Government Record on Education, Employment and Welfare

Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, for introducing this debate. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who always has important and interesting things to say about vocational training—and, it seems, about ministerial appointments.

I am very proud that this Government’s mission is to reindustrialise Britain, make work pay and lift living standards. There has been real progress. The UK is now the fastest-growing economy in the G7. Better job security and higher wages through stronger employment rights incentivise workers and reduce turnover costs for business. NHS waiting lists are falling, delivering a healthier workforce. That benefits business too. The Resolution Foundation reports that this year the lowest-income half of families in Britain will see a significant improvement in their standard of living. Let us remember that the single greatest contribution to social mobility in this country has been this Government scrapping the two-child benefit limit, lifting half a million children out of poverty. That is the kind of schooling that I am interested in, because it will transform not only their lives but the lives of their families and communities.

To generate fair growth, we must tackle Britain’s record of low investment and poor productivity. Government action to accelerate clean energy production shows what can be achieved. The CBI reports that the net-zero sector now supports over 1 million jobs and over 23,000 firms whose productivity is 48% above the national average. We need to see that success across sectors, to fund decent welfare and education and to deliver the good, skilled jobs that the British people demand.

That brings me to a new report by University College London for the ETUC which was published last month. For two decades, the debate about economic competitiveness has been framed around the diagnosis that labour costs are too high, which in turn requires pay restraint and deregulation. This new report draws on a 25-year firm-level analysis of Europe’s 300 largest publicly listed corporations and provides evidence that that diagnosis is wrong. What is holding back growth is not the cost of labour but the misdirection of capital. Profits have been increasingly diverted away from productive investment into shareholder payouts, debt-funded distributions and financial reserves.

The report recommends making government business support conditional not only on decent labour standards but on meeting reinvestment requirements. It also highlights the importance of corporate governance reform. This is vital to address the British sickness of short-termism, which puts shareholder returns above the long-term interests of the company. Does my noble friend the Minister agree with the diagnosis that Britain needs more value creation and more productive investment? Does she agree that we need more government action, including on procurement power and corporate governance rules, to drive it?

Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill

Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 16th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, I too offer my warm congratulations to my noble friend the Minister on his appointment. I strongly welcome this Bill for the simple reason that our country must have a sovereign capability to make steel, and I commend the Government on acting swiftly. Taking powers to nationalise in the public interest is an essential tool of a modern industrial policy. We have done it before. In 2009, with cross-party support, similar powers were taken to stabilise the banking and finance industry. If we can bail out bankers, we can certainly support our steel-workers.

Steel is a vital part of our economy, as we have heard. Critical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, defence capability, hospitals, schools, housing and wind turbines all rely on steel. Some would add to that list Wembley Stadium, which was built with British steel. In today’s world, we cannot afford to leave ourselves at the mercy of China dumping cheap steel on the global market or the United States playing a capricious game on tariffs. Nor can manufacturing depend on supply chains left vulnerable by wars made in Moscow or Washington, so the Bill is essential for our security.

Many other advanced economies recognise the value of a mixed economy and the important role that state intervention and ownership can play. Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Spain, China and India already provide major state aid to their steel industries. The state can intervene not just to correct market failures but to accelerate industrial success. It can both protect and grow firms of strategic importance and, for good measure, lift skills, living standards and whole communities.

The Opposition once recognised that. In 1971 a Conservative Government led by Ted Heath, admittedly somewhat reluctantly, nationalised a strategically important firm that was on the brink of bankruptcy. It was called Rolls-Royce. Some mounted the same arguments against nationalisation back then that we hear from some quarters today: that it was too expensive or that government should not bail out so-called lame ducks. History records that under state ownership, Rolls-Royce produced a new generation of engines that were a huge commercial success. It was only 16 years later that Rolls-Royce was sold off alongside a good deal of the nation’s family silver, including, of course, the national grid. Over subsequent years, bill payers and taxpayers have paid a high price for that 1980s dogma of privatisation. Now the steel industry is at a crossroads.

According to More in Common polling last year, the public think that the Government should take state control of the wider steel industry. More than half the public support this, with only 13% opposing. Support for public ownership of British Steel is even higher. Roy Rickhuss, chair of the National Trade Union Steel Co-ordinating Committee, and a former steel worker himself—in fact, I think he is also the son of a steel worker—backs this Bill. Gareth Stace, director-general of the trade association UK Steel, strongly backs it too. They agree that, without support, our steel industry risks falling further behind international competitors, but with state backing British Steel can become a global leader once again.

Let us be clear: we owe our steel workforce. Their vital work is hard, and it can be dangerous, so we owe them respect for their skill and resilience, but, most of all, we owe them respect for their sheer determination to see a successful and sustainable future for their industry and for their communities.

In conclusion, I would welcome my noble friend the Minister’s views on the following. First, I agree that we need to deliver competitive energy prices. Can he tell us what additional support there will be for energy-intensive industries, including progress being made to speed up and scale up grid connections? Secondly, we must match the ambition of other countries’ investments in green steel production and ensure a just transition for workers. Can the Minister update us on discussions with the steel industry and trade unions to develop a just transition plan, and does the Minister agree that all technological options need to be on the table? Thirdly, can the Minister comment on the need to introduce robust climate measures to protect us from dirty steel imports, and on progress to mandate the procurement of UK-made steel for defence, energy and major infrastructure projects, including a clear forward pipeline to encourage long term investment?

Finally, in this House I have previously asked about the Government’s assessment of the impact on UK manufacturing of the EU Industrial Accelerator Act. I would add to that question another one on the impact on UK steel of the European Union’s plans to cut tariff-free quotas by 47%, to double tariffs from 25% to 50% and to impose melt-and-pour requirements. I would be very grateful if the Minister could provide an urgent update on the reset negotiations, and other discussions with the EU on these specific matters, either now or by letter.

Declining Birth Rates

Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O’Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My thanks, too, to my noble friend for opening this debate.

My Lords, it seems ironic that some of the very same politicians who framed the falling birth rate as a crisis have also pledged to bring back the two-child benefit cap. Meanwhile, the far right peddles racist conspiracy theories about white European populations being replaced and proclaims that having babies is a woman’s patriotic duty.

In contrast, my starting point is women’s choice. Most of us do not want a Handmaid’s Tale-style future, with the state pressurising women into motherhood. Instead, we should celebrate how better education and access to contraception and abortion services has helped women take more control over reproductive choices. In a free society, it is not for government to dictate whether we have children or how many. But government policies can either support citizens’ choices or push them beyond reach. Ordinary people have suffered years of austerity and pressure on wages, and they were told that they had no right to expect job security, let alone a secure home.

I pay tribute to this Government’s Employment Rights Act and Renters’ Rights Act, which guarantee a more stable life, including for those who want to start a family. Policies that recognise that families come in all shapes and sizes are important too. A quarter of families are headed by a single parent, who are overwhelmingly mothers—I was one of them—so action on equal pay and childcare really counts.

The paid parental leave system, which this Government have inherited, is among the worst in Europe. That makes it harder for new mothers to stay in the workforce, or relegates them to second-class status, holding back economic growth. New fathers and other parents get a raw deal too. While many employers top up statutory paternity pay, blue-collar workers are much more likely to rely on the statutory rate, and self-employed dads get nothing at all. The UK’s parental leave system is still rooted in the 1950s idea of the sole male breadwinner and emotionally detached fatherhood—a model of masculinity that only the so-called populist right still aspires to. All the evidence is that women and men want to share parenthood more equally, and giving new babies more time with their parents is one of the best forms of early years investment. Change is urgent.

Similarly, living longer lives should be seen as a measure of human progress. It becomes a crisis only if we fail to put in place policies necessary to support a happy old age, not least tackling the UK’s stark class inequality in healthy life expectancy. The last thing we need is divisive proposals that stoke intergenerational wars. That brings me to the recent report from the Centre for Social Justice, Baby Bust. It argues that “too many retirees” believe that

“they have ‘paid for’ their pension rather than understanding that it is funded by current taxpayers”.

The centre could have usefully added that this generation of taxpayers has an interest in protecting a decent state pension, because one day they will claim it too. The state pension is, in fact, a prime example of intergenerational solidarity.

Reading the report, you might also think that the UK’s state pension provision is generous. It is not. UK spending on state pensions as a percentage of GDP is well below the OECD average. Of course, we must prioritise economic growth to support an ageing society. Many argue that technology is the answer, and it has been calculated that the introduction of AI alone will deliver multibillion-dollar productivity gains. I would welcome the Minister’s views on ways to ensure that those gains are shared fairly, and on how big tech can pay its fair share towards the decent public goods and services that our ageing population has earned.

King’s Speech

Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway Excerpts

Thursday 14th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Grady of Upper Holloway (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Redwood, and to perhaps offer a slightly different perspective. I declare my interest as a member of the Great British Energy start-up board and my responsibilities around a just transition.

We live in times of global economic shocks, from the financial crash to Brexit, Covid and conflict in the Middle East, and there is no guarantee that the global picture will get any easier. On the contrary, such shocks could speed up and intensify, which makes it ever more important that we build our economic resilience. At times like this, it is even more important that the UK has an industrial policy that is both agile and long term. To succeed, it must certainly last longer than the life of a couple of Parliaments, and that means that we need a broad national consensus to sustain it.

This Government’s industrial strategy has won support across traditional lines, and that is reflected in the make-up of the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council. There is broad agreement that a long-running problem for the UK has been low investment in technology, capital equipment and skills, which leads to low productivity, and that this challenge must be met by not just the Treasury but the whole of the Government, at the local as well as the national level. There is widespread consensus too that the Government have made the right call in identifying eight strategic sectors, with the right balance between industry and the services sector.

Economic security and stability matter for families and communities as well as for the country. It should therefore be self-evident that a key objective of the industrial strategy must be to cut carbon and reduce energy costs and to deliver prosperity and good, skilled jobs in the parts of the country that need them most. We have to recognise that there is a growing public expectation on the state to step up and protect people against the volatilities and failures of the free market and to tackle structural inequalities. A mission for growth becomes meaningful in everyday life when it also delivers rising living standards and fair shares. Polls show that public support for a modern, mixed economy is strong. To put this plainly, I merely observe that the privatisation of Royal Mail, British Rail and the utilities is now seen as an almighty rip-off. I commend the Government for taking back public control of rail and of steel, which is a core foundation industry that is critical for the security of this country and indeed Europe. I am sure I do not need to remind noble Lords that polling shows strong popular appetite for more public ownership, not least of the water industry.

We need the private sector to play its part in delivering fair growth for the British people. According to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics, share ownership in Britain is dominated by overseas investors. It has now reached a record high of nearly 58% of UK quoted shares and, on average, shares change hands in a matter of months. That is why I believe that an intelligent industrial strategy must address the case for corporate governance reform, to encourage directors to focus on company long-term success and to ensure that the workers’ voice is included.

While there is growing consensus in favour of an active industrial policy here in the UK, others are not standing still; they are moving ahead too. I end by asking my noble friend the Minister about proposals for EU alignment and the EU’s draft Industrial Accelerator Act, published in March, which was touched on briefly by the noble Lord, Lord Fox. The draft Act sets a clear goal to bring EU manufacturing back up to 20% of GDP by 2035. It is said that this will be delivered by introducing “made in EU” and low-carbon preferences in public procurement. It will regulate foreign direct investment in emerging strategic sectors, streamline and digitise permission for new industrial projects, and launch acceleration areas to encourage the creation of clean manufacturing clusters. I have some questions. If the Minister understandably cannot provide answers now, I would be happy to receive them in the form of a letter. What is the Government’s assessment of the impact of this EU Act on the UK? Is it on the agenda for the reset and dynamic alignment discussions with the EU? Will the Government agree to open a public conversation, including with British-based manufacturers, alongside the TUC and unions, on how we can match the Act’s ambition here in the UK?