report were rejected. The Government ought to have a pretty strong case when responding on this matter to a significant body such as a House of Lords committee led by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, but it seems fairly obvious that the Minister has somehow been shielded behind the perspective that only the House of Commons has any authority with regard to the economy. We all know the law—we all know why the House of Commons produces its Finance Act and we in the House of Lords defer to it as presented—but that is a little different from a committee examining the conduct of a government department. From what I can see, on the whole, Ministers have not been prepared to attend the committee and have been rather dismissive of many of its hugely significant recommendations.

Expressions have been made during the debate with which I have the greatest sympathy. I am not talking about the speeches from the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, who were both quite definitive in what they had to say—I of course agreed with the judgments they reached—but there were other comments that strengthened my support for the committee. The noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, indicated the difference between how this part of taxation is dealt with and how welfare support is often dealt with. This is a tragedy that has gone on for a number of years, but so has welfare legislation and the great problems with universal credit, in which people who are devoid of resources are being asked to wait for weeks to get the money to which they are entitled. I was very grateful to him for bringing our attention to that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, criticised the use of the word “customer”. I too found it difficult when the railway companies started to refer to us as customers—they were not very confident that we would become “passengers” and go anywhere, but we were “customers” because we had paid for the ticket. There is a lot that we ought to seek to correct, through gentle persuasion, about the terms in which big organisations and businesses address us.

Two issues about the Government’s estimation come out strongly in the report. We can see that the Revenue and the Government are motivated by the fact that there could be considerable increases in resources through Making Tax Digital. The Opposition understand the argument for Making Tax Digital and endorse it, but it has to be introduced and developed in a better way, as the reports have identified. Those in this unfortunate position with the loan charge have earned salaries and tax is payable on them. There obviously has to be care about how people are challenged to make these payments, because many have limited resources, but there is no doubt that HMRC’s objective was to ensure that tax was legitimately paid on payments allocated to workers. The 2017 court case made this absolutely clear. Therefore we are not in any way, shape or form castigating HMRC for pursuing the issue in principle; we are concerned about the practice.

It has been quite clear from this debate that the committee has identified the department’s position with great force and accuracy. We expect Ministers to take note. We all have faith. I greatly regret the loss of the noble Lord, Lord Bates, the immediate predecessor to the noble Lord, Lord Young. Although I clashed with the noble Lord, Lord Bates, on very many occasions, I never had the slightest doubt about his genuine attempt to present his case accurately, effectively and with the greatest concern for the rights of the House. I am not so sure that Financial Secretaries in the other place have shown much respect for this body, but I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Young, will seek to answer the very real questions asked in this debate, and treat the committee and its excellent reports with the respect due to it.