My Lords, I commend my erstwhile noble friend the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, on her powerful opening of this debate. I agree with the arguments she put forward, as well as those of my noble friend on the Front Bench. There is very little for me to add to what they have already said about this decision that the Government have made and for which they have no mandate. They have not even had the respect to set out a proposal in a Budget in a much more rounded way, as put forward by my noble friend Lady Altmann.
I want to make a bigger point. What a lot of people find quite hard to take at the moment is that, alongside this decision, the Prime Minister has the gall to say that his Government are acting in a way which will restore public trust. He seems not to understand that all of us in the political class over the last few years have lost public trust—himself included—because of our disregard and disrespect for what the electorate have been demanding from us. For this Government now to take decisions that affect people so directly without any notice—believing that such decisions can be justified because the Prime Minister and his Chancellor are convinced that they know best—damages public trust further.
Of course, the impact of this politically on the Labour Party is a matter for it, but I urge the Minister and the rest of her Government to accept the arguments put forward by my noble friend Lady Altmann today. I hope that she does not mind me calling her my noble friend; she will always be “my noble friend” to me.