Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Razzall. I agreed with some of what he had to say, which is a bonus for me today, so I am enormously grateful for his contribution. I am also grateful to my friend Lord Leigh for tabling this debate. Who knew that it was going to be so well timed? Like many others, I too will fall into the trap of focusing on the Budget because it is top of mind at the moment, and not in a good way. I have to say, from listening to my noble friend Lord Leigh’s opening remarks, that he brings extraordinary expertise of commerce and the private sector, as of course do many other speakers in this short debate today, notably my noble friend Lord Petitgas and of course the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria. Unfortunately, that is more than can be said of the current Chancellor and indeed the wider Cabinet—I think some analysis has been done, and private sector experience is somewhat lacking—so I hope that the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, that some of the Labour Peers are promoted to positions of greatness such that they can share their private sector expertise, is taken up. It is definitely the case that there is private sector expertise on the Labour Benches; it just does not seem to have got up to the top levels. Yesterday the new Labour Government raised the tax burden to the highest level in our country’s history. Despite making an outright promise not to raise taxes on people, they raised taxes on working people. In hiking the employers’ national insurance contributions—NICs for short—to raise a headline figure of £25 billion, the Government have committed a straightforward breach, according to the IFS, of their manifesto. Furthermore, there are numerous examples of the now Prime Minister and Chancellor promising before the election not to hike taxes. Can the Minister give the Committee any insight into how the discussions went when drafting the section of the manifesto about no increase in taxes on working people? Was it a cunning sleight of hand that left the words “national insurance contributions” unencumbered by the “employees’” qualifier, or was it just incompetence? The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, made an excellent contribution. I appreciate his comments about the last Government. As a Conservative, I can say that no one wants to see taxes go up—it is just not in our DNA. I remember many debates when I was a Treasury Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, in opposition, would slam me for tax rises. I was going to come up with various quotes today about the number of times he has previously slammed me for tax rises, but I thought that would be really cruel.