Government Record on Education, Employment and Welfare

Lord Evans of Guisborough Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Evans of Guisborough (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in the debate. I express my gratitude to my noble friend Lady Evans for presenting the case against the Government so eloquently at the start of the debate. It has been very interesting to follow a number of distinguished speakers. It is a particular privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Gill, who made a stirring attempt to defend the Government’s record. I hope that Mr Burnham is watching this somewhere, and that he will be able to provide the rewards which are so clearly deserved for that effort. I merely point out that, sooner or later, it will be impossible to blame the previous Government for the current Government’s failings and, of course, much sooner it will be impossible to blame the previous Prime Minister for the current Government’s failings. We will see how things develop.

My own experience in this area comes from having been the Deputy Mayor of London, where I dealt with schools, businesses, employment and skills. It is perhaps a slightly unusual spread of experience in the House today: we have heard from a lot of former Ministers. However, as the new Prime Minister takes over, perhaps this will become a more relevant piece of experience, because he has talked a lot about learning things from the regions and applying them to national government. I will be interested to see what he does, and to see whether the Minister can raise the curtain on some of the things that we can expect from the new Prime Minister. There are good things to be learned and not just, of course, from Manchester, although I am sure that there are other things we can pick up from there as well.

My noble friend Lady Coffey talked a lot about incentives, and I will just touch on the way that regulation—in particular, taxation around national insurance—has disincentivised business from employing people. We hear a lot about how having a low-paid job is a bad thing, but I would suggest that having no job at all is an even worse thing. That is where a lot of people are heading, given the current policies that are being pursued.

I have not had the benefit of a briefing from UKHospitality but I know, because I go out in my own high street in Romford probably a bit too often, and meet people running restaurants and bars there, how challenging it is for them to employ people now under the new national insurance rules. It is a very employee-intense industry. You need to employ a lot of people and everyone you employ is an additional cost, so national insurance has hit them particularly hard. They were doing well last night—the high street was absolutely full of people—but usually they do not do so well. The Government need to start thinking about how they are going to help the hospitality industry to provide those entry-level jobs that so many people take on when they first leave education.

My noble friend Lord Leigh talked about the impact on the care sector. We have hospices in Essex which have struggled to deal with the national insurance impact. I know the Government provided some extra money for hospices as a result, and that is very welcome; we should be grateful for funding from government. But we should also be aware that that funding was intended for capital projects. It will make no difference to the extra costs imposed on the hospice sector by the national insurance problem that it is trying to deal with.

I look forward to the Minister’s response to this debate. She and I spent some months working together in the Middle East in the past, so I know how indefatigable and tough she can be. Resolving this problem will require every bit of her strength, so, rather like my noble friend Lord Baker, I hope that she retains her role in the next Government.