Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Cormack Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 15th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox of Soho, is appearing remotely. We can see her but we cannot hear her.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, is sorting her out.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

We will go to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes.

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[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate. I begin, as many others have, by paying a tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Black of Strome, who made a fascinating and somewhat gruesome maiden speech. I look forward to hearing her again on those subjects and in more detail. I long for the day when this Chamber is full again, when we can have a proper debate, without too many colleagues Zooming in.

I will concentrate on one issue in particular, which is an aspect of the construction industry, about which the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, spoke with some passion and deep knowledge. I declare my interest as the founder and chairman of the William Morris Craft Fellowship programme and the first vice-president of the Heritage Crafts Association.

As many of your Lordships know, I am passionate about restoring buildings, particularly this one and Lincoln Cathedral, which I look at from my home every time I am back on the weekends or in recess. I am acutely conscious that great buildings, such as this one, Lincoln Cathedral and churches around the country—often focal points of their local communities—are in greater danger than they have been for many a long year. It is partly a consequence of the pandemic: many churches have been shut for months and have deteriorated. Many are bat-infested, which is a real problem that I have talked about in your Lordships’ House before. We owe these buildings to craftsmen and, more recently to crafts men and women, through the ages. One evening every month in Lincoln Cathedral, when we generally pray for those who have been benefactors or achieved great things, we pray for the unknown by name who created that great building. It is the same here and in every parish church in the country.

We founded the William Morris Craft Fellowship, named after that great pioneer—also a great socialist, but I will not talk about that—in the 19th century because of his dedication to the arts and proper restoration. We sought to find mainly young crafts men and women around the country who showed enormous potential but who had all been through a long apprenticeship. I say in parenthesis that one of the things that disturbs me about the Bill is that it does not confront “apprenticeship” properly. The word has been too loosely used in recent years, even attached to flower-arranging courses that last nine months—although I say nothing against flower arranging.

To master a craft is a long, arduous and challenging business. We were looking for those who had done so, who had shown great interest in kindred crafts—because you cannot be master of your own unless you understand others—and who showed the potential to be able to take charge of important sites. Over the last 35 years since we founded this fellowship, we have chosen well over 100 mainly young men and women who have gone on to do all manner of things, including writing notable books about the subject.

That is why I am so much in sympathy with my noble friend Lord Willetts when he talked about not having an artificial distinction between the academic and the vocational. I am a great believer in vocation. I consider that those of us in this place, and in the other place where I had the honour to serve for 40 years, are following a vocation to public service. It is desperately important that we encourage more and more young people to realise that by working with their hands they are also using their brains and helping to create or preserve things of great beauty.

I mentioned the other day, when we were we were talking about the Environment Bill, the importance of constructing buildings of quality today—I cited the Prince of Wales on Poundbury—but the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, was right: there are not enough who have mastered their crafts. I share the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, about the delay in the implementation of aspects of the Bill, but I hope there will be a real emphasis on encouraging young people to embrace real crafts and to help to create or preserve those buildings of beauty in which the history of our country is embodied and will continue to be built.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, in common with my noble friend Lady Fookes, I can look back at over half a century of Queen’s Speeches, and they have various things in common. They all remind me of that Punch cartoon of the curate’s egg: they are good in parts. They are rich in aspiration, prolific in generalisations and generally fairly poor on detail.

I had proposed to speak about the constitution, on which there is that wonderful sentence:

“My Government will strengthen and renew democracy and the constitution.”

Well, you cannot object to that, but detail is there not. I was going to talk about that tomorrow, but my noble friends will understand when I say that that my wife has her second jab on Friday morning and the LNER trains are all to pot, so I cannot go back to Lincoln later than tomorrow, and so I will have to try to entertain your Lordships tonight.

The whole of this Queen’s Speech is, of course, in the shadow of Covid. I direct my brief remarks to two aspects, one general and one specific. First, on the general, I am sorry that my noble friend Lady Foster has left the Chamber, because she was very eloquent on the subject of travel. I believe that we have to concentrate on this country and making it safe. With all these variants in various parts of the world, we must be excessively careful as to how we compile any green lists. We have to make sure that, in this particular case, it is the United Kingdom first. It may be sad if people are not able to have the holidays they normally would—but not half so sad as a fourth lockdown, which would be totally devastating to our economy. I beg the Government, and my noble friend in particular when he replies, to reassure us that there will be ultra- caution on the travel front.

My specific point is one I have raised in your Lordships’ House before, and it concerns some of the most vulnerable people in our country. I refer to those who live in our care homes. I have raised several times with my noble friend Lord Bethell, and indeed other Ministers, the question of those who work in care homes. I have cited one example of a great friend of ours, whose mother is 99 and in a care home. Of course, she has had her vaccinations. Our friend has to put on, very properly, protective clothing and all the rest of it when she goes to see her, and she was not able to hold her hand until very recently—and yet, at least 30% of the workers in that care home have declined vaccination. I believe that the Government have to be a little bit authoritarian here. After all, they have been authoritarian in many other ways—we have not been allowed to have people in our homes or to do many things we would ordinarily do. It is crucial that we make sure that this sector of the community is given the full protection it needs and deserves.

I agree with something else my noble friend Lady Foster said earlier, when she talked about getting back to normal. There is nothing I want more than getting back to normal in your Lordships’ House. It is absolutely appalling that so few of us can be in the Chamber. I understand that the Commons intends to be normal after 21 June—well, so should we. The place of a parliamentarian is in Parliament, not on Zoom. Although I warmly congratulate both the maiden speakers today and hope to see much more of them, I was delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds, spoke in the Chamber and I was sad that the noble Lord, Lord Lebedev, delivered his excellent speech on Zoom. We are colleagues; we are parliamentarians. We have to be together, working together. It is essential that we do, because otherwise the country suffers. Parliament is essential to the well-functioning democracy talked about in that vague sentence. I say to my noble friends in government: we have to get back to normal to hold you properly to account. If we do not, the country will be the poorer. If there are people working in Parliament who have not been given their jabs, they should be given them as a matter of total priority.

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[Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate. The gracious Speech outlined a number of policies, but what hit me particularly was that it underlined a great vision—for jobs, full employment, lifelong training, the younger generation moving from Generation Rent to Generation Buy, and prosperity.

On the economy, let us not forget that we are in a very fortunate position. Last year our economy was devastated by Covid. We faced the most serious loss of output for 300 years, and the real prospect of mass unemployment. The Government acted promptly and quickly; we can now expect growth this year of over 7%—just in the Budget, it was forecast at only 4%. This is an extraordinary achievement. I believe the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England deserve great credit and our thanks for their courage and judgment.

I am the 85th speaker in this debate and I wish to be brief. I strongly agree with the levelling-up agenda in the Speech. It provides a lifetime skills guarantee and massive investment in further education and improving communities, not just providing ladders to escape but reviving those communities. There are certain things which only the Government can deal with and which the private sector cannot: one is climate change; another is the pandemic. Much as with national insurance, which we introduced at the beginning of the 20th century to cover unemployment benefit and then the creation of the NHS, people welcome greater public resources being moved into training and rebuilding communities, almost as a form of social insurance. We may well be at a turning point in our society, much as we experienced under Prime Ministers Attlee and Thatcher.

However. getting the public sector right is only half the story. The other half is getting the private sector right. As the infrastructure is rolled out, we must ensure that we have a private sector of investment and businesses ready to take risks. For that, we must ensure that we have a market economy that is in good health, in which markets are transparent but not overregulated and certainly not subject to high taxes. Low taxes, as has been mentioned by a number of speakers, are key to an enterprise economy. The great challenge facing the Chancellor is how to restrict the growth of public spending without increasing taxes at the same time, which will undermine it.

My second point concerns the importance of the detail of policy implementation and not simply policy in terms of ideas, framework, and design. This was mentioned in the context of further education by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and by my noble friend Lord Cormack, who is not in his place at present—

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

Here he is.

[Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach (Con)]

He is behind me. Thank you—the invisible man.

If I learned one lesson being in No. 10 for five and a half years as head of the policy unit, it was the difference between the design of a policy, the ideas in a policy and the implementation of a policy. I saw it in the privatisation of gas, electricity and so on, and in education reform. In the gracious Speech we have a terrific statement of intent. To make it happen, we need implementation.

Are there any risks which could undermine everything in the gracious Speech? There is one: inflation. The Bank of England and the Office for Budget Responsibility are quite relaxed about it, but I am not so sanguine. Globally, we are seeing a tremendous boost to the economy. We are seeing bottlenecks and shortages, as was mentioned. The monetary aggregates are increasing too much, and the fiscal and monetary boost is enormous. Inflation is not mentioned at all in the Queen’s Speech, but a pick-up in inflation such as that which we saw in the 1970s is the one thing that could undermine the great economic proposals in it. It is therefore time to tackle that subject, and not to delay.

Innovation Economy: Skills

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge]

My Lords, through the education sector, that is part of what is taught in our schools—there is the environmental science A-level—but in terms of what the Government seek to deliver, it is part of our priority to develop the industries we need to deliver that commitment.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman of the William Morris Craft Fellowship Committee. What is my noble friend doing to ensure that more young people in our schools are aware of the immensely rewarding careers available in the skilled crafts?

[Baroness Berridge]

My Lords, the Government are investing in the Careers & Enterprise Company, there is a careers strategy nationally in schools and it is part of the Ofsted framework, but we leave it to teachers to determine who they should invite in through our various initiatives. I am sure that that is one that many schools would want to invite participants into.

Trade Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 6th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fairhead]

My Lords, there is a genuine difference of legal opinion here. My proposal is that we reflect on this and have a meeting, if your Lordships are content to do that, because we have to work through this.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I apologise for interrupting at this stage, but is my noble friend prepared to say on the record that this matter can be referred to at Third Reading, if necessary?

[Baroness Fairhead]

I am unable to make that commitment.

St Petersburg International Economic Forum

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fairhead]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. I can confirm that specialist advice is available. We have special advice from the DIT in London and the British embassy in Moscow. Indeed, a number of other expert organisations, such as the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce, can also offer advice, as can a number of individuals in this Room. Advice is available: the DIT offers it and it can be accessed on location in Moscow, too.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, if Ministers from other Governments will be present—as they clearly will be—what is deterring British Ministers from standing up for our country, negotiating and taking part in meetings and gatherings of this sort? Absence achieves nothing.

[Baroness Fairhead]

In terms of our stance on Russia, and in response to actions in Syria and Ukraine and the Salisbury attack, we are trying to show that this matter is a real threat to a rules-based international order. We are trying to send a clear message that those actions are unacceptable and illegal and to give a calibrated response that shows how unhappy we are with them, while continuing to engage in other areas and support businesses that take part in sanctions-compliant activity. We think that is the right way to do it.

United States Tariffs: Steel and Aluminium

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fairhead]

I thank the noble Lord. We have had a long and enduring relationship with the US and, in the past, when protectionist measures were applied—for example, in 2002—they were eventually rowed back and the relationship continued. It is important that we continue to demonstrate the benefits of free trade. The number of jobs expected to grow in the UK steel industry versus the number that might be lost in downstream industries indicate that potentially, this is not a good move in the US. A recent think tank report said that there could be a net loss of around 146,000 jobs in the US if this was put in place. We need to argue for free trade. We have a long and enduring relationship and the UK/US economic, national and defensive co-operation will endure long term into the future.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on the way she is handling this delicate and tricky matter. I hope that she will be involved in some of these negotiations and, if she is, that she will reinforce the fact that we are working with friends and neighbours in the European Union and that this ought to be an object lesson to everyone who has the interests of our country at heart.

[Baroness Fairhead]

I thank my noble friend for his supportive words. Although officially I am not in the Trade Policy Unit—I am concentrating on exports—I obviously have interactions with it. It is likely that I will visit the US in a few weeks’ time and I will continue to represent the importance for us of addressing the excess steel capacity in the world, which is the root cause of the problem. We have made good progress along those lines. Where we see other countries behaving improperly, we are able to initiate anti-dumping or anti-subsidy measures. In the UK alone there are 45, which have proved to be effective. We will continue to fight but it is important that we do so within a rules-based system.