United Kingdom: Productivity

Lord Desai Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Desai (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate, especially following the noble Lord, Lord Flight. I will not go back to the early 19th century, as he did, but we have certainly been debating the backwardness of British productivity compared to the German for at least 125 years. I have done some work for this debate, and I am very grateful to the Library for having helped me out.

There are two problems. First, as the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, said, the level of productivity in the UK is low relative to other countries, especially the United States—it could be the size of the domestic market but I am sure that the persistence of that gap is quite an interesting phenomenon. Secondly, we have the problem of growth in productivity. However, these are two separate problems. My own views is that what the Government are proposing is quite rightly taking care of the level of productivity across the economy by dealing with transport, housing and all sorts of other things that are time-saving devices, in a sense—by improving the quality of the input, they will raise productivity generally. But whether there will be productivity growth is a separate issue.

On the level of productivity, as I have said before, the British economy is a 60:40 economy, in that 60% of the labour force is employed in areas that produce only 35% of total output, and 40% is employed in producing 65% of total output. I am not saying that the 60% are unproductive; they are engaged in activities that I have before called welfare producing or happiness producing—or whatever it is. The productivity growth is much more marked and easily measurable in sectors that produce solid, practical things.

What happened during the long recession of 2007 to 2013 made it clear that, when growth collapses, productivity collapses. There is a simultaneity. Not only does productivity help growth, but growth helps productivity. During that period, by and large people went into the 60% of the 60:40 economy, into public and professional services, which sheltered them. The wages did not grow, because people went into low-productivity sectors, but unemployment stayed low. Labour market flexibility helped to absorb people who moved into low-productivity areas, because highly profitable, high-productivity areas had suffered a huge output shock and were shedding labour, especially in financial services. So in a sense, productivity and output were low because, in a sense, the productive sector was shedding labour and the less productive sector was absorbing it. There is nothing new about that, but that is a phenomenon which we have to live with.

Our problem would obviously be, as the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said, that we have to concentrate on what I call the less productive areas. It is very difficult to enhance the productivity of health and social workers, but 13% of the labour force is employed in health and social care, which produces 6% of output. It is very difficult to say how you can raise the productivity of a childminder or somebody who looks after the elderly for social care. Obviously, in areas like that it would be about improving the surroundings or the technology available, improving how patients are dealt with, with support services, and so on. But we have to look very carefully at those areas. We often look at the easier areas, the wealth-producing areas, where solid things are produced that can be measured—assembly lines, and so on. No doubt we should invest in that as well. However, our real problem may be that we have to raise the productivity of the areas where the bulk of the employment is, which will be a more difficult thing to deal with than raising growth in wealth-producing areas.

Coming to the latter, obviously, what the document shows is that we have had a slow-down in investment. Not only is the share of investment in terms of GDP lower in the UK than in the OECD generally, but lately during the recession we have had a drop. I know that every time anything happens the first thing businessmen say is, “Cut our taxes and we will give you growth”. I have heard it before, and for a long time. At least as far as econometrics is concerned, the connection between investment and tax cuts is, let us say, fragile—not very solid. Anyway, we have to have happy businessmen, so we can give them a tax cut.

The problem is that we have to find reliable ways of increasing investment, and not just increasing investment but doing so in the newer technologies, where tremendous scope exists for raising output and productivity. In a sense, if you look at some of the stuff which is being said—I am not a very practical person, so I only read this in newspapers—what is going on in the IT revolution will be tremendously important and will fundamentally transform production in the next 10 years or so. As the Minister said in his introductory speech, we have the universities, the young entrepreneurs and the start-ups; basically, now the Government will have to find some trick to connect up the people who are doing the start-ups and those in the universities, with more Fraunhofers—or whatever they are called in Germany—from universities, which will raise productivity.

In the next 10 years, as I said before, GDP growth will not be very high. I am sorry that this is the bad news, but I am giving it now. We are in a downward phase of a long cycle. Output growth will be low, as will inflation. However, we will have to find ways in which we can employ people in productive jobs, because as productivity grows we will have to absorb people into other sorts of jobs. I wish the Government good luck, and I hope that they will raise both productivity levels and the rate of growth of productivity.