Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Rooker and Lord Snape

Wednesday 24th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, without repeating anything I have said previously, I support my noble friend. We are in a pretty unique situation at the moment, at 5.30 pm today: the country does not have a Chancellor of the Exchequer, so we can actually crack along. I realise that that is impractical, but the thought did occur to me.

[Lord Snape]

I point out to my noble friend that not only is there no Chancellor but we have an old Etonian Prime Minister taking office shortly—I think he has taken office. We also have—on his own account; he is frank enough to say it—an old Etonian Minister present, replying. Surely some deal could be done early on to demonstrate how effective this new order is.

[Lord Rooker]

Notwithstanding my support for the principle, which I have promoted, I fully accept the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. I see the force of the argument. It looks late in the day and, it is true, I see it as the thin end of the wedge—as I said to the noble Baroness. I made the point that the broader the tax base, the less you have to raise the particular taxes. It has to be a good thing in principle to broaden the tax base. It is not something we have total control over, because it is a devolved issue; it may happen in Edinburgh. It is not as though it does not happen and work elsewhere—that is the point.

My noble friend used the example of that incredible debate last week on the report by the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine. It was packed out; there were twice as many people in the Moses Room as there are here. I got the message that the Lib Dems were far more iffy about the report and recommendations from the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, than the general thrust in the meeting. I am not picking out any particular points, and I do not single out this one, but a lot of caveats came from Lib Dems. Nevertheless, there is the genesis there of something to take forward for our cities. I fully accept that the timing is probably wrong; there is always an excuse for doing nothing, but I do not accept that. There is an argument here for a pilot scheme. It might fail. We do not use pilots enough and this is a classic example where we could use one. If it fails, we will see the defects in it.