Fourth Industrial Revolution

Lord Fox Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord’s enthusiasm for these matters. I think the House is grateful for his very prompt intervention.

The noble Lord recognises, as I do, that changes are coming and that we must accept them and work for them. He will have seen the Made Smarter Review that we commissioned, published only a week ago by the chairman of Siemens, and I think he would accept that we will see many more jobs; I think the review estimated this could create something in the order of 135,000 new jobs. In terms of what he was saying about greater inequality, which I do not accept, there are estimates that the fourth industrial revolution will not only create new jobs, but create them faster and create better-paid jobs. That is something we need to look at. I will certainly look at the other reviews he mentioned, but there are challenges that we must accept. These changes are happening and we must work to ensure that they happen to our best advantage.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I am delighted that the Minister has mentioned the Made Smarter Review, which highlights that the UK is slow in adopting digital technology compared with our industrial competitors. One of the things it proposes is to run an adoption pilot scheme and to use the north-west of England as the location for it. Does he agree that we need to hurry up the adoption of a digital strategy and that a pilot in the north-west of England would be a good way of moving that forward?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I shall not make any firm commitments about that review, which was published only at the beginning of the month. Noble Lords will know that we have already had a Question dealing with it. I confessed that I had not yet read the full 246 pages of the review, but I am making progress under the advice of the Leader of the Opposition, who recommended that I read it with a mug of cocoa. I will look at all recommendations. I will not make promises about the north-west of England but the noble Lord will know I have a particular interest there. I would welcome going back up there as often as possible.