Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)

My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group. I spoke in respect of small businesses and, as the Minister will have detected, I was upset about the effect that the NI increases will have on small businesses. I would not say that I am upset about the effect that it will have on charities: I am angry and disappointed. The Labour Government have dramatically let down charities and they should know better. The total increased cost of employers’ NIC is estimated at £1.4 billion a year to the charity sector alone. Those are not my figures; they are from the highly respected aforementioned NCVO, with which I have worked in the past. I have done a lot of work in the charity sector. I formed the committee to look at fundraising abuses, working with the NCVO, from which the fundraising regulator came about. I chair four charities in the United Kingdom. I work for a number of other charities, as indeed do other noble Lords in this Room. For example, every year I run 10 miles for WaterAid. One of the noble Lords present in this Room supports me, for which I am grateful. Every year, I raise £50,000. I have raised £0.5 million for WaterAid in total. The entire benefit of my fundraising for WaterAid has been wiped out by the national insurance increase. The whole purpose of the fundraising for so many people is wasted, gone, because the money has gone to the Government for the purpose of raising revenue, which I understand is perfectly reasonable. But surely the Government could be more intelligent and sympathetic to charities in seeking to raise revenue. I know that the Minister is driven by empirical statistics.