Lord Peston: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his Question, with which I know for a fact that my noble friend Lord Barnett was in total agreement. I also thank the Minister for his kind remarks, because he might be forgiven for thinking that one of Lord Barnett’s missions in life was to make his life a total misery. Lord Barnett will be remembered for his formula, but those of us in this House will...
Lord Peston: I congratulate my noble friend for raising this Question, but I am sorry to say that I disagree with him. Changing the name of the Bank of England would be economically very damaging to our country. Is the Minister aware that there is a lesson to be drawn from this? It is mainly that making constitutional changes on the hoof is not the right way to do this sort of thing. The next time he sees...
Lord Peston: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Barnett, and at his request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.
Lord Peston: My Lords, the reason that your Lordships are stuck with me and not my noble friend is that he is very ill indeed, and I know that all noble Lords will wish to send wishes that he recovers quickly.
Lord Peston: In particular so that he can occupy his usual place and ask some really difficult questions. In so far as I understand this subject at all, is it not the case that aggressive tax avoidance leaves companies making enormous sums of money and millionaires paying lower rates of tax than those with average or around average incomes? Does this not bring the whole tax system in our country into...
Lord Peston: My Lords, to place this important Question in context, is it the Government’s view that there are two possible aims of economic policy: the first is that we should maintain as high a rate of real, sustainable growth as is feasible, and the second is that we should maintain a stable, low inflation rate? Bearing in mind that those two objectives are not always compatible, what is the...
Lord Peston: My Lords, as background to this Question, we should remember that when we were debating the 1998 Act the Minister went to great lengths to emphasise that the activities of the Monetary Policy Committee would be scrutinised not only by other place but also by this House. Certainly, when I was chairman of the Economic Affairs Committee—a committee I invented, as the Minister is well...
Lord Peston: My Lords, I must apologise to your Lordships for being an economist and for allowing some economics to get into an economics question. Is the Minister aware of the research evidence on these matters, which is that we need some inequality in our society in order to provide a proper incentive system? However, it is possible—and it is almost certainly the case in our country—that we have far...
Lord Peston: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, referred to raising standards for all children. If the schools that the Minister is talking about are so good, why do not any noble Lords opposite send their own children—or more likely, their grandchildren—to those schools, as many of us did, because we felt it was our responsibility to be supportive of local schools?
Lord Peston: My Lords, is the Minister aware that quite a few people in full-time employment are in jobs below their qualifications and abilities, so the figures need to be looked at more carefully? Much more to the point, is he aware that if we look at the present state of the British economy, to cite that great liberal economist John Maynard Keynes, it is nowhere near full employment and the...
Lord Peston: My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend on asking this important Question, although I hope he would agree that it is not only small firms that suffer from the late payment problem. All firms tend to find that the problem arises. Does the Minister agree that there are two aspects to this Question? One is an ethical aspect: namely, businesses simply should not, as a matter of course,...
Lord Peston: My Lords, will the Minister cast his mind back to when your Lordships debated what is now the Bank of England Act? My noble friend Lord Barnett and I put down an amendment precisely to achieve the flexibility which is in this command paper. We were not told that the flexibility was already there, which is what the command paper says. We were told that we were idiots, and that the remit of the...
Lord Peston: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that research evidence shows categorically that if you want to get the debt to GDP ratio down, the vital ingredient is to increase the rate of growth of GDP? That is the way to do it. Measures such as raising taxes or cutting the deficit by cutting large chunks of public expenditure simply do not work. Overall, the lesson we have to learn is that an austerity...
Lord Peston: My Lords, I reluctantly totally oppose this amendment. Those who are totally opposed to same-sex marriage have day in and day out taken up an enormous amount of your Lordships’ time in making their case. This is the dying embers of their attempts to go on making their case. It has nothing to do with tolerance. No one is remotely asking those registrars who oppose same-sex marriage suddenly...
Lord Peston: My Lords—
Lord Peston: The noble Baroness has spoken.
Lord Peston: I know I do not have to tell the noble Lord not to count chickens, and I know I do not have to remind him that good news may be good news but let us wait for things actually to happen. However, to be serious about this subject, surely what is needed is for Britain to get back on to its long-term sustainable rate of growth and, better still, to raise that long-term sustainable rate of growth....
Lord Peston: I congratulate the noble Lord on his answer, which seems to me for once to be entirely right. The exchange rate did collapse but it had no noticeable effect on improving the balance of payments, as he said, because the supply side of our economy has not been able to respond. Apart from that—theoretically—we do not know whether it is the balance of payments that affects the exchange rate,...
Lord Peston: My Lords, according to this bit of paper the original Question asked “what assessment” the Government have made. As far as I can see, they have made no assessment. Does the noble Lord remember, from whenever he learnt some economics, that economic theory does not tell us anything at all about the optimum rate of tax? This is because people with a greater preference for leisure will work...
Lord Peston: My Lords, given the economic mess that the Government’s policies have got the whole country into…
