Baroness Thornton (Lab)

My Lords, I am pleased to be participating in today’s debate on the Budget. I regret that the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, has continued to vilify—unfairly—my right honourable friend the Chancellor. Last Wednesday, the Chancellor delivered a Budget that eases the cost of living, reduces national debt, brings down NHS waiting lists and lifts nearly half a million children out of poverty, building on the progress made to date on delivering our plan for change with this Labour Budget. I intend to speak about two matters. The first is the contribution of co-operative social enterprises and mutuals to the regeneration of our economy. I remind the House that I am a Labour and Co-operative Member of the House and refer noble Lords to my register of interests as founding chair of Social Enterprise UK and a senior associate of Social Business International. Secondly, I wish to raise a couple of questions on the impact of the Budget on women. The manifesto on which my Government were elected included a commitment to supporting a diversity of businesses to tackle the growth in the economy. The Co-operative Party is committed to doubling the size of co-operatives in the UK. It will be clear that I am very keen on the growth of businesses that trade for a social purpose, but to achieve this will require change in business development support across government. This was the first time in a generation that co-operatives were mentioned in a Chancellor’s Budget speech. I hope that the proper review of business support for co-ops will help drive this ambition forward. Will this be extended to social enterprises and mutuals? Co-operatives and social enterprises are proven to be productive, resilient, long-lasting and equitable. They provide business models that do not extract wealth from local places and hoard power in the hands of shareholders. An example of that is the profit-gouging of companies making excess profits in providing residential care for our most vulnerable young people. At the moment, there is a lack of appropriate and encouraging legislation, regulation and access to financial measures and development support or education for social enterprises and co-operatives. I raised in my contribution to the King’s Speech debate last year that we see scattered regulation in this sector—the DBT, DCMS and the Treasury being the main regulators. Financial mutuals, for example, are excluded from the business department’s call for evidence on co-op growth because they fall under the Treasury’s remit. Will the Treasury consider launching an equivalent review on their contribution? I turn briefly to the impact of the Budget on women. As my noble friend the Minister will be aware, women face structural inequality throughout their lives, and policy impacts differently on men and women. Some positive steps were definitely taken for women, but more ambition is needed, as the Women’s Budget Group said, and I agree. Was an equality impact assessment carried out on this Budget, and if not, will this happen for the future? Was there an assessment, for example, of the impact on women of freezing personal income thresholds? Is it the case that the majority of those who earn under the personal allowance tax band are women and freezing it means that more women will be paying income tax for the first time? Because women have lower incomes on average, does this mean that women will lose a greater proportion of their incomes through the freezing of this income tax threshold? I would really appreciate clarification on this from my noble friend.