House of Lords (Members’ Taxation Status) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I very much welcome the Bill, although it might have been nicer to discuss it on a cruise liner off the coast of Africa—perhaps we could all have been there to hear the noble Lord, Lord Steel, tell us about the merits of his Bill on reform of the House of Lords. I have enough experience of Private Members’ Bills, as we all have, to know that this is a chance to air the principle behind it, which is very timely. Some of us will therefore not be addressing the detail this morning. The noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, made an interesting observation at the start of his speech along the lines of, ““Here we are now in a recession and we see people in offshore tax havens having a legislative role in the House of Lords””. My noble friend Lord Lipsey and I were on opposite sides of a debate last night about who caused the winter of discontent. During the winter of discontent in 1979, 24 million working days were lost. For each increase in unemployment of 1 million in a year, 365 million days are lost. A 2 per cent increase in unemployment, which we have, means more than 600 million days lost. The crisis we are in at the moment is very relevant to the reputation of the whole financial services sector, those people who live in tax havens, and some of the best brains in the City of London who for years have dedicated themselves to defrauding the British public of the tax that they should be paying. To complete the analogy, those 24 million days lost in 1979 and all the circumstances that led up to that—there are arguments on both sides—are thought among historians of the intelligentsia to have been the nadir of the trade union movement. I could argue about that but if it is true, a fortiori it is now true a hundredfold about the damage caused by people who are defrauding the country. What are they doing to the economy? These are the greedy people who have looked after their own interests. They have no interest in the rest of society. They have gone from 10 to 20 to 30 to 40 in leverage ratios, in pyramid lending and all the rest of it. It is a scandal that anyone with that status should be legislating in the House of Lords. In one sense, I am quite happy that things continue as they are, because that will be a clear signal to many other sections of society, such as people in Burton-on-Trent in a few weeks or a few months’ time. Who are they going to blame for what is happening at the moment? They have to blame someone.