Spring Budget 2024

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, the message I get from anti-poverty, children’s and women’s organisations in response to the Budget is one of weary disappointment. They are weary because here is yet another Budget that fails to put first the interests of those for whom they speak, and there is disappointment because, as the cost of living payments come to an end, living costs are still a life-sapping struggle for those on low incomes—witness the unprecedented numbers turning to food banks, and the evidence of tired and hungry children in schools. These organisations had hoped for more.

There are some welcome crumbs, including the abolition of the debt relief order charge and the extension of the universal credit budgeting advance loan repayment period, although the latter touches only the surface of UC’s deeper problems. Welcome too is the last-minute reprieve for the household support fund, but giving local authorities only 26 days’ notice and then creating a new cliff edge in September is not an effective or efficient way to plan local crisis support. It is particularly alarming for those living in the 37 English authorities that no longer run a discretionary local welfare assistance scheme, which replaced the national Social Fund.

Rather than lurch from cliff edge to cliff edge, would it not make sense to integrate the temporary fund with local welfare assistance, creating a single statutory scheme, centrally funded, on a multiyear and ring-fenced basis, with clear guidance, but still providing local authorities with some discretion as to how the money should be spent? I should be grateful if the Minister could take this suggestion back to the relevant department.

The additional money announced for the next two years for childcare will certainly help—Commons Ministers seem to have forgotten that it was the previous Labour Government who first recognised government responsibility for childcare—but it will not fill the gap between what providers receive per hour and the real cost of delivering those hours. This is according to the Women’s Budget Group, of which I am a member, wearing my academic hat.

I welcome the rise in the child benefit high income charge threshold and the smoother taper. However, while I certainly recognise the unfairness created by the present system, I do not believe that the answer is to jettison the important principle of independent taxation. After all, this was pioneered by a Conservative Government back in 1990, and endorsed by the Minister the other week. Moreover, as tax experts have warned, and the Chancellor has conceded, it will require significant reform to the tax system. Such reforms are likely to pose considerable administrative problems. If introduced on a cost-neutral basis, they would create as many losers as gainers, according to the IFS. I ask that the consultation include the option of abolishing the charge altogether.

As the Minister said, and to quote the Chancellor, child benefit

“is a lifeline for many parents because it helps with the additional costs associated with having children. When it works, it is good for children, good for parents, and good for the economy because it helps people into work”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/3/24; col.850]

In the words of Sebastian Payne of Onward:

“There would be no greater sign that Hunt and Sunak are on the side of families”.


Reversion to universal child benefit, supported by the Conservative Party in the past, would also do more for the simplification the Chancellor seeks, according to his letter to Peers.

The traditional rabbit in the hat, which jumped out prematurely this year, was the cut in NICs. True to form, this particular rabbit favoured the better off rather than the worse off and men rather than women. It is difficult to see how this could have been a priority over investment in our crumbling public services, social care, housing and a social security system which fails to provide genuine security. As it is, according to the Resolution Foundation, the scale of cuts to unprotected departments is equivalent to almost three-quarters of the size of those inflicted in the first austerity Parliament. This will mean more cuts for local authorities. I speak as a citizen of Nottingham, which faces the heartbreaking destruction of vital public and voluntary services, jobs, parks, the arts and libraries, hitting women in particular, as workers, service users and unpaid care providers.

The Chancellor has made clear his longer-term ambition to scrap NICs altogether. We now learn that the Prime Minister hopes to fund this through a further squeeze on social security benefits, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Lamont. This again is a repeat of how social security claimants were demonised and how benefit cuts paid for tax cuts at the height of austerity, leaving a social security system not worthy of the name.

Moreover, in framing the scrapping of NICs as a simplifying tax cut, the Government appear to be indifferent to the implications for not just pensions but working-age contributory benefits. It took the Daily Telegraph to observe that:

“It would completely remove even a semblance of the contributory principle”.


As a letter to the i newspaper warned, this could represent a nudge towards private insurance, the only alternative being means-tested UC, with potentially damaging implications for women in couples’ independent social security entitlements. Can the Minister please clarify what the Government think this will mean for contributory benefits for working-age people, as well as pensioners?

Whether the Budget represents the final or penultimate fiscal event of what Tim Bale calls this “fag-end Government”, it underlines the need for a strategy that prioritises social justice in the interests of people in poverty, especially children, together with women and other marginalised groups.