Queen’s Speech

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, it is conventional in your Lordships’ House on occasions such as this to open one’s remarks with a few comments on the immediately preceding speeches. However, I am conscious that, as the 45th speaker, the House’s attention span is beginning to flag so, if I may, I will cut to the chase.

In the few minutes available to me, I want to lend my support to those measures in the gracious Speech which the press has loosely grouped under the heading of blue-collar aspiration. I had the pleasure of listening to the noble Lord, Lord Prescott, speak on Radio 4 about the Labour Party’s leadership contest. I am sorry that he is not in his place. The noble Lord was rather dismissive of the concept of aspiration—a word bandied about by the candidates—to which he referred, in rather fruitier words than I think would be appropriate to use in your Lordships’ House, as being without substance. With due respect to the noble Lord, I disagree with him. Aspiration is a wide-ranging concept. Of course, it has an economic aspect and covers access to the basic support services of our society—health, education, the police and justice—but it also encompasses much less tangible features such as a sense of belonging, a sense of involvement and a sense of community cohesion. These less tangible, less measurable objectives should in my view nevertheless form an important part of the Government’s aspiration agenda.

One part of our society that can play a particularly effective role in this regard is the charitable and voluntary sector. Some Members of your Lordships’ House will know of my interest in the sector and the reports that I have written for the Government. Therefore, it will not surprise my noble friends on the Front Bench that I am very pleased that the Government are proceeding with the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill. It has the twin objectives of improving the efficacy of the regulatory powers of the Charity Commission, which is very important as a means of encouraging public trust and confidence, and at the same time facilitating the development of what is now called social investment—a new sector in which the UK is the world leader and in which we have a chance to remain so in the future. I look forward very much to the Bill’s Second Reading next week.

For the rest of my remarks I return to the issue of social and community cohesion and to what I think will be an immense challenge to it over the next 20 years. As we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Green, that challenge is the expected increase in the absolute level of the UK population between now and 2035—20 years from now. I make it clear that this is not a speech about immigration. I am fond of remarking that we are all immigrants; the only question is when we got here. I also make it clear that my speech is nothing to do with people’s colour, creed or racial origin. I have no interest in that either. However, it is about absolute numbers. I give a couple of statistics. Every day the population of this country goes up by 1,100 people. Every week we are putting a small town or large village on to the map of Britain—every week, 52 weeks a year. This is in a country—England—which has recently overtaken the Netherlands as the most densely populated in Europe. The daily increase consists of 590 excess births over deaths—what is called the natural increase—and 510 from immigration.

I give one simple, specific example concerned with the controversial question of housing, which has featured in many noble Lords’ speeches this afternoon, including those made from the Front Benches. In passing, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, on her maiden voyage as leader of her party. In the UK we currently have 2.3 people per dwelling. If we are to house our new population to the same standard, we will need to build 478 dwellings every day. That is one every three minutes, night and day, and without any improvement or increase in our existing housing stock, which I think everybody in your Lordships’ House agrees needs some improvement.

I fear that this is not the whole story because between now and 2035, if you take the mid projection of the Office for National Statistics, we will have an additional 8.4 million people. If you apply the same metric to that, we will need to build 183,000 dwellings every year—that is, 3,500 a week, 500 per day or one every three minutes. So for the next 20 years we will have to build a house, dwelling, flat or some form of habitation every three minutes. I find it hard to believe that we will be able to integrate 8.4 million people and build 3.6 million homes without there being significant risks for our social and community cohesion. My concern is that part of our settled population—no matter its colour, creed or background—may well find itself pushed to the margins of our society; “crowded out” is what the sociologists call it.

I will give a very simple example. Football is in the news so I have chosen football as my example. The Premier League is a fantastically successful commercial enterprise. It earns millions around the world for this country. But just 21% of the players in the Premier League are British. Does this matter? Probably not, but it does mean that several hundred young men do not fulfil their dreams and aspirations, and that group of young men will contain a particularly high proportion from the black minority community—a group which I think most people agree needs role models and stories of encouragement, success and participation in our society. That is one simple, small example. I could replicate it if time permitted—it does not—across our society.

In conclusion, I see no easy answers to this issue but I am convinced that it is an issue that needs to be raised, debated and considered in a calm, rational and dispassionate way. If we do not do that, wilder spirits may take over, with results that I am sure no one in this House would wish to see. If I am uncertain about that, I am certain about one thing tonight: when my noble friend comes to wind up, he will take care to ensure that he makes no reference to this part of my speech or indeed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Green. His officials will tell him, “Don’t go there, Minister, there be dragons. You will almost certainly be misreported and quoted out of context. There is no political advantage”. In that sense, his officials are quite right. Demographic policies have very, very long lead times—15, 20, 25 years. So a five-year parliamentary cycle gives every incentive to avoid the whole topic. But in 2035, when we have built those 3.6 million dwellings and I, aged 93, am dribbling into my cornflakes, our succeeding generations may well regret that we did not do more to consider the challenge now.