Working From Home (Home-based Working Committee Report)

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the committee for its work and its recommendations, and in particular very grateful to the chairman, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, for a very comprehensive introduction.

I have some form on this. Rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, I remember the days back in the 1980s and 1990s, when we were struggling with employers to introduce flexible working patterns. The Government were opposed to changes—they did not like it—yet we managed to persuade them that it was the right way forward. In turn, it was a way that saved the Civil Service; we had so many vacancies that we could not fill, but we retained women who were going to leave because they were offered flexible working hours, and we recruited many more women into the Civil Service because they had the opportunity of working in that way. It spread throughout the public service—and now the NHS would not operate without the kind of flexibility that was then introduced there.

There are big changes now, and it is quite interesting. I was not on the committee. Had I been, I would have raised the issue of looking at what we did here in the House. I find it amazing that we worked so well and transformed ourselves when we were working from home, and I would be interested to know whether we are keeping up to date the evidence that we produced of our working activities. When we are considering the need to decant, I wonder whether we have explored the alternative possibility of working from home and a repeat of what we did during Covid. It worked extraordinarily well indeed. We may have a hybrid variation on that theme, but I am sure it would save an awful lot of money, as is presently being talked about, being spent on restoration and renewal.

I was particularly interested in the committee’s point about productivity, like other noble Lords. We have to look at AI there, and I will be interested to see what work the Government are doing on AI and its link with home working. There are so many areas in which I think we could be using AI to assist with people working from home. There is a whole long list. It can have a role as a coach for home workers. It can be used as a costing and output companion, which is an important change and quite a worrying one. It can record the work completed and objectives achieved, assist in prioritisation of objectives and help overcome obstacles that people face. It can summarise and report, and it can identify training needs and monitor well-being as well as burnout risks. In short—and this has all come from AI—there is a whole range of activities that could be undertaken that would assist in a way that management would have been expected to do in the past.

AI would not need to be used simply as observing hours worked. We need to find mechanisms whereby we can calculate the cost of working in a more up-to-date fashion than we do at present. If you ask AI who is doing this, you will find that McKinsey, Accenture and the major companies of that ilk are doing this kind of work and producing models. They are quite expensive, but they will very much be the way that we will operate in the future. Are the Government doing work in this area and are they starting to run any experimentation to see how we can move it forward?

Artificial Intelligence: Impact on Human Relationships and Society

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Friday 5th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

I too am most grateful to the most reverend Primate for selecting this important topic, for her wide-ranging and stimulating speech and for proposing the three questions that we should address. On her third, the truth, it is worth remembering that there was life on this planet before humanity. Notwithstanding our desire that humanity should not be replaced or surpassed, it could be, if it is God's will.

We should pay particular attention to the fact that there are engineers who are seeking to implant into the AI technology itself, as it is developing, those emotions, feelings and characteristics of human beings that the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, referred to. It is not going to be easy to stop this, slow it or reverse it, but of course we should try. At a minimum, we should endeavour to guide the changes—we should at least be trying to get wisdom and goodness into AI.

We should make greater efforts to be in control of our destiny. We rely too much on the USA’s big tech companies. I have long been an advocate of seeking to create our own UK sovereign AI entity on not dissimilar lines to what was mentioned, like the way we created the BBC in the 1930s. The first Oral Question we had this week was on this topic. In particular, my colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Berger, pointed out that:

“France, Germany, South Korea, Switzerland, Singapore, Canada and Ukraine are all investing in”—[Official Report, 1/6/26; col. 628.]


this. She overlooked to mention that India is launching its own and will be, I believe, able to compete with China and the big American tech companies. Perhaps, if we cannot do it ourselves, we at least ought to be thinking of trying to establish a partnership with it. But before that, why is the UK not investing in its own model? That is what I ask the Minister.

The noble Lord, Lord Walney, earlier this week pressed a similar question. My noble friend the Minister replied that she could not give a definitive opinion. I trust that she has taken some further soundings since we had that debate earlier in the week. We also had a very important debate yesterday in the moses Room, on governance and regulation. I look forward to her responding, I hope positively, to the desire which has been expressed by an increasing number that, notwithstanding the cost, we should seek to have greater independence in this field.

We can look to try to develop a public/private partnership model, which would be wider than the ones that we have used in the past, with more people involved with the public; in particular, we should extend the private over a wider area. We should try to get parents and other people who are keen to see a UK sovereign AI entity operating to invest into it. I pose the question to the most reverend Primate of whether the Church itself might consider investing in a UK AI entity, so that we have control over the machine and over what our children should be encountering rather than leaving it to others to do so.

Similarly, given that the Pope has made such an important intervention, can we look forward to the Churches coming together, not just within the Christian faith but over the broader faith throughout the world, so that we can see a wider response taking place? That is what is going to be needed: a response in the way that we have endeavoured to do with climate change. Regrettably, somebody always breaks ranks. This is the problem that we encounter because of our humanity. But we must try. We must have faith, and we must look to see that there is a better world before us, notwithstanding the challenges which come on a daily basis from new technology.

Public/Private Partnerships: Shares

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Monday 3rd November 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking in consulting on, revising and updating public/private partnerships with shares open to the public.

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

My Lords, the 10-year infrastructure strategy set out our approach to private finance and infrastructure through a variety of available models and approaches. Public/private partnership models are one mechanism available to bring in private finance to infrastructure projects. The strategy set out the circumstances in which the Government will consider PPEs. The Government will always consider carefully which model is most appropriate for a project on a case-by-case basis to ensure value for money.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, since I tabled this Question, my noble friend Lord Livermore has been appointed Labour’s national campaign co-ordinator for next year’s elections. I am sure that everyone would wish to congratulate him on that, even in his absence. He is now, of course, in a unique position: not only is he campaigning but he is within the Treasury. If he can spend a little time on looking more at the public/private partnership models, and if we could revise, update and extend them to include individual citizens’ contributions and people’s investments in them, rather than it simply being large capital investment, I think that he would find that they would attract greater interest. As he comes to campaigning, he could advance in Scotland a major PPP project, one in Wales, and one for every county and shire around the country as part of this programme.

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for his question and I will pass on his good wishes to my Treasury colleague, whose full attention is on organising for next year’s elections but also on his duties in the Treasury. As I said, the Government will always consider carefully which model is most appropriate for a project on a case-by-case basis to ensure value for money. Matching the right private finance models to projects ensures that the project benefits from efficiencies. Investment trusts already open the door to retail investment in private assets such as infrastructure, but we are going further. By moving the long-term asset funds into the stocks and shares ISA from April next year, the Government will give more people access to long-term investment opportunities and the higher returns they can bring.

AI-generated Public Services

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her report, which I have just picked up for my Christmas reading. It has been rather influential within the system. I do not know if my noble friend is aware of the cross-Whitehall ministerial group chaired by the new Minister for Technology, Saqib Bhatti MP. It will certainly look at how the digitally excluded can be helped in hubs in different ways. The library network already exists. I have always thought that this is very useful in communities. I have collaborated with bank expertise on fraud—which is my area of responsibility. I am grateful for the work of her committee. I will certainly take her point away.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, was the noble Baroness briefed on a question which I asked on the last occasion when this topic came up? I asked if the Government were looking at developments with Paradot. The Minister who was answering did not know anything about it. Paradot is an online buddy. I have a therapist friend who believes he will be out of business in five years’ time because of the way in which this is developing. If this kind of change takes place, it will have a massive impact on what will happen in the public service.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a good point. The honest truth is that I was not aware of his intervention. Perhaps I can go away and get back to him on another occasion. This sounds a very interesting point and issue.

Cross-government Cost-cutting

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the House for allowing me to nip in quickly. I just want to express a few words of thanks. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for introducing the debate and, as usual, for being provocative on what is needed much more from the Government these days and which seems to be absent—some attention to common sense. So many of our policies seem to go awry and we do not seem able to do the simple things. I also take this opportunity of welcoming my noble friend Lord Watson to the House, and thank him for his very important maiden speech, and in particular his apology. To apologise like that takes some doing, and it is right for us to say that we are sorry ourselves, to accept it and welcome him. I very much look forward to his contributions and the work that he will do in the House.

On the subject itself, I will be very brief. I am surprised that the contribution from the Green Bench did not mention this, but rather than looking all the time for growth, growth, growth, given what is happening to the planet we should now be looking for life. Less of something is better for us and good for the planet, good for the universe and good for individuals. Why do we need to grow, grow, grow? Why do we not start to look to consume less food and drink every day, as a number of noble Lords have suggested? We would all be better at the end of the day if we did that. Why do we not look to travel less, rather than to travel more and use planes, as we have done in the past? We could use less, and stay in our communities and with our colleagues. There is a whole range of areas where we could do this, such as fuel. Why do the Government have to have a debate on whether to advise people to economise on the use of fuel? Common sense should prevail. As I promised I would speak only briefly, I will leave it at that. It is a different approach, and it is time for a different approach on the economy.

Out-of-work Benefits

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

Let me start by saying that the intention behind our efforts is not to issue punitive measures. Let us clear this up right now: as I have always said, sanctions are imposed only if there is no good reason for people not to take up an opportunity offered to them and they can do it. Some 98.9% of sanctions are down to the fact that people fail to turn up for interview, and the minute that they ring up to book the next appointment, the sanction is reviewed. At the DWP we do not go to work in the morning saying, “How many people can I sanction today?” That is just not the line. The noble Baroness raised a point about childcare, and it is number one on my list. I have just come back from the G7 where I spoke to my colleagues in Australia and Canada who have made enormous strides in improving childcare. The noble Baroness can take it from me that I am on the case.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, the number of people available for work is reducing primarily because of the increase in ill health in this country, as the Minister conceded. What discussions is her department is having with the Prime Minister, the Treasury and the Department of Health about how we start taking measures that will improve health in this country and move us away from being one of the unhealthiest countries in Europe?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I am not aware of any discussions with the Prime Minister, who probably has enough on her plate at the moment. We are well aware that the longer people have health problems—the longer they exist—the more difficult it is. We are working hand in glove with the Department of Health and with psychologists and psychotherapists to help people who have depression and anxiety. I have found that the best way to stop people losing their job because of mental health issues is to make sure that we work with the doctors so that when they give them their antidepressant prescription, they send them to us quickly and we can get them back to work sooner rather than later.

House of Lords: Appointments Process

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the House for the opportunity to intervene in the gap, and I apologise for not putting my name down. I have two points.

First, we have great power, and we are not exercising all the power that we have. If the Government choose to ignore the recommendations made by the Appointments Commission, all of us of like mind should come together and take it into our hands to have a petition against what the Government are doing. If that fails to move them, we should petition the Queen that she should not issue Writs to people who are appointed against the wishes of the Appointments Commission. I would value the Minister’s comments on that before we move to such a position.

Secondly, I take a different line from the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, on the House and how we come to be here. I have been here nearly 25 years. I was a union official and was appointed in the first instance as a union official. Mrs Thatcher changed the rules and I then became an elected official. I had to stand in front of my membership, and I was better for being accountable in that way. The great weakness of this House is that it is not accountable. While-ever it continues like that, particularly in modern society where people are able to communicate in a quite different way, we will come under more and more criticism. We need to look afresh. We need Cross-Benchers; we need people appointed too, but we need an element of accountability, which presently is missing. I appeal to the House, now that we are coming back together again, to take the powers that we have and take control of our future for the work we should be doing for the constitution of the country.

Standards in Public Life

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, like others, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Blunkett for introducing this debate in such a magnificent way, based on his long experience in politics. It was a great blessing for us. I am grateful, too, to the Library for the briefing note that it provided, which reminded me to spend a little time looking at the seven principles.

In that context, it is interesting that the new Lord Speaker recently sent out a little reminder to us all about how we conduct ourselves and the courtesies that we show each other when we come into the Chamber. I think that that has been quite well received. It might be worthwhile if the seven principles were circulated among all of us, particularly for newcomers, who are coming into politics perhaps for the first time.

I was particularly taken by what my noble friend Lord Blunkett said in his introduction about the responsibility that we hold, given the privileges we hold, our ability to exercise power and how we do so. I would like to focus primarily on a narrow area, one that my noble friend Lord Griffiths picked up on: the way we conduct ourselves.

If we look at the seven principles, we see that I as an individual and we as the Lords are somewhat weak when it comes to accountability. Who are we accountable to? What is our principal job? I would say that scrutinising legislation is our principal role: legislation comes to us from the Commons, or we introduce it ourselves, and because it goes through the Commons, ultimately we are accountable to it, because it decides, yea or nay, whether our amendments will be taken. But there are many areas beyond that in which, when I look for accountability, there is a great big gaping hole. I am not really sure, in the context of this debate, whether I am asking questions of the Minister or of the House on how we conduct our business, because there is a Nolan principle up there, when we come to it.

I share a room with my good friend the noble Lord, Lord Young, who raised the issue of finance. We are not accountable to the Commons on finance. I do not know who we are accountable to on that. Is it the Government directly? We seem to run our own show in what we believe is the best way possible and acceptable. But as to a clear line of accountability, there is no stream there to be identified, and that is a weakness of this House that we should address.

Linked to that of course is the growth of the House. There are now 830-odd of us—it is far too big and we do not need that. We need change, and we have endeavoured to make that change ourselves. I put it to the Minister that the Government have a responsibility to say what they will do about the ever-growing size of this House, the way in which they conduct themselves in making appointments, and how we contain it and reduce the cost. We, in turn, still have further work to do in that area; we ran away from having an age of retirement, and I can see the arguments against that. But our basic function here is to vote. If people do not come here and stay to vote, they are not fulfilling the public duty that they have been given. If they are not fulfilling the full role given to them, as for a policeman, a nurse or others, they should not be Members of this House; they should exercise the principles and voluntarily leave. We should go back to our work in looking at the House and review whether we could do more to reduce our numbers.

We then come to the issue of accountability to the public. Deep down, we do not want any real change, because it threatens our positions. Whenever this has come up, we have found ways and means, as has the Commons, of avoiding elections to this Chamber. I do not want to get involved in that today, but we still have a gaping hole in our accountability to the public. I hope that we can open up and start to have a conversation in that area. I might suggest that a start would be to do some MORI-type work among the public at large on how they perceive us in the light of where we stand in 2021, particularly after Brexit. In 2016, we were well out of touch with the mood of the public, notwithstanding all our intelligence and expertise. We have to be close to the people and we need to find ways in which we can get closer to them than we are, for the betterment of ourselves, for the betterment of the public and for the betterment of public standards.

Emergency Covid Contracts

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I said in my previous answer that I am not equipped, at this notice, to answer specific questions on specific meetings in another department about which allegations are being made. What I will say to the noble Baroness, and to everyone, is that an extraordinary effort was made, and was required of government by the country—and by opposition parties, as a matter of fact—to procure material that was needed to address the Covid crisis. While criticism is made of the alleged fast-track process of urgent procurement procedures, the absolute priority was to save lives, and those procedures were in line with procurement policy. There was extreme urgency, and indeed the Government’s case that emergency procurement regulations could be used because of the extreme urgency of the Covid-19 pandemic was upheld by a judge in the High Court in a recent case.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I hope that the Government will seek to establish why there have been these administrative errors and give a full report to both Houses. I recognise that the Government had to act urgently in the circumstances in which they found themselves, but I see no reason why they needed to break existing rules. The previous Secretary of State used a personal mobile in a way that was in contravention of all the guidance given to him. There is no reason why he should not have used the official mobile. Can the Minister tell me whether the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, has been having private conversations on his mobile? Has this been investigated? If not, why not? The public need to know what is going on. If there is nothing to be worried about, let us bring it out into the open and the Government will be cleared—there will be a smell continuing if they will not investigate these issues.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the matter of the letting of contracts has been reviewed by many people and many reviews. The Boardman first review covered communications contracts, and 28 of its recommendations are complete, as of today. The Boardman second review covered areas of PPE, ventilators, vaccines, et cetera. Work is under way to implement those recommendations. The NAO found no irregularities or potential conflicts of interest involving Ministers in its report up to 31 July. I think the background is a little less perfervid than is described. As far as email is concerned, of course Ministers should have a care. All Ministers are aware of the guidance around email use. Government guidance is that official devices, email accounts and communication applications should be used for communicating classified information, but Ministers have other lives—parliamentary lives and so on—and other forms of communication may be used in conducting government business. As for my noble friend Lord Bethell, he spoke on this matter in the House on Tuesday, so I refer the noble Lord to his comments; obviously, he is best equipped to answer those kinds of charges.

Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill [HL]

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 25th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bird, for presenting the Bill. He is a great, doughty fighter, and I very much support what is in the Bill.

I have listened carefully to the arguments advanced about what we can and cannot expect and how we can and cannot plan for the unexpected. We need to be very honest about politics, and we are not honest enough in politics. While I subscribe to much in this Bill, the reality is that when the Minister stands up, I expect he will use all the lovely words of comfort but will reject the Bill. The Government will reject this Bill at every stage. If it manages to get through the Lords, time will not be found for it in the Commons. That is my expectation, and that is very much the life that we encounter.

Right at the beginning, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, talked about difficulties in meeting the unexpected. We can recognise that in certain areas there are expectations that will not change, yet we ignore those expectations and often work against them. I am thinking here of the very important part of the Bill, to which I subscribe, on the environment. We are now going through Covid, an experience we have never had before. In the past five years since 2016, with Brexit, we have seen massive changes and government struggling day by day to cope with what is thrown at it—Covid being the ultimate. It was totally unexpected.

If we look at what we have been doing to the planet, is it unexpected that the planet itself, nature and the spirit behind nature will hit back against the human population to try to defend themselves? We have grown from 1.8 billion 100 years ago to 7.4 billion now, and we are projected to go to 10 billion. This is quite unsustainable. COP 26 is coming, but we are not talking about population. Faiths and science will not address the fundamental problem we have of too many people trying to inhabit this planet and damaging it. We will find that the planet in turn will care for itself, as it has always done, and come back at us. For the sake of our children, the one issue we must spend time focusing on, looking to the future and trying to work together, is what needs to be done about the environment and especially world population growth, where changes are needed. The faiths need to address that. If they want to protect God’s planet, they have to do the things that God needs on the planet.