Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. The example that he just gave us illustrates, down at the level of fine detail, the broader point I want to make about charitable organisations and non-governmental, not-for-profit organisations. In thinking about making a contribution to this debate, I looked up contributions around the phrase, “I wouldn’t start from here”, to see some quotations. I found lots of rather repetitive jokes—noble Lords can look them up for themselves—so I shall aim not to be repetitive. As I said at Second Reading, the Green Party believes we should start with a wealth tax so that the people with the broadest shoulders make contributions to society in order that we can do what we need to do: invest far more in our austerity-stricken services and infrastructure and tackle the climate emergency and nature crisis. However, we can combine two things here and focus on charities and non-governmental organisations. We are talking about hospices, for goodness’ sake, which these amendments of which I am broadly in favour, deal with. I want to cross-reference two Early Day Motions in the other place: EDMs 374 and 380, tabled by my honourable friend Ellie Chowns. They look at what a mess the social care sector is in now, with the chronic underfunding and the workforce shortages problems. They also note how much the voluntary sector is already under strain from escalating operating costs and cuts to contract funding. The elements of these amendments that are worth focusing on are voluntary sector charities and not-for-profit organisations. I have a proposal to put to the Minister; it comes from the charities and NGOs that I have spoken to. They are saying, “Yes, we can imagine a scenario where we could cope with this national insurance rise, but not on 6 April, which is so close, with our budgets all set out and our staffing set in the position it is now”. Would the Government consider, specifically in the case of charities, non-governmental organisations and not-for-profits—particularly those in social care; the Government can draw the lines wherever they like—postponing for a year? This would surely not involve that much money in terms of the Budget, but postponing for a year would give these organisations the chance to reorganise their budgets so that they have a chance to prepare for this situation. That is neither where I would like to end up nor where I would like to start, but it is a constructive suggestion to help these organisations, many of which are in desperate straits.