Queen’s Speech

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, one of the glories of these four days of debate on the Queen’s Speech is the wide-ranging nature of contributions from all sides of the House. I want to pick up one point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and supported by the noble Baronesses, Lady Drake and Lady Hollis, and the noble Lords, Lord Monks and Lord Morris: the question of zero-hours contracts. This is not a defence of zero-hours contracts. I think there are things that need to be done to make them better, but many noble Lords would be astonished by how popular they are. I was for a number of years until a couple of months ago a director of a major brewery and pub company—we had 2,500 pubs—and the demand for zero-hours contracts from students and men and women who wanted to be able to work evenings and weekends when they wanted to was very considerable. It would be a shame if we shut off that opportunity for people to better themselves economically by overregulating the sector. That would be a grave error and I hope that the Government will not allow the regulatory burden to become too great.

For my part, I want to congratulate the Government on the progress they have made. Unsurprisingly, the record has a blemish or two, but overwhelmingly the story has been one of steady progress in the face of a range of extremely intractable problems inherited in May 2010. My noble friend Lord Stoneham of Droxford made an excellent series of comments about that in his remarks earlier. Now in this final year we are going to continue that programme with hard graft. I would like to pick out two Bills that we are going to be looking at: the protection of charities Bill and the social action, responsibility and heroism Bill—the SARAH Bill. I have to say that I think the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, was less than generous in saying that the Government were not interested in the charities sector.

Noble Lords will know that I have done quite a lot of work for the Government on the charities and voluntary sector, and I have prepared a couple of reports. I share the view that charitable or voluntary effort is a very important part of the glue that underpins the cohesion of our society. The first of those reports, Unshackling Good Neighbours, revealed that many people are put off volunteering, whether as a trustee or as a worker, by the perceived potential threat of legal action. This has been the result of some very well publicised legal judgments that appear entirely counterintuitive and some well publicised cases that in the event turn out to be myths. Whatever the reason, I am delighted that the Government have decided to put in statute that people have a responsibility for their own safety and that, so long as people seeking to help them behave responsibly, they will not be held liable by the courts if something goes wrong. I fear that this will not please the lawyers, who will argue that the case law and the precedents already established are entirely adequate. Further, lawyers find it extraordinarily difficult to accept that judges ever give counterintuitive judgments. But public perception on this issue is different, and in this case public perception is the critical factor. I hope that the Government will stick to their guns.

The second report I undertook was a review of the Charities Act. The charities sector does tremendous work but it has come in for a lot of criticism in recent years—the Cup Trust, executive salaries, aid going to fund extremism and so forth—so it is more important than ever that public trust and confidence in this sector are maintained. This requires vigorous action by the Charity Commission and, of course, appropriate action by the trustees of individual charities. My research found that the Charity Commission is underpowered in that regard, so I hope that the Bill will plug the gaps. I think that it is due here in the autumn. Once it is in place, I very much hope that the Charity Commission will not hesitate to use it in a proactive as well as a reactive way.

For the remaining few minutes of my remarks, I want to refer to an issue that I have raised several times in the past: that is, the future demographic shape of this country. Today, we are debating business, employment, pensions, welfare, agriculture and the environment. The policies in every one of these departments will be radically affected by the future absolute levels of population in this country. As is always the case, I need to start by making two things clear. This is not a debate about immigration or about the racial make-up of our country; I am not interested in those. My interest is in how future levels of population will affect every member of our settled population. Indeed, some strongly argue that it is the more recently arrived who will be the most affected. I continue to raise this because, of all the challenges that Governments face, demography has the longest lead times. A nudge on the demographic tiller has no immediate impact at all. Its effects are felt in 10, 20 or even 50 years. That is why it is so important that all Governments look to the future and decide what, if any, steps are necessary today.

The basic facts are these. The population of the United Kingdom increases every day by 1,150 people. That means that we are putting onto the map of Britain a large village or a small town every week for 52 weeks a year. Currently, 60% of those people are what is called the natural increase—the excess of births over deaths—and 40% from immigration. Should we mind that increase? Well, it is certainly going to have an extraordinarily dramatic impact on our country. We have heard a lot of speeches from noble Lords talking about housing. Currently, 2.4 people live in every dwelling. I think it will be accepted around the House that it is our duty as a civilised society to house our fellow citizens properly. If we assume that the ratio persists—it has been falling gradually over the years—we need 480 houses every day. We need some immediately to deal with adult immigrants and some over a slightly longer period to look after children as they mature. Noble Lords can do the mathematics: 480 houses every day means 20 houses every hour, a house every three minutes, night and day. That is going to make an impact.

In fairness to other Members of your Lordships’ House waiting to speak, today is not the occasion to address the other complex aspects of the subject, such as the relative population densities—England has now overtaken the Netherlands as the most densely populated country in Europe—or the relative economic advantage of immigration. It seems likely that the richer you are, the more immigration benefits you; the poorer you are, the more immigration is to your disadvantage. It is, however, worth asking one final question: where might this all end? The Government Actuary’s Department and the Office for National Statistics suggest that by mid-century—40 years from now—our population will be just below 80 million, that is, about a third higher than it is today. The bulk of that increase is likely to come in London and the south-east. Using the yardstick of housebuilding that I used before, we shall need to provide another 3.6 million homes.

To conclude, I think that this is a fantastic country to live in. That is why people want to come to live here. They have the chance to learn English—the world’s lingua franca, especially in the world of technology. Of course, they come to take advantage of the economic opportunities that exist here. However, I think that they also come because of what the Greeks would call our demos: that extraordinary mixture of the rule of law, the absence of corruption, the ability to speak your mind, the ability to follow your faith, the extraordinary breadth and depth of our country’s environment and cultural heritage and, last but not least, the prevailing atmosphere of tolerance and good humour. At heart, what has given this country its social cohesion is a sense of fairness. The Government and all parties need to reflect on whether the demographic challenges, which are coming as surely as night follows day, will put at risk that sense of fairness, and so partially undermine what has made our country such a distinctive and attractive place to live.