Cost of Living: Public Well-being

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, this is a very serious debate. I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, brought this vital question to the Floor of this Chamber.

It is perhaps disappointing to see the vast swathes of Conservative red Benches without any Members on them. At the moment, for the record, we have the Minister, we have the Whip, and we have the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, who I am delighted to see in her place. Other than that, there have been perhaps six Conservative Peers in the Chamber at certain points. I realise that we are speaking on a day of considerable turbulence for the Government and the country, but we have been in a state of considerable turbulence for some weeks. Indeed, we have been in some turbulence since Liz Truss became Prime Minister at the start of September.

This is the first opportunity I have had to welcome the Minister and the Whip to their places. The noble Lord, Lord Markham, I believe, was gazetted on 7 October and took his seat in your Lordships’ House a mere 10 days ago. They have been a very interesting 10 days. I suspect that the two people on the Government Front Bench are here not necessarily because they put their names down voluntarily, in the way that most of us who had signed up to speak today did, but rather because it was felt that they needed to come out to speak on behalf of the Government to respond to one of the most urgent questions in this country: the impact of the cost of living on public welfare.

This is surely what the Government should be about. There are two things that really matter: one is the security of the nation—defence—but the other is ensuring that every man, woman and child living in this country has enough to eat, has a roof over their head, and can heat that home. We cannot guarantee that in 2022. What sort of country do the Government think we are living in? This is a country where the Prime Minister and others were so keen in pledging to get Brexit done that they said we had this fabulous economy—we were the fifth-largest economy in the world. If that is true, why are 69% of people worried about heating and eating? Why is the Royal College of Physicians saying that vast numbers of people are more concerned this year than last year about whether they can heat their homes and eat?

There are major problems in this country, and it is not acceptable for the Government to claim that it is all to do with Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine. Yes, that is part of it. Yes, there is inflation, and there are grain problems elsewhere in the world. Yes, there is an energy crisis. But other countries are not facing the difficulties that the United Kingdom is facing, because we have added a degree of chaos and instability, as the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, pointed out. Instability is a major problem. The Government’s mini-Budget spooked the markets, and however many U-turns there are, that spooking of the markets and the increase in interest and mortgage rates will not be overturned overnight. Changing the Chancellor, changing the Prime Minister, even—dare I say it—changing the Government will not change those difficulties, which are now baked into the system. However good the next Prime Minister is—of whichever political persuasion—some of the difficulties brought about in the last three weeks by this Government are going to be the legacy that we all have to pay for, including those who are still at school, because the national debt is going to be paid back, not in weeks and months, but over generations. I would like the Government to apologise for that, and I am sorry that there are not more Conservatives here to apologise as well.

It is not normal, I realise, in your Lordships’ House to be perhaps quite so partisan, but some of the difficulties we are facing can be put only at the door of the outgoing Prime Minister and the recently departed Chancellor of the Exchequer. There is very little that can be done to overcome some of those difficulties. Those difficulties are substantial: we have already heard about the difficulties for those on benefits, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, spoke about so movingly. However, there is something that the Government can do: make a commitment—and stick to it—about uprating benefits in line with inflation, while at the same time sticking with the pensions triple lock. It will be difficult but they should at least try to persuade people that when they finally make a commitment on one of these vital issues, they will stick to it.

At the moment, we are seeing children going hungry—the danger of malnutrition even in this leading first-world country in the 21st century. That is not acceptable. Will the Government commit to ensuring that every child that needs them gets free school meals? They should not be excluded from free school meals because somehow they do not quite meet the metric that the Government have assumed. Those children who are hungry, who have arrived at school without breakfast and who cannot afford school meals are not going to be able to study effectively. That means they are not just being damaged now, at this time of a cost of living crisis; it will damage their prospects for the whole of their lives unless we do something to protect them right now.

In 2020 it took a footballer, Marcus Rashford, to change the Government’s mind. In those days the Prime Minister was Boris Johnson, and he made U-turns twice on providing free meals to children during school holidays. On 12 November 2020 the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions—currently the Deputy Prime Minister—Thérèse Coffey issued a statement following the U-turn regarding Christmas 2020. She stated:

“We want to make sure vulnerable people feel cared for throughout this difficult time and, above all, no one should go hungry or be unable to pay their bills this winter.”


Can the Minister confirm that it is still the Government’s view, two years later, that no one should go hungry and everyone should have a warm home?