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Finance Bill

My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of Invesco Recovery Trust 2011, quite an apt title for this debate. I would like to be associated with the speeches made by my noble friends Lord Lang, Lord MacGregor and Lord Forsyth. I shall not cover the ground that they have already covered. I want to highlight three things. The first is savings, which I hold dear. They are the neglected vital ingredient for a successful society. Long ago, when I read economics at Cambridge, Keynesian philosophy was drummed into me. It is basically that savings equal investment and once those savings are made they flow through to good investment. Today, we have a savings ratio of just under 3 per cent. It should be nearer 8 per cent or 10 per cent to be the least bit successful. The only incentive to make anybody save at the moment is the fear of unemployment or the recession. As one looks through the Bill, there are no incentives for savings. There is nothing to encourage the family unit that is in employment to save or anything about looking to see whether the tax on dividends should be reduced to improve the return on equities and thereby improve the profitability or viability of pension funds. There is nothing about inheritance tax. Why is it that over half the countries in the rest of European have already got rid of inheritance tax? It is because they know that inheritance tax is a tax on the family and means families’ well earned lifetime savings being double taxed. There is nothing in the Bill about real safety for personal or family savings. There ought to be a flat rate of £100,000 or something of that order. I said that I would say nothing about savings, but I declare an interest as a trustee of the parliamentary pension fund and remind noble Lords that today the average pension of a former Member of Parliament is £16,160. That is hardly gold-plated, as most of the press seem to think.