Autumn Budget 2024
Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts(1 week, 3 days ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I am speaking from the Back Benches today about productivity, but I want to start with a thank you to the Minister on two counts. He has rightly resisted the temptation to erode further horse racing’s competitiveness, vis-à-vis France and Ireland, by increasing betting duty—I declare an interest as a member of the racing APPG. I was also pleased to hear that the Government are going to tackle the ever-exploding level of retail crime. A few years ago, from the Back Benches, I sought an amendment to the Policing and Crime Bill to achieve just that, but although I worked constructively with the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, on a proposed amendment, I could not persuade him to be sufficiently radical. This Pauline conversion is most welcome.
As a country, our greatest economic challenge is to increase the growth rate, by which I mean GDP per person. The only sustainable way to do that is to increase productivity, and I was disappointed that the Budget includes so little to advance that aim. The truth is that the productivity figures since the financial crisis of 2008 make depressing reading. The situation is not the same everywhere, and I note that, in my old sector of retail, matters are somewhat better than elsewhere. According to the BRC, productivity in retail is 8.1% higher than in Q4 2019—which was before Covid—while the equivalent figure for the whole economy is 1.45%.
What should we do? The most important change is to have efficiency in mind when taking all decisions. The Government state that growth and productivity are right at the forefront of their concerns. That is a good start, but they have to act as though they mean it. They state in the Red Book that, in the medium term, above-inflation pay awards will be funded from improved productivity—good. It is a pity they did not follow that policy when, on attaining office, they awarded public sector bodies above-inflation pay awards costing £9.4 billion without any productivity conditions. I am glad the Government have seen the light on this, but will Minister look at my proposal for a new productivity and growth assessment to accompany all legislation, which I mentioned in our debate in the House on 9 October?
Other necessities are to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy and to examine environmental requirements. On bureaucracy, I do not believe that checks to counter money laundering need to be anything like as onerous and time-consuming as they are. The march of the data society, with its many benefits, has made government, regulators and others lazy. They do too much checking and collect too much information, instead of focusing on what really matters and doing that speedily. It creates some pretty awful jobs too, in both the public and private sectors. David Graeber, in his splendid book Bullshit Jobs, stresses how depressing this can be.
On environmental protection, I read with despair that HS2 has spent £100 million on building a tunnel to protect bats. Can we have a sense of proportion? Moreover, why are our electricity prices for industrial users, which make up the most productive part of the economy, treble those in India and the US? Both phenomena seem good candidates for early study by the new Office for Value for Money.
I turn to construction, including housebuilding and infrastructure; I have two points. The first relates to planning controls, which need simplifying and speeding up. The second relates to the building-related workforce. There is much evidence that more skilled labour of every kind will be required for the foreseeable future. What plans do the Government have to help in that regard?
Likes others, I am very concerned about the triple whammy of increased national insurance—especially the lower threshold—the new national minimum wage and the new regulation on workers’ rights. I know from my own experience that these are particularly difficult for SMEs because of the extra cost and bureaucracy that they will bring. The “good news”—I suppose—from a short-term productivity point of view is that this will send the less efficient into insolvency, but that is a very hard way to improve productivity.
As our new Conservative leader has so rightly said:
“It is not the Government that creates growth, it’s business that creates growth”.
The Government’s attitude to business and public sector efficiency so far is unsatisfactory. If they are to achieve their growth ambitions—which we all share—they need another Pauline conversion.
United Kingdom Declining Birth Rate
Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts(2 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Lord Livermore (Lab)
My noble friend makes some very interesting points. I assure him that the Treasury is working closely with the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology to advance the things that he mentions.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, we have just had a Budget which the OBR says will lead to a loss of jobs and the first ever taxes on education. What does this do for family life and for the birth rate in the shorter term?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
To clarify, the OBR is very clear that, over the next five years, employment will grow by 1.2 million people.
Working From Home: Public Sector Productivity
Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Lord Livermore (Lab)
I am not sure I am going to be able to answer that right now, but, as set out by the noble Lord, Lord Darzi, in his investigation into the state of the NHS, productivity in the NHS has fallen significantly and is far too low. Improving productivity in the NHS is a key priority. What the noble Lord said about management was really interesting. Emerging studies show that, where workforces are well managed, productivity can rise with working from home. This is a point that the noble Lord who asked the original Question raised in a previous debate on this subject, which I read: the quality of management has a key impact on productivity when working from home.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, although good management certainly makes a difference, there is strong evidence from academic studies that working from home reduces productivity—although there are other benefits. So far, this Government have been coy about publishing office attendance figures for government departments, as we used to do. Will the Minister ensure that the publication of such figures is restarted and that working from home is limited to those areas where efficiency is not compromised?
Lord Livermore (Lab)
This Government have exactly the same policy in terms of civil servants working from home as the last Government: civil servants should be in the office for a minimum of 60% of the time. That is unchanged and those figures will of course be published in exactly the same way. The noble Baroness said that working from home reduced productivity: that is not actually the case, according to many studies. I read one from the IMF recently that said that the positive and negative effects of working from home roughly offset each other, generating no net productivity impact.