My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his questions and above all for his party’s support for these regulations, which I believe was also given last year. When I have answered some of the questions, I think he may feel even happier about providing that support.
The noble Lord asked whether the employment allowance achieved its intended purpose of supporting employment, given that the impact report stated that only 34% of those surveyed planned to take on more staff. The aim of the employment allowance is of course to support businesses and help them to grow by reducing the cost of employment. Statistics published by HMRC at the end of October 2015 show that 1.17 million employers have had their employment costs reduced by the employment allowance. Of course, it is up to individual businesses to decide how best to use these savings. The latest research from the Federation of Small Businesses suggests that 29% of small businesses will use the savings to boost staff wages, 28% will employ additional staff and 24% will invest resources. However, this is one of a suite of measures and, as I said, it is up to them how to use the allowance.
The noble Lord made a point about information and asked how we can target the employment allowance to specific gaps in small business employment if we do not have the data about who is using it. There are already positive indications to suggest that employment allowance is being widely claimed by the small business community. The impact report states that nearly seven in 10 eligible businesses with fewer than 50 employees are claiming the allowance. That report was compiled when the scheme had been running for less than a year. Since then, figures show that 1.17 million employers have benefited and, at the moment, 98% of the benefit of the allowance goes to small and medium-sized businesses—by which I mean those with fewer than 250 employees.
I turn to the regulations on excluding single-director companies from employment allowance. The impetus, as the noble Lord put it, behind these is to reinforce the objective of the allowance as a means to support wider employment and to help to ensure that it is focused on reducing the cost to companies of expanding their workforce or taking on their first employee.
On the question of eligibility for the allowance, whether further exemptions will be added to it and potential confusion from the changes, the report on awareness and impact on employment that the noble Lord cited was published last July and represents a snapshot of the research carried out between November 2014 and January 2015. Since then, the Government have published take-up figures and, at the end of 2014-15, the take-up rate stood at 89%—a quite substantial improvement—with more than 1 million employers claiming the allowance. As I mentioned, the mid-year estimate was 1.17 million employers. We are encouraged by those statistics and think that the early concerns set out in the report have eased with the passage of time, but, of course, the Government continue to monitor the effectiveness of employment allowance and its contribution to wider government aims.
The noble Lord asked why the technical consultation on single-director companies was so short. In fact, the tax consultation framework sets out that the consultation period for this sort of secondary legislation is four weeks, and this consultation was a bit longer, at five and a half weeks, because of the Christmas break. It was closed in early January to enable the measure to come into effect in April, as announced. As for a summary of the responses to the consultation on the single-director company measures, paragraph 8.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum provides a short summary of the comments made in response. It was quite short, and we have no plans to extend that because the essence of the replies is contained in that short summary.
The noble Lord asked, in relation to the paragraph in the Explanatory Memorandum on the technical consultation on excluded companies, whether the responses to the consultation informed the action taken to assist small businesses. That paragraph relates to the technical consultation. The responses to the consultation were useful in assisting HMRC to write the guidance for the measure, which will be published in due course on the government website GOV.UK.
The territorial application was mentioned. I can confirm that all these measures will apply to the whole of the United Kingdom, as set out in paragraphs 5.1
and 5.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum on the employment allowance changes. The paragraph that the noble Lord cited was included in relation to all the SIs to assist the Speaker in the other place by drawing attention to the fact that the instrument does not need to be certified for the purposes of the English votes procedures in the other place.
There was slight confusion about the Government increasing the upper earnings limit, meaning that employees have to pay more national insurance contributions on their earnings. The proposed increase in the upper earnings limit will maintain the alignment with the point at which the higher tax rate is paid. This will increase to £43,000 next year, which is slightly above inflation. At the lower end, the CPI rate of inflation, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, has been minus 0.1%, so those rates have been frozen. That is consistent with the approach taken in the past when the retail prices index was negative, which led to the thresholds being frozen for the 2010-11 tax year.