Fourth Industrial Revolution

Lord Mendelsohn Excerpts

Wednesday 15th November 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Henley) (Con)]

My Lords, we recognise the huge benefits of the fourth industrial revolution and are working across government to exploit them. The digital strategy outlines ways to make Britain the best place to start and grow a digital business, trial new technology or undertake advanced research. We are working closely with industry, considering the recommendations of two major government and industry reviews on digitalisation and artificial intelligence.

[Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that response. There are some excellent initiatives in various departments, not least the use of blockchain in the Department for Work and Pensions to greatly empower benefits recipients. Does my noble friend agree that all the advantages of the fourth industrial revolution will be realised only through a connected, collaborative approach across the whole of Whitehall? Otherwise, the opportunities before us will not be fully utilised and realised and we will fail, fast.

[Lord Henley]

My noble friend is right to say that there are great opportunities ahead of us. He is right to stress the need to work across government. There will be no silos in government, as far as we can make clear. BEIS and all other departments will work together on this. I merely mention BEIS because that is where I happen to be at the moment—I am sorry; I could have expressed that better. The other point to make to my noble friend is that we want to work with industry and all those outside to make sure we receive the benefits of the change we are seeing with the fourth industrial revolution.

[Lord Mendelsohn]

My Lords, I apologise to the House for my enthusiasm. I also apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Holmes—a great ally on many issues—for getting up far too early.

Although the fourth industrial revolution is a recognisable force that promises great GDP growth and the transformation of the world of work and production, the greatest risk to economic efficiency is that income and wealth will be ever more skewed. A weight of reports, including an excellent one by UBS Investment Bank, warn that inequality will be greater and the benefits will accrue to fewer and fewer people. As part of their work on the fourth industrial revolution, will the Government establish not only new measures to track this issue, but appropriate targets to ensure that its economic benefits fall to all in society?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord’s enthusiasm for these matters. I think the House is grateful for his very prompt intervention.

The noble Lord recognises, as I do, that changes are coming and that we must accept them and work for them. He will have seen the Made Smarter Review that we commissioned, published only a week ago by the chairman of Siemens, and I think he would accept that we will see many more jobs; I think the review estimated this could create something in the order of 135,000 new jobs. In terms of what he was saying about greater inequality, which I do not accept, there are estimates that the fourth industrial revolution will not only create new jobs, but create them faster and create better-paid jobs. That is something we need to look at. I will certainly look at the other reviews he mentioned, but there are challenges that we must accept. These changes are happening and we must work to ensure that they happen to our best advantage.