Cross-Government Cost Cutting

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

Can I reassure the noble Lord that these questions are considered in spending reviews? They are also considered as part of the process of collective agreement when new policy is made between the periods of spending reviews. The noble Lord mentioned the MoJ and the Home Office; they will grow by, respectively, 3.6% and 3.1% a year over this Parliament.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Bird, made a very sound and good point. Would the Minister recommend to her Treasury colleagues that the “10%/slash everything” approach to public expenditure used in recent times is not the best way of controlling and curbing the size of the public sector, of improving its efficiency or of cutting out waste? There are techniques that have been tried in the past, namely the policy programme budgeting system, learned from the original Bureau of the Budget in America 40 years ago, and which should be revisited. Such techniques are much more effective in delivering real, effective, cost cuts, which take into account all the side effects that can sometimes overwhelm the original attempt at economy.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My noble friend is right: we must ensure that when we undertake these exercises, we really are delivering efficiency and value for money gains, rather than short-term fixes for departments’ budgets that, in the long term, may create other problems. I can reassure him that no figure is attached to the current exercise; it is about working with departments to see where they can find efficiency savings to help them manage the pressures they are under.

Economy: Balance of Payments and Industrial Productivity

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Neill of Gatley]

My Lords, by and large as a result of the Bank of England’s responsibility for monetary policy, in effect the responsibility for what happens to the exchange rate in a very competitive world is hugely influenced by our monetary policy relative to others. We have been and remain in favour of open markets, where prices are determined in world markets.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

Will my noble friend explain to most of the noble Lords who have spoken that nowadays, most manufacturing items have a huge service and knowledge-laden complex in them? Will he also explain that to the Office for National Statistics, which does not seem to understand the difference? Will he not concede that at the moment, as an economy, we have an £86 billion trade surplus on our services overseas, which indicates that the mixture of services and manufacturing that we are developing is the winning formula for the future?

[Lord O’Neill of Gatley]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Howell points out some extremely important facts, which I encourage everybody to listen to and read more about. I would add, as I emphasised at the start, that there are some signs that our trade balance in goods and services in recent years has improved. The deterioration that so many people talk about is in another source; it relates to the difference between the returns of investors here in the UK and our return on our own investments overseas.

Economy

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome this debate promoted by the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, who made several points with which I agreed. I want to focus on the austerity aspect of the debate—we are looking at the concept of “beyond austerity”—and examine some of the myths that surround it.

Austerity may have become a loaded word in some quarters, but the truth is—and this is difficult to accept but essential—that there has to be a permanent downward pressure on public spending at all times. That is essential if we want a balanced economy. Those who want to end austerity and make speeches about it at the moment really want more spending. More spending means more borrowing, which means more taxes to meet the ever-bigger interest payments. That taxation inevitably comes from workers’ wages and salaries, however much you try to squeeze the rich. So ending austerity and calling for a clear anti-austerity agenda—as I believe the fashionable phrase is—are just weasel words for shifting the burden onto working people and the poor to pay for the ever-swelling state. I find it difficult to see why people cannot understand that very obvious point, but those who cannot see it should to my mind follow the advice on the Underground ticket gate, which tells you to “Seek Assistance”. Poor Scotland under Mrs Sturgeon’s economic policy, which is declared to be against austerity, and poor British workers if ever Labour take charge.

To maintain the essential downward pressure on public expenditure, which is needed at all times and not just over the next little while, I welcome the Chancellor’s new fiscal responsibility charter. But will that be enough? I will give a little history. Back in 1970, my colleague Mark Schreiber, who is now my noble friend Lord Marlesford, who I see is in his place, believed that we should import into Whitehall three powerful new tools: PPBS, which is policy and programme budgeting systems; PAR, which is programme analysis and review; and a central capability, subsequently called the central policy review staff, to drive the questioning of every government activity.

The art of questioning is of course to ask the right questions. This was the genesis of the original CPRS idea. We wanted a central capability with colossal and persistent questioning power to ask, and repeatedly ask, the right questions of every part and function of government—every division and every agency. “What are your objectives? Could you achieve them better? Do they need to be achieved in the public sector or could they be contracted out? Could they be achieved better by the private sector? Are they worthwhile and necessary at all?”.

To mount such questioning centrally of course requires massive intellectual power, and that is what we wanted to see centred in the CPRS. We wanted it to drill down into every public sector department, division, agency and state-owned industry systematically and penetratingly, insisting on constant rejustification for every organisation’s or group’s existence in the public sector, with privatisation or abolition as the alternatives if public sector operation and public expenditure could no longer be justified. We saw this as the only way to place a firm and disciplined hand on the whole public sector and on the constant tendency, which is always underestimated, of public activity and public bureaucracy to swell and grow at all levels, which it always otherwise does.

This is not an ideological impulse: it is a practical and managerial one. Government is mushroom-like. If left in the dark and out of the light of challenge and questioning, it always grows. That is inevitable. Pressures good and bad are pushing for expansion all the time. How often one hears the cry “There should be a law about it”, or “We need a new agency”— in a trice we have a new set of regulations, more committees and more spending. That is why we wanted then and still need a really powerful and well-informed inside mechanism to assist Parliament and the national interest, as we did in 1970.

There was support then from the very top, but Civil Service chiefs were very suspicious of too much power in No. 10. Finding the right people to ask really penetrating questions was extremely difficult. One person whom we approached said, “I’m not going around Whitehall asking awkward questions. Socrates did that, and look what happened to him”. So in practice, the CPRS began the right way but it really lost its direction after the 1970s and ceased being a powerful questioning and challenging agency. Instead, it started generalising about the broad direction of government and of macroeconomic policy, so it was abolished. Today we need central spending tightly controlled at all times, and not just in the short period ahead. We could call it austerity. I am afraid that the word “prudence” has been discredited. But whatever others call it, I call it common sense.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, as the first of those making a winding-up speech, I thank and congratulate not just the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, but everyone who has contributed today. I do not think that I have ever sat through a debate in the House where every single speech has opened my mind in a different way and provided me with such extraordinary food for thought. Really, a very exceptional conversation has gone on with all sides of the House.

We have had, in effect, almost two different debates today: one, if I could turn it around, on austerity—I am going to make a few comments on that—and the other on the challenge that the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, has put before us of the extraordinarily disruptive new technologies that are changing the world in which we live. Such technologies will be the basis of the economy going forward and offer us extraordinary opportunities, as well as present us with real risks. I think the beginning of that debate is absolutely crucial.

Let me go back very briefly to austerity. I say again to the Labour Party and the Conservative Party that I completely agree that the crash was caused by the finance industry. There is no question about that. But the problem was that the ability to respond to that required cutting the deficit because public spending by the Labour Government was predicated on the assumption that we had done away with bust and were into a permanent era of boom. When that disappeared, it was simply unsustainable to continue public spending at those levels. But I also say to the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, that I believe we are no longer following the coalition’s trajectory, which, by the way, when it realised it was moving too harshly, had the common sense to tack its sails and reduce the deficit more slowly. There has been an ideological decision to try to rapidly move to a surplus situation and abandon the underlying principle of the coalition, which was that the burden should always be shared. In the Budget, we saw people who were prosperous and propertied getting very significant advantages and the cuts falling on the poorest of the working poor, children, young people and those with mental illnesses. That is the key change that I would fundamentally dispute, and it worries me going into the spending review.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My Lords, the noble Baroness mentioned my name, but I think she is slightly attributing to me views that I do not hold. All I was saying was that the concept of “beyond austerity” seems to imply a sort of nirvana where public expenditure can be completely relaxed. That is a delusion. If that line is pursued, it will hurt many working people very seriously. That is all that I am saying.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I like the word “prudence”; it is a sensible one to use. As my noble friend Lord Taverne said, in a civilised society taxation plays a key role and there is always a balance between the investment provided by the public sector, support for the vulnerable and the potential that can be brought about by constraining the amount of the economy that the public sector captures.

Let me move on to the more exciting part of this discussion, which will, I hope, be the first of many. During the coalition years, we had a very interventionist Government and an industrial strategy, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, referred. It was not a free market solution of bringing back R&D investment and rebuilding the technological skills base in this country. It was a working partnership between the Government and business, often through the catapult centres, with a big focus on and support for research, especially the development end of research, and with that a development of the skills base.

Several people have made a key point: apprenticeships are wonderful and every one of us here would support high-quality apprenticeships. I hope the Government will look at how they work, not just in large companies but in small companies, which have been rather neglected. However, the work of the further education colleges in developing skilled people who have the flexibility not just to fill the immediate jobs but the potential to develop new industries and fill the opportunities of the future is absolutely key. I hope the Government keep that very much in mind.

These disruptive technologies are incredibly exciting; to me, that is, in part, because they are so consumer and user-driven. Amazon has become a powerhouse, not because it has been imposed from the top but because people want to change the way they buy. I hate the fact that it does not pay taxes, but we have to solve that problem because it will be a characteristic of so many of the firms of the future. Look at Uber. No matter how we feel about the black cab company, it seems that younger people have found Uber to be effective. However, as people in this House have said, it is a company that does not own a single taxi. I suspect that rather than going to a conventional hotel, many in this House are now looking at Airbnb as a way of booking their summer holiday. In the finance sector, which is rarely discussed in this context, the disintermediation of the big players is phenomenal. Peer-to-peer lending, crowdfunding and small, specialised banks are filling the gap that the financial institutions have allowed to develop, partly because they have hung on to ancient legacy technology—nearly all of them are dinosaurs. One sadness about the return of RBS was that it could have been reshaped into something that matched the new world of alternate finance. Instead, frankly, it has been left as a dinosaur of the old world.

I am concerned about access to financing for SMEs, because the traditional banks are not doing it any better than they were during recession—that is absolutely key; it is being picked up by the alternate world. That world will carry them through the very early days of development with relatively small amounts of finance, but we still have in this country the famous valley of death for companies that are beginning to grow and then cannot get access either to the risk capital or to the lending that they need to make that transition. We live with two consequences that worry me enormously. So many of our brilliant entrepreneurs who start companies have no ambition to grow them to global entities. In the US, their counterparts would do it without question, but they look to sell out. It is partly a cultural attitude, but it is also because that financing to go to a global structure is not available in this country, and it is something that has to be tackled rapidly.

A number of people—my noble friend Lady Miller in particular—talked about the importance of the green economy. It is one of the key economic sectors of the future. I am extraordinarily worried because any conversation now with investors in the green energy sector will tell you that they are holding back because they have been so discouraged by the actions that the Government have taken. Zero-carbon homes were mentioned, as was the withdrawal of support for onshore wind—there is now complete mistrust and suspicion across that sector. Those green jobs are critical to our future.

No one discussed the transport industry, where I have spent the past two years of my life. Ultra-low-emission vehicles together with driverless cars and huge manufacturing change—for example, 3D printing of car parts—revolutionised that industry. The old-legacy companies are scrambling and cannot see a path to the future. We have an extraordinary opportunity to become a leader if we build the market for ultra-low-emission vehicles and driverless vehicles in this country, and allow in the R&D and the jobs that can come with the related manufacturing. I hope that the Government will continue their commitment to that sector which was almost solely driven by Danny Alexander. I know that Oliver Letwin is also a big proponent of it. It is crucial that it continues to thrive because of the opportunities that it presents.

I see that my time is virtually up. I just want to say what an exciting time this, but let me add one very small caveat. It is the European Union. It is critical to us that we remain part of that single market if we are to have this exciting future that potentially sits in front of us. We are seriously at risk of talking this country out of the EU. I direct my comments particularly at the Conservative Benches and ask them, please, to stop the indulgence of the right wing, which is inward-looking and does not understand the dynamics of the market and the new opportunities, and to make sure that Britain is properly positioned as a world and European player with skills and investment and able to welcome and take advantage of those new disruptive technologies.

Greece

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Neill of Gatley]

My Lords, let me reassure Members of this House that—as I said in my prepared comments and in repeating my right honourable friend the Chancellor’s Statement—we will do whatever is possible to make sure that any tourists or businesses going to Greece get the right guidance and advice. As to the issues on the ground for the Greek people, raised in the noble Lord’s question, we will be looking for further updated guidance over coming days, pending how the discussions go tonight and tomorrow on the financial and economic relationship between Greece and the rest of the eurozone. But, of course, we would all like to think that we will try whatever is within our means to help the Greek people in potentially challenging circumstances if they were to deteriorate further.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, one idea that has been widely referred to but was not mentioned in the discussions in the other place this afternoon is that Greece could temporarily leave the eurozone and return if and when matters settle down later. I do not expect my noble friend to give an opinion on that now, but will he see that that point is looked at in the considerations in the coming days? Can he give us any guidance—possibly he cannot—on the treaty-changing implications of that or any other proposal connected with this growing crisis?

[Lord O’Neill of Gatley]

My Lords, while that may not have been discussed in the other House, it has, as I am sure my noble friend Lord Howell is aware, been suggested by some other members of the eurozone. It is certainly something that we are aware of having been raised and it will be mentioned again in discussions; that is for sure. I reiterate, however, that it is not appropriate for me or my right honourable friend the Chancellor to talk about such matters ahead of the delicate discussions that will take place tonight and tomorrow.

Taxation: Avoidance

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 9th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, if noble Lords have read the statement by HSBC in today’s Guardian—it may be in other newspapers, but that is where I read it—they will have seen that it is clear that, in 2005, HSBC was run as a very loose confederation and that the centre sought not to exercise very great control. That has changed very dramatically, and the new regulatory authorities are much more intrusive in ensuring that management at the centre has effective control throughout the organisation. It is clear that there was a wholly unacceptable culture in many of the banks. Both regulatory and legal change and activities by the banks in setting up their own body to monitor standards—as well as statements by senior management at the top of banks—are trying to reverse that culture towards the kind of culture that I suspect most people would expect their bankers to follow.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I have listened to several attempts by the Opposition to tie the name of my noble friend Lord Green to whatever was going on in HSBC Switzerland, which I know in intention he would not dream of defending. Does the Minister nevertheless accept that my noble friend Lord Green is a man of the utmost probity who has done an enormously valuable job as a Trade Minister for this Government? I have the privilege of working with him. His activities bring great benefit to this nation. Would it not be a little wiser, if we want to maintain the quality and integrity of our political discussion in this House, to avoid premature innuendo of the kind that we have heard frequently from the opposition Benches?

[Lord Newby]

I completely agree, my Lords.

Employment: Private Sector Jobs

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, there are a number of measures but one of the key things is what is happening to employment and unemployment regionally. In the past quarter, unemployment fell more quickly in Scotland, Wales and four English regions than it did in London. There is big growth in a number of regions outside London, which is extremely welcome.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, when it comes to rebalancing, is my noble friend aware that more than 40% of our export earnings come from the services sector, at which we are extremely good? Manufacturing is doing extremely well but services are doing very much better. Can he assure us that the Government will do everything to reinforce and encourage this sector, particularly in international dealings in an increasingly digitalised and networked world where services are the main growth area?

[Lord Newby]

Absolutely, my Lords, and in a number of the major trade delegations that the Prime Minister and other senior Ministers have undertaken in recent times, promoting services has been uppermost in their minds. One of the great strengths of the UK in terms of professional services is that the standards we set here through bodies such as those for chartered accountants and the legal bodies have a worldwide reputation, which underpins the credibility of British companies seeking to sell their services internationally.

Economy

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, we have a long-term problem in terms of linguistic skills and a long-term problem in terms of the balance of payments. The Government are seeking to put in train policies that turn that around. I completely agree with the noble Lord that the survey evidence suggests that for small businesses in particular a lack of language skills is one of the biggest single inhibitors in moving into non-English-speaking foreign markets. That is why we must do all we can to encourage children to take up languages at school.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an adviser to the British Chambers of Commerce. In welcoming this obviously improving news about the economy, which is now getting distinctly stronger, particularly in the export sector, can my noble friend tell us what plans the Government have for reinforcing the work of the British Chambers of Commerce rather along the lines of the chambers of trade in Germany, to reinforce our export effort even further?

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, the Government are very appreciative of the work that the British Chambers of Commerce has done. Of course, the Heseltine review, No Stone Unturned in Pursuit of Growth, made the point that a strengthened British Chambers of Commerce was much to be welcomed. However, the tradition in Germany of chambers of commerce, of which membership is virtually compulsory for organisations, is very different from here. While the Government are encouraging the chambers of commerce to strengthen, it would be misleading to think that one could have a simple write-across from the German example in the foreseeable future.

Economy: GDP Forecast

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 29th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I disagree with virtually all of that. As I pointed out earlier, during the five years of this Government we will have borrowed very significantly more to shore up the economy. That is why debt is higher. I am not sure whether the noble Lord is suggesting that we should have borrowed even more.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

Is not the noble Lord, Lord Peston, leading us all into a bit of a false dichotomy? Of course we want economic growth, and we are getting a little now. The growth is coming back, as the noble Lord will have seen from the newspapers. Although we would obviously like more of it, growth depends on getting the debt curbed and on getting public expenditure under control. These things are not opposites or choices but all have to go together. Surely the noble Lord, who is a very good teacher and an expert, should be teaching us that. That is what he should be telling your Lordships.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Peston, is an extremely eminent economist and he knows, as a good Keynesian, that the key at this point of the cycle is the change in animal spirits—the sense to which people have confidence to invest. Animal spirits have been very significantly subdued over recent years. There is a suggestion in every single figure that we now see that they are returning to the positive. That, more than any single thing that the Government now do, will be what drives growth forward.

Future Investment

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that these long-term plans—in some cases very long-term—are mostly welcome, but that the problem lies in their delivery and implementation over the years? He may be too young, but does he recall that back in 1980, I announced in the House of Commons on behalf of the Government the introduction of a programme of nine new giant pressurised water reactor nuclear power stations, but only one ever got built? Of course, life would be very different today for our power sector, and we would have much more opportunity for low carbon, if we had those machines in place but the programme failed. Will he make sure that his colleagues in government, particularly in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, are fully aware of why the failures occurred, why the vast stabilisation and drop in fossil fuel prices undermined most of the economics of nuclear and why the political resistance built up? There are lessons to be learnt there which, unless they are absorbed properly, may yet damage our own attempts to move to a low-carbon, long-term nuclear base load for electricity.

[Lord Newby]

My Lords, I am happy to give that assurance but the noble Lord underlines what has been a leitmotif of the nuclear programme. On paper it has looked a lot better in a number of respects and easier to deliver than has been achieved in practice. What we are committed to trying to achieve when we set our face to get new nuclear capacity is that we are able to deliver it on a reasonable budget and within a sensible timeframe.

Economy: Growth

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My Lords, I join in warmly welcoming my noble friend Lord Deighton to his Front Bench responsibilities. I listened with great interest to his opening speech. I must confess, however, that I am reluctant to join in this great argument between austerity versus Keynesian inflation, of which we have heard both sides in this debate. That is not least because both sides are in fact based on a wildly exaggerated view of the degree to which our economy in this country can be steered, manipulated, adjusted, rebalanced or anything else magically, by purely domestic economic actions, somehow to create growth and pull it out of a hat. In fact, I go further and say that the naivety of some of our economic gurus who pronounce on these matters never ceases to amaze me. It really is laughable to see the so-called expert analysts twisting themselves in knots, to coin a phrase, over whether GDP grew in the last quarter by 0.1% or shrank by 0.3% or more, when GDP itself is a questionable and highly inaccurate measure of economic activity and progress. I believe that it was invented only in the 1930s and it has in any case now been distorted beyond recognition.

Now the experts tell us that infrastructure spending can somehow be switched on overnight to “kick-start”—that is the phrase—the economy. I do not know what system they believe they are dealing with. They have obviously never worked in the construction industry or they would know that the rather ugly phrase “shovel-ready” is a meaningless term and that the best infrastructure projects take a minimum of two years to prepare—the best projects, that is—and to wind their way through all the permissions and controls that we still have in this country, even after certain reforms. I note what was said earlier by my noble friend Lord Forsyth, who reminded us that the HS2 scheme announced yesterday will take 13 years to get to its first phase. I am not at all sure where I shall be in 13 years’ time, or indeed where even the economy should be. I am not sure that these issues fit into our present concerns at all.

The reality is different. It is that our fate lies very largely overseas and it is our sagging exports, especially to the eurozone, that have hurt us. That is the problem now. That is what the December economic review from the Office for National Statistics emphasises, quite rightly, and the Office for Budget Responsibility also makes that crystal clear. I am sorry that my noble friend does not think they are always right but on this they are pretty clear indeed.

In the past six years, goods exports to the poor old European Union have fallen by 5%, while goods exports to non-EU countries have risen by 65%. Since 2009—that is, just over three years ago—our total exports of goods and services to non-EU countries have risen by 35% and to the EU by 6%. At this moment, 60% of all our overseas earnings come from outside the European Union. That trend will probably accelerate and will certainly continue.

On the domestic front, I am not against more major projects here at home to repair and upgrade our dilapidated infrastructure. On the contrary, we need a bit of the imagination shown by the Victorians and some of what has been called the lunatic optimism of the Brunels—father and son—and other great Victorians. I believe that some of these projects could be financed without spooking the international bond markets.

I see that a certain Professor Pissarides, a Nobel prizewinner, has been telling a Davos audience that good energy and transport projects with a strong payback in return, both in narrow and wider economic terms, can be financed with minimum impact on the public finances if sensible accounting practices are used. Some of us have been touting this idea around for at least the past two years. It is all brilliantly laid out in American Gridlock, a book by one of America’s best and most original economists, H Woody Brock, in which he speaks of the need for a completely new capital stock of higher quality. There is nothing very new about these ideas; it merely seems as though economists over here, on this side of the Atlantic, are at last waking up to them. They ought to be ideas that, frankly, transcend party politics and are not turned into a political football.

Still another domestic key to recovery is going for a policy of lower energy and power prices instead of the higher ones that we have at present. Again, my noble friend Lord Forsyth emphasised that. Energy costs here are stupidly high. We may not be able to match America’s low gas and electricity prices at present, for obvious reasons, but anyone who doubts that the value of cheap and abundant power supplies is key should look at the industries now flowing back into America—especially petrochemicals—and the hundreds of thousands of new jobs being generated. Britain is in fact superbly placed over the next decade for gas supplies, with both our own substantial resources and half the world trying to sell us more of both piped and frozen gas. It is a true buyer’s market and we should be making the most of it, rather than the least.

As I say, the real recovery is in export markets—whatever we do at home—and in our ability to be quick-witted enough, agile enough and far-sighted, innovative and creative enough to adjust to totally new world conditions in a network world. If we are looking for the queues that my noble friend Lord Wolfson, in his remarkable speech, said had to be there for demand, then that is where the queues should be forming for us to perform much better in the export market.

While we must of course remain constructive Europeans in a reformed and redirected European Union—we will be debating that matter in this House on Thursday—and while we remain close but not subservient allies of the United States, which is still a colossal market for us, the central priority must be the repositioning of the UK as a global network power. We must build with the utmost vigour on the networks available, of which the Commonwealth is certainly one, and other strong networks and bilateral links outside the Atlantic area.

We have to recognise that the global energy pattern has undergone two successive and enormous revolutions —the first towards lower carbon and greener energy forms on both the supply and demand sides, and the second towards shale gas and oil, and the associated new extractive technologies—entirely altering the global map of energy resources and the corresponding political significance, influence and market power of many countries, many of them with Commonwealth connections, to which we must have access, as well as being sources of savings and wealth to invest back in this country, as the noble Lord, Lord Birt, referred to just now.

In this new landscape we must deploy with confidence and without apology our exceptional British qualities, historic associations, English-language strengths and worldwide cultural influence to our direct advantage in rising Asia, Africa and Latin America. In doing so, we need to use the full range of soft power techniques, new and conventional, to protect and promote British interests, and to promote the British global reputation and powers of influence and attraction for our goods and services.

The potential is colossal. I wonder how many people know, for example, that the Association of Commonwealth Universities, based in London, connects up to 530 universities across this planet in an amazing network of common interests, services and exchanges. That sort of thing is as important for our prosperity as many a conventional trade mission. It also opens up, though exchange between individuals and scholars, avenues for enterprise for small and medium-sized businesses. I should certainly like to see the chambers of trade play a far bigger role in the international export scene, as my noble friend Lord Heseltine recommends, and I declare an interest as the economic adviser to the British Chambers of Commerce.

There is a hopeful message to be distilled out of this. It is not a disaster at all. The message is particularly and almost uniquely favourable to Britain. The essence of it is that we now live not in a world of power blocks and superpowers but in a world of networks. That is what the microchip and the worldwide communications revolution have brought about, and many economists do not yet seem to understand that. It is not just a question of Asia and the southern world awakening, with their vast cities of the future and their cultures and values—which incidentally are often superior to ours when it comes to family cohesion and education—and generally pulling ahead of us in technology. That is the story of the past 10 years and it is almost over. Those schoolbooks that we had about capital flowing from the West to the developing world are history. The wealth, as well as the research and technological skills, are now flowing the other way. The debt-laden western powers are now turning east and south for desperately needed investment and capital from the massive savings and the huge sovereign wealth funds of Asia. We have so much to learn and gain from India and China; it is not the other way round. They certainly do not want lectures from us.

This time round we also have to get even closer alongside not just the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—but the great new energy powers, such as Australia and Canada, two of Britain’s most stalwart friends. They are in the lead, followed by a whole raft of new players such as Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya in east Africa, and in west Africa Ghana, Sierra Leone and the Nigerian giant, which will soon be overtaking South Africa if it can manage its internal politics. There are also South Korea, where I have just been, with its once direct alliance with the United Kingdom, Turkey, Mexico, Vietnam and other new players and new markets alongside which we must move very tightly.

For Britain, once we have navigated through the present dangerous seas, it means that our luck will be in—unless we screw it up. We will be sitting plum in the midst of the world’s best network. We will be, even more than we are now, a safe haven for the world’s investors. We will be increasingly well placed energy-wise, as I have described. That is the good story of where we are going as a nation—the purposeful narrative, worth telling, even while the cold wind of recession keeps gusting around us. It means that in the totally transformed world ahead, Britain is promisingly placed to become the networking nation par excellence.

Europe of course remains our region, where we have to step forward and work out how to lead, for once, in the reform of the European Union that half the continent is waiting and longing for, and we shall debate this next Thursday. America obviously remains our close ally and a gigantic market but the evolving Commonwealth network is our family and lucky legacy. We should stake our hopes and future prosperity on the connections and gateways to the great new markets that it offers. That is where the demand will come from. Whatever measures we take here at home, that is the source from which our return to full and sustained economic performance will come.