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National Insurance Contributions Bill

My Lords, I have made clear in the past my criticism of the Government’s cuts to regional expenditure. Therefore, I welcome the fact that this measure potentially puts back the best part of £1 billion into regional development. It is not the traditional way in which it has been done. Arguably, if it works, it will be more effective because it follows the market absolutely rather than the views of regional development agencies. Therefore, it could be an effective way of getting money back where it is needed. I found the first of the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, about fairness quite perplexing. To argue that the measure is unfair because it excludes the more affluent parts of the country is to argue that regional policy is unfair because it excluded or did not give much preference to the wealthier parts of the country. It is true that there are wards and constituencies in London that are extremely poor and that have high levels of unemployment—that has been the case for a very long time and throughout the history of regional development—but it has not been seen in the past as a reason for not giving additional support to the north, where the problems are even greater. The difference between the problems of Newham and those of Sunderland, Liverpool and Barrow is that Newham is in a buoyant labour market within a travel-to-work area that is doing very well compared with the rest of the country. Many communities in the north are in labour markets and travel-to-work areas where there is simply no way to get a job very easily. That is the essential difference between the excluded regions in the south and those in the north. The noble Lord spoke about simplicity. While he might have been right to castigate the Minister for using administrative arguments in dealing with the first amendment, he is doing exactly the same here. He cannot argue that a man or a company cannot be given a benefit in Newcastle just because, two and a half years down the line, they employ someone in London. That argument does not stand up. New businesses have been set up in the past predominantly in excluded areas. Therefore, if his approach were adopted, one would expect a large number of new businesses to be established in London and the other excluded regions. What assessment have he and the Labour Party made of the cost of such an extension of the area? I know that he—and, indeed, I—are not absolutely convinced that £940 million is the cost of this programme, but no doubt he has a view as to what it is likely to be. I suspect that the cost of extending the provision will be double what is in the estimates already, which means a potential cost of another £940 million. Even if it is £500 million, has the noble Lord contemplated that? How does that extra expenditure fit into the Labour Party’s commitment, under the Fiscal Responsibility Act, to halve the deficit over the next four years?