Inequalities

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Dubs said in his opening remarks that it was a privilege to open this debate; I am sure the House will agree that it is always a privilege to listen to him. I pay tribute to him for securing this important debate and for the way in which he introduced it.

I intend to address my remarks to the issue of inequality. The levels of inequality in this country are shameful. The detailed evidence of that is to be found not only in the Deaton review and the research that underpins the special rapporteur’s report but, interestingly, in the speech made by the Prime Minister when she took over at No. 10 on 13 July 2016. People can read the detail for themselves, but she made a speech of about 650 words, of which she devoted more than half to describing the challenges she was inheriting from her predecessor, David Cameron; she described him as a “great modern Prime Minister”, whose “true legacy” was “about social justice”. In contradiction to that description, the country she described in half of her speech was one of burning injustices and inequality, and she restricted herself then to only nine examples; there are many more. I am certain that other noble Lords will deal—and have dealt to a degree—with the evidence in detail. But, in my limited time, I intend to assume that their contributions will comprehensively prove the case for urgent action, as the previous speaker did.

To add to our shame, we know how to deal with these inequalities. I have picked a few solutions at random. On life expectancy, where the disparity between rich and poor is growing, access to healthcare services and education is crucial. Spending on public health has fallen since 2016 and education spending is flatlining. Deprivation is the driver of inequality more broadly, but benefit cuts have continued to be rolled out, and food bank use and homelessness have continued to rise since the summer of 2016. We now have an audit of race disparity in the criminal justice system but, as the deputy director of the race equality think tank the Runnymede Trust said:

“Highlighting the gaps doesn’t address the gaps”.


We need action, and we have known that we need action for a long time. Social mobility has been virtually stagnant for four years and requires the implementation of at least some of the recommendations of the Social Mobility Commission. On the gender pay gap, women on average still earn 18% less than men; progress is far too slow.

In 2010, we had in place much of the necessary infrastructure to support the programmes needed to address many of these challenges. These public programmes are being pared down, bit by bit. Institutions that protected vulnerable people are being closed, social care services are at breaking point and local government and devolved institutions are stretched far too thinly as more and more responsibility for this is given to them by central government. The social safety net that once provided a guarantee of security against the most extreme level of poverty and deprivation has systematically been eroded to focus austerity on the poorest while giving tax cuts to the privileged few.

In responding to this debate, I hope, as my noble friend Lord Dubs does, that the Minister will engage with these and other solutions, and confirm that a Government still led by a Prime Minister who promised to make a country that works,

“not for a privileged few, but for every one of us”,

will increase investment in them. Why is it that the Chancellor’s £26 billion reserve, taken from the poor by austerity, is being referred to as a “Brexit war chest”? I have to say to the Minister that I fear disappointment, but I caution her to avoid the responses her colleagues have deployed against the increasing evidence of inequality. She should avoid the Chancellor’s inclination to deny the existence of the scale of poverty and inequality; apparently, he does not see it, yet, as my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, pointed out, the evidence on the streets of the communities that we live in is there for us all to see.

Secondly, I welcome the increase in employment, but it is not a panacea for poverty. A shocking 2.8 million people are in poverty who are in families where all the adults are working, and one in six food bank users is working. In particular, will the Minister avoid the response deployed by the Prime Minister at PMQs on 22 May? When faced with the evidence of inequality set against the obscenity that the wealth of the 1,000 richest people had increased by £50 billion in the preceding 12 months, she stated that in every year under the Conservatives the richest had paid more tax. Does she not realise that this response provides evidence of growing inequality, not the opposite? Is she proud of the fact that the richest have increasingly monopolised both the wealth and the income of this country?