Autumn Budget 2025

Lord Tyrie Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyrie (Non-Afl)]

I agree with a great deal of what I have just heard. I will say a few words about growth, but before I do, I will touch on a couple of other recent controversies. First, the creation of the OBR has given forecasts an air of respectability that no economic forecast should ever have. The one certainty we can be sure of with forecasting is that any forecast will be wrong—usually, seriously wrong.

However, now we have the OBR, we had better make it work. Uniquely among government appointments to senior jobs, and mirroring what is commonplace in the United States, the senior appointments to the OBR, as well as their dismissal, are subject to a veto by a parliamentary committee, the Treasury Committee. That committee should now use that power to help identify good candidates in a way that is capable of helping to restore some confidence to the OBR’s work.

The second quick point directly concerns the Chancellor’s Budget, which is largely a reflection of what happens when a Government become prisoners of their own Back Benches. I have no doubt that the farago over the pre-briefing and the row over the OBR partly owe their origins to a misguided attempt to manage Labour Back-Bench expectations. The Chancellor may have made mistakes here, but I would be surprised if she lied. I know her well. I have worked with her and I found her to be an extremely reliable and likeable counterparty.

The most important question is growth. The main planks of a policy are relatively easy to identify, although very difficult to implement. First, we need to restore our trading links with the EU. There is a huge debate about how much we have lost in GDP terms, but it is several percent, and in the studies that have been done the average estimate is about 5%. Restoring those links will bring back a sizeable proportion of growth. But no party will touch this because Reform is doing so well in the polls.

Secondly, there are the bottlenecks in the labour market, which now need to be addressed. Some of the Government’s measures make this worse. On immigration, the most sensitive issue, the crucial question should never have been how many but who. The UK must make it easier for firms to recruit from abroad, and, at least for a time, bottlenecks in the NHS and care services need to be filled by facilitating the return of good-quality and relatively inexpensive recruits from abroad. Again, Reform’s polling strength is in action here, blocking much change.

Thirdly, much greater pace needs to be injected into the reform of planning law. The shortage of houses is a major obstacle to labour mobility and growth. The problem is that, by not acting quickly, majorities are beginning to form in former Tory seats now held by Labour MPs, who know that their fragile electoral prospects would be extinguished if they voted for more houses. Fourthly, the public finances need to be put on a much sounder footing.

I will end with just one further point. I have said how difficult all those recommendations are to implement, but the Government have had at least two opportunities to create the political space to tackle such an agenda. Their first opportunity came immediately after the election, in using the argument that the legacy was worse even than they thought. They should not have got attached to £22 billion. They should have just said, “Things are worse than we thought and we have got to re-examine our pledges”. The second was provided by President Trump, when he tore up the post-war trading order and replaced it with penal tariffs on much of the rest of the world. Both those opportunities have been missed. Growth will be the major casualty. Regrettably, the Government remain trapped by their pre-election pledges.

Budget: Small and Medium-sized Businesses

Lord Tyrie Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. The OBR has upgraded Britain’s growth forecast for this year from 1% to 1.5%, reaching the same conclusion as the IMF, the OECD and the Bank of England, which have already upgraded their growth forecasts. We were the fastest-growing economy in the G7 for the first half of this year, and we are on course to be the second fastest for the year as a whole. He is right that the OBR has looked back at the previous decade and concluded that policies such as austerity and Brexit have weakened the economy more than previously thought, and that assessment then directly impacts its view of GDP for the remainder of the forecast period, but the past does not have to determine the future, and we will go further and faster with our growth mission. We are cutting inflation and cutting borrowing every year of the forecast so that interest rates can keep falling, giving businesses the confidence to invest; we are maintaining public investment to build critical infrastructure; and we are backing our fastest-growing companies. We beat the growth forecasts this year, and we will beat them again.

[Lord Tyrie (Non-Afl)]

Well, it is goodbye Budgets for growth and hello tax and spend, is it not? When Ministers are forced back just to reading scripts—completely unedited, as far as I can tell—we get a gist of the sense of lack of authority behind some of the remarks that have just been made. Budgets used to have detailed studies of incentive effects attached to them. Could the Minister tell us, and publish, any such studies of the incentive effects on small business growth for the tax measures in this Budget?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

The noble Lord was characteristically rude, but I will resist being rude back to him. There were very many measures—

[Lord Tyrie (Non-Afl)]

Could the Minister possibly say where I have been rude?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

There were several measures to help businesses scale up. The enterprise management incentive scheme will be significantly expanded and made available to more companies. Enterprise investment scheme investment limits and gross asset thresholds will be doubled, and venture capital trust investment limits and gross assets thresholds will also be doubled. The Government will obviously publish impact assessments for all those measures.

Primary Stock Exchange Listings

Lord Tyrie Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I fundamentally agree with the underlying point the noble Lord made about the importance of investing in and having the right environment for life sciences companies in this country; they are incredibly important to us. It is why they are fundamental to our industrial strategy.

In terms of specifics, I am not going to comment on speculation. We want to see high-growth companies start, scale, list and stay in the UK. He is absolutely right; the life sciences sector plan is forthcoming. If he is just a little bit more patient, he will see it very soon. Through that, we will seek to harness the life sciences sector to drive long-term economic growth and build a stronger, prevention-focused NHS.

[Lord Tyrie (Non-Afl)]

I think that most people would agree that there is a depressing lack of detail from the Minister in response to the important question about the lack of support given, compared with the United States, to high-growth businesses. Perhaps the Minister is not fully briefed on it. Could he come back to the House, if necessary in writing, and give us much greater detail rather than just saying we have to wait for a speech at the Mansion House for an answer?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I cannot say what the Chancellor is going to say at her Mansion House speech now, otherwise there would not be much point in her giving her Mansion House speech then. She will publish a 10-year strategy for financial services at that point, and I am sure the noble Lord will enjoy reading it.

Capital Investment and Share Ownership

Lord Tyrie Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right in much of what he says. The private finance initiative was a specific public/private partnership model that was developed 20 years ago. The Government are actively managing the legacy PFI portfolio and learning lessons from that. The Infrastructure and Projects Authority believes that there is an opportunity for the public and private sectors to reset relationships, improve performance and deliver high-quality public facilities and services. Of course, lessons have been learned from the past. On 24 March the National Audit Office will publish a report called:

“Lessons learned: Private finance for infrastructure”.

[Lord Tyrie (Non-Afl)]

The PFI has been a very mixed bag, but parts of it have been highly successful. Unfortunately, the Treasury’s approach to negotiating run-off in PFI has led a large number of top-flight managers in these good PFI projects to leave the industry altogether and seek work elsewhere. What steps are the Government taking to make sure that there is no further attrition?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

As the noble Lord says, many of the private finance initiative contracts are coming to an end within the next decade. It is important to prepare early for a seamless transition to the public sector to protect taxpayers’ money. The Infrastructure and Projects Authority is responsible on the Treasury’s behalf, providing oversight and support to the portfolio of operational PFIs. It carries out regular health checks and, to date, around 215 expiry health checks have already taken place.

Economic Productivity

Lord Tyrie Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

That is a very good question, which I am not sure I know the answer to. Obviously, the Department for Business and Trade has an ongoing programme of dialogue with small businesses, as the noble Baroness said, in terms of communication, and it will continue to do that. The recent Mansion House reforms outlined by the Chancellor will, I hope, address the noble Baroness’s points.

[Lord Tyrie (Non-Afl)]

Do the Government accept that the fall in business confidence since the Budget will have a depressing effect on the investment needed to secure productivity gains?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

Well, I hope that the recent international investment summit, which saw £64 billion of investment come into the UK, suggests otherwise. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the Bank of England and the OECD have all upgraded their forecasts for the growth of the UK economy over the next three years; that is a very encouraging sign.

United Kingdom Declining Birth Rate

Lord Tyrie Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her question. I agree with much of the sentiment that sits behind it. The Government recognise and value the contribution that legal migration makes to our country. We will continue to strike a balance between ensuring that we have access to the skills that we need while encouraging businesses to invest in the domestic workforce.

[Lord Tyrie (Non-Afl)]

Further to that question, what conclusions do the Government draw from the substantial evidence now that immigration at the margin increases the tax yield by more than it increases public expenditure?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

It is a very important point and one that we should retain as we make policy.