Industrial Strategy

Lord Birt Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the noble Lord speaks with great knowledge of the north-east, I believe. I know the north-west—or rather, the north-north-west—pretty well, and I know the sort of problems he is talking about, not just in the cities but in the large towns. We see them in my part of the world in west Cumberland, in Workington and Whitehaven. We certainly need to look at what we can do. The noble Lord also spoke about LEPs and the role they can play, and on some occasions it is more than what the LEP can do. I hope that the noble Lord, in welcoming the White Paper, will accept that the important point is that one of the five ideas behind it is identifying the importance of place. That is why, particularly in relation to productivity, again, I wanted to re-emphasise the fact that there are regional imbalances and that they need to be addressed. LEPs can play a very valuable part, but there will be more that can be done, and I hope that the industrial strategy sets that out.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, the UK’s poor record on productivity is not a new discovery. We have lagged behind our major industrial competitors for many decades. There are many reasons for that. Some have been mentioned already. One is skills, and another is infrastructure. We led the world in infrastructure in the 19th century, but in the 20th century we spent a smaller proportion of our GDP on infrastructure than any other major industrial country. We have overcongested roads; noble Lords should try going from Liverpool to Leeds on a slow train; and why is it taking us so long to sort out Heathrow? On that particular matter, has the Minister anything to tell us about when a decision on Heathrow will finally be made?