The UK’s Demographic Future

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I deeply regret being here today and participating in this debate. I regret it because it involves the valedictory speech of a great parliamentarian who should not be stepping down, as a mere boy of 83 in House of Lords terms. Just look at him. He is still as sharp as a tack and gives top-class service to this house. Indeed, he is an Aston Martin V8 firing on all cylinders, if one is allowed to boast about petrol cars these days. Okay then, in electric terms he is a Duracell Bunny that just keeps going and going and going—that is something the family will tease him about over Christmas, I am certain.

My noble friend Lord Hodgson has been highly active in business for the past 50 years, and he still is. He was a director of the Securities and Futures Authority for 10 years. After coming to this place, he served on various committees before David Cameron asked him to perform a wholesale review of the Charity Act 2006 and the Charity Act 2011. He published his report in 2012. In 2021, he co-authored an essay entitled Population Growth, Immigration and “the Levelling Up” Agenda with my noble friend Lord Horam. However, for me, it was in the period 2019 to 2023 that he made his greatest contribution to this House, and indeed to Parliament, when he chaired the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. I had the privilege and opportunity to work with him as chair of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.

I say to my noble friend Lady Hodgson of Abinger that my noble friend will be an absolute nightmare at home because he will not stop working. There will be no slippers and pipe for him. I expect to read in a couple of years’ time yet another authoritative report by my noble friend Lord Hodgson. I mentioned his work as chair of the SLSC. He authored an outstanding report, Government by Diktat: A Call to Return Power to Parliament. It received widespread acclaim and is even more relevant today as we see more and more ill-thought-out secondary legislation bypassing proper parliamentary scrutiny. I welcome the opportunity to speak in support of the Common Good Foundation’s report Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow and to pay tribute to my noble friend for bringing this vital analysis to our attention.

The report rightly insists that we must think beyond the next election and plan for the demographic, economic and infrastructural realities that will shape our country for decades to come. My noble friend’s work sets out a clear, evidence-based case: population growth, driven in part by migration, creates sustained pressures on housing, water, transport and public services, and there is public concern about the pace of change. That concern is real and politically consequential, and we ignore it at our peril, as other noble Lords have pointed out. Without long-term planning and honest public engagement, we risk undermining social cohesion and democratic trust. These are not abstract academic points; they are practical governance challenges that demand cross-government thinking and durable policy responses.

However, I suggest that there is an additional, closely related concern, which my noble friend has raised elsewhere, that should be folded into our thinking about tomorrow. Here I want to amalgamate the theme of his report Government by Diktat, in which he warned that the increasing use of secondary legislation, regulations and orders, subject to far lower parliamentary scrutiny than primary Acts, has the effect of imposing hundreds of laws with minimal effective oversight. As he put it, government by diktat must not become the norm.

That warning matters for the demographic debate we are having today, for two reasons. First, many of the levers that shape population concerns—immigration settings, planning rules, environmental pyramids, infrastructure, and approvals—are exercised through secondary legislation, guidance and administrative practice. If those levers are adjusted without robust parliamentary scrutiny, we risk making long-term structural choices by stealth rather than by democratic consideration. Secondly, when major social changes are managed through low-scrutiny routes, public confidence in institutions can erode, feeding the very polarisation and distrust that the demographic report warns against.

For those reasons, I urge the House to treat my noble friend’s two reports as complementary parts of the same argument. Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow asks us to plan for demographic futures, while Government by Diktat reminds us that how we make those plans matters, as well as what we decide. Long-term strategy requires not only sound analysis and investment but transparent, accountable lawmaking and genuine parliamentary oversight.

What, then, should we do? I suggest three practical steps that respond to both reports together. First, we should adopt a cross-government demographic strategy with a long-term horizon, 20 to 30 years ahead. That strategy should align immigration policy, housing supply, water and energy planning, transport investment and local government capacity. It should be published, updated regularly and stress-tested against higher-population and lower-population scenarios so that Ministers, local authorities and the public can see the trade-offs involved.

Secondly, we should restore and strengthen parliamentary scrutiny over the instruments that implement that strategy. Where secondary legislation is used, Parliament should receive clearer explanatory material, longer scrutiny windows and, where appropriate, affirmative procedures rather than the negative ones that we get on almost every Bill these days. Major changes to planning, migration and infrastructure rules that have long-term consequences should be debated openly and honestly and, where necessary, enacted through primary legislation so that our full democratic mandate is explicit.

Thirdly, we should commit to transparent public engagement and local empowerment. Citizens must be given accessible information about population projections, the assumptions behind them and the likely impacts on services and communities. Local authorities need resources and statutory powers to manage integration and deliver infrastructure at the pace required. National strategy without local delivery is a recipe for frustration and failure.

I suggest that these steps are practical, not partisan. They are about restoring the balance between the Executive and Parliament and ensuring that long-term policy is made openly and responsibly. They also respond directly to my noble friend’s plea that we should not allow emergency modes of lawmaking to become the default. In times of crisis, speed is necessary; in terms of planning, scrutiny is essential.

In concluding, I return to the character of my noble friend’s contribution. He has done us a great service by refusing to treat demographic change as a purely technical problem or by allowing the mechanics of lawmaking to remain invisible. He has connected statistics to lived experience and legal process to democratic legitimacy. That combination—data, democratic principle and practical policy—is exactly what we need if we are to govern well for the next generation and succeeding generations.

I commend my noble friend’s Government by Diktat report and this current one, Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow, to the House. Let us take their combined message seriously, plan for tomorrow with courage and clarity and make those plans through processes that Parliament can scrutinise and the public can understand and trust. If we do that, not only will we manage population pressures more effectively but we will strengthen the institutions that make democratic government possible.

My noble friend is a deep thinker, a committed parliamentarian and quite simply a great man. I shall miss him immensely.