Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this important debate and to follow the noble Lord, Lord Faulks. It is, however, an occasion tinged with sadness, because it marks the retirement of one of our most talented, fair, honest and hard-working colleagues, my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts. I endorse everything that has been said today about his character and his generosity. He was one of a small band that kept forensic, intelligent and constructive opposition going through the, for us, bleak years of the Blair Government, and his experience of that will be a great loss.
Since I joined the House in 2013, the noble Lord has been a great support and a fount of knowledge for me as I battled with business legislation, including the tricky reforms on pubs as a Minister in the coalition Government. He also made a superb contribution as chair of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, as my noble friend Lord Blencathra has already said. That is a body that makes our scrutiny more effective and is incredibly important.
When we sat on the Back Benches together through the Brexit years, we tried to improve the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill in 2020, wresting back some parliamentary control with a cap on arrivals, or the advertising of vacancies in the UK before they were offered to newcomers, or higher salary thresholds. All these ideas were rejected at that time—wrongly, as is now clear. My noble friend Lord Hodgson’s underlying rationale then was the likely surge in immigration and the impact of that on demand for housing and the consequences for water and nature. On 30 September 2020, he criticised the Home Office for an attitude which essentially said, “Don’t worry; it will be all right on the night”. His measured warnings on demography and his call even then for an office for demographic change were well grounded and admirably unemotional. I am only sorry that he had to be a Cassandra in this respect.
I hope nobody will deny the proposition that demography is a very important subject. It is especially important when populations are changing rapidly, as we have seen in recent years. Indeed, demography, in the form of one of its components—namely, immigration—has for many years been at the top, or near the top, of the subjects that voters deem to be the most important political issues of the day. So UK citizens were fully seized of its importance. They judge correctly. After all, immigration policy—an aspect of demography—was plausibly a principal cause of Brexit and of the rise of Reform, which now leads in the polls, as we have heard. “Take back control” was largely a political response to what was then regarded as large waves of immigration for which nobody had voted or, indeed, been asked to vote.
Unfortunately, Governments, political parties and legislatures have not shown the same clear-headedness as our voters. Indeed, they frequently acted like the proverbial ostrich, determined to see nothing and to direct attention elsewhere. This went on for many years before the very recent reluctant tacit acceptance by all parties, including the party currently in government, that the subject deserved more attention and more action.
I am afraid that, in this process, we in this House have not covered ourselves in glory. When presented by my noble friend Lord Hodgson with the opportunity to consider what was known to be of major importance to many voters, we have instead been content to pretend that much lesser issues deserved more attention. We did not support his proposal for a new office, and we repeatedly turned down his request for a special committee of inquiry on this subject. So, to our shame, we join the ostriches in that.
Today we have the opportunity to set this right by properly and fairly examining the noble Lord’s report, and we should do so. In reading it, I was immediately struck by the stark simplicity of his statistics and the quality of the different contributors. The population grew from 55.9 million in 1971 to 67.6 million in 2022, and of course that has accelerated. The fertility rate, however, has fallen rapidly, from 2.44 in 1970, as the report shows. The most recent figures from the ONS are 1.41 per woman in 2024 in England and Wales—the lowest on record—and 1.25 per woman in Scotland. Unfortunately, as Professor Sefton points out, pro-natal policies do not seem very effective. The most pragmatic response is to reinforce the trend of older workers retiring later. So we need to make that easier and improve the incentives for employers, who tend to discriminate against older workers, as I found when I conducted the review of the state pension age in 2022.
Another worrying statistic, highlighted by Professor Sarah Harper, is that the UK population over 65 is predicted to reach some 25% by the middle of the century, with 2% over 85. That is some 1.5 million people, and it is likely to double within two decades. This means smaller numbers of productive people paying for the non-productive in a country where productivity has already been flatlining since the financial crisis during the last Labour Government.
We know from the work of the OBR how disastrous the increase in the proportion of the elderly will be for the nation’s finances—one reason why I proposed a GDP-related growth cap on pension expenditure in my review. As the report says, we can also learn from Japan, which has a more open attitude to employing older workers. This could have a dramatic effect on the dependency ratio, the UK’s future finances and, indeed, the nation’s health. As those of us who are lucky enough to work in this House know, working has a generally positive effect on health.
Some little-known and puzzling statistics on page 21 of my noble friend’s report are those on national insurance numbers in 2024. It is difficult to see how the 940,000 national insurance numbers—60% for Asian nationals—can be reconciled with the much lower number of work visas that have been issued. My noble friend Lord Hodgson and I quizzed Home Office Ministers on the defects of immigration statistics during the passage of past legislation, but they appeared to have a surprising degree of faith in their statistics and a resistance to looking forward at the future implications. It took several precious years for the establishment to accept that reality. Other important statistics have been mentioned. For example, England has a population of 438 people per square mile and will have a larger population than Germany on current trends. This is highlighted by Professor Michael Clarke in a very interesting contribution on national security, which the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart of Edgbaston, rightly mentioned.
This all leads to the report’s conclusion that there is a problem finding properly based and appropriately focused data to tell us what is going on. It means that there is a strong case for a new body following the precedent of the independent Dutch state commission on demography 2050, as advocated for so eloquently and frequently by my noble friend.
We have a problem, as the report makes clear, in the widely differing levels of acceptability of discussing big strategic decisions. Climate change and net zero have been the subject of extensive debate and have their own well-resourced Climate Change Committee, yet adding 6 million to 10 million more people to our population will not only hasten climate change but will have a major effect on our country, our children and our grandchildren—and, of course, our schools, hospitals, housing and infrastructure.
We also need to get under the skin of net migration. As we discussed in the Budget debate last week, we are now losing many entrepreneurs and more of the young and ambitious because of the weight of taxation and the growing burdens on business ushered in by this Government. Net migration has reduced significantly from its record levels, but in the year to June 2025, we were still seeing 898,000 new arrivals, many of them hard to accommodate here and creating a drain on public expenditure and pressure on benefits. We need to understand this and the social and regional ramifications much better.
In closing, I thank the Leader of the Opposition and his Chief Whip for finding time at last for this important debate and invite the Government to establish a new demography or population authority. Given the expertise in this House and its convening power, we should also tackle the issues in one of our committees. Such changes would be an appropriate legacy of my noble friend Lord Hodgson’s 50-year contribution to Parliament, to public life and to evidence-based debate.
Lord Frost (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I begin by declaring my interest, if perhaps a rather general one, as the incoming director-general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has an interest in these and many other questions.
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, who made a powerful speech, if I may say so, that compelled attention. It is also a particular pleasure, of course, as many other noble Lords have said, to be able to support the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, today and to pay tribute to all his work over many years. The report on population that we are debating today is entirely characteristic of the serious, evidence-based examination of issues that he has always brought to bear and is particularly needed on this subject.
For there is, without question, a real problem. The numbers are striking. We have heard them already today, so I will not go into the detail, but as the report notes, over the past 20 years the UK population has risen by nearly 10 million people. One-third of that increase has arrived in the past four years or so, and another who knows how many—five, six, seven million—may arrive over the next decade or so. Population growth on this scale concentrated on an already densely packed island and particularly in the south-east of England, which is now one of the most densely populated areas in the whole world, apart from island states—a point that is repeatedly underlined in the report by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson—obviously poses challenges for housing infrastructure, public services, social cohesion and so on.
As we have heard, the implications of all this are simply not taken into account systematically in government planning. Indeed, the debate on the subject is too often stigmatised, as if expressing doubts about whether rapid population growth is desirable or possible to accommodate marks one out as being beyond the pale. One of the important things about today’s debate is that it is a way of beginning to break some of those taboos about important issues. It is necessary because polling consistently shows that the public feel that the population is growing too fast and that immigration has been too high. They know that something is amiss.
We have already discussed those issues at some length today, but there is one aspect that I want to focus on today, which has been mentioned but not covered in detail, and that is fertility and the birth rate—the number of children that we have in this country. That is where I want to focus my remarks. Just reviewing the facts briefly, all western countries, with the exception of Israel, have seen significant declines in fertility rates. The UK’s current fertility rate, about 1.4 children per woman, is the lowest it has ever been. Thirty years ago, all our population growth—it was much slower then, of course—pretty well came from births, from natural increase; 15 years ago, it was 50:50; now, births and deaths are roughly equal and all our population growth is coming through migration. This is historically unprecedented, at least since the fifth century AD.
Why has this decline in fertility happened? Some of this is obvious. Social changes are real and well documented. Women have more choices, education and careers rightly come first and marriage is delayed, but these changes have been in progress for many years now. They surely account for the fall in the birth rate over the 1960s and the 1970s, but since then, between about 1980 and 2015, the fertility rate—the number of children per woman—has bumped along at around 1.8. That is not at replacement rate, but not so far from it.
Since 2015, however, fertility has fallen precipitously again to around 1.4, as I said. It is tempting to attribute this, and it often is attributed, to particularly British factors such as high housing costs—which are, of course, themselves driven by immigration, at least in part—or to a tax system that is, compared to much of continental Europe, remarkably unfriendly to families. In truth, though, that is not quite good enough. A similar trend is visible across most European countries. It is more or less strong from country to country; the starting points are different, but the trend is still quite clearly visible.
Why is this happening? The only honest answer to give, I think, is that we do not really know. One can of course speculate. The slow to zero growth in incomes across Europe since the financial crash is no doubt part of it. There is perhaps a growth in cultural disapproval—I do not know; I feel it is rarely stated openly, but it is certainly present—of those who choose to have large families. Could it be that the growth in social media since around 2015, the boom in dating apps and the growth in, shall we say, novel conceptions of sex and the family have had some effect on all this? Unpopular though it may be to say it, I will say it anyway: the increasing recourse to abortion, now at its highest ever level in this country with a quarter of a million abortions in 2022, not far off now half the number of live births, clearly has an impact on the figures.
Or could there be something more intangible and more profound—some sort of loss of confidence in the future more broadly? Some say this is about climate catastrophism; others see it as a decline in confidence in the values of western civilisation. Who knows? Whatever it may be, when people do not believe that the future will be better than the present, they tend not to have children. The fact that Israel, a country with strong civilisational self-confidence among many other things, has more or less avoided this trend suggests that there is at least something in that view.
However, we do not really know. That is part of the problem because it makes the issue particularly difficult to deal with, but the fact that we do not know is not a reason not to talk about it. We have to deal with the consequences because they exist whether we like them or not. We have to try to find some way of mitigating them if we cannot change them.
So what can we do? I identify—here I am echoing work by other demographers, notably Dr Paul Morland—three possible solutions to this predicament. The first is to try to have more children and increase the fertility rate back towards replacement. As I say, so far only Israel has really achieved this among developed nations, and other countries that have tried it in various ways, with extra public support or whatever, such as the French and the Hungarians, have had only a very limited effect. That suggests to me that, although there is an economic aspect to the problem, it is not really the whole problem.
The second approach is to give up on trying to change demographics and simply adjust to an ageing society: accept lower fertility and a shrinking workforce but invest heavily in productivity, automation and reform of the labour market and pensions to accommodate this older population with fewer children. That is the solution set out by Professor Sefton in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, and Japan is the obvious case study here. The basic difficulty, though, is that, in order to increase productivity in this way, we would need, in this country and across Europe, to embark on a campaign of liberalisation and reform of the economy for which no political party really seems to have the appetite, and which perhaps ageing societies are particularly reluctant to contemplate.
The third approach is the one that we have actually chosen over the last 30 years along with most developed countries, and that is bring in a replacement population: import workers and their families to maintain the worker to dependant ratio and supply the labour that the native population cannot. The problem with that option, whatever its appeal—and it is of distinctly limited appeal to me at least—is not actually a solution at all, for two reasons. First, the economic case for mass migration is weaker than is often claimed. The work of Dr David Miles and others, again as cited in the report, shows that mass migration does not boost per capita growth—it may produce a growth in the absolute size of the economy, but not per capita—and of course there are lots of social and other consequences that we have discussed.
Secondly, and more fundamentally, mass migration is simply a way of deferring the problem. If you try to hold the dependency ratio constant through immigration—that is, at about its current 3:1—to ensure that there are always enough working-aged people to support those in retirement, simple maths shows that you end up needing inflows of half a million to three-quarters of a million people every year in perpetuity.
On that trajectory, by 2050, a third of the British population will be born overseas. I do not particularly welcome that prospect; I do not think that it is a sustainable policy for us, and it may not, in any case, be a solution that is available to us due to the growing scepticism about mass migration that has been touched on in our debate today.
We have to exclude the option of importing a replacement population. The option that is before us is to bring immigration down, close to zero, for a prolonged period. If we choose to resume it later, on a more selective basis, then we can, but it does, of course, leave us with a problem. What can we do to solve it?
First, we can try to increase the birth rate. That involves boosting economic growth, building more houses, reforming taxation and doing what we can to change and reinforce the civic and cultural messages that are around. We should not and cannot count on that working. Secondly, there is the Japan solution: do what we can to create a more productive workforce if we cannot create a bigger one. Luckily, the solutions there are largely the same: more growth, more reform and more incentives to boost incomes, however challenging that all looks. Thirdly, and this is a bureaucratic solution, is the recommendation in the report from the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for an independent advisory body on demographic strategy to provide us with honest, evidence-based advice about the trade-offs and the numbers. I would add that this body should be explicitly tasked with studying trends in the birth rate and fertility. It should be tasked with looking at whether measures taken in any other countries across the world have made any difference, and why. More broadly, it should look at what the experience of other nations tells us about managing demographic change.
Finally, we need to break the taboo on discussing these things. I remember the scorn that was poured on politicians sharing my political opinions, such as the former MP Miriam Cates or the current MP Danny Kruger—who are my friends—when they sought to raise these questions two or three years ago. They persisted—credit to them—and now the birth rate is slowly becoming part of the debate. We cannot avoid it; indeed, it is very welcome. Honest, open, evidence-based discussion—on the interaction between fertility and migration, and its economic and social effects—is vital if we are going to restore public trust in our institutions’ ability to solve these difficult questions. The report from the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, is a vital contribution to that conversation, and I hope that it marks the beginning, not the end, of a more serious engagement with one of the defining challenges of our time.
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, for securing this debate. The report Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow is a timely contribution to our national discussion on population, prosperity and the future of our United Kingdom. Many noble Lords have already highlighted the noble Lord’s distinguished career. I add my thanks for his public service, and for his notable contributions to my county of Staffordshire in his business dealings.
The report highlights the demographic shifts our nation is currently experiencing, but, before I touch on his report, I feel I should also reassure the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, that I will respond to its key points. I will reflect on some of the questions in Hansard, answer some specific ones that have been raised and will, as ever, write. However, noble Lords will appreciate that this has been a wide-ranging discussion and debate. I should also highlight to the noble Lord that, before the general election, my boss was Sir Trevor Phillips, whom he cited; so I could end up getting myself in a great deal of trouble by the end of this response.
This Government recognise the points articulated in the document: the pressure on housing supply, the strain on our NHS, the impact on wages in certain sectors and the importance of maintaining social cohesion amid rapid change. We are not alone in facing these challenges. As the report notes through its international case studies, many countries across the world are also grappling with similar issues. Before I move on to the substance of the debate, I would like to make a couple of points.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Horam, who raised the issue of Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire, and where this debate can lead, I am well versed, having helped to lead the campaign against the BNP in my great city. Only this week, the now former leader of my county council of Staffordshire had to resign over his support of white supremacist social media sites. I am aware of what is at stake, and so are my Government. As the Prime Minister has stated, this is a battle for the values which govern our country and it is incredibly important that we are part of the fight.
In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, who made a very powerful speech, I say that, like her mother, my mother is also a force. I would suggest that is why both the noble Baroness and I are in your Lordships’ House. My mother ensured that I understood my responsibilities to fight back against racism, and those who hated me because of who I was and not what I did. However, I think my mother beat the noble Baroness’s, because I went on my first demo when I was a toddler.
I will now address some of the specific issues in the report before us, and the points noble Lords raised in the debate. On migration, this Government have been clear that we want a system that works in the national interest, attracting the brightest and best while being fair and firm. The modern challenges that migration can present do not overwrite the millions of individual stories of people who have come to this country over the centuries, built our nation in partnership with those already here, and today are our colleagues, our neighbours, our families and our friends.
I am here because my family fled persecution and found sanctuary in our great country. It was a brave decision to flee the country from which they came, to flee the Pale of Settlement, but the scale of pogroms gave them little choice, and I am very grateful that our country let them in.
Since taking office, this Government have taken fair action to reduce the number of people coming to the UK, particularly in some of the areas identified by the report. Our recent tightening of the rules around dependants for students and the review of the graduate visa route are evidence of the Government’s commitment to responsible migration management. However, fair management of migration is only one side of the coin. We must also address the consequences of population change already in the system, as outlined by the report’s expert contributors.
Given the request for better data, however—which I will come to later in my speech—it would be helpful to remind your Lordships’ House that the latest ONS figures estimate net migration of 204,000 in the year to June, a fall from 649,000 the year before. If we are going to talk about data, we should be absolutely clear on the accuracies of that data.
Turning to some of the points raised about migration, in response to the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, who raised the issue of asylum seekers, the Government have published a new asylum policy statement setting out significant reforms to the UK’s asylum and illegal migration system. The statement outlines the current challenges, the Government’s objectives and a comprehensive package of measures to restore order, control, fairness and public confidence in the system. Elements of this include that refugee status will be temporary, granted for 30 months and renewable as necessary. Settlement will no longer be automatic; instead, there will be a 20-year route to permanent residency, ensuring long-term commitment and integration. Refugees will be able to switch into a new bespoke work and study route to access family reunion and resettlement rights, with new fees and conditions in accordance with the rules of that route. This will enable them to earn down their length of time before they can settle in the UK to 20 years.
Both the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham—from slightly different positions, I suggest—touched on the ECHR and our current plans. Noble Lords will be aware that only yesterday, the Deputy Prime Minister, accompanied by my noble and learned friend the Attorney-General, addressed the Council of Europe’s informal Conference of Ministers of Justice in Strasbourg to talk about reform of the system, in order to make sure that the ECHR can be fairly applied with regard to illegal migration, and to secure the convention’s future.
With regard to immigration and the effect on GDP, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, the UK’s immigration system is geared towards supporting businesses and accessing highly skilled overseas workers, who boost the supply of skills and talent in the UK labour market. These individuals are the most likely to contribute to growth. That is why the Government have recently announced plans to improve access to our highly talented visa routes and tilt the immigration system back towards attracting higher skilled workers to the UK. The Government are clear that overall net migration must fall from the very high levels over recent years. We plan to achieve this by reducing lower skilled migration and groups with lower participation in the labour market, who contribute less to growth.
The noble Baroness, Lady Finn, also raised the issues of skills and productivity. Increasing skills is responsible for a third of productivity growth and provides the opportunity for people to boost their incomes and improve their quality of life. Through short courses, funded by the growth and skills levy, and partnership with colleges and universities, Skills England will work in partnership with employers to support clearer navigation of the skills landscape and training products for the outcomes they need. The Department for Work and Pensions will work with employers to fill their vacancies—to get the right people with the right skills, or set them on the right path to grow their necessary skills.
The introduction of work visas was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Empey. Since the introduction of the skilled worker route, the salary requirements dictate that a migrant must be paid whatever is higher out of the general threshold for the route or the going rate for that occupation, with an absolute minimum salary requirement that an overseas worker has to be paid. This is designed to place a premium on recruiting overseas and maintaining access to international talent for firms, while also ensuring that UK resident workers are not undercut—something the noble Lord would expect from the Labour Party.
The Government are clear that international recruitment cannot be a cheap alternative to fair pay, and this must be reflected in future changes to the immigration system. On that point, I turn to the noble Lord, Lord Sarfraz, who raised a series of interesting points about new technologies. I will reflect on his comments, especially that robots are nice. Given the subject of the report, he really is thinking about tomorrow. I have all the lyrics of “Don’t Stop” in front of me, and I am very disappointed that other noble Lords have not used them in their speeches.
I turn to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, about international students converting from study visas to work visas. The Government’s approach is to link migration policy and visa controls to skills and labour market policies, so that immigration is not used as an alternative to training or tackling workforce problems in the UK. This approach will be important to enabling delivery of the Government’s broader agenda.
Moving from migration to social cohesion: the UK has experienced a sustained period of rapid demographic, economic and technological change, which, alongside 14 years of Tory austerity, has put increased pressure on public services and local communities. We have seen tension, frustration and, in some cases, division manifested in the places most affected. At this point, I put on record my former roles at HOPE not hate and the CST, where my core responsibilities involved work on social cohesion and counterextremism.
I reassure your Lordships’ House that these issues are being taken extremely seriously, and I especially reassure the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester that this is key to what we seek to do. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is co-ordinating cross-government efforts to consider a longer-term, more strategic approach to social cohesion, working in partnership with local government, communities and stakeholders comprehensively to address complex, deep-seated issues in our places. As the right reverend Prelate asked for, this is a whole-society approach.
As part of our pride in place strategy, we are providing up to £5 billion over 10 years to support more than 330 of our most deprived communities across the country, helping to build strong, resilient and integrated communities. My great city of Stoke-on-Trent is a participant in that, including in my husband’s constituency—I set that out for the record. Bentilee, Ubberley and Meir North are areas that will each receive up to £20 million over the next 10 years.
Our long-term investment is designed not only to address deprivation but to rebuild social capital and strengthen community ties in areas, with a portion of funding expected to support cohesion-related projects. Importantly, we are empowering communities to make decisions that shape their places. We will continue to seek ways to bolster social cohesion, working in partnership with local government and civil society.
I turn to one of today’s consistent themes: the pressure on public services and housing. The 10-year health plan, published in July 2025, set out a vision for how the Government will make an NHS fit for the future. The plan set a clear direction for the service, its stakeholders and the public on the future shape of care through three radical shifts: hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention. I turn to a specific point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart—I want to call her “my noble friend” even though she is a Cross-Bencher. An engaged workforce is central to delivering the Government’s objectives for the NHS. The 10-year health plan set out the vision for how the Government will make the NHS fit for the future.
A new workforce plan will be published next year to detail how the workforce will be equipped to deliver the 10-year health plan, the roles it should carry out, where they should be deployed and the skills it should have. That includes staff being better treated and having better training and more exciting roles. The new workforce plan will be based on multi-professional teams, with the skills needed to enable the delivery of the three shifts.
Building on that point—and in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Finn—NHS England will shortly commence the second phase of the medical education and training review, working with partners to design a package of reforms that will provide doctors with the skills they need to meet the evolving needs of our patients in a modern NHS. That includes work focused on procedure-heavy specialities, to ensure a rapid acquisition of skills and to develop a curriculum that delivers the skills needed for a community-based, digitally enabled healthcare system.
On housing, we are committed—as noble Lords have recognised—to delivering 1.5 million safe and decent homes this Parliament, as set out in our plan for change. We have already taken urgent action through bold planning reforms and a record £39 billion investment to kick-start social and affordable housebuilding at scale across the country.
Houses are homes which anchor communities. It is vital that the homes delivered are high-quality, well designed and in places where people can work and thrive. We will ensure that what we build is supported by the necessary infrastructure and well-designed place-making, working in partnership with councils, housing associations and the wider sector.
Employment support was highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe. Professor Harper’s analysis in the report of an ageing UK workforce is particularly pertinent. People in the UK are living longer, and the proportion of workers over 50 in the workforce is growing. Noble Lords need only look at your Lordships’ House.
Good work and careers have a positive impact on health, well-being and financial resilience. Work gives people purpose, a focus for learning and the important means to engage with society. This is particularly important for people who experience loneliness in later life, as the right reverend Prelate highlighted. Our focus is on lifelong learning, upskilling and incentivising longer, healthier working lives to maximise the potential of our domestic workforce.
The DWP currently offers employment support for all ages through its network of jobcentres across the UK and through contracted employment programmes. In addition, work coaches and employers are supported by 50PLUS Champions working across all 37 jobcentre districts. Champions provide a critical layer of support through jobcentres to ensure that the needs of workers over 50 are met.
I have many points on the environment, but there were not many points made on it. So I will write to the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, who was the main person to raise it.
I move on to security, on which there were several points. Professor Clarke, who I worked with when he acted as an adviser to the House of Commons Defence Select Committee and is a great analyst, addresses two areas of national security: protecting the state from external threats, and internal stability. He focuses in particular on military recruitment and on threats to national cohesion from state-directed sub-threshold warfare.
At this point, I refer the House to my register of interests. Like my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart, I am an honorary captain in the Royal Navy. While we are talking about matters relating to the senior service, I will just quickly respond to the noble Lord, Lord Empey. I reassure him that both the Type 26 and the Type 31 frigates are currently being built in the UK as we speak. When I questioned myself, I did go and check with the former First Sea Lord, who usually sits in front of him.
As the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, emphasised, the issues of security are key, and some of the issues we are addressing are outside our immediate scope. These are both important aspects of the challenges we face. Our national security strategy, published in June, sets out the Government’s intent to harden their approach. Its objectives include strengthening our borders and making the UK a harder target for adversaries and for gangs engaged in people trafficking.
Beyond our borders, we must consider the effects of the very significant demographic changes which will take place in other countries over the next 50 years. The strategy is clear that we are entering a period of significant global instability. Demographic change will contribute to a number of issues, with challenging implications for the UK.
As set out in the strategy, our statecraft will need to adapt to this environment, ensuring that we can defend our territory and overseas supply chains from increased competition, improving our resilience to transnational risks and strengthening our key alliances so that we are better placed to tackle together the challenges that we all face. The noble Baroness, Lady Stuart, is aware of exactly what is in the national security strategy, so I will not read out the details.
I am trying to make sure that I come in under 20 minutes.
In terms of how we legislate, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, and Henry VIII and delegated powers, following on from previous reports laid by the noble Lord, I reassure your Lordships’ House that the Parliamentary Business and Legislation Committee will review every single Henry VIII power that comes forward. There are circumstances where it is appropriate for Bills to contain substantial delegated powers, but departments with Bills containing any delegated powers must produce a delegated powers memorandum detailing each power and the justification for it, which is published on introduction. Noble Lords are aware that we are seeking to move away from the sheer volume of SIs that there has been previously.
The lack of data to understand trade-offs and what is happening on migration was raised specifically by the noble Baronesses, Lady Neville-Rolfe and Lady Finn. Forecasting net migration is an uncertain business. The impact of external events as well as uncertain behavioural responses to policy measures on migration trends make future migration hard to predict. Not all impacts of migration are quantifiable, as set out by the Migration Advisory Committee in its report, EEA Migration in the UK.
Although there is a significant body of evidence to suggest that highly skilled immigrants make a positive contribution, there remains a lack of evidence and significant uncertainty about wider impacts on productivity, investment and social cohesion. The ONS is making more use of administrative data in its estimates for net migration. It keeps published estimates under review and revises accordingly, with estimates in the last 12 months marked as provisional. The revisions published recently by the ONS are primarily due to changes in the data sources, which have led to improvements in the ONS’s methodology. Although the numbers have changed, the overall trend for net migration has remained the same.
The Home Office continues to develop its data linking. In May 2025 the Home Office published a research report linking sponsored work and family visa data with HMRC PAYE data, providing crucial data on the earnings and tax contributions of visa holders, but I appreciate that not all points raised by noble Lords are covered there so I will come back—I am going to go slightly over time, so apologies.
The key recommendations of the report are
“the creation of a new body that would provide a commentary on the government’s stated policy objectives, to undertake research into demographic issues, and to provide an open transparent forum to reassure the public that these challenges were not being overlooked”.
The Government have a manifesto commitment to strengthen the Migration Advisory Committee to deliver several key reviews and to fill a new remit with a new Labour Market Evidence Group to support a more joined-up approach to skills, migration and labour market policy. The Labour Market Evidence Group consists of the Migration Advisory Committee, the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council, the Department for Work and Pensions, Skills England and equivalent skills and training experts from the devolved Governments.
As set out in the immigration White Paper, the Labour Market Evidence Group has an ongoing standard function to work together to gather and share evidence about the state of the workforce, training levels and participation by the domestic labour force, including at devolved and regional levels. It will focus on sectors and occupations that are central to industrial strategy, currently have high levels of reliance on migration for their workforce or are anticipated to in future, and it will make recommendations about sectors or occupations where workforce strategies are needed or where the labour market is currently failing.
This report is a timely challenge to all of us in this House, and across all parties, to think beyond the immediate term. The people of this country have a right to expect a Government who plan for tomorrow. We are committed to taking action now to tackle these pressing issues, providing the clear leadership and long-term strategic planning that the British people deserve. I again thank the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for his report and for the opportunity to debate it in your Lordships’ House. In the words of Fleetwood Mac, who I assume he is very fond of: “Don’t you look back”. I wish him well in his retirement.