Queen’s Speech

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, and other noble Lords who spoke on social care, but I will go elsewhere. I declare my business interests in the register.

I last spoke in a debate on a Queen’s Speech as recently as October. Then, I criticised the Labour Party’s declared plans to attack property rights. Fortunately, that threat has abated for the foreseeable future. It is also clear—I pay tribute to the Prime Minister—that Brexit will happen, allowing realistic plans to be made by the Government and economic actors right across the UK. With victory, however, comes responsibility. The country will expect the Government, with their comfortable majority, to get things moving again after the Brexit-induced paralysis of the past three years.

On public services, I very much welcome the new money for schools, surgeries, police, road and rail improvements, and especially GPs, as well as the multiyear settlement for the NHS and schools. We apparently face a major shake-up in government and the Civil Service. When I moved to business in 1997, I learned things that government lacked: lean thinking; innovation; customer focus; long-term forecasting based on dynamics and demographics; and how to lead, manage and motivate. While some of this toolkit of a successful global company can be adapted to government, the latter is of course more complex and requires a wider range of skills.

My concern about the direction of travel as reported in the press is that No. 10 may try to grab too much power and use it unsatisfactorily rather than ensuring that departments are fit for purpose and able to progress under effective Ministers. The truth is that Downing Street—I have worked there—does not know enough to run the country on its own.

To be a successful nation at a time when possibly as much as 40% of GDP is knowledge-based requires a first-class education system. It was a wake-up call when I discovered in 2014 that we were 24th in the PISA tables for maths, and not much better in reading or science. Mainly thanks to the brave Gove reforms, we are now 18th in maths, ahead of France, Germany and the US. My noble friend the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, touched on PISA. I add that England consistently ranks above the higher-spending Scottish and Welsh systems. To compete, especially in Asia, we need to do more. We need good education for everyone from the most to the least talented. Our vocational education, including our apprenticeship system, continues to lag woefully behind many others.

The wrong sort of taxes can also be an issue, for example, business rates, where the tax is badly designed and its effects have been especially malign for retail. Given the prospect of more job losses, I was delighted to see the promise to bring forward fundamental change. Radical, rapid reform is essential.

Brexit gives us a wonderful opportunity to simplify our rule book. We need to make our bureaucrats more business-friendly rather than cautious and obsessed with obtaining and using new fining powers. Looking at the proposals on financial services, I worry that there seems to be more on regulatory protection than is compatible with the stated intent of supporting the UK’s competitiveness and its position as an international services centre.

Financial services is our biggest sector, representing £127 billion of GDP. Many regulatory changes, often Brussels-based, followed the financial crisis and brought in a period during which productivity in the financial sector plummeted. This obviously reflects the destruction of capital but also, I fear, the build-up of control and bureaucracy, especially for smaller players. Indeed, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Hodgson, that is not always effective. A change of leadership at every level is an opportunity. I hope that the new Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, will tackle red tape better. He did this brilliantly with his simple regulatory Sandbox for new fintech businesses.

Finally, our regulation should start in our own back yard with HMRC. If well run, this could support business and frustrated taxpayers and actually raise more tax.

There have been many constructive references to climate change this week. I want to make one point. We need to shift from virtue signalling, as epitomised in last year’s Bill on net zero, to action. We have had years of engagement, and during that period, we could have made much more progress with simple plans and encouragement to business.

This is the most wide-ranging of debates. I have not even had time to talk about online harms—highlighted in an amusing speech by the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths—antimicrobial resistance or health data. There is so much to do and to gain. Focus is essential. We have five years and we must use them well.