Spring Statement

Debate between Lord Hammond of Runnymede and Justine Greening

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Lady is right to raise this issue. It is something we keep under constant review, and I talk regularly with the Governor of the Bank of England about personal debt. She will probably know that personal household debt rose in all but one of the 13 years of the Labour Government, and it is now lower than it was before the financial crisis. The judgment of the authorities at the moment is that household debt levels are sustainable, but she is right to draw attention to it. It is something we keep under close review.

[Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)]

Can the Chancellor give more detail on the announcement that the Office for National Statistics will work with the Treasury on a more sophisticated measure of human capital? In a knowledge-based economy, that becomes more crucial than ever for driving our economic productivity. Can he give us more detail on the timelines and the nature of that work?

[Mr Hammond]

I am glad that my right hon. Friend has asked this question, because it gives me an opportunity to thank her for sparking this line of inquiry in a letter she wrote to me. I did challenge the Treasury with the idea that it is more focused on the returns to infrastructure investment than on skills investment. When we looked at it in detail, we discovered that the metrics for measuring the returns to investment in human capital are not as well developed as they should be. That is something the ONS has to take forward, but it is important, as we move increasingly into a knowledge-based economy, with a huge set of technological changes ahead of us, that we can compare appropriately and objectively investment in physical infrastructure with investment in human capital, and that is what we will be able to do if we get the new metrics right.