Spending Review 2025

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

The right reverend Prelate set out a number of issues that he agreed with, and obviously I am grateful for his agreement with those. He talked about child poverty and he knows that—as the Prime Minister described it—our free school meals policy is a down payment on the work that we want to do to tackle and end child poverty. I was lucky enough to be part of a previous Government—I worked for a previous Chancellor—who reduced child poverty by 1 million children, so there should be no doubt about my personal commitment to reducing child poverty. I had to sit by, as did many of my noble friends, and watch the previous Government increase child poverty by 700,000. That is not something that any of us wanted to see; so he should be reassured that we absolutely prioritise this issue.

The right reverend Prelate asked about free school meals. The children of every family on universal credit will be eligible for those free school meals. He described the child poverty strategy as much delayed. I am not sure I would accept that. I think we have set out when it will come—alongside the Budget this autumn—and it will consider all the issues and representations that are put to it. There is quite a lot in this spending review to tackle child poverty. As I say, that is a down payment and I very much hope we will be able to do more.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the fact that the Chancellor reiterated yesterday, in the other place, a commitment to no unfunded increases in expenditure. Could the Minister reassure me about the other promise which she made in the autumn Budget—I am going to read it so I am not misrepresenting it—that there would be no further tax increases during the current Parliament? She said, “I will not increase your income tax; I will not increase your national insurance; I will not increase your VAT”. Does that promise still stand? How can it possibly stand with the Government’s debt interest bill now being £105 billion and rising and the costs of borrowing, because of the level of debt, actually being higher than they were at the time of the crisis under Liz Truss?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. On the specific question that he asked about whether the manifesto commitments that we have given to working people still stand, yes, they still stand. The manifesto very clearly says there will be no increase in working people’s income tax, national insurance or VAT. That commitment continues to stand. In terms of future decisions on tax and spending, as I have said already, I am not going to write now—it is not in my gift to write now—four years-worth of Budgets. As he knows, the OBR will produce a new forecast in the autumn for the Budget, and the Chancellor will take decisions at that point, based on that forecast. He can be assured, though, that, at all times, we will meet the fiscal rules, but I am not going to prejudge those decisions now.

I am not sure whether he was defending at that point the Liz Truss mini-Budget or not. He shakes his head vociferously. I do not blame him: I would not want to defend it either.