That an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:
“Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament.”
My Lords, it is a great honour to open this debate on Her Majesty’s gracious Speech. I am delighted to be joined by my noble friend Lord Younger, who will, I know, brilliantly close what I am sure will be a constructive and lively debate. We will consider in detail the Government’s proposed approach to economic affairs, business and public services. The key theme linking all those areas is the overarching objective to invest in our future prosperity. Given that, I am sure that there will be unanimous support for that priority across the House, and I look forward to hearing your Lordships’ expert contributions on its implementation.
There is no question but that the gracious Speech sets out an ambitious agenda for reform. There might be some who will be tempted to give an opinion on that but I will not apologise for what is a challenging and bold approach and for a Government who are restless for opportunity and renewal. This is a Government who are re-energised, reinvigorated and refocused on the right priorities, with a driving purpose to deliver real change for British people up and down this country.
If we put aside for just one moment the small matter of Brexit, noble Lords will not be surprised to hear me say that there can be no higher priority than the NHS. It is therefore my pleasure to open this debate by updating the House on the Government’s plans for improving healthcare.
As noble Lords will no doubt be aware, we have already committed to increase NHS funding, amounting to an extra £33.9 billion in cash terms annually by 2023-24. This is the single largest commitment to the health service ever undertaken by a peacetime British Government. Furthermore, in the first 100 days of this Parliament, we will bring forward legislation to enshrine this multiyear funding settlement in law. This is the first time that a Government have delivered such a commitment in legislation and its purpose is to give unprecedented financial certainty and to allow the NHS to plan with security for years to come.
The NHS long-term plan has been drawn up by those who know the NHS best, so that we can guarantee that it is not just about money but about how we spend it effectively. It has been drawn up by health and care staff, and patients and their families, along with experts in their fields. It sets out an approach for making sure that this extra funding goes as far as possible, ensuring that every pound is invested in the things that matter most.
Supporting the NHS in delivering the long-term plan is a priority for the Government and we are carefully considering options for targeted legislation to enable this. These targeted changes will reduce bureaucracy and improve collaboration across the NHS, ensuring that it evolves to meet the challenges of prevention, integration and technology, and enabling local partners to work together to deliver a healthier nation where we can care for people throughout their lives.
My Lords, before the noble Baroness sits down, following her remarks on the NHS, can she tell the House whether the Government propose to leave the European Medicines Agency? If so, will pharmaceutical companies registering a new compound, having gone through the procedure with the European Medicines Agency, have to replicate the process and cost by going through the same procedures here? Or will the Government accept the EMA’s registration, even though we no longer have any influence over the management, policies or strategy of the agency?
I apologise, but I think the noble Lord slightly missed his moment and I had sat down. However, I know my noble friend Lord Younger will respond in his closing remarks.
My Lords, I express my gratitude to the noble Baroness for the wide-ranging announcements in the speech she just delivered. I rise with some trepidation and no little sense of honour and privilege as I introduce our side of this debate.
We have a new Prime Minister. He has certainly earned the right to sit in the driving seat—we cannot deny that—but our job on these Benches is to remind him to fasten his seatbelt. We are all passengers on board now and must remain vigilant.
So many subjects crop up in this compendium agenda item, but I will limit myself to just three. My noble friends will no doubt pick up on others, and expert interventions from around the House will deal with a great deal. I will concentrate on education, the internet and transport.
I have been a school governor, a trustee and, for the last 10 years—and here I declare an interest; it is all in the register—chairman of the board of the Central Foundation Schools. I want to say that, because I believe it has given me a front-row seat, allowing me to see and be part of the reinvigoration of failing schools that have risen to take their place among the best schools in the country through initiatives such as Teach First, City Challenge and the establishment of academies in their first iteration.
We must also acknowledge the contribution made by the Liberal Democrats through the introduction of the pupil premium in their time in the coalition Government and thank them for this. In London and other cities I know, those initiatives and items have turned schools that were at a loose tether and in measures into front-ranking and high-achieving schools. It has been an honour for me to put in the spadework to achieve those objectives.
In doing so, we have been able to define a model for education that works. We do not have to invent anything de novo. Just as much as a rail system, an airport terminal, broadband accessibility or other things mentioned in the Minister’s speech, I believe that education simply has to be viewed as part of our national infrastructure. It is not just roads and bridges; if you have an infrastructure strategy, it must include education.
My Lords, after what might be described as a sluggish arrival of Bills and legislation to your Lordships’ House over the past few years, the Queen’s Speech sets out a dazzling array of Bills and legislation, which the Chief Whip said he expects to keep us very busy. We should welcome the fact that we are moving to address legislation because it quite rightly deals with some very important issues for this country.
After the dazzling speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Blackwood, and the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, and with regard to the 70 other people who will follow me, I will have a self-limiting ordinance and will try to speak quickly and limit what I say around the business, energy and industrial strategy portfolio that I represent. Others on these Benches will of course cover other areas. I am trying with this speech, in the spirit of positivity, to get more information and some sense of how this legislation will flow and about some of the unanswered questions that have come up.
The noble Baroness, Lady Blackwood, spoke with great brio on the employment rights Bill. Indeed, if it is as good as she tells us it will be then I am sure we will all welcome it. However, I share some of the reservations that the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, just set out, in that once these measures start to come before your Lordships, there will be a reining back. This is, as the noble Baroness knows, an area in which the EU has had a strong influence over the United Kingdom’s rules. We will be judging this Bill not just by what it contains but by when it comes. Perhaps the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, can give us some idea of the conveyor belt of these Bills and of what will be coming when. That will give us some sense of the priorities within the lump of Bills in this Queen’s Speech. The background notes for the Bill state that the purpose of the employment Bill is to
“protect and enhance workers’ rights as the UK leaves the EU”.
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak during this debate on Her Majesty’s gracious Speech. I note my interests, which I have declared, and I will limit my comments purely to health and social care.
I welcome Her Majesty’s Government’s focus on the NHS: health, social care and the workforce. I also welcome the additional funding. However, we must not be misled into thinking that this is a funding bonanza; it will serve only to stabilise NHS services. Between April and September, for all nine NHS cancer targets the lowest percentage of patients was treated on time since the standards were introduced. All 118 A&E units fell below the 95% threshold in November as the NHS posted its worst performance since targets were introduced more than a decade ago. We have a long way to go simply to stabilise the status quo. Are Her Majesty’s Government confident that the action outlined will make up the ground that is required?
The NHS is only as good as its workforce, and I am glad to see the focus on recruitment, training and immigration. However, issues related to immigration must be acted on as soon as possible. The new NHS visa is welcome, but it is a limited response to the need to recruit international staff to meet pressing workforce shortages. Health workers coming to the UK still need to pay the immigration surcharge, which is set to increase to £625 per person every year, on top of £464 for a visa. I wonder whether more needs to be done.
Her Majesty’s Government’s commitment to bring forward draft legislation to support the implementation of the NHS long-term plan is to be commended. As already mentioned, this should be based on the targeted proposals NHS England has developed. This will make it easier for NHS organisations to collaborate with not only each other but their partners in local communities to improve services for the people they serve. However, as any nurse working in a hospital today knows, too often patients, many of them vulnerable, cannot be discharged, despite being medically fit, because they have nowhere safe to go. A strategy for social care and its workforce is also needed.
My Lords, in the days following Her Majesty’s gracious Speech, noble Lords may have missed the announcement of 0.3% as UK statistic of the decade. It represents UK productivity’s average annual growth, down over 10 years from 2%. According to the Royal Statistical Society’s Hetan Shah, it is
“the most important boring statistic that you have never heard of.”
Productivity did not feature much in election campaigns, but it should have. High productivity growth leads to higher wage growth and more money for public services. Shah is not alone in linking low productivity with social discord. The University of Sheffield’s Richard Jones suggests that it is not
“far-fetched to ascribe our current dysfunctional and bitter political environment … to a decade of stagnation in productivity growth.”
I therefore welcome the commitment to boost productivity through new investment and R&D tax incentives. As the notes on the Speech explain:
“R&D is vital to a productive economy—firms that invest in R&D have around 13 per cent higher productivity than those firms that do not”.
The Government intend to
“prioritise investment in industries of the future where the UK can take a commanding lead”—
life sciences, clean energy, space, design, computing, robotics and AI. But in focusing on the cutting edge, they need to take care not to ignore everyday and foundational areas where poor productivity is a drain on the economy: low-wage, low-skill industries such as catering and retail; the public sector, which makes up one-fifth of the economy; or health and social care, where advances in biomedical science need to be balanced with research that improves productivity in the system.
Too narrow a focus on becoming a “global science superpower” also risks excluding areas of existing dominance. This includes the creative industries, which generate 5.5% of the economy and contribute across every region of the UK. Yet they are absent from the Queen’s Speech—as they were from the last—and are seemingly excluded from any additional support for research and development. Creative businesses undertake almost as much R&D as manufacturing, but as much of it relies on arts, humanities and social science research, it does not qualify for targeted R&D tax relief. This is because in applying R&D definitions that draw on the Frascati Manual, HMRC requires that R&D relates to scientific or technological delivery, despite the manual’s wider scope. Arts, humanities and social sciences are specifically excluded, and are deemed
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. She always makes interesting speeches, some of which she and I have discussed over cups of tea outside the Chamber. Given the exigencies of the five-minute limit, I hope she will forgive me if I do not take up her points and instead go straight to the issues that I wish to raise with the Government as they set out their plans for the next five years.
In summary, I want to draw the Government’s attention to some weakness in the way our economic system currently operates and make some suggestions for its improvement. At the outset, I want to make it clear that I am a strong supporter and defender of the market-led economic system, but the fact that I am such a strong defender and supporter does not mean that I think it is incapable of improvement or above reproach. I must say, I have had to reach the conclusion that the system, in its present configuration and in recent years, has not delivered rewards sufficiently fairly across all sectors of society and all regions of the country.
On behalf of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn hinted at some of this during the last general election campaign. The fact that his solutions were, frankly, beyond ridiculous should not blind us to the somewhat unpleasant fact that, nevertheless, there are questions that require a substantive response. Such a response will certainly be needed from this new Conservative Government if we are to keep faith with those voters who turned the red wall into a blue one. There is, therefore, a pressing need to create what might usefully be described as a more responsible capitalism. I congratulate the Government on the approach and tone that they have adopted so far. These are, however, early days, and I note that familiar country phrase: fine words butter no parsnips.
What practical steps should the Government now take? First, they should, without delay, introduce legislation to reconstruct the UK’s inadequate audit regime. There is general agreement, supported by the Government’s own reviews, that the present system no longer retains public confidence. A proper audit regime is an essential building block in the establishment of a more responsible capitalist system, so it is particularly disappointing that the Government intend to bring forward such legislation only, to use that famous Whitehall phrase, when time allows.
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to take part in this debate on the humble Address. I want to talk about housing. I declare my interest as chair of the National Housing Federation, the trade body for housing associations in England.
A week after the general election, it was reported that the number of homeless households in Britain had risen to over 68,000. At Christmas, more than 135,000 children did not wake up in a safe home to call their own. Each one of these children and their families need us to act now to invest in decent, affordable and high-quality housing. Given the ambition of this Government, I am hopeful that we will see the investment needed to build the homes that will fix the housing crisis.
The election made clear that voters want to see a change in the status quo. We have seen a real shake-up in traditional heartlands. These constituencies voted for a greater amount of investment in their schools, hospitals and infrastructure. I welcome the Government’s commitment to high levels of investment in infrastructure, but this must include a bold and ambitious plan to fix the country’s housing crisis.
The morning after the election, the Prime Minister made a welcome commitment to address the concerns of utmost importance to voters who may have voted for the Conservative Party for the first time. Polling by the National Housing Federation during the election revealed that 65% of undecided voters who backed Labour in the last election and voted leave in the EU referendum support the idea of spending billions of pounds a year on new social housing. This investment would not only be the right thing to do to help millions of families in England, it is also what voters have been asking for.
In the past 20 years, many communities in the north and the Midlands have been “left behind” while cities have thrived. I welcome the Government’s plans, including regeneration, to level up the regions in England. Housing associations work as economic and social anchors in their communities. They build the vital homes we need, and, just as important, they support existing communities and empower their residents. They add £16 billion to the British economy each year and they support over 250,000 jobs distributed right across the country. Does the Minister agree that housing associations will play a key role in the Government’s aim of levelling up the regions?
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A key part of this strategy is, as we have debated many times in this place, fixing our social care system, which is clearly under pressure and which, in turn, contributes to the unprecedented demand on the NHS. To meet this rising demand, we are already providing councils with access to an additional £1.5 billion for social care next year. This comprises an additional £1 billion of grant funding for both adults’ and children’s social care, and a proposed 2% to enable councils to access a further £500 million from 2020-21. Of course, this is not only about money. We are determined to find a long-term solution to meet the challenges in social care to ensure that every person is treated with dignity and offered the security that they deserve. Therefore, alongside the additional funding, we will seek to build cross-party consensus to bring forward the necessary legislation to implement social care reform. For the avoidance of doubt, we have pledged that these reforms will ensure that no one needing care will be forced to sell their home to pay for it.
Furthermore, the Government have promised to put mental health on an equal footing with physical health. As the Mental Health Act is nearly 40 years old, modernisation of this Act is critical. Therefore, we will publish a White Paper early this year, setting out the Government’s response to Simon Wessely’s independent review and our vision for wide-ranging reform. We will then bring forward a new mental health Bill to amend the Act. This work is important but it is also complex. Given our experience—in this place particularly—with the Mental Capacity Act, I think we can all agree that it is right that these long-term changes are made with care and consensus. Through these reforms, we hope and intend to empower patients and remove inequalities in our mental health system.
In my role as a Minister for Health, I have particular responsibility for promoting innovation across the industry. We all have reasons to be grateful for the medical innovations that have become available through the NHS over its 70-year history, from the first clinical trial into scurvy, to proton beam therapy and mass vaccination programmes. The Medicines and Medical Devices Bill will give us the necessary powers in UK law to update the current regulatory systems for human and veterinary medicines, clinical trials and medical devices. The Bill will enable us to cement our position as a world leader in the licensing and regulation of innovative medicines and medical devices after we leave the European Union, and will ensure that we have a regulatory system with robust standards and patient safety at its heart. The Bill is very much part of our agenda to modernise regulation, supporting early clinical trials and the production of personalised medicines but also the development of ever more sophisticated and safe medical devices.
I am proud to say that Britain is a nation of innovators, with many world-changing innovations and inventions pioneered here in the United Kingdom. The Government are committed to continuing to push the frontiers of science and technology via boosting R&D funding and developing proposals for a new, high-risk funding body to ensure that we remain at the forefront and competitive globally. We are equally ambitious in the scale of our commitment to the environment. We are the first country to legislate for long-term climate targets; we are world leaders in offshore wind and green finance; and there are now nearly 400,000 jobs in low-carbon industries and their supply chains. We will continue to lead the way in tackling climate change, encouraging new industries that will boost our productivity and growth as an early supplier of new, low-carbon technologies globally.
Our future, though, depends on the strength of our great cities. We have promised a White Paper on devolution, and I think all of us in this place agree that there is a powerful case for empowering every region and levelling up opportunity across every corner of this country. To unleash the potential across city centres in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, we need to invest in the factors that contribute to economic growth: a strong labour market, education, land for housing, infrastructure and more.
Our labour market is in its strongest position in years, with a UK employment rate of over 76%, almost three-quarters of which is in full-time jobs, but we are committed to going even further. This Government are determined to make the United Kingdom the best place to work in the world. Through the employment rights Bill, we will continue to deliver on our pledge to bring about the greatest reform of workers’ rights in 20 years. The gracious Speech confirms the Chancellor’s promise that the national living wage will increase and that, provided economic conditions allow, it will reach two-thirds of median earnings within five years. Also, within five years, the Government plan to expand the reach of the national living wage to everyone aged 21 and over. Taken together, we expect these changes to benefit 4 million low-paid workers. As assured in our manifesto, the Government will also increase the national insurance threshold to £9,500 next year—a tax cut for 31 million people, with a typical employee paying around £100 less in 2020-21.
Record numbers of people are now working and saving for retirement, with 87% of employees saving into a workplace pension in 2018, an increase of 55% since 2012. This shows that people are preparing for their future but, even with this success, we know that we must do more. Everyone in this place has commented on this in my hearing. That is why the Pension Schemes Bill will put protection of people’s pensions at its heart and sets out the next phase of pensions reform, building on consensus across the pensions industry and the political spectrum. On a personal level, I also very much welcome the urgent review undertaken by the Department of Health and Social Care and HM Treasury into the annual allowance taper to fix the pensions system so that senior clinicians can take on extra shifts without the fear of an unexpected tax bill.
Our nation’s productivity is no more and no less than the combined talents and efforts of people up and down this country. Therefore, the next part of our plan to make Britain fit for the future is to improve the quality of our education system. Importantly, the OECD’s PISA results show that the UK already outperforms the OECD’s average for reading, maths and science, and that performance has recently improved significantly in maths. It is especially welcome that this has been driven by improvements for lower-attaining pupils. However, our work is far from finished. That is why we have announced a cash boost to schools of £2.6 billion next year, rising to an additional £7.1 billion in 2022-23. This means that per-pupil funding in every school will increase in cash terms, and it will rise higher than inflation in most schools. The settlement underlines our determination to recognise teaching as the high-value prestigious profession that it is. It ensures that pay can increase for all teachers, with teachers’ starting salaries increasing to £30,000 by 2022-23. That represents an increase of up to 25%. On further education, we have already introduced the first part of the national retraining scheme and we will invest an additional £3 billion in the National Skills Fund, which will build on existing reforms to ensure that British workers are equipped with the skills they need to thrive and prosper for a lifetime in work.
Key to ensuring a lifetime of prosperity, to recruitment and to raising the productivity of our country is building more homes and creating a fairer property market. We know that this is true. In the last year, therefore, we have delivered over 241,000 additional homes. That is the highest level in over 30 years. During this Parliament, we will implement measures to encourage shared ownership, help local families on to the housing ladder and speed up the build of affordable housing. This Government are working to deliver a rental system fit for the future, which is why we are introducing the Renters’ Reform Bill to protect tenants and support landlords to provide the good-quality homes that we know this nation needs. It is also necessary that we undertake urgent action to respond to Dame Judith Hackett’s independent review of building regulations and fire safety. Working together to learn the lessons of Grenfell, we will bring forward a building safety Bill and a fire safety Bill as soon as possible. I know that the House understands the urgency of those steps.
Turning to transport, Her Majesty’s gracious Speech contained a series of measures to tackle urban congestion and transport links—it is no good trying to boost productivity if people cannot get to work on time—both here in the UK and with trading partners around the world. Our ageing airspace system has not been updated since the 1960s, so the Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill will bring forward measures to modernise airspace, making flights faster, cleaner and quieter and giving the police greater enforcement powers to effectively tackle the unlawful use of unmanned aircrafts, including drones.
Earlier this year we successfully brought home 150,000 Thomas Cook passengers stranded overseas in the largest ever peacetime repatriation. But that operation was complex and costly, so we will bring forward a number of reforms to deal with airline insolvency that will provide oversight of airlines in financial trouble and help passengers to return home speedily and efficiently. Furthermore, we are determined to protect passengers from the misery of transport strikes, so we have announced plans to keep a minimum number of services running during transport strikes, ensuring that unions can no longer hold the travelling public to ransom. We will also implement widespread reform to the rail industry, following the Williams review, to improve performance and reliability, simplify fares and ticketing and introduce a stronger railway commercial model.
This Government are steadfastly committed to a path of budget responsibility in the context of what I have outlined as an ambitious reform agenda. Our economic plan will be underpinned by a responsible fiscal strategy, investing in public services and infrastructure while keeping borrowing and debt under control. As a country we are in a strong position, not by accident but by design. The International Monetary Fund forecasts that this year the UK economy will grow faster than those of France, Germany, Italy and Japan. The deficit has reduced by four-fifths since 2009-10. We have seen the economy grow every year since 2010. There are 3.7 million more people in work now than there were in 2010, and the proportion of low-paid jobs is at its lowest in 20 years.
All this is good news that I am sure will be welcomed by every Member of this House, and thanks to this we can now invest more in growing our economy and public services. That is why this Government are proposing a step change in infrastructure investment to deliver sustainable and inclusive growth. We will implement an infrastructure revolution, helping to ensure that productivity and opportunity are spread to every part of this country. That is why the gracious Speech has confirmed plans to publish a national infrastructure strategy, which will act as a blueprint for the future of infrastructure investment across the whole of the United Kingdom. It will examine how, through infrastructure investment, we can address that most critical and pressing of challenges—decarbonisation—and set out plans to turbocharge gigabit-capable broadband rollout and improve energy and transport infrastructure.
In closing, it is my fervent belief that Her Majesty’s gracious Speech affirms our commitment to invest in an ambitious agenda and level up opportunity and quality of life in every corner of the United Kingdom. We will invest to reform education to deliver social mobility. We will invest to build homes, infrastructure and economic opportunity to help raise living standards. We will invest in our NHS to make it the most sustainable and high-quality healthcare system in the world. I know that as legislation comes forward there will be expert and challenging debates in this place in which the collective wisdom and experience of the House will be called on to the full. I also know that in this place we share a common commitment to a fairer, more innovative and prosperous Britain. I look forward to delivering on that with each and every Member in this Chamber.
From my own personal involvement in education over the decades, I can attest that investing in education yields measurable and immeasurable outcomes of the first order: skills, efficiency, culture, productivity, aspiration, mobility, personal development, well-being and citizenship. All this and more can be directly attributable to a properly focused and functioning education system. Alas, we have lived through 10 years when a lot of the progress looks to be coming towards disintegration. I have heard the measures proposed. The proposal to
“ensure every child has access to a high-quality education”
was clearly stated, with some figures put on it by the Minister. But the promise to
“increase levels of funding per pupil in every school”
while being welcome will leave us by 2022-23 only just at the levels that the Labour Government left as per-pupil expenditure in 2009-10. We have to recognise that what seem like alarming increases are increases of a relative nature.
At the same time, school budgets are having to pick up extra costs such as national insurance and pension increases. Pupil premium inputs have not increased with inflation and changes to the benefit system have diminished the number of pupil premiums without significantly compensating the families concerned. While we acknowledge the proper demands and expectations of Ofsted—of course we do—schools are telling me that they do not have the financial resources to implement them. Budgets for schools in the maintained sector are set in April, but in September for academies, while changes in teachers’ pay are decided in the summer. A simple thing could bring both budgeting exercises in line with each other, which would be an achievement in its own right. So budgeting becomes very hazardous for maintained schools, which have to take a guess at what the salaries are going to be later in the year.
“Education, education, education” is a mantra that we do not have to attribute to its source, but from an interview in the current number of the New Statesman I can add another sophism:
“Social mobility is something I care passionately about”,
says the subject,
“and the key to social mobility is education.”
All I can say is that that can be attributed to someone who I want to call my noble friend, although he usually sits on the opposite Benches: the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Lympne. We were at school together and know the advantage in mobility that education can provide.
All of us want education to improve. Can the Minister who replies let us know, I wonder, whether he is aware of the factors that have led to the success of London schools? Will he be prepared, instead of levelling things down from an admittedly unequal distribution of resource so that everybody gets the lowest common denominator, to level up to the success levels that we can now quantify and recognise from good practice over the last 10 years?
It was spelled out in the manifesto or the Queen’s Speech that
“We will legislate to make the UK the safest place in the world to be online—protecting children … and … the most vulnerable … and ensuring there is no safe space for terrorists to hide online”.
The duty of care has been well delineated in the online harms White Paper; of course we welcome these commitments and will do our best to support them. But we are not best assured by the turnover of those holding office as Secretary of State for this part of the Government’s work. It seems to be a launching pad for people with aspirations beyond DCMS—but what am I? I do not know anything about politics.
Nor do we feel able to continue the fruitful conversation already begun in this area until we have sight of the results of the consultation which, let us remind ourselves, ended in July last year. I attended seminars and conferences. I have held discussions with various interested parties throughout the period and since. We are told that more detailed discussion between the Government and unnamed “stakeholders” has been going on. This is a matter that demands cross-party, non-partisan collaboration. It is too important an area of our national life for it to become prey to the goings-on of party politics. I do not like being kept out of the loop. I hope that the promised pre-legislative opportunity will materialise before a final shape emerges in the form of a Bill. We need to get this provision right, or as right as we can make it, and it is vital for us not to cut corners as we find our way forward. I must plead with the Minister to give us some timetabling precision on this point.
The Government have pledged
“to bring full fibre and gigabit-capable broadband to every home and business across the UK by 2025”.
I thought that I had a good vocabulary; it has been enriched since people put me in charge of this brief. We ought all of us to gasp with astonishment at this seemingly simple promise for two reasons. First, the Government have brought forward their previous commitment from 2033 to 2025—by eight years. That means that if the target stated is to be reached—while I am not very good at internet gigabit stuff, I got 100% in arithmetic at O-level, so I can do this bit—BT’s current rate of progress, at 80,000 homes per month, will have to be increased fivefold to 400,000 homes per month. Have the Government received the nod from BT Openreach that this is achievable? Has it been costed? Will the £5 billion mentioned in the Conservatives’ manifesto be enough to do the job? There is so much more that needs to be said on these matters that I leave it to other noble Lords who will surely follow on later.
I come finally to transport, and I am not going into the aeroplane side of things. The proposed railway minimum service legislation sets a dangerous precedent on the right to strike. Nobody likes to be inconvenienced by strikes, especially on the railways. I am a regular user of Southern Railway and have been as frustrated as many others in this House by these actions, but this Government’s attempt to restrict the collective bargaining of rail workers, to scapegoat them, is reprehensible. Surely it is time to sort out the mess of underfunding and franchising that has characterised the entire history of our railway system since its privatisation in the early 1990s. Here is another Tory mess, I am afraid to say, that needs to be looked at in the round rather than dealt with by populist measures aimed against the workforce. Can the Government assure the House that we will not see a race to the bottom of deregulation and a slashing of workers’ rights in this and other areas, especially in the post-Brexit era?
The arguments for and against the continuation of the HS2 project have been very much in the news, and I commend the dissentient report made public earlier this week by my noble friend Lord Berkeley. However that project turns out and whatever decision is made—high speed, high cost; that is what it seems like—it should not be at the expense of the vast improvements needed in the commuter and inter-regional networks around our major cities in the Midlands and north of England. This is a time for joined-up thinking to produce joined-up transport systems. There can be no serious regeneration without adequate infrastructure of this kind. The House will welcome some reassurance and commitment on these points.
I look forward to sitting through the next endless number of hours as I listen to other people’s more splintered views, as I have been able to luxuriate in a few extra minutes. With that, I take my leave.
As far as I can see, the list of main elements of the Bill does not include the protection of retained EU workers’ rights. Perhaps the Government can clarify where they stand on that.
The financial services Bill aims to maintain the UK’s regulatory standards and ensure that we remain open to markets when we leave the EU. This is “remain” and “maintain”—in other words, we are pushing toothpaste back into the tube. I will avoid the obvious Brexit jibe here, but does the Minister think that we will in fact maintain the access we currently enjoy to the European financial services market? What grounds does the Minister have for that opinion?
The national security and investment Bill seeks to establish a notification system whereby businesses would flag transactions with potential security concerns. This is something we should all be concerned about, and indeed have been in the past. Given Her Majesty’s Government’s recent conduct—as Ministers will remember —around waving through the Cobham deal and its takeover by a US investor, I think I join other noble Lords in being sceptical about the Government’s intention. It is all very well increasing the Government’s powers and giving them the ability to apply conditions, or indeed to block deals, but if the Secretary of State chooses not to do that and to bend the knee to the market, then those powers are essentially useless. Perhaps the Minister can help me with a thought experiment: can the Minister name one British business that would be protected by this rule that would not, or could not, in fact be protected by existing legislation?
The science, space and research Bill is really important, and elements of this Bill have been perhaps the most trailed in the newspapers. I speak of the Government’s so-called ARPA approach to a big investment. We are told that there will be £800 million invested in something, and that that something will be in the north. The details will follow, no doubt, in this Bill. However, what has not been mentioned is the role of UK Research and Innovation. As noble Lords will remember, we went through a very long legislative process to establish UKRI. It was given a co-ordinating role in order to simplify and focus the research activities of this country. If noble Lords want to see how complex the current research and development funding structure in this country is, there is a report from the Science and Technology Select Committee that has one of the most mindbendingly complex box-and-wire diagrams imaginable. This seems to add more complexity and to call into question the role of UKRI. Can we have some clarification around that? In any case, £800 million does not reproduce the level of investment we are getting through the European Union, particularly through Horizon 2020 looking forward. Will Ministers also guarantee that, beyond the current assurances, which have been very well accepted by the research community, research organisations will have access to at least as much as the total funds that are coming from Europe?
While we are on the subject of UKRI, two words that have been all over other Queen’s Speeches we have heard but have not appeared in this one are “industrial strategy”. I do not see those two words in conjunction anywhere in the Queen’s Speech. Is this a slip of the drafting pen? When the current Chancellor of the Exchequer was briefly Secretary of State for BEIS, he proscribed the term. Are the Government proscribing the words “industrial strategy”, or are they merely hiding their light under a bushel? The Queen’s Speech does mention a couple of new sector deals. If there is not an industrial strategy, in what context are those sector deals to be delivered? I seek some clarity. Industrial strategy was, or is, the purview of UKRI, so what is its role going forward, particularly in the context of this ARPA-style research organisation that is coming? Where does industrial strategy lie? While we are in this area, what is the status of existing sector deals? Will they be honoured? Many of them stretch far into this Parliament and, indeed, probably beyond, so where are they and will they be honoured?
The Made Smarter review was very important in the area of revitalising regional economies, but it too was not mentioned in the Queen’s Speech, so what is its status? I shall not go into the details of the national infrastructure strategy Bill, but the area I would like the Government to focus on is energy strategy. It is absolutely clear, even before the targets we have set ourselves on zero carbon, that this country is bereft of an energy strategy. We absolutely need a stand-alone energy strategy, so can the Minister fill us in on when we might expect that process to start, when we might actually have that debate and when the industries that will have to deliver this strategy can actually start work? It is already too late in many cases, and we need to move. Leaving aside conversations about all the other elements of infrastructure, that should be top of this Government’s pile.
By any measure, this package is formidable in terms of objectives. I am sure that if this were “Yes Minister”, the civil servant would say, “Very ambitious, Prime Minister”, yet the election campaign stoked expectation even higher, and this will be the challenge. The noble Baroness, Lady Blackwood, talked about challenges. The challenge is going to be public expectation of delivery—that is the phrase du jour that we must use. Those expectations will have to be delivered in a difficult climate. Not only are all these Bills coming, but there is the small matter of free trade agreement negotiations going on, at least with the European Union, if not with other parallels. They are designed simply to reproduce what we have already or to deliver the equivalent economic basis. Meanwhile, economic growth, with all due respect to the other numbers trotted out just now, slowed to about 0.4% between the second and third quarters of 2019, with construction and manufacturing struggling in particular, and the service sector essentially holding its breath at the moment to see what happens.
National expectations have been pushed up, and we on these Benches will work hard with the legislation that comes our way and do our best to make sure that these Bills get the scrutiny that the country deserves.
The additional £1 billion is welcome, but in a sense it may give only a short-term boost to social care services for adults and children. I wonder whether it is enough to meet the rising demand for care while maintaining quality and accessibility of services. I am reassured to see that there is a cross-party approach to seeking consensus on social care reform, but it will take tremendous commitment, tenacity and creativity if the Prime Minister is going to honour his promise to fix the social care system once and for all and to bring forward meaningful proposals for reform. I look forward to lending my support to this work.
Would Her Majesty’s Government consider bringing forward proposals for health and social care integration? As the British Medical Association states:
“Challenges for Britain’s health do not end in GP surgeries or hospitals and the Government needs a credible long-term plan on how to care for people at home and in communities.”
Given the scale of the task of merely maintaining the current situation and the combined demands on healthcare needs, such a plan is increasingly important. Plans should be there to see health in its wider community context.
The diocese of London is collaborating on a pioneering project with Health Education England to place mental health students in faith communities in the Grenfell area to enable mutual learning. We need more such initiatives. They free up capacity, relieve pressure on various parts of the NHS and also contribute to the health of the community. I wonder whether more progress could be made to commission, partner and champion with local charities and churches to provide services to support the vulnerable and at-risk groups and to look at health and well-being in broader terms.
Finally, I hope that the implications of the European Union withdrawal Bill on policy and legislative business do not distract from improving the NHS, health and social care. Improving health and social care is good not just for the individual but for the nation.
“not science for the purpose of these Guidelines.”
This narrow definition excludes advances in knowledge that lead to production of experiences or to enhanced understanding of human behaviour.
The benefits of a unified R&D definition across all knowledge domains go beyond the support of legitimate innovation in the creative sectors, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Duncan, for agreeing to meet on this. A unified definition would ensure that technological solutions are informed by insights into human behaviour, making adoption more likely; it would also encourage knowledge exchange across disciplines where innovation often occurs.
The correlation between creativity and scientific discovery is well understood, including, I know, by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackwood. Galileo was a poet; Newton was a painter; and Leonardo was both, and more. A 2008 study of 40 Nobel laureates in science found them three times more likely to have arts and crafts avocations than other scientists. Several observed that
“purely academic skills are not sufficient to train a person for creative scientific work.”
This makes obvious sense: it takes creative thinking to come up with new hypotheses and to imagine the experiments that will prove them.
Given this, the Government’s decision to opt out of the PISA 2021 test for creative thinking is surely a mistake. This is a unique opportunity to collect internationally comparable data and increase understanding of how education best develops creative thinking—vital for the workforce of the future and vital in solving global challenges. It is an opportunity that the Government should not turn down.
The Conservative manifesto promised to promote creativity in schools, but measures to do so are noticeably absent from the Queen’s Speech. Reversing the decision to opt out of the PISA 2021 test for creative thinking would be a first step in addressing this. I am sure noble Lords will agree that it would be unfortunate if, in our efforts for the UK to become the global science superpower, we were to lose our position as a global superstar in creativity.
The Government could also usefully institute a much wider and in-depth consideration of the pinch points of modern capitalism. This could include: first, an analysis of the consequences of the different tax treatment of interest on borrowing, which is tax deductible, and on dividends, which is not; secondly, consideration of whether share purchases should give immediate rights of ownership of the enterprise or whether some period of longevity should be required; and, thirdly, consideration of the asymmetric nature of the risks in modern corporate activity, with some groups able to insulate themselves and some—mostly workers in factories—unable to do so. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, it could include consideration of whether limited liability status should become a privilege, not a right, so that in cases of particularly egregious personal behaviour, individuals could face the full consequences of their actions.
Responsible capitalism could not, will not and should not be created by government alone. It will require a wholehearted commitment by British industry and commerce, in particular its leaders and trade associations, to change the culture and end the sense of entitlement that has prevailed in recent years and has so disfigured the corporate scene. Profit of itself is not a business purpose; it is the result of creating and selling a product or a service that people wish to purchase. There is therefore in business a moral dimension, and a failure to make this distinction has damaged the reputation of our industrial and commercial sectors.
Let us take this week’s example of Mr Neil Woodford, fund manager extraordinaire, whose fund has performed so badly that redemptions have been stopped and investors cannot withdraw their money. How can Mr Woodford look at himself in the mirror and say it is fair that he should personally withdraw £9 million-worth of dividends from his fund management company, let alone justify that to a wider audience and the wider world? Our market system can, should and must do better than that.
But of course our drive for new homes must not detract from ensuring that existing homes are of the utmost quality and safety. It is imperative that people are safe and feel safe in their homes, and I am pleased to note two new pieces of legislation in the Queen’s Speech that will contribute to this goal. Since the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower, housing associations and indeed local authorities have worked swiftly to identify unsafe ACM cladding, and work has begun or been completed on the vast majority of these buildings in the social housing sector.
But we face failures throughout the building safety system well beyond ACM cladding, as the Hackitt review has shown. All social housing providers have made it an absolute priority to deal with the safety of entire buildings, together with tenants and residents. Not surprisingly, that presents considerable financial and operational challenges. We cannot ignore the sector’s capacity to do this while continuing to build new affordable homes and investing in communities up and down the country.
The wholesale failure of the building safety system should not hamper the ability of housing associations and councils to build the affordable homes of the future. The Government’s plans to resource remediation work must take this into account. It is a complex and extensive programme of work that needs renewed strategic leadership from government. For their part, housing associations remain committed to working in partnership to get this crucial work done. Let us all be clear in our focus on what matters most of all: the safety of the people who call these buildings their homes.
I am glad that the Government have reaffirmed their commitment to the affordable homes programme. Delivering hundreds of thousands of affordable homes needs the certainty of sustained support and specific funding for building homes for social rent. Ahead of the upcoming Budget, will the Minister speak with his Treasury colleagues to ensure that the affordable homes programme is financed effectively to build the homes this country needs?
The election result will continue to be dissected, but the Government have accepted the clear message for change and a greater political focus and action on the communities that have been ignored for too long. We know that when you have a safe, quality and affordable home to live in, everything else follows—as the Minister herself quite rightly said. It is right that the Government are finally listening to these voters, and I hope that we will see the investment desperately needed to deliver the meaningful change these communities have been calling for.