Public Services: Workforce (Public Services Committee Report)

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Friday 16th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I begin by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, not only on getting through those 15 minutes with a cold but on the report. I also congratulate and thank the members of the committee, as well as the staff who the noble Baroness mentioned.

One of my passions is local civil society. I first became interested in this area as a PhD student, when I read a book by David Green, a former Labour councillor, called Reinventing Civil Society: The Rediscovery of Welfare Without Politics. He wrote about the country’s rich history of civil society organisations, such as mutuals, friendly societies and trade unions, which used to provide adult education, insurance, medical and other services; what we would today call public services. Since then, I have taken a real interest in local civil society, an interest shared by noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, and the noble Lord, Lord Collins.

I approach the report and this debate based on my experiences. First, when working as academic and research director at an economic think tank, it was clear to me that we needed to think about demographic changes and their impact on public services. I should refer noble Lords to my register of interests. Secondly, this is based on my recent experience of being a Health Minister, however briefly, faced with the current and future challenges of our system of health and social care. I am grateful to many noble Lords across the House for conversations and advice on addressing these challenges during my time at the Department of Health and Social Care, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, who I see here and who helped me many times. Thirdly, when I was a Member of the European Parliament for London, I was inspired by and helped to publicise local community and neighbourhood civil society projects across London. They addressed many of the issues found in local communities; for example, training NEETs or using sport to help teach children who had been excluded from school due to behaviour problems. There were local charities helping the homeless, including a fantastic project helping former drug dealers to turn their entrepreneurial skills to becoming sandwich dealers—I will not say what was in the sandwiches—projects working with ex-offenders, anti-radicalisation projects and many more. When in October the current Prime Minister decided that my services as Minister for Civil Society, my dream job, were no longer required, I was able to return to my passion projects. One of these is to help local community champions set up neighbourhood non-state civil society projects.

Having read the report, I found myself agreeing with a number of its recommendations, but today I will focus on two or three. During my time at the Department of Health and Social Care, it was obvious that we have so much more to learn about health and well-being and so much research to do. One example is our increased awareness and understanding of mental health conditions—I look to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, who often raised this issue—compared to even 30 years ago, when the response used to be something like, “Stiff upper lip!” or “Pull yourself together.” Think about PTSD, which was recognised only in the 1980s. Looking back, we realise that shell shock from the First World War was a form of PTSD. I remember preparing for a debate on neurological conditions. When I rather naively asked my officials to send me a list of all the neurological conditions they knew of, I received the answer, “But Minister, there are more than 600”—600 conditions, many of which will require more research to understand and more resources to address.

While people are living for longer physically, they are not always living in good mental health for as long, so demand for these services, as well as existing services, is increasing. As the report says, our ageing population means that

“The proportion of the population with multiple and complex needs will rise further, even as the labour market available will be smaller.”


In simple terms, the number of people paying into the Government’s piggy bank will get smaller, as the number of people receiving public services paid out of it increases.

As the noble Baroness alluded to, contributors to the report argued that

“long-term thinking must consider different ways to boost workforce numbers, such as UK training routes and immigration”,

efficiency, data, and flexible and creative deployment of staff. The report argues that we need all of these, but advances in technology and flexibility alone will not solve the skills gap. We will need some immigration.

After the war, when the UK faced a workforce shortage, it was immigrants from mainly Commonwealth countries who saved our public services. Take my own family. My father came here to work on the railways and as a bus driver; his brother came to work as a postman; his sister as a nurse. We will need more immigration, especially from those countries that train more people than they have jobs for domestically and that see receiving overseas remittances as far more effective than receiving foreign aid. I hope we can change the debate on immigration from one of numbers to one of filling the skills gaps and vacancies.

The third important point that stood out was the recognition that public services do not always mean state-provided services. On more than one occasion, the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, has reminded the House that the state cannot do it all. It has to work with civil society and the private sector. The report rightly recognises that

“The voluntary sector can add immense value to public service delivery”.


I have seen and worked with a number of projects. I think of a local mosque offering IT training to its congregation; the local council partnered with it to offer wider, more cost-effective delivery for the council and a bit of income for the local charity—a win-win situation. But while this is a win-win situation, we have to be careful and not expect all charities to become social enterprises and support public services. I have also seen projects fail when they have turned their attention to government contracts as opposed to growing organically and helping local people. I remember an owner of a gym who said that the people who worked there did not need qualifications but social skills. They needed to turn up on time, smile, be clean and learn not to say, “Computer says no.” He said that that was what he had to do. Sadly, this is one of those projects that expanded too quickly and failed, in anticipation of government contracts. While we should encourage social enterprises to bid for public contracts, they still face a number of barriers, as the report rightly says. It says that we need

“a fundamental shift in how the public sector works with voluntary partners”

and the private sector.

There are many other points which I could address, but I will leave that to other noble Lords. It is an excellent report. I cannot cover all the points, but I will end with a question for my noble friend the Minister. Can she tell noble Lords what the Government are doing across departments to include civil society, and indeed private sector partners, in better delivering public services so that we all gain?