Lord Deben
Main Page: Lord Deben (Conservative - Life peer)
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I believe that quite a bit of it is under way, but I am not as familiar with progress as my colleagues in the Department for Transport will be. What I can say is that an assessment by the National Infrastructure Commission found—the noble Baroness is right—that pandemic restrictions and associated increases in remote working did affect infrastructure use. However, it is too early to assume that long-term behaviour change such as increased remote working would lead to a wholly different pattern of infrastructure. In terms of our approach to transport infrastructure, there is an element of “wait and see” on the effects of the pandemic.
Lord Deben (Con)
Does my noble friend accept that most sensible employers—I count myself as one—have a balance in this? They bring people in, say, two days a week when everybody works together and gets the advantages of which she speaks. The point of this Question really is that the Government ought not to give the appearance that the way we are dealing with this in the public sector is somehow different from the private sector, which has reached out to this new way of working. In terms of family friendliness it is enormously better, and in my business I certainly find better productivity as a result, because people feel happier about the work/life balance.
Baroness Penn (Con)
I would absolutely echo my noble friend’s language around balance, and he has mentioned some of the other benefits of hybrid working that we have discussed. Each government department sets its own hybrid working policy. The Treasury, for example, expects staff to work 50% of the time in the office and the remaining time at home over a two-week period. I think that strikes a balance.