Cost of Living

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Eatwell for a brilliant speech. I also read his blog, which he issues every week. We go back a long way. We were friends before Labour came to power. He was one of the major architects of building the Institute for Public Policy Research, which was such an important body in giving influence to economic policies within the then Labour Government of 1997, and which of course produced so many Cabinet members as well.

As we come out of Covid and with all the additional problems now facing us, this may be an opportunity—I am primarily addressing my own party—for us to sit back and take a longer look, in a way that we have not done for quite some time, in determining what the party’s economic policy should be. I do not think I will persuade the Government to change their position much. I do not feel that the Government have learned a great deal from Covid, and there are some important lessons there which need debating—fundamental issues which have not been addressed, way beyond simply the health service.

Many people worked at home and had a different lifestyle for two years. We ought to spend a bit of time talking to people about that lifestyle change that they have gone through. Many of them do not want to go back to the work they had before, because it was poor quality and poorly paid, and they found that they were happier at home. A million people have disappeared out of the economy, and we need to get those people back in one way or another.

There is a way of getting them back in. Instead of constantly saying, “Get back to work! Get back to the office!”, is it not time that we started examining whether in fact people could work from home on a far greater scale than they have done in the past? People found they were happier, healthier, less stressed, and they were saving money on not travelling and on the very high costs of childcare that many face. These are all savings that could be made for people who are in financial difficulties if they are allowed and encouraged to work from home.

I address that appeal primarily to the Labour Party as it works out its future policy. I believe that the party that says that it is looking for a fundamental change away from people working in offices in great groups to operating in their homes, within their local communities and developing them, will have a very good policy indeed that will be very attractive to many people around the country.

Secondly, linked to that, we need an overall review of where we are going with benefit support. Just as Labour went for a minimum wage in the 1990s, so we now need to move forward and look for a minimum salary for all, whether you are working at home or not, so that you can be at home with that minimum wage, you can look after your family, your children and the people around you, and you can work from home. This is an entirely new style of life which was pointed to us in Covid. It gave us the outlines of it. It behoves us now to spend more time looking at it and to see what kind of longer-term economic policy and social structure we can develop that will be more in accord with a happier nation than we have at the moment.