Covid-19: Economy Update

Lord Balfe Excerpts

Tuesday 27th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

To answer the noble Baroness, as I mentioned earlier, a huge range of initiatives has been announced over the last few months, particularly for some of the sectors referred to. On 30 June, the Prime Minister announced substantial infrastructure commitments, partly from new money and partly from acceleration of money. Many of those are strategically aimed at the sorts of businesses mentioned, including those involved in a carbon-free economy.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to another division in this country. Those who I define as the salariat are largely working from home and not suffering any reductions in pay. Indeed, they are saving money and a couple of hours a day from not travelling to work. They are making the rules, but seldom suffer any of the consequences. At the same time, we have a lot of very junior workers, some around this House, who are struggling to get by. Some are furloughed; some have no jobs at all. They feel rejected and unwanted by society. This is not a matter that the Government can wave a wand to solve, but we need to pay more attention to this division in society.

This House is almost empty of workers. If they can work at home for so many months without us even seeing them, is there not a good case to move some jobs from the House of Lords to areas of high unemployment and poverty in the north-east? If they can be done remotely from Dorking, Woking and towns in Berkshire, they can surely be done from Hartlepool and other delightful towns found in the north-east and north of the country, where these jobs are seriously needed.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

The noble Lord makes an extremely important point. By coincidence, I am the Minister working on the programme to move civil servants out of London, which was recently announced. The Prime Minister will be making more comments on this shortly but, given that I have lived this for six months, I can reassure my noble friend that we have identified 14 hubs with spokes across Britain, including the devolved authorities. The most important part is to get the senior civil servants out of London, because they make decisions on the lives of people from whom they are, in my view, far too detached. At the moment, some 65% of all senior civil servants in the country are here in London, and the vast majority in this postcode. We are committed to ensuring that opportunities for those senior jobs are outside the capital, and that they make policies that affect citizens in those areas.