Tackling Intergenerational Unfairness (Select Committee Report)

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I thank members of the committee for the hard work they put into producing this report, but I must say that I agree with a great deal of what the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, said. Reading through the committee’s report again, I increasingly came to the view that, while there are some issues that undoubtedly disadvantage the younger generation, the key issue is fairness across the board. After all, for most of those who are born to well-off parents, many of the problems highlighted in the report will simply not exist. They will go to good schools, will stand a better than average chance of getting a good job and will have a helping hand on to the housing ladder, before inheriting a home when their parents die.

They will also have a better than average chance of sustainable good health. In the western world obesity, for instance, is disproportionately a reflection of social class. This pandemic has shone a brutal torch on the pernicious effects of the inequalities in our society, so I believe that there has to be an increased emphasis on fairness generally as a means of dealing with perceived intergenerational unfairness.

Potentially the greatest intergenerational unfairness we risk passing on is from climate change, and every one of us can have an impact in trying to ameliorate its effects: handing over a world in better climatic shape would be a great start to improving the life chances of future generations. As the report points out, our elderly population is expensive in terms of not just pensions but social and medical care. Sadly, the funding of that burden is falling on a diminishing pool, not only because of a sliding birth rate but because of the inevitable effects of Brexit, which has sent hundreds of thousands of predominantly young EU citizens back to their home countries, stopping them paying taxes into the UK’s coffers. They were net contributors to our finances, not dependants.

The balance of income between the elderly and the young is now—despite the noble Lord, Lord Davies, taking exception to the phrase—in favour of the elderly on average. Averages are always difficult, of course. Nevertheless, it means that the triple lock needs to be re-examined. Many of the people in the older generation have had the benefit of defined pensions: a luxury that increasingly few will now have, and that the young barely stand a chance of gaining.

There has to be a long-term plan for dealing with an issue that has been so often thrown into the long grass: the provision of social care. It has to be approached in a long-term way. I was very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for explaining the benefits of active old age, and what a difference that can make to promoting health and combating loneliness. His prescription for being active and for community centres that can be enjoyed is absolutely right. Loneliness is a huge problem: it makes people ill and sends them to doctors. We need to tackle it in a different way. Prescriptions for art and culture can also be very effective.

This leads me to an issue highlighted in the report: the need for all-age communities. There are huge benefits to be had from encouraging the young and old to be mutually supportive. I point to the highly successful experiments in putting nursery schools into shared-provision properties with the elderly: both sides benefit hugely. Equally, I would endorse schemes for sharing accommodation where the elderly with spare space hand it over to younger people in return for help around the house. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, and the noble Lord, Lord Hain, spoke about this. Local authorities should embrace such schemes.

The report highlights the changing employment market that will face the younger generation, with the need to retrain regularly and to up their skills. Inevitably, jobs will evolve as technology impacts extensively on our lives, and reskilling will be something that government and employers need to invest in. We need to keep improving our productivity. But do we really need to accept the idea of a gig economy, which is so cruel to so many? There used to be a relationship between employer and employee that had mutual obligations. We should ask government to examine what it could do to encourage that sort of mutual support again, rather than just accepting a task/reward type of relationship.

However, more than 1 million households—2.4 million people—were destitute at some point in 2019. That was an increase of 35% on the year before. Some 550,000 of those people were children. There can be no worse start in life than to grow up in destitution. This is why, as the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, said, we need to look at intragenerational fairness if we are to deal with this problem.