My Lords, I will be quite quick. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, does himself a disservice; this is a very important issue. I certainly missed it, and I think only someone with his expertise
and acuity would have picked up this very fundamental point of principle. The National Insurance Fund and its Northern Ireland equivalent are used to pay social security benefits, as the noble Lord said, including the state pension. Messing with the state pension certainly reverberates with the general public. Without the change proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, these funds are in effect being raided by the Government to pay for economic growth subsidies. Is that now their purpose?
The Government may argue that their new national insurance contribution social care levy, to be used for the NHS and perhaps eventually for social care—many of us doubt we will ever get there—sets the precedent for raiding the fund. We come back to the word “precedent” yet again. I doubt that this has been declared openly to the British people. It matters not just because of the promises inherent in the fund and its role but because NICs fall on workers earning well below the tax threshold. To raid their contributions—which they will have thought are paid towards benefits and pensions—to provide a subsidy for businesses is certainly a fundamental change of purpose.
I hope we can have some explanation from the Minister, because this seems to me a point of principle. With precedent established, I very much question where this whole track will take us. I again thank the noble Lord, Lord Davies, for raising a very fundamental point of principle which needs to be answered and dealt with openly.