Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Debate between Lord Warner and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee stage
Wednesday 17th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

We are going to be discussing the Occupied Territories in a group two or three later in this Bill and I do not have an answer to the noble Lord on this point today, except to reiterate that this Bill has been collectively agreed. I was particularly talking about the arrangements for regulations which, in turn, had been collectively agreed. I explained the system that when you have a new statutory instrument, there is a write-round which involves all relevant Ministers. In this particular case, that would certainly include the Foreign Secretary.

[Lord Warner (CB)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, can I ask her to take away the point I was ineptly trying to raise earlier? If a public body—we could take as examples housing, health and care—has an investment decision to make on a new building and/or new services, is it expected to find out more about the sources of the money going to be used to enable it to perform public functions and provide new public buildings? Are they expected to go that far?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I am grateful for that point, but I am not sure I entirely understand it, so perhaps I can offer to meet the noble Lord or to write to him and make sure that he gets an answer in good time.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Debate between Lord Warner and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Wednesday 17th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner (CB)]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister, but I am still trying to puzzle out what happens, to take the example of Scotland, if there is a great deal of resentment about this legislation, particularly Clause 4. What happens if the Scottish Parliament, presumably protected by privilege, decides to have a debate, there are a number of decision-makers under Clause 1 in that debate, and they voice their view in a way that is totally different from the Government’s view on that particular country and the issue they are debating? Would the UK Government then wind itself up to fine them? I am not quite sure what the fine levels will be. What if the Scottish Parliament then has another debate and decides not to pay the fine? This does not seem a fanciful position, given that the Government seem to be going out of their way to annoy the devolved Administrations. What will the Government actually then do, in practice?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

If I may, I will come back to that at the end of the speech, because I want first to try to explain what we are doing with the devolved Administrations. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said that the WTO already places non-discrimination requirements on public authorities. Although this is the case, these obligations do not cover all countries and territories and apply only to procurement decisions, not investment decisions.

To return to the subject of legislative consent, I think it is fair to say that we are disappointed that the Senedd and the Scottish Parliament have refused to give their consent to apply the ban to their Ministers and the respective departments and agencies. It is always the Government’s intention to legislate with the support of the devolved Administrations and, where relevant, the consent of the devolved legislatures. We will therefore continue to ensure that the interests of the devolved Administrations, including the devolved assemblies, are fully taken into account. Contrary to the noble Baroness’s suggestion, we do engage with the devolved Governments. I was in Northern Ireland last week, I visited the Welsh Government relatively recently, and my office has contacted the offices of the relevant Ministers in the Scottish and Welsh Governments. I hope to meet with them in the coming weeks to discuss further how we can gain their support for the Bill.

Pension Schemes Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Warner and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee stage & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 4th March 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 83, which sets a deadline for a review and is essentially probing in nature.

I am unashamed. I want to put pressure on the Government to do something—and fast—about the impact of the cap on senior or long-serving doctors and consultants. We have a mini-crisis here which dates back many months, and the situation is even more serious given the potential impact of Covid-19. I join others in commending the Secretary of State and the CMO for today’s all-party meeting, and for setting out all that is being done to manage this alarming virus—including encouraging clinicians out of retirement.

There is a pension problem. As my noble friend Lord Balfe told Parliament on 30 October, a BMA survey showed that 42% of GPs and 30% of hospital consultants were reducing their hours. There have been similar figures from the Royal College of Physicians. Doctors are attracting substantial tax bills to care for their patients, and are therefore reluctant to do extra sessions to clear waiting lists or to take on management. There are reports that as many as half our doctors are retiring younger than they used to and that the lowering of the annual allowance from £255,000 in 2010 to £40,000 today, and the increase in the retirement age to 65, may well be factors.

The situation is worse in hospitals than in GP practices, mainly because the latter earn less. However, GPs can be caught out if their practice income peaks temporarily because of a vacancy or because a doctor is missing. The reward for all the extra work and stress can be an extra tax charge. This is especially difficult for small practices, which, unfashionably, I have found to be the best, because they provide continuity of care, which saves on drugs bills and hospital costs. However, that is a matter for another day.

That brings me to hospital consultants, who are generally better paid than GPs but are critical to patient outcomes. I will never forget the lady consultant at King’s who managed me through the latter weeks of a pregnancy, when my youngest son refused to move.

The situation is serious. The impact of the coalition fix—to allow people to carry forward unused allowance from the previous three years—is, I think, running low. The DHSC consulted recently on proposals to allow senior medical staff to opt to build up a pension at a lower rate. This was, however, dismissed by the BMA as a sticking plaster. Understandably, it wants a change in the rules. As always, given the noises made by senior politicians, there is much hope—including on my part—about next week’s Budget.

What, therefore, can and should be done? I look forward to hearing from other noble Lords who have been kind enough to support this amendment, and from the noble Lord, Lord Warner, whose Amendment 86 proposes new regulations to ensure that NHS pension scheme members are reimbursed if they are worse off. I look forward to hearing how that would work.

Other approaches might include getting rid of the annual pension cap—the so-called annual allowance—and relying entirely on the lifetime allowance, which has been reduced over time. Alternatively, and perhaps more radically, we could move relevant senior medical staff on to non-pensionable pay, above a certain level, but pay them as salary the notional employer pension contribution that they miss out on. They would have a higher tax charge, but they would not be punished for working, which I think is the concern.

Many very intelligent people have spent hours trying to fix this problem, so it probably is not easy. There are ways to do it, and we must have a solution by the time this Bill reaches Report if the NHS is to overcome today’s growing challenges.

[Lord Warner (CB)]

My Lords, Amendment 86 is in my name and those of the noble Baronesses, Lady Altmann and Lady Janke. It is a rather simple amendment for tackling a complex problem that is, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, has said, causing a great deal of damage to the NHS and to patients.

I will not go into the intricacies of the interrelationship between pensions and tax policy, or repeat the data that I laid out at Second Reading about how this is affecting doctors. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, has given a reprise of some of that data. There is plenty of data showing the impact on doctors and the NHS; you do not have to look very far to find it. Noble Lords will therefore be relieved to hear that I will not go over that ground again.

The point of this amendment is to address what is happening on the ground now in our NHS. We have arrived at a situation in which doctors can neither control their pension growth nor predict their tax bills; that is where we have got to. Tax bills cannot be calculated until the end of the tax year in which the tax has been incurred; by then it is too late for doctors to adjust their earnings. In some cases, the tax bill exceeds the entire take-home pay that the doctor would earn in a given tax year. We are getting to the point where doctors have to pay to work: that is the situation we have created.

The only way that they can avoid the tax bills is to reduce their work in anticipation, which is what they are doing. I have previously set out the implications of that form of workload reduction, so I will not repeat them, but they include, in many cases, taking early retirement. The serious implications this has for patients and the running of the NHS needs no exaggeration. Suffice it to say that there has been a very large decrease in NHS medical clinical capacity, with very serious implications for patients and the functioning of the NHS. The latest BMA survey of 6,000 doctors shows that even more doctors, in this year and in the past, are planning to reduce their work commitments in the tax year, which is only a month or so ahead. This is why the situation is incredibly urgent.

This problem was so serious that NHS England acted to take the unprecedented step of agreeing to cover annual allowance payments for NHS doctors for the current tax year to try to ease the significant winter pressures on the NHS. At present, as far as I know, there is no plan to suggest that this short-term mitigation will continue into next year, let alone the longer term. It is all very well for the Government to pass last week an NHS Funding Bill, but if there is a serious shortage of doctors, it will not do patients much good.

The Government have been reviewing this problem for some time, but my information from the BMA and others is that they have not so far offered any worthwhile mitigation scheme. All that is available is the option of paying these large tax bills from future pensions by generating a loan against your pension which attracts a high rate of interest and effectively reduces your pension. This option will not reduce the outflow of doctors. Amendment 86 requires the Secretary of State to extend the NHS England scheme on a permanent basis. It also prevents doctors incurring any interest-bearing loans that will reduce their eventual pensions. It has been prepared with the help of the clerks, for which I am grateful, and discussed and agreed with the BMA and other professional bodies.

I am not saying that my amendment is the only solution to the problem—the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, has given some other options—but it is an attempt to apply an urgent response to stop more doctors leaving the NHS or reducing their capacity. If the Government can come up with a better solution, I will be delighted. So far, there is no sign of a solution acceptable to the profession that would stop the NHS haemorrhaging doctors.

Let us remember again that the new tax year starts in a month, and that the coronavirus epidemic threatens all of us. I listened yesterday to the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary referring to bringing back retired doctors; that seems to be an important part of their emergency plan for dealing with a potential epidemic. I wonder how aware they and their No. 10 special advisers are of this own-goal lurking in the bureaucracy. We can ill afford to lose doctors from our NHS through a self-inflicted government muddle when a solution is to hand.