Government Record on Education, Employment and Welfare

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, I also most warmly congratulate my noble friend on a brilliant speech in which she said all that needed to be said. Many of us will repeat the same message, but that is what you do in church—as the right reverend Prelate will understand—and you learn the message in the end, so I hope that I will be forgiven for doing so.

Education, employment and welfare cannot be judged in isolation. Together they determine whether people can build secure and independent lives. Much of what the Government want to happen is commendable, but too much of what has actually happened is deplorable. Mission is not the point. I have always had a great regard for the noble Baroness who just spoke, but lifting the two-child limit is not the point. This Government are so good at doing easy things. They do not seem to have any stomach or courage to introduce unpopular measures, yet most of us know that to achieve success you have to do difficult things. I had to shut hospitals. The noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, had to shut mines. If you want progress, you have to do extremely tough things. This Government too often play to the gallery and are not prepared or do not have the courage to tackle what must happen.

I will say a bit about teachers and lecturers, who provide such a vital service. It again shows commitment that 4,000 of the promised 6,500 additional teachers have been delivered, but the real problem is retention. How can we make teaching a more worthwhile activity? I have just returned from the University of Hull, where I received an honorary degree, I am delighted to say. Mine was a long service award for 17 years as chancellor, and I was being given it alongside the most distinguished noble Lord, Lord Norton, who has done decades of proper service at the university. But the ceremony was a teacher graduation, and I was so impressed by the dedication, professionalism, commitment and, above all, the support the university can offer teachers in the region the moment they get burnout. When they get depressed, demoralised and have compassion fatigue, they can provide mentors, networks and further training. I commend that example.

Much has been made of this appalling figure of 1 million young people not in education, employment or training. Those who do not study history are destined to repeat it. Many of us came into public life at the time of the race riots and terrible unrest, when young people, then Black people, had no work, no self-esteem, no recognition and no respect. That leads to crime, lawlessness and despair. The urgency of the practical steps needed to lift this generation forward cannot be exaggerated.

I commend my noble friend Lord Baker. I visited his UTC in Hull, the Baker Dearing UTC, and it is extraordinary to see the way it works with employers and the university to deliver results. At a time when there is disenchantment with university—my noble friend Lord Willetts will no doubt address this problem—more and more young people want skills, a vocation and a job. It is extraordinary how many have said, “I don’t think university is for me”. So we have to look even more urgently at technical and other education.

I support those who argue for greater regionalism. I have long been a great admirer of the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill of Gatley, whom I very much hope will be a leading light in the new Burnham Government. He argues that skills should be completely devolved, because Whitehall cannot know what each labour market needs. He makes a powerful case for joining health, welfare and employment. I very much hope that, in the same way as Andy Street did in Birmingham and as happened in Manchester, we have a better result with more regionalism, innovation and opportunity. The critical test is in delivering a complex achievable plan. Let us bring an end to government by press notices.

Working From Home (Home-based Working Committee Report)

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, I too warmly congratulate the noble Baroness on her report: thoughtful, practical, and admirably free from dogma. I think we are all going to ask her to review the report a couple of years’ time, because it is clear that we need more evidence.

As has been well said, the pandemic accelerated what the committee calls a previously “modest and gradual shift”. We have a new reality, with 13% of working adults in Great Britain working from home, 26% in a hybrid way. We do not want to turn back the clock. For carers, disabled people and parents, it has been life- changing and, properly managed, hybrid working can offer the best of both worlds. I can remember going to work and pretending that I had a very important meeting, when actually I was going to see my children’s primary school play. We have all been in situations where we were rigidly supposed to stay at our desks with no flexibility—we might work in the evening, we might do anything, but no, it was the nine-to-five commitment —but the world is very different now. At the same time, what matters is what works for both parties, and I worry that the pendulum may go too far. Employees owe their employer commitments and obligations, as well as the employer owing them to the employee.

Businesses have different requirements. They need people to come in at different times, and many people cannot work from home. If you look at the workers out in Belfast last night—the emergency services—they had to go to work. The noble Baroness, Lady Watkins of Tavistock, will know that people in the health service have to go to work. People talking about working at home can be a little bit precious about their world. The key is that it requires management, and within management the key person I would like to have seen more reference to in the report is the chief people officer, whose job is to make sure you get 110% value out of people, and not 90%. That is all about motivation, engagement and leadership; it is at the heart of productivity. The CPO’s role is about culture, engagement, and performance management—always incredibly difficult, but how much more difficult is it when people are working from home? Workforce planning is at the heart of deciding how you are going to organise jobs that involve working from home. I was talking to someone at a utility the other day. All the call centres are now organised with people working at home, but there is a requirement to come into work on a regular basis to meet colleagues, have training and raise issues. It can be done, but it requires a great deal more thought and analysis.

For some people and businesses, working from home is essential. The Minister used to work for Standard Chartered bank. If you have to be on the telephone to Hong Kong in the morning and to America in the evening, this is very difficult to do without flexible working. If tech businesses had to be constrained by the talent pool in their local area, that would be extraordinarily limiting. It is a context between the business, activity, individuals and the employers, and we should try to be unprejudiced, objective and, above all, evidence-based as we look for a way forward.

More must be said about young people, because the Milburn report, which we have all found harrowing and deeply alarming, stated that one in eight people is now not in education, employment or training. Without action, that could become one in six. Of all the people who need to go to work—to learn, listen, be exposed to the watercooler moment, and have bossy people such as me wandering around on management walk- abouts, seeing when they look miserable or out of order —young people should be able to go to a work environment whenever possible. That is very easily said.

I also believe that older people should go to work, because they become rather comfortable. They are better off, live further away, like their house, have their dog, and they are in their comfort zone. In fact, they are stuck in a rut and becoming fossilised. They need to go to work to learn about TikTok and the next generation.

Hybrid working needs good management, analysis and thought. It is here to stay. We do not yet have all the answers, but the noble Baroness and her committee have helped us to understand a few more of the answers rather better.

Artificial Intelligence: Impact on Human Relationships and Society

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts

Friday 5th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great honour to speak in this debate. It will sound increasingly like an echo chamber in the themes that are raised but, to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, with all that she has done in this sector, is remarkable.

I start by paying tribute to the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury. She gave a magnificent speech. I speak on behalf of many, I believe, in saying how delighted we are that she is the Archbishop of Canterbury. She learned humanity at the bedside. Those of us who have been involved in health know that it is the nurse who really is closest to the patient at times of suffering, difficulty and frailty. That shone through in her remarks today. We are privileged indeed that she is our archbishop. We all pay tribute to her for the topic of the day, following on from the Pope’s encyclical.

The most reverend Primate cannot have all the glory, however, because the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford deserves a great deal of recognition for his steadfast tenacity on the importance of ethics in relation to AI and human-centred AI. Indeed, former Archbishop Welby, who made such a big and profound difference for so many of us, supported the Rome call for AI ethics in 2024, so there is a continuity about this.

As the most reverend Primate said, artificial intelligence already offers enormous benefits to humanity across science, education and industry, with the potential to increase productivity, solve complex problems and improve quality of life. We welcome those advances, nowhere more than in healthcare. As the most reverend Primate said, AI is helping clinicians detect diseases, personalise treatments and improve patient outcomes. It is transforming medical research; the work of DeepMind, through AlphaFold, and of Isomorphic Labs, has demonstrated AI’s remarkable potential to accelerate drug delivery by predicting the structure of proteins and helping researchers identify promising new treatments at unprecedented speed. What once took years of painstaking laboratory work can increasingly be accomplished in a fraction of the time, bringing hope to millions. It reminds us that AI is not just a technological advance: it has the potential to become the greatest tool for human flourishing ever created. If harnessed wisely, it can help us live longer, healthier and more productive lives.

Of course, innovation and governance must go hand in hand. This week, noble Lords have been rediscussing the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, which was my first Bill when I became a Minister. This was a new technology, creating a life outside the body, and it needed different regulation: subtle, complex and long-lasting. Now, it needs updating. It was difficult to organise that regulation and this is a whole new challenge—but it has to happen. We have to strike the right balance between encouraging the development of technologies that benefit humanity while ensuring that they do not undermine human dignity, security, freedom or well-being.

We need not only to address the problems of AI that are here and now, but to understand and forestall the problems of AI that are to come, which could dwarf those we face today. There are the fast-burn problems of advanced AI in the hands of bad actors or the loss of control of an advanced AI; there are also the slow-burn problems we are just starting to confront, including the erosion of jobs leading to many of people being deprived of a job, career and sense of purpose in their lives, and the threat of gradual disempowerment and enfeeblement of human beings, as has been said. No one knows how to avoid the fast-burn problems, but supposing those potentially catastrophic threats are solved, it is the slow-burn problems we will have to contend with.

Rather than addressing the problems of today—troubling though they are—we must show our concern for the rapidly advancing future. It is a future we have not asked for that is being imposed on us by a few tech barons, backed by massive amounts of money. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford rightly asked in his response to the King’s Speech, where are the laws binding development of superintelligent AI? Those who want to have several sleepless nights need only read Yudkowsky and Soares’ recent book. Do we want AI that is more capable than a human in all significant respects or and AI that none of us knows how to control?

Enlightened governance, transparency and safety measures are not obstacles to innovation; they are essential means. We must address the potentials of the future now. Humanity has a challenge on its hands; it is one we can meet, but only if we combine wisdom with innovation, ethics with progress and a steadfast commitment to ensuring that technology remains the servant of humanity, not its master.

NHS 10-Year Plan

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for his very thoughtful contribution. It is particularly of the moment, and I completely recognise everything he said about this needing to focus on people.

We have to look at this technology as enabling better care and freeing up time. How many of us go to the GP and experience frustration at the restriction on the time that we are allowed to spend with the GP, because so much of their time is taken up with admin? Of course, data protection is central. The health service is not the only area where we are looking at systems of data protection, and the normal protection methodology will be brought to bear. We have to make sure that, in governance, there is a much more transparent and open style, which, frankly, we all have to admit has been missing in some cases. This is an opportunity to look at that.

I must admit that I will have to have a conversation about where the ethical discussions will actually take place, but I know that, throughout the professional bodies, these considerations are taken into account all the time. It is fundamental. The direction of travel is to have people at the centre, building the workforce, so that they have the opportunities to thrive and do their jobs to the best of their abilities for their patients.

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lord, this is a pot-pourri of worthy aspirations, with the most extraordinary sense of déjà vu: hospital to community; sickness to prevention; a patient-driven NHS; league tables; foundation trusts; funding following the patients and outcomes. I was a contemporary of Alan Milburn, and he is behind this; these were all measures that we were discussing long ago. Maybe they have not been sufficiently implemented—and I so welcome the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, asking where the timetable and implementation plan are, and how this is going to happen.

But I must leap forward to the most serious issue of the day. We are all united on the importance of the NHS. It is incredibly difficult to change it, manage it and lead it. How can it be right for resident doctors to be taking industrial action for five days later in July? They have had an incredible increase compared with other members of the public sector, and the Government have said that they will help them on their work conditions. For those who say that their greatest pride is in helping patients, this is a shocking state of events—in a career that people want to join and that has long-term respect. Will the Minister ensure, very specifically, that the department checks up on whether any junior doctor taking industrial action then moonlights in another health authority, or in a private health provision, so that while they are taking industrial action they are also earning, at a premium rate, making up the gap left by the other doctors on industrial action?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

As someone who has been involved in the plan, I start by saying to the noble Baroness that although it might echo things that have happened in the past, there is an enormous difference now. There is a depth of collaboration, bringing people together and recognising the different cultures in organisations. Of the 200 bodies that are going to be dismantled, Healthwatch is one; it has been very positive and has contributed to the future plan for how this is all going to look. There has been a step change in how we get out and work with people. It is a very ambitious plan, which I am pleased about. I am also very optimistic, because, quite frankly, too many professionals have gone too close to the edge and they realise what is on the other side if we do not all pull together and do something about this.

We are disappointed about the BMA decision to strike. The majority of resident doctors did not vote to strike, and threatening strike action that could harm patients will set back progress. I assure the noble Baroness that no one on these Benches is welcoming the strike. The basic truth is that, thanks to this Government, resident doctors have received a 28.9% pay rise compared to three years ago, and the highest pay award in the entire public sector this year. The Secretary of State met the BMA yesterday. Although he has made it very clear that the Government cannot go further on pay than we already have this year, he has offered to work with resident doctors to resolve issues they might face around working conditions. It will, of course, be down to their managers to work with staff to come up with a plan to deal with the action that is being proposed.

Social Cohesion and Community during Periods of Change

Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone Excerpts

Friday 6th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak in this debate, which always has a particularly important place in the calendar. I look back fondly at our debate this time last year on families and the really wonderful work that the outgoing most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury did on Love Matters, helping people accept families as they are in the present world. These are not always wonderful—we remember RD Laing and the schizophrenogenic mother—but, for the most part, families are the building block of society. That seems to me to be the right place then to move into social cohesion, such a critical issue.

I am alienated by the Library briefing referring to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe to give me my definition of social cohesion. Social cohesion goes back to Durkheim, the French sociologist and founder of sociology, 150 years ago; to Max Weber and Karl Marx trying to understand how societies would operate in the face of declining social and religious factors and the change in the workplace. They talked about social cohesion and the outfall of suicide, delinquency and deviance if social integration was not properly respected. Of course, in today’s world, social cohesion is even more difficult.

One reason I became Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, when my boss had asked me to take a much chunkier department, was because my observation, as a social scientist, was that the framework that held people together was increasingly disintegrating. People were held together by the docks, the steelworks, the mines: that was the drumbeat of communities. In a world where people work from home, those common causes are no longer there, and it is the DCMS responsibilities that hold people together. Going to the Last Night of the Proms is an act of social cohesion. Going to the cup final at Wembley is an act of social cohesion: people are there together, regardless of their class, their background and so on. Museums, sport and galleries are all ways of creating social cohesion in a world where it is not always the Church that provides that cohesion. I regret that.

There was a time when political parties created social cohesion. Anybody who went to my constituency, when I was first an MP, joined the Tory party not because they were Tories but because they would meet nice people. I know that it was the same in a lot of Labour constituencies, but it is not like that any more. The work of the Church, and all faith groups, is enormously important because it gives meaning to life, it helps the needy, it helps the lonely and it helps people through the life cycle. The great thing about faith groups—religious, Muslim, Hindu, Christian—is that you celebrate birth, you celebrate adolescence, you celebrate marriage and you prepare for death. This is how we create communities that care for each other and understand each other. It was shocking, the most reverend Primate’s comment about people who are so obsessed with being online, they do not have a friend. How often do we see that with children? Their friends are their online friends. How dangerous and sinister is that?

I want to talk about this new development, articulated by Dame Sara Khan as “freedom-restricting harassment”. That is a rather fancy name, but we see it in the cancel culture in schools and universities—the idea that people are not free to speak the truth as they see it. The joy of the House of Lords is that we cannot be intimidated; we can say what we like without even having to be afraid of our constituents getting at us afterwards, as those who have been in the Commons will understand. I have spent many years in universities, as have many, and my message to graduates getting their degree is always, “University is the place where you have created your values, you decided who you are. It is not just about facts and knowledge, it is about wisdom, trust, values and what you believe to be right for the future”. The fact that our universities are particularly international in nature is all the more important, because the stranger factor is so sinister and dangerous, but if you have learned together, you work together and understand different cultures—how important that is for the economy.

Those of us who are followers of McKinsey will recognise that diversity is one of the critical factors in successful businesses. I applaud employers and I think we should say more about them in terms of social cohesion, and the work they are doing on diversity and inclusion. It sounds very woke but it really matters. Can you be yourself at work? Can you be the best possible person you can be? Can you give 110% of your effort? Because if you are feeling insecure about being of a different ethnic group, sexual orientation or whatever, you are not able, you are not liberated, to do the best you can in your economic enterprise.

How much more important is this now too, with all this working from home, which I have viscerally opposed? Except for women, or men, with childcare purposes, I will not believe that working from home is a healthy thing to do. We are social people. We need to go to work. Young people need to go to work to see grumpy old women like me at work, and grumpy old people like me need to see young people who will explain to them about TikTok. This is how we share values and how we change. The sooner we move away from thinking that working from home is a wonderful thing, I shall be delighted. I accept that it has transformed life for many women, and I will allow it there, but otherwise nothing will convince me.

On democracy, the most reverend Primate made really serious comments about people failing to vote, their alienation and disinterest. I get very angry when I hear people say, “All politicians are in it for themselves”. If you want to do it for £80,000 a year or whatever it is, working seven days a week, you try. I meet a lot of people in the business world who sneer at politicians, and that really winds me up big time, but there is an issue about the effect of social media. This is familiar. When we all went to political meetings when we were young—long ago—people would argue and debate. You would never leave a political meeting thinking it was 10-0 or 8-2, everything was divided, but social media is about assertion. There are no facts, no evidence, no logic; there is assertion, and this vulgarises and polarises debate.

I commend the most reverend Primate particularly on his presidential address at the York Diocesan Synod last March. He quoted Jonathan Sacks, with whom I used to work a lot, talking about the temptation for religious leaders to be confrontational, like politicians. He said, “I am trying to resist this temptation, please pray for me. And please resist it yourself”. He also said that with this divisive mindset:

“Choices must be set out as stark divisions. Not to condemn is to condone … A prophet hears not one imperative but two: guidance and compassion, a love of truth and an abiding solidarity with those for whom that truth has become eclipsed”.


It seems to me that that is what we have to do. I want to draw attention to the English-Speaking Union, which encourages young people to debate, to take each other’s sides in an argument, to speak with logic and rational purpose—to become the citizens we need.